Socialism = Fascism?

[maycocksean]

^ harpy.

No, no. . that's just YOU.

 

[INDY500]

If the burden of proof lies on me what am I trying to prove?

 

[INDY500]

Was Avanti! the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party while under the editorship of Mussolini?

Yes or no?

 

[martha]

Who did you wish to begin with? The Italian Fascists, the German Nazis, the Russian Communists or Wilson Progressivism? Or perhaps the myth that fascism and communism are opposites?

from another thread:

I'll be more than happy to set you straight on the subject if you'd like to start a new thread.
If they were right-wing they were right-wing socialists and only in comparison to Stalin and the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

and:

Nazi, also known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party I believe.

If the burden of proof lies on me what am I trying to prove?

There ya go.

 

[maycocksean]

If the burden of proof lies on me what am I trying to prove?

Fascism equals socialism--the whole point of the thread was for you to be able make your case. I'm not saying you haven't tried. I am saying it isn't compelling so far.

 

[maycocksean]

Was Avanti! the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party while under the editorship of Mussolini?

Yes or no?

Umm. . .I'm going to go ahead and say yes?

Was Jim Jones the pastor of a Christian church.

Yes or no?

 

[melon]

Was Avanti! the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party while under the editorship of Mussolini?

Yes or no?

This is like saying that Ronald Reagan was a lifelong Democrat, because he started his career as one. Mussolini's ideology was not compatible with the Italian Socialist Party and was expelled by them.

As written by a contemporary:

"Regarding Mussolini Professor Benito Mussolini,...38, revolutionary socialist, has a police record; elementary school teacher qualified to teach in secondary schools; former first secretary of the Chambers in in Cesena, Forli, and Ravenna; after 1912 editor of the newspaper Avanti! to which he gave a violent suggestive and intransigent orientation. In October 1914, finding himself in opposition to the directorate of the Italian Socialist party because he advocated a kind of active neutrality on the part of Italy in the War of the Nations against the party's tendency of absolute neutrality, he withdrew on the twentieth of that month from the directorate of Avanti! Then on the fifteenth of November [1914], thereafter, he initiated publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia in which he supported -- in sharp contrast to Avanti! and amid bitter polemics against that newspaper and its chief backers -- the thesis of Italian intervention in the war against the militarism of the Central Empires. For this reason he was accused of moral and political unworthiness and the party thereupon decided to expel him. Thereafter he....undertook a very active campaign in behalf of Italian intervention, participating in demonstrations in the piazzas and writing quite violent articles in Popolo d'Italia....

He was the ideal editor of Avanti! for the Socialists. In that line of work he was greatly esteemed and beloved. Some of his former comrades and admirers still confess that there was no one who understood better how to interpret the spirit of the proletariate and there was no one who did not observe his apostacy with sorrow. This came about not for reasons of self-interest or money. He was a sincere and passionate advocate, first of vigilant and armed neutrality, and later of war; and he did not believe that he was compromising with his personal and political honesty by making use of every means -- no matter where they came from or wherever he might obtain them -- to pay for his newspaper, his program and his line of action. This was his initial line. It is difficult to say to what extent his socialist convictions (which never did he either openly or privately abjure) may have been sacrificed in the course of the indispensable financial deals which were necessary for the continuation of the struggle in which he was engaged... But assuming these modifications did take place... he always wanted to give the appearance of still being a socialist, and he fooled himself into thinking that this was the case."

 

[INDY500]

This is like saying that Ronald Reagan was a lifelong Democrat, because he started his career as one. Mussolini's ideology was not compatible with the Italian Socialist Party and was expelled by them.

How refreshing. A fair and reasoned rebuttal. I suppose a politician may change affiliations for many reasons ranging from principled disagreement to opportunism. Reagan saw the Democratic Party moving away from his core believes of individual freedom and limited government as well as a perceived softening of our Cold War stance under Truman. Many Americans from the 60's through the 80's saw this as well and although remaining Democratic would be known as Reagan Democrats.

As Reagan would famously say, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me." And yes, I cut & pasted that quote.

Mussolini left the Socialist Party to form his own party and shape a more totalitarian society. His motto became (cut & paste alert!)

"Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state."

Interesting motto. In regards to healthcare which is closer to Mussolini's fascist motto? Single-payer (a form of socialism I think we can agree) or private pay-for-fee?

 

[melon]

How refreshing. A fair and reasoned rebuttal.

I have no interest in ideological polemics, while philosophy and history are two subjects I am quite familiar with.

I'll address your last point later when I have more time.

 

[BVS]

How refreshing. A fair and reasoned rebuttal.

You've been handed plenty fair and reasoned rebuttals and asked many fair but tough questions, the problem is you didn't respond to those, we get snark and victimhood.

"Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state."

Interesting motto. In regards to healthcare which is closer to Mussolini's fascist motto? Single-payer (a form of socialism I think we can agree) or private pay-for-fee?

So I'm going to ask another fair yet many times ignored by you question one more time.

Even if Obama was pushing for a single-payer healthcare, how is that FOR the state? And if your answer is simply control over pricing, guidelines, etc which I'm assuming it's going to be, then why is that control OK in the hands of a few suits?


BTW, many believe your translation is incorrect, they believe it's:

Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State

 

[Se7en]

Actually I wouldn't go this far. The distinction between authoritarianism (which usually better characterizes fascist states) and totalitarianism is an important one; totalitarianism by nature and design destroys civil society completely.

perhaps i should have said, "stalinism and the third reich".

better?

 

[INDY500]

Even if Obama was pushing for a single-payer healthcare, how is that FOR the state? And if your answer is simply control over pricing, guidelines, etc which I'm assuming it's going to be, then why is that control OK in the hands of a few suits?

Of course a move from our current system, problematic as it is, to a single-payer system would most certainly result in MORE government control of prices, MORE government mandates to providers, MORE control over our private lives in the form of Nanny-state restrictions, MORE decisions made by politicians rather than individuals and markets or a LARGER, much larger, government bureaucracy? Kinda sounds more like 'for' the state than "against" it.

BTW, many believe your translation is incorrect, they believe it's:

I'll ring Jonah Goldberg on that and get back with you. Maybe my Italian, it's not so good.

 

[BVS]

Kinda sounds more like 'for' the state than "against" it.

So as long as it's not "against" it's "for"? When our military and senior citizens are given healthcare by the government do we see it as "for the state?" What are those seniors giving the government? What are they doing "for the state"?

Those damn fascist seniors and service men!!!

MORE decisions made by politicians rather than individuals and markets

BUT THIS ISN'T THE CASE!!! THIS HAS BEEN POINTED OUT TO YOU NUMEROUS TIMES AND EVERYTIME YOU IGNORE IT!!! Individuals and markets are not making the decisions, you are going to have to accept that.

 

[INDY500]

Individuals and markets are not making the decisions, you are going to have to accept that.

I do accept that. Which is why I support putting decision making back in the hands of individuals by decreasing the number of mandates and rewriting the tax code and putting market forces back into pricing by removing third-party payers for routine care.

That's the type of reform I support and just the type of reform this legislation ignores. That's the lype of reform that will lower prices and increase accessibility without adding to the national debt.

 

[maycocksean]

I do accept that. Which is why I support putting decision making back in the hands of individuals by decreasing the number of mandates and rewriting the tax code and putting market forces back into pricing by removing third-party payers for routine care.

That's the type of reform I support and just the type of reform this legislation ignores. That's the lype of reform that will lower prices and increase accessibility without adding to the national debt.

You mentioned removing third-party players, by that you mean the insurance companies? Because if we still have to work through them to get health care coverage, I imagine that decreasing the number of mandates would only empower the insurance companies further to deny coverage, right?

Also could you explain more about rewriting the tax code?

 

[yolland]

Is there any other way to accurately present a quote? Or should I be embellishing or modernizing them in some way?

The cherry-picking, INDY. It's not a serious approach to answering a question this big, and when you see someone online attempting to do so, it usually means they're cutting and pasting from a single polemical work or site which told them what they wanted to hear, rather than arguing from an established knowledge base on the topic.

Shall we discuss Mussolini's "Third Way" or how fascism came to be viewed as "right-wing" today? Anyway, now you know the context of the quotes I "cut & pasted."

Only if said discussion entails some studied familiarity with the theory and practice of corporatism under Mussolini (and its actual effects on the economy and workplace; for example, what happened to labor protection laws and average wages in Italy under his rule, how his corporatist pseudo-'unions' differed from our variety, etc.). Which, to be honest, I doubt I'd personally have much time to participate in at this point, since we're in the frantic final stages of preparing to move our family to Hong Kong for the school year, and I won't be around at all for at least a couple weeks after we leave next week. I did read the Mussolini chapter in Goldberg's book online last night, and was not impressed; it's basically just, well, cherry-picking autodidactic polemicizing. Then again, he's a journalist with a BA in English, not a historian, political scientist or economist, so best regarded as (at most) a provocative conversation-sparker rather than a serious authority on fascist polities.

Fascism's place on the political spectrum is in fact a continued topic of lively debate and discussion in academia, frequent foolish misuse of the term in popular discourse notwithstanding. I certainly wouldn't classify it as 'just another right-wing ideology,' and none of my colleagues would either; most political scientists would emphasize at the outset that fascism is a highly unique, distinct and eccentric phenomenon in the world of political ideologies, whatever descriptive similarities various policies of specific fascist states might bear to (non-fascist) regimes elsewhere. If Goldberg's purpose in writing Liberal Fascism was to reveal the hollowness of lunkheaded equations of Bush with Hitler or evangelical conservatism with fascism or whatnot, then he did that cause a disservice by choosing the 'Oh yeah? Well I can make ad hominem attacks too, nyah nyah' route.

Even as he clashed with them he felt a kinship. Even as he quit the party and Avanti! he believed he had just found in the PNF a more efficient way to advance their cause.

Right, and David Duke's not really a racist or an anti-Semite, since after all he's repeatedly said he isn't and oh-so-credibly rationalized why. And "clash" is an incredibly callous euphemism for what both Mussolini and Hitler actually did to thousands of (indisputed) socialists, their earliest political adversaries, both during and after their respective rises to power (see also: Freikorps, initial rounds of deportation to concentration camps). Like all fascists, they rejected both the centrality of redressing class conflict to state goals and policies, as well as the antinationalist impulses, characteristic of socialism and its relatives; like all fascists they blamed the existence of democracy for socialism's rise, since after all free elections amounted to "systematic cultivation of human failure," as Hitler put it (well, he also added a Marxism-as-submission-to-your-'Inner Jew' spin to that, but Mussolini wouldn't have).

Me ne frego--"I don't give a damn," the offical Italian fascist motto--that's as revealing a starting point for discussing what Italian fascism really was (and how it differed from the Nazi variety) as any of the other contradictory bits of doublespeak which flowed from Il Duce's mouth.

Perhaps BVS, martha, Tiger Edge or UberBeaver can contrast and compare for us.

The reason I asked you that was because Mussolini's own economic philosophy as PM/Duce of Italy, as spelled out in for example the Dottrina del Fascismo, is clearly more germane to understanding what sort of '-ist' he really was as Duce than what he believed in as a young man (and occasionally paid lip service to, as needed, later--his power was never as well-secured as Hitler's, and he often engaged in posturing and, where necessary, compromise to protect it).

If it's your feeling that specific posters are categorically disinterested in putting forth the effort at a constructive dialogue with you (and in certain cases I'd agree with you), then why not simply ignore them. That's generally what I do, and it saves a lot of time and stress. I don't come here to play tit-for-tat games, and there's no reason for you to either if you don't wish to. That may or may not make the unconstructive posters any less so, but at least it'll reduce the proportion of your posts which feel to you like a waste of time afterwards.

Interesting. I've never heard a distinction made between the two. What would be an example of a totalitarian state as opposed to authoritarian. Would you say North Korea or Myanmar are totaltitarian?

Stalin's USSR was totalitarian, Pinochet's Chile was authoritarian. I'd say North Korea is definitely a totalitarian state, while Burma/Myanmar is not--I'd probably 'just' classify that as a military dictatorship. Very, very broadly, the difference is that totalitarianism entails absolute, all-pervasive control of both the political and social spheres in the interests of pursuing an elaborate, exhaustively detailed agenda, with reference to which all state actions, no matter how minor, must be rationalized; whereas authoritarianism ultimately aspires only to total political control, with social controls playing a secondary and 'as-needed' supporting role in pursuit of that prime goal.

In totalitarianism, all aspects of the individual's life are subordinate to the government: for instance, all existing social institutions and organizations--churches, universities, social clubs, sports associations, youth groups, etc.--are either forcibly dissolved or else brought under government control (upon which membership in them may in fact become mandatory), and police and other security personnel operate unbound by any regulations limiting their powers against citizens, instead effectively operating as the visible wing of an extensive terror apparatus used to maintain absolute government control. That's the kind of thing I meant by "destroys civil society completely"--an enormous problem facing many post-Soviet states, for example, has been re-establishing any semblance of public discourse, since all the institutions which once supported it were wholly gutted by decades of totalitarian rule, so that the process basically has to be started over from scratch. Totalitarianism is always anti-pluralist, anti-individualist, and anti-liberal (in the classical sense of the term) to an extreme degree.

The authoritarian state, by contrast, doesn't seek to annihilate civil society (though it does inevitably weaken it, to highly varying degrees depending on which state and regime we're talking about). The government's ideology is typically fairly vaguely defined, and policymaking often proceeds in an opportunistic manner, showing blatant inconsistencies with principles professed to at earlier times. Considerable pluralism is usually tolerated at the level of social organizations (though not, of course, at the level of political parties). The totalitarian state's ability to mobilize its entire population very rapidly and efficiently for whatever its latest project is, is largely lacking in the authoritarian state. And the limits of power (official or unofficial) which are observed, in practice, by the leadership are typically far more predictable in the authoritarian state.

perhaps i should have said, "stalinism and the third reich".

better?

Nazi Germany is an interesting case with reference to the distinction, since in many ways it falls into a gray area between the two. Personally I'd probably describe it as a totalitarian state in the making which never quite arrived there--certainly not as spectacularly as Stalin's USSR. (And a quintessentially fascist one, with all the characteristic mystical exaltation of the supremacy of the state and the nation/race over individuals and groups, and the cult of personality surrounding a charismatic leader, which that term implies.) I wouldn't, though, describe fascist Italy as a totalitarian state (with all due regard to the irony of the term having originated there, totalitario--but, they didn't use it with reference to an actual mode of governance; that's a shift in meaning which occurred once the term moved beyond the Italian lexicon and was pounced upon as an ideal way to characterize Stalinism).

So, yeah, better by me, anyway.

 

[VintagePunk]

Thanks yolland, that was an interesting read.

 

[INDY500]

Only if said discussion entails some studied familiarity with the theory and practice of corporatism under Mussolini (and its actual effects on the economy and workplace; for example, what happened to labor protection laws and average wages in Italy under his rule, how his corporatist pseudo-'unions' differed from our variety, etc.). Which, to be honest, I doubt I'd personally have much time to participate in at this point, since we're in the frantic final stages of preparing to move our family to Hong Kong for the school year, and I won't be around at all for at least a couple weeks after we leave next week. I did read the Mussolini chapter in Goldberg's book online last night, and was not impressed; it's basically just, well, cherry-picking autodidactic polemicizing. Then again, he's a journalist with a BA in English, not a historian, political scientist or economist, so best regarded as (at most) a provocative conversation-sparker rather than a serious authority on fascist polities.

Now that it's warmed up I'd just as soon enjoy the final weeks of summer as well. So you're leaving our great state? I currently work with a med student from Hong Kong. Very interesting to talk to.

Fascism's place on the political spectrum is in fact a continued topic of lively debate and discussion in academia, frequent foolish misuse of the term in popular discourse notwithstanding. I certainly wouldn't classify it as 'just another right-wing ideology,' and none of my colleagues would either; most political scientists would emphasize at the outset that fascism is a highly unique, distinct and eccentric phenomenon in the world of political ideologies, whatever descriptive similarities various policies of specific fascist states might bear to (non-fascist) regimes elsewhere.

Couldn't agree more. Which is why I started off this thread by asking what type of fascism we should discuss first because they are very different and intertwined to cultural and nationality traits. Not to mention products of their Age and not especially relevant to modern day politics.

If Goldberg's purpose in writing Liberal Fascism was to reveal the hollowness of lunkheaded equations of Bush with Hitler or evangelical conservatism with fascism or whatnot, then he did that cause a disservice by choosing the 'Oh yeah? Well I can make ad hominem attacks too, nyah nyah' route.

Maybe you'd have to be a conservative and so often on the receiving end of the Fascist or Nazi epitaph from people who have no idea of their history or meaning. Then again, maybe that's why some of our more liberal posters are so sensitive to the charge of Socialist.

Right, and David Duke's not really a racist or an anti-Semite, since after all he's repeatedly said he isn't and oh-so-credibly rationalized why.

But Mussolini did institute many programs (which I mentioned in an earlier post) that are clearly more socialist than free-market or pro-individual. So look at one's true goals and aspirations, track their actions -- don't rely on their rhetoric.

The reason I asked you that was because Mussolini's own economic philosophy as PM/Duce of Italy, as spelled out in for example the Dottrina del Fascismo, is clearly more germane to understanding what sort of '-ist' he really was as Duce than what he believed in as a young man (and occasionally paid lip service to, as needed, later--his power was never as well-secured as Hitler's, and he often engaged in posturing and, where necessary, compromise to protect it).

If it's your feeling that specific posters are categorically disinterested in putting forth the effort at a constructive dialogue with you (and in certain cases I'd agree with you), then why not simply ignore them. That's generally what I do, and it saves a lot of time and stress. I don't come here to play tit-for-tat games, and there's no reason for you to either if you don't wish to. That may or may not make the unconstructive posters any less so, but at least it'll reduce the proportion of your posts which feel to you like a waste of time afterwards.

Understood.

 

[BVS]

That's the type of reform I support and just the type of reform this legislation ignores. That's the lype of reform that will lower prices and increase accessibility without adding to the national debt.

Yes this works in an ideal world. One where we have more access to disposable income, therefore can save more, and are generally A LOT more healthy.

Your plan reminds me of a U2 lyric:

The rich stay healthy while the sick stay poor...

 

[yolland]

So you're leaving our great state?

Just for a year; I have an administrative Fulbright to help their university system develop an East-West core curriculum. Looking forward to the professional change of pace, the regional travel opportunities, and the food; not looking forward to the language barrier and the smog. This will be the first time I've done an extended turn abroad in a place where I don't speak the primary local language.

Maybe you'd have to be a conservative and so often on the receiving end of the Fascist or Nazi epitaph from people who have no idea of their history or meaning. Then again, maybe that's why some of our more liberal posters are so sensitive to the charge of Socialist.

I hear you; given my family history, it's easy for me to go through the roof when people direct 'Nazi' insinuations at policies and politicians I generally support, particularly if there's any hint of flippancy to it, and I'm sure I'd feel the same way about "Bush = Hitler" insinuations had I been a Bush supporter (as it is, I find them cheap, lazy and stupid). I don't generally feel as strongly about similar attacks on pundits or the like, since I tend not to hold their 'office' in all that high regard anyway, but with policies and politicians, yes. And yes, particularly in an American context, "socialist" commands similar, if perhaps not quite as dark, trigger associations--can't erase the legacy of all those decades of 'duck and cover,' 'bears in the woods,' and 'godless [read: evil] Communists' so easily.

But Mussolini did institute many programs (which I mentioned in an earlier post) that are clearly more socialist than free-market or pro-individual.

I don't really want to belabor the point, but...'socialist,' as an ideological label and especially as a type of state, denotes something pretty specific, and at the end of the day either the shoe fits or it doesn't. Is Singapore 'more totalitarian' than the US? I understand what such a question means to get at, but why muddy the waters like this, especially in such a riskily charged way--Singapore isn't a totalitarian state, it's a procedural democracy with a robust market economy and also significant authoritarian components (extensive limits on freedom of speech, no trials by jury, very stiff criminal penalties etc.--which, yes, are all also features of totalitarian states, as far as it goes), arguably to the point of constituting a unique 'hybrid' state type unto itself. To someone asking such a question, I would say, Look, sit down with a good encyclopedia and read the sections on history and government of Singapore, then read the entry on Lee Kuan Yew (which will hopefully discuss his 'Asian Values' theory); think about how the form of government whose creation and evolution he presided over for three decades complements those ideas; then finally read the entry on totalitarianism, and I think by that point you'll have a pretty good idea why framing the question this way is problematic.

Same with Mussolini's Italy or any other fascist regime--read (again, from a good reference source) about the country's history immediately preceding and during that period, read about the leadership's vision of the state and then about the full sweep of their economic policies, then think about how the two complement each other, then consider the history of socialism and the vision of state and society it promotes, then ask yourself how much sense it really makes to describe this regime as a 'socialist' project. And of course Mussolini's programs weren't 'pro-individual'--that's impossible! 'Pro-individualism' and fascism are categorically, fundamentally incompatible. As is fascism in the absence of a muscular government presence in the economic sphere--that too would be unsustainable. Doesn't mean the regime's actual project was ultimately much like, let alone the same as, that of any other regime which shared or shares certain policy features with it, any more than Singapore's having certain political features also found in totalitarian states--more so than the US, certainly--therefore makes it 'like' or 'de facto' a totalitarian state.

Understood.

 

[Irvine511]

And yes, particularly in an American context, "socialist" commands similar, if perhaps not quite as dark, trigger associations--can't erase the legacy of all those decades of 'duck and cover,' 'bears in the woods,' and 'godless [read: evil] Communists' so easily.

i found this helpful getting into the mindset of many older voters.

i certainly remember the USSR growing up as a child in the 1980s, but even at that point, we sort of knew that those people didn't really want to kill us, they just wanted Michael Jackson CDs and Diet Pepsi and higher quality skin care products. sure, it would come to a head at the Olympics with the proverbial East German figure skating judge, but i never had a sense of being locked into a life-and-death struggle with "the Communists."

i suppose that is different for people who grew up during the height of the Cold War and were acutely aware of what was going on during the Bay of Pigs and likely supported intervention in Vietnam (at least in the mid-1960s) because they felt that we had to contain the spread of Communism.

i still think that wielding words like "socialist/communist" are cheap, lazy, and stupid, but i think i can pause for a moment and understand just why those words might be so much more relevant for a certain segment of the population, and why some of the more hysterical reactions might be rooted in a history where actual annihilation seemed not that far fetched.

shame on the Right for exploiting it and using it to (as ever) scare a group of people into voting for them, a group of people who would almost unquestionably benefit more from Democratic policies than Republican policies. but taking a longer view of 20th century American history, i think that fear becomes much more understandable. since when you hear "socialist" some people's immediate association is Stalin, rather than your typical Swede.

 

[yolland]

i suppose that is different for people who grew up during the height of the Cold War and were acutely aware of what was going on during the Bay of Pigs and likely supported intervention in Vietnam (at least in the mid-1960s) because they felt that we had to contain the spread of Communism.

I don't think you necessarily even have to go back that far. I'm only about six-and-a-half years older than you; nonetheless, the consequence of that is that my childhood memories are of the 70s whereas yours are of the 80s, and I think even that makes a significant difference, because I actually can't relate to this "they just wanted Michael Jackson CDs and Diet Pepsi" perception of 'the Russians' you're recalling. We did duck-and-cover drills at my grade school, I heard all the "godless Communists" and "Evil Empire" stuff from doom-and-gloom adults plenty of times, and I also remember Reagan's presidential campaign ads featuring this scary-looking grizzly pacing around while a deep, growly voice intoned, "There's a BEAR LOOSE in the woods. SOME say the bear is tame, but SOME say the bear is DANGEROUS..." (they never actually mentioned Russia or Communism, but they didn't have to; merely showing a menacing bear in the context of a political ad was enough for everyone to recognize immediately what scenario was being invoked). For sure, at least by Gorbachev's time there was a different feeling in the air here, but as a kid, seeing Brezhnev in magazines or on TV, I remember being distinctly aware that one was supposed to be deeply afraid of this man. Then there was all the urban-myth stuff, e.g. "OMG OMG, [name of our city or town] is #20 on the Russians' strike list!!" that so many people my age or a little older remember hearing--they must've had an awful lot of #20s on that list, haha. And a bunch of movies and pop songs from the 80s about nuclear war too.

It's not, of course, that people were literally walking around constantly chomping their fingernails and nervously glancing up at the sky, rather a question of the kinds of deep-seated emotional associations between certain terms and concepts and places which were being formed. And I'm sure that gets all the more vivid the further back into the Cold War era your memories go.

 

[BonosSaint]

I don't recall that fear at all and I'm older than both of you. I did duck and cover and certainly heard the undercurrent of Russian/USSR and Communism was a bogeyman, but an abstract one. I can't speak for generations older than mine and the fear may have been more potent then although I don't remember my parents or my grandparents quaking in their shoes. The fifties were before my time and I was too young during the Bay of Pigs. I do remember an uneasy qualm. But what I took from it is they'd like to destroy us (I did get that message) but they can't, so bite me. MAD was a comfort, even though that brought its own fears. I never saw it as the battle between two ideologies as I saw it a battle between two (then) superpowers with demonization being then and now the rather trite but effective battle strategy.

I can't argue that yolland isn't dead on. I think she is. I just don't remember that fear as being a significant part of my childhood and certainly not one that carried into my adulthood except that I am wary of any superpower, including us. Not saying I don't fear a mushroom cloud. Just that any of us can set it off, ideology be damned. Then again, I could have just been oblivious. That's a distinct possibility. Or I was taking a perverse delight in danger. Another distinct possibility.

People are always fearful. I remember after 9/11, a few people around here being afraid our area would be a target. I had to laugh. Why would they bother? I could imagine a terrorist scoping us out in a plane and thinking this area must have already been hit. No, children, it wasn't our nuke plant that was going to get hit.

 

[Irvine511]

i never did duck-and-cover, and i don't remember being aware of any Soviet leader other than Gorbechev. i did not have any awareness of Brezhnev. i've seen the Big Russian Bear Will Kill You ad, but only in college when i took a social psych class. i was too young to see "Red Dawn," though i do have a vague memory of "The Day After Tomorrow" being on TV, and of course i was forbidden to watch it.

i suppose i was also advantaged because my father did a physician exchange with the USSR in 1985 and was gone for, like, 2 months (again, i barely remember this), and he came back with all these books and trinkets and stories so i never had a concept of the Russians as really "evil," so to speak. i was in 5th grade when the Wall came down, and then Communism suddenly ended, and i really think that the most palpable sense of Communism and how it was "bad" was watching the Olympics in 1988 and knowing that the East German women were all steroided up (and yet Janet Evans still beat them). and then, by 1992, it was all over.

by the time the 1990s came around, all the movie bad guys were Muslim terrorists anyway.

 

[martha]

My husband was born in mid-October, 1962, and his parents weren't all that sure if there would be a world for him during the last few months of the pregnancy. It was that real. My duck-and-cover experiences during the '60s were for tornadoes in Omaha, and those drills were real and necessary, but for people just ten years older than me, the Soviet threat was as real as those tornadoes.

So I think for a certain age group, the buzzword "socialism" is a very effective word to make them very afraid. They remember all that crap, and it's a cynical use of their fear. But I expect nothing less.

 

[Max_theHitman]

Don´t believe the hype.

 

[UberBeaver]

Perhaps BVS, martha, Tiger Edge or UberBeaver can contrast and compare for us.

I will gladly give you a discourse on each (with pictures, and maybe graphs!) if you can answer the following:

Can someone explain to me - using logic and facts (OMG!!!) what is wrong with Universal Healthcare - is it just the price point? And also, why pushing for universal healthcare is somehow related to Hitler, who as far as I can tell, was adamantly opposed to any sort of health care for large segments of the German population.

 

[Tiger Edge]

Wait, what? What am I supposed to compare and contrast? I totally missed that post.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

Wait, what? What am I supposed to compare and contrast? I totally missed that post.

it was buried between several paragraphs of "insight"

 

[Tiger Edge]

Oh.

Either way, I don't know about Mussolini's policies or what he thought about cappuccinos. Alls I know is...

I don't know.