#fascism #ICYMI
"FASCISM! An Army Orientation Fact Sheet, 1945
Fascism is a way to run a country—it’s the way Italy was run, and the way Germany and Japan are run. Fascism is the precise opposite of democracy. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.
Fascism is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.
Why? The democratic way of life interferes with their methods and desires for: (1) conducting business; (2) living with their fellow-men; (3) having the final say in matters concerning others, as well as themselves.
The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence — democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told.
They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law. They make their own rules and change them when they choose. If you don’t like it, it’s 'T.S.' [tough shit].
They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of 'blood' and 'race,' by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and 'realistic”to be pitiless and violent.
How It Starts
Fascism came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan at a time of social and economic unrest. A small group of men, supported in secret by powerful financial and military interests, convinced enough insecure people that fascism would give them the things they wanted.
They did so partly by clever propaganda and deception. They promised the people that fascism would bring them great power and prosperity. The details differed from country to country but the general pattern was the same.
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To big business men and the industrialists they secretly promised greater security and profits through the elimination of small business competitors and trade unions and the crushing of socialists and communists. To the whole nation they promised glory and wealth by conquest. They asserted it was their right, as a 'superior people,' to rule the world.
As soon as these methods had won them enough of a following to form their Storm Troops, the fascists began using force to stifle and wipe out any opposition. Those who saw through the false front of fascism and opposed them were beaten, tortured, and killed.
The fascists knew that all believers in democracy were their enemies. They knew that the fundamental principle of democracy — faith in the common sense of the common people — was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few. So they fought democracy in all its phases.
How It Works
It was easy enough for the fascists to promise all things to all people before they were in power. Once they were actually in power, they could not, of course, keep their contradictory promises. They had intended in advance to break some, and they did break those they had made to the middle classes, the workers, and the farmers.
As soon as the fascists were in control of the government, the torturings and the killings were no longer the unlawful acts of a political party and its hoodlum gangs. They became official government policy.
Among the first victims of this official policy were those farmers, workers, and small business men who had believed the promises that had been made to them and who complained that they had been .sucked in.'
Some simply vanished. Often they came home to their families by return mail in little jars of ashes.
The concentration camps and graves filled with the opponents of fascism. Out went equality before the law, free elections and free political parties, independent trade unions and independent schools, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and, in time, freedom of religion."
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2026/01/fascism-army-orientation-1945/