In my view, Communism has never been too much of a factor in Western Europe and the USA since the thirties when it enjoyed something of a high in the years leading up to the Second World War. One of the reasons for this was the proliferation of "strong man" , nationalist leaders influential countries like Germany, Italy and Spain who all ricked many of the fourteen boxes in that article that has been posted in this thread. In Britain, Oswald Mosely is surely the most famous British fascist of the last hundred years and, undoubtedly, the peak of his popularity was in the 1930s.
Oswald was a Conservative and Labour MP in the 1920s and, apparently, switched parties quite often before he formed the British Union of Fascists. This tends to support the view expressed in this thread that you can have fascism on the political right and left - I accept that, but I don't get why it needed to be raised in the first place in this thread, unless it was to try to argue that my OP asking about Fascism on the right was somehow precluded by the fact that you can have Fascism on the left as well.
Given that Communism and Fascism (as practised by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco) was more prevalent in Western Europe in the thirties and the decade ended in a World War, it has always seemed the most traumatic decade of the last century to me, but the last ten years has seen the election of nationalistic Governments with strong man leaders in former Soviet countries, other European countries (e.g. Turkey), Brazil and the USA, while, although Putin's Russia hardy seems Communist to me, it has become more expansionist and so with the potential flashpoints we have in Taiwan, Ukraine and the middle east, the threat of another World War seems as strong currently as it has been since the last thirties.
I'd say the leaders of some of the countries I mention above could legitimately be called Fascists, but, as far as the UK is concerned, although I'm sure our soon to be former PM would have loved to have been thought of as a strong man leader, he was too lazy, too much of a clown and too indecisive to be one in real life. However, he and an awful lot of Conservative MPs have backed the prorogation of Parliament which was found to be illegal and articles like these
https://www.dazeddigital.com/politic...g-the-pandemic
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ope...no-punishment/
show a disregard for rules which has resulted in law breaking in some cases which points to the "rules don't apply to us" type criticism that was often aimed at the Johnson and members of his Government.
This brings me back to the first post in this thread where Johnson loyalists and, to a degree the new Prime Minister in waiting are advocating that an enquiry into conduct which could see Johnson have to face a by election if it is found that he misled Parliament (it's pretty clear that, willingly or otherwise, he did) should be shelved for reasons which range from it's a witch hunt to hasn't the poor man suffered enough. More menacingly, the Daily Mail and the likes of Dorries, Rees-Mogg and Lord
Goldsmith are putting pressure on Tory members of the relevant Select Committee (and one who has resigned from said Committee) to step down rather than carry out the task they are duty bound to.
I mentioned before that some of the posts in this thread strike me as somewhat complacent - Fascism is alive and well in the world today and we have a Government that is closer to being fascist than any other in my life. Okay, there is a question of degree as to how close they are, but they're closer than any Government we've had going back to Wilson's first one in the sixties (the first one that I had a degree of political awareness about) and I don't see that changing under "strong woman" Truss.
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
In my view, Communism has never been too much of a factor in Western Europe and the USA since the thirties when it enjoyed something of a high in the years leading up to the Second World War. One of the reasons for this was the proliferation of "strong man" , nationalist leaders influential countries like Germany, Italy and Spain who all ricked many of the fourteen boxes in that article that has been posted in this thread. In Britain, Oswald Mosely is surely the most famous British fascist of the last hundred years and, undoubtedly, the peak of his popularity was in the 1930s.
Reply With Quote