quotes and sayings on fascism, an obstacle to living life fully

capitalism

When fascism comes to
America, it will be wrapped in
the flag and carrying a cross.

attributed to Sinclair Lewis,
probably because of his book
It Can't Happen Here

"Are you a communist?" "No I am an anti-fascist" "For a long time?" "Since I have understood fascism." Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls

Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations. Adam McKay

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them. Jean-Paul Sartre

Fascism exists at the level of Stage One within all democratic countries—not excluding the United States. “Giving up free institutions," especially the freedoms of unpopular groups, is recurrently attractive to citizens of Western democracies, including some Americans. We know from tracing its path that fascism does not require a spectacular “march" on some capital to take root; seemingly anodyne decisions to tolerate lawless treatment of national “enemies" is enough. Robert O. Paxton The Anatomy of Fascism

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated
the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger
than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism:
ownership of government by an individual, by a group,
or any controlling private power.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Power, no matter what kind of power it is, without a foundation
in truth, is a dictatorship, more or less and in one way or another,
for it is always based on people's fear of the social responsibility
and personal burden that "freedom" entails.

Wilhelm Reich
The Mass Psychology of Fascism

The biggest mistake of a democratic country is to underestimate
the power of a democratically elected pro-fascist leader
because it is always easier to destroy a castle from within!

Mehmet Murat ildan

The strangest thing about fascism in America today is that
American fascists are so dumb, they don't even know
they're fascists. They don't even know what
the word "fascism" means.
They vaguely know that it had something to do with Hitler and
the Nazis, but that's it. They have no idea that the first words
of the Nazi anthem were "Germany above all else" which was
their version of "America first." And the way Nazis demonized
Jews was no different than the way American fascists demonize
liberals. Hitler promised to "make Germany great again."
And Hitler denounced the newspapers, which exposed him
for what he really was, as "Lügenpresse,"
which is German for "fake news."
If the German Nazi party still existed today, they would
look exactly like the Republican party under Trump. Hitler's
rallies looked no different than Trump's rallies. And Hitler
would absolutely love a well-oiled propaganda
outlet like Fox News.

Oliver Markus Malloy
Inside The Mind of an Introvert

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate
perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda
carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in
the common front against fascism.

Henry A. Wallace

In "Anatomy of Fascism," Robert Paxton includes in his concise
definition "the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment
that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against
its enemies, both internal and external.

Garry Kasparov
Winter Is Coming

The very concept of "revolutionary violence" is somewhat falsely
cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to
prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing
on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the
much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling
oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks
against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction
of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications,
death squad assassinations, the extermination of
whole villages, and the like.

Michael Parenti
Blackshirts and Reds

He was afraid that the world struggle today was not of Communism against
Fascism, but of tolerance against the bigotry that was preached equally by
Communism and Fascism. But he saw too that in America the struggle was
befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the
word “Fascism” and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of
Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty. For they were thieves
not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote
not only Scripture but Jefferson.

Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen Here

The name of the regime where media is on the side of the government
is undoubtedly fascism, a regime of the sick minds where freedoms
are drowned in the cold waters of oppressions!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Fascism says what you and I experience as facts or what
reporters experience as facts are irrelevant. All that matters
are impressions and emotions and myths.

Timothy D. Snyder

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The one thing with writing stories about the rise of fascism is that
if you wait long enough, you'll almost certainly be proved right.
Fascism is like a hydra--you can cut off its head in the Germany
of the '30s and '40s, but it'll still turn up on your back doorstep
in a slightly altered guise.

Alan Moore

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing
fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen
to believe that we are all monsters.

Margaret Atwood

Benito Mussolini is credited with founding and developing fascism as a political ideology and establishing the world's first fascist state in Italy.
While the intellectual roots of fascism (such as extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, and the glorification of violence) existed before him, Mussolini was the first to formalize these ideas into a political movement, adopt the name "Fascism," and seize power.

Here is a breakdown of Mussolini’s role in creating fascism:

1. The Foundation (1919)
After serving in World War I, Mussolini—a former socialist—pivoted to extreme nationalism, believing that the war had created a new form of politics based on national unity rather than class struggle.
In March 1919, he organized the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento ("Italian Fasces of Combat") in Milan. This was the precursor to his National Fascist Party (PNF).
The name comes from the Latin word fasces, a bundle of rods tied around an axe, which symbolized strength through unity and Roman authority.

2. Developing the Ideology
Mussolini, along with philosophers like Giovanni Gentile, formulated the doctrine of Italian Fascism. It was built on several core tenets:
Totalitarianism: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
Ultranationalsm: Placing the nation above individual rights.
Anti-Socialism /Anti-Liberalism): Violent opposition to communism, democracy, and parliamentary systems.
Cult of Personality: Positioning himself as Il Duce (The Leader).
Violence as Action: Using "Blackshirt" paramilitary squads to terrorize political opponents.

3. Seizing Power and Setting the Example
1922 March on Rome: Mussolini’s paramilitary march led to him being appointed Prime Minister, after which he systematically dismantled Italian democracy.
The Template: Mussolini’s success inspired other movements, most notably Adolf Hitler’s Nazism in Germany. Mussolini was in power for 11 years before Hitler, and Hitler originally modeled his rise to power on Mussolini’s methods.
While Mussolini drew on earlier far-right ideas, he is the undisputed architect of 20th-century fascism as a distinct, organized political movement.

Bertrand Russell’s forceful yet dignified letter of refusal to debate a British fascist, a response to Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley.
━━━
Dear Sir Oswald,

Thank you for your letters and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell

Note: This letter was written after years of provoking correspondences from Oswald for the 89-year-old Russell to engage in public “talks“ in which Mosley believed he could persuade the politically liberal and pacifist philosopher of the so-called “merits” of fascism.
(In 2006, BBC History Magazine selected Mosley as the worst and most hated Briton in 1000 years.)

It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the
world scene somebody saying "I want to reopen Auschwitz,
I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares."
Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the
most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point
our finger at any of its new instances--every day,
in every part of the world."

Umberto Eco
Il fascismo eterno

The corridors of power are littered with Fascist leanings;
anything to save the upper classes through disenfranchisement
of the common person while allowing the common person
to think you're on their side.

Jacqueline Winspear
A Lesson in Secrets

It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world
terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If
evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the
beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics
and narrow-minded people everywhere.

Marjane Satrapi

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The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State,
of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State
is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

Benito Mussolini

Let fascism find not even a single passage to power or else
that poisonous snake will infiltrate into the every vital
corner of the country and kill the future of the nation!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Fascists like Putin, Trump, and their MAGA Nazis hate
democracy, because they feel they're entitled to rule,
but democracy keeps getting in the way.

Oliver Markus Malloy
Inside The Mind of an Introvert

The slogan "never again" requires us to recognize that if we are
not vigilant it could happen again. Preventing that from happening,
anti-fascists argue, requires us to break anti-fascism out of its historical
cage so that its wings can spread out across time and space.

Mark Bray

Either we learn to live together and embrace the complexity of life,
or we will end up with fascism again and destroy ourselves.

Sebastian Lelio

Fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of "mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At the bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one's own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, inassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These "mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations:

-a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

-the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;

-the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

-dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

-the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

-the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the groups' destiny;

-the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;

-the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;

-the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

...Fascism was an affair of the gut more than the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.

Robert O. Paxton
The Anatomy of Fascism