What exactly is Fascism?

doing a podcast on fascism today. Yes, and as I was saying, Chuck's always calling me a fascist pig, but I don't know that that's necessarily accurate. After I read this article how fascism works, Well, you should stop giving speeches from your balcony above at Land in my hand, partying my hair to my side a little bit, take down all the posters of you all over the place. Never so, Chuck, Yes, you want to talk about fascism, let's do it. Okay, So did you know I was

surprised to find this out. Bnino Mussolini was the guy who actually created pretty much created fascism. He definitely coined the term and uh, this concept of fascism was drawn upon from ancient Roman techniques, military techniques. Sure, Machiavelli, of course. Um. And I was surprised to find this out because, you know, he ended up strung up by his ankles with his throat slit, people kicking him in the head. He'd fall down after he was dead and they'd string him back up.

It didn't work, he no, it didn't. And really he was kind of Hitler's lackey. Really. Sure, I was surprised to find that he was the guy who started fascism, but by god he did. Apparently he was a socialist until he got ahold of Nitzsche and then he was like, WHOA has screwed a lot of stuff up in this world show. I like him personally, but you got to take the guy with the grain of salt, you know.

So as far back as n uh Mussolini was starting to ruminate on fascism, right, yeah, And what is it, chuck? What people throw this word around like it's it's awesome or um sweet or l O L? Have you noticed people use l O L to a ridiculous degree these days? But I do know that fascism is I think I can't remember who it was, But someone said it's the most misused word of our times. Yeah, and I believe it or um incredible, right, but you hear me know,

Bush is a fascist, Obamba is a fascist. Nancy Pelosi is a fascist. Dick Cheney's a fascist. None of them are fascist. All right, We're not going to debate that here. I thought that was a nice sprinkling of liberals and conservatives in there that I should throw in a Tea Party member to cover all my basis. Um Josha comes from the word fast skule, Italian meaning bundle. You're not gonna say it was an accent and fast skill nice.

Then Previously the Latin fascus or fascists, I take it as fasis and that is a bundle of sticks tied to a single axe. And that kind of says it all it is. It's pretty much a again, Mussolini has a master stroke. This is uh, this is a perfect um descriptor of what fascism is. The state is the axe which can yeah, and the people are the bundle of sticks that support the head or break depending. Fascism has a tendency to push people at the breaking point,

doesn't it. Although fascism also kind of brings out the absolute worst and conformist in human beings as well. Yeah. Um, so fascism is is basically the opposite of democracy. The whole point is the state. There is no individualism, there is no ump no, no. But that that doesn't necessarily

mean it's communist. And actually communism and fascism are opposite sides of the coins, uh to a lot of at least economically, right, because with communism it's um one social class, right, and with fascism they're very distinct social classes that you cannot get out of. Yeah, if you're in a social classes under fascism, then be prepared to stay there. Right. And another uh defining characteristic of fascism is that the

whole point of the state is um war. Yeah, it's it's based on natural selection Darwinian evolutions, where the the the state's entire existence is to wage and win war, and it's survival of the fittest. So everybody's out there waging war. And if you lose, well then you're you are naturally selected, you're absorbed by another state, you're tronker, you're subjugated. And the state that did the subjugating was selected as the fittest that was the strongest. So the

entire point of the state is to wage war imperialism. Baby, Yeah, it's pretty pretty rotten stuff really, um. And Mussolini put it, Um, that war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people's who have the courage to meet it. What a jerk, But you know it was a rallying point. People got into it for a while. Yeah. And and how I mean, like you wonder, how can some guy come along and

say you have no individualism. Everything your mommy told you about how great and unique you are in your little snowflake is wrong. Um. And your entire purpose in life is to support the glory of the state, which is going to go wage war indiscriminately. Um. How do people get duped into this? How do they follow along? I'll

tell you how, buddy. One thing that uh, the fascist prayed on And we say prayed because it's not strictly define Fascism isn't really around anymore, although there are tendencies and smaller groups, but as far as the big time governments, it's it's gone. But one thing to do is they take a nation in crisis. For instance, let's say Europe after World War One. Yeah, and they say, you know, we can return our country to its former glory. All you have to do is buy into it. So people

got to buy into it at first. It can't be done with the iron fist initially, right. And the way they buy into it is that the people are already suffering. Right. So a lot of people blame the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One for eventually leading to World War Two. There was a lot of um restriction placed

on the losing nations. Um. They they their their normal working class people in countries like Germany suffered tremendously um and they they had to repay to rebuild nations that they went to war with, and there was no trust whatsoever. So it's kind of a bad treaty actually, but it did set set the stage for fascism, right. So you've got the people who are suffering and they're saying, you've got to buy into it. What are they buying into while they're buying into the state and only the state,

and everything you do is for the good of the state. Right. That pretty much sums it up. And a lot of times it's based on um, some sort of idealized past, right, which again after World War One, that made it easy because this nation, like Germany, was suffering tremendously UM, and so they they were saying, well, we used to be great. We need to reclaim our superiority. Even if the great it doesn't matter because mythical as long as they buy

into it, right, Yeah, like the fifties. And also there there tends to be um, one ethnic group that is singled out as the important one, and everything else is being every every other group is dragging this one group down, and they need to be dealt with the master race in the case of Germany for sure. Yeah. And that's where we come to the difference between the capital f and the lower case f right. As far as fascism, apparently Mussolini's is capitalized and Hitler's is not. And he

was probably pretty angry about Uh. I don't think so too wanted to capital left, Yeah, he was, He get angry a lot. Um. Mussolini's fascism was largely based on going and waging war just for the hell of it, right, yes, just to show the glory of the state. Hitler's conquests um actually had a method to the madness, right right. His was basically basically um based on uh, furthering the Aryan race through conquest. Yeah, I got a cool quote

for you, alright. This Italian fascist philosopher who knew Giovanni habably enough, his name is Giovanni Genteel. He says mankind only progresses through division and progress and progress is achieved through the clash and victory of one side over another. So basically you can't progress unless you're dividing people and conquering. So there you have it. So my dad always said, and his name is Genteel or Genteel. Nice, Thanks, Chuck.

I was looking forward to this one because I knew that you bust the Italian accident out of you know, in my blood. There's another characteristic that we didn't mention, and it's an authoritarian leadership, right right. I mean you've got Mussolini, you've got Hitler. They have these cults of personality surrounding them. Yeah, that's really important, and they come

to embody the state. Right, So like it's you, you can pretty much interchangeably say everything you're doing is for the glory of Germany, or everything you're doing is for the glory of Hitler. They're pretty much interchangeable. That's why we had their flags and their posters all over the place, which they love their posters or did. Um. There's also

a tremendous amount of violence in these societies as well. Um, you can't have war without violence, you can't have well, not only that this it's not domestically you also have violence. So in addition to say, um Hitler's process of the Final Solution, where he's furthering the Aryan race by murdering anybody who's not a member of it, um, there's also, uh, there's domestic violence. For anyone who speaks out any resistance

movements anything like that, they're gonna be crushed. Yes, you're not supposed to you're not supposed to wage warrant discriminately for the glory of the state. You're really not supposed

to turn on your own people right round upon most decidedly. So, what's life like if you are one of those people who um would would have passed the Milgram experiment with flying colors and are just waving flags and happy as can be to see Mussolini's Il duce a car driving past well, it's not a very happy place because Mussolini flat out rejected them what he called the myth of happiness. Yeah, and uh, it's not a good place if you're a woman, because the only thing you are and under a Thatchero's

seme as a woman is a little fascist maker. Yeah, I don't want to They don't want you to work in anything. I want you to make a little fascist. And the the youth are um accentuated in the society's right sur it is survival of fist but also the youth make the best soldiers. And they're also the leaders of tomorrow. So if you indoctrinate them throughout their lifetimes, beginning at an early age, they're going to have the same ideals. Right. It's it's also not very good if

you're gay. It's because aside from Hitler and the gang thinking it's like, you know, mass perversion, it's also you can't make a little fascist, So that that was no good. Is I didn't know that? Is that why homosexuals were targeted so much Hitler well, for those reasons that they thought it was perverse, and then they you know, you can't make baby fascists, so what good are you right, but Hitler thought it could be cured. Mussolini just outlawed

it altogether. There's also what lots of rallies, parades, like you said, posters everywhere. It's it's um ubiquitous. The the the sentiment of fascism, everything for the state and the leader. They're everywhere you go. So if you're you know, sixteen seventeen in your courting, you're going to go to a state parade, state holiday. They tend to take on a religious quality, right, because there's no religion but nationalism. Well, yeah, that's a little tricky because they they reject religion in

a lot of ways. But in uh, the article that pointed out Mussolini in Italy clearly cannot reject Catholicism because that's where it's rooted. So he would kind of use the church to his advantage when it worked for him, and Hitler did a lot the same as well. Right, Yeah, he was a protector of the church. Right, so they say, God, these guys are crazy. Luckily that this, uh, this, this whole this, this fascism didn't take off all that well.

They tracically had a pretty short run. Nineteen eighteen and nine was the height of it, right, Yeah, that's not very long. This is where you find the fascist states in Germany, Italy, Romania had one pretty much sort of did Spain did. Yeah. When Franco led the revolution, he was colluding with the fascists, but they apparently weren't organized enough for I'd spread enough to really, um come on as the functioning government, so he just took on. He

adopted some of their fascist values in Spain. Uh. You know what, I think one of the coolest things is why it didn't work out. Was the reason it shouldn't work out is people started to say, wait a minute, genocide probably isn't a very cool thing to do, and violence and mass murder is Uh, we're kind of bad guys now, And I don't know if I like that. Right.

We're sick of the shock troops cracking our skulls for smiling because happiness is a myth, an absurd myth, right, And so after World War Two the chaos is gone, which you know, they depend on that kind of chaos to to rally the people, right, and the fascism was seen, um even before World War two. Were during World War two is leading the world to war. These guys were just conquering nations, like going out and invading other nations that were nearby for whatever reason, and they had to

be stopped. Which is why World War Two, I think, is viewed as such a positive war. There were such clear, mind bogglingly distinct bad guys. Right, the rest of the world was like, we're going to take you down. Sure, and they did and fought well together, and you know it was it was, as far as wars go, a pretty great war. Yeah, we're not war guys, obviously, the kind of worst we waged today. But back then, I think I would have grab my my musket. Wait, probably

not a musket. I would have grab would have been really in trouble I did go into the front world, I would grab my bolt action rifle and I would have Yeah, I would have tried to Yeah, I would have been loving glorious Beast. So I was just about to say that I just saw it again this weekend. Yeah, that's awesome movie. Um. Unfortunately, fascism didn't completely go away, Like you said, there are small pockets of movements around the world. Right, we're gonna talk about skinheads, these puts is,

they're just stupid. I don't think we should give them any times, because you know what, there's such small pockets of morons out there that embrace this kind of thing these days. It's just silly. H There there's some neo fascist sentiment that I found surprising. It's called love of difference, which is basically just racial separation, but with a different spin on it. Right. Yeah, they say being different is

really great. That's why you shouldn't mix races, not because one is better, which is we justlike being different, right, and being white. So those are kinder, gentler fascists, I guess, And there are. There's some markers that you can find in some governments. See if you can guess which ones we're talking about. Um, governments that have anti immigration laws. Right, that's a check small progressive limitations on civil rights in the name of giving a democratic country, uh, greater security

check um. Isolationist foreign policy no comment. And government intervention in the means of production to secure the state from shortages and economic downturns. Definitely, no comments. Many Yeah, So that's fascism, yes, right, And it's still around here there. I don't think that there is any pure form of government, is there. No? But like we said, there are these pockets of morons that embrace uh, you know, neo Nazis,

that kind of thing. But I shouldn't completely dismiss them because they do act out in violent ways at times. Oklahoma City obviously, so I don't want to make light of that. They do bad things. No, London had some bombings in I was thinking about that. London is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world's very progressive city and it had bombings. It has bombing sometimes. That's pretty nuts, it is, Okay, So that's fascism. You want

to learn more. See some creepy pictures of people smiling and waving flags as Mussolini passes by. And if you love to look at Hitler and hate him, you can find pictures of him on this fascist article by typing fascism and the andy search bar at how staff works dot com. So I guess it's listener meal time, right, Yes, indeed, Josh, I feel dirty, Yes, Josh, I'm gonna call this one. Um, how could we not mention Boba Fett? That's we're gonna

call it. We heard from quite a few people on this and the Bounty Hunter episode because we failed to mention Boba Fett, who was arguably the coolest bounty hunter. He drove a vet. Oh did he? Haven't you ever heard that, Chris, I'll send it to you. So this is from our pal, Aaron A C who he writes

in a lot and he's a regular. Um. I just got done listening to the latest joint how bounty bounty Hunters work, and I'm appalled, appalled because you did not I did not hear a single mention of Boba Fette and then he types, wah uh yeah, okay, so maybe he's fictional allegedly, but come on, no excuse. During the Ninja podcast, I sat through it seemed like ten minutes of you guys parentheses, Josh geeking out hard on the dossier credentials of action figures. So I know that's not it.

So come on, how about a shout out for Boba. I think he deserves it. Dog and his mulleted militia ain't got nothing on the fat Man, and I would agree I would too. So we didn't mention Boba Fette. We wanted to acknowledge that. And he also says, speaking of Boba Fette in honor of his anticlimactic afterthought, of a death scene in Jedi. I'd like to offer a podcast suggestion how the Wilhelm scream works. Have you ever heard of this? I've never heard of it either, but

it is awesome. It was the scream, uh, that a sound engineer recorded for a movie, and I think the nineteen forties Man Dies by Alligator was what it was called, and that has since been used the exact clip and over two movies since then. It's like an in joke with sound engineers. The Vilhelm scream. I can't believe I've never heard of it. So he asked if we can play one, and I think Jerry, we can probably rustle up a Vilhelm screen. It sounds a little something like this.

I can't wait to hear what that sounds like. It's really funny actually, and after you hear it, you've noticed, Wow, I've heard that before. I hope I do. So. Thank you. I'm going crazy here, like it just played and I still don't know what it sounds like. Uh. We just want to thank Aaron for for educating me on a movie thing. I can't believe I didn't know this popular movie thing. Nice. I think Jerry knew it. Nice. And now you know I do, and knowing is half the battle.

That's right. If you have any obscure movie Arcania, actually Arcania of any variety, Yeah, we're always very interested in that. We're wrapping up in an email, spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand and twelve cameras. It's ready, are you