Stuff You Should Know - What exactly is Fascism?

Episode Date: March 11, 2010

Fascism is a specific political philosophy that's often mistakenly used to describe any authoritarian, supressive movement or regime. Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, history and markers of Fascism in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, fascist. Josh Clark, fascist. That's exactly what I was going to say too. I was going to say Chuck, you're always calling me a fascist pig. Not true.

It isn't this. Anyway, that's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello. We're 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 Atlanta. Shaking my hand, parting my hair to the side a little bit. Write down all the posters of you all over the place. Never. Chuck. Yes. You want to talk about fascism? Let's do it.

Okay. So, did you know, I was surprised to find this out, Benito Mussolini was the guy who actually created, pretty much created fascism. He definitely coined the term. Yes, he did. And this concept of fascism was drawn upon from ancient Roman techniques, military techniques. Plato. Plato.

Yeah. And Machiavelli. Of course. 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. Yeah, it didn't work out too well.

No, it didn't. And really, he was kind of Hitler's lackey, really. Sure. So, I was surprised to find that he was the guy who started fascism, but by God, he did. Yeah. He was a socialist until he got ahold of Nietzsche, and then he was like, whoa. Yeah, Nietzsche has screwed a lot of stuff up in this world. I like him personally, but you've got to take the guy with the grain of salt, you know?

So as far back as what, 1922, Mussolini was starting to ruminate on fascism, right? Yeah. And what is it, Chuck? People throw this word around like it's awesome or sweet or LOL. Have you noticed people use LOL to a ridiculous degree these days? No, 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 incredible. Right. Yeah. But you hear of Bush as a fascist, Obama as a fascist, Nancy Pelosi as a fascist, Dick Cheney as a fascist. Yeah. None of them are fascists.

All right. We're not going to debate that here. I thought that was a nice sprinkling of liberals and conservatives in there, though. I should throw in a Tea Party member to cover all my bases. Josh, it comes from the word fascile, Italian, meaning bundle. You're not going to say it was an ax, huh? And fascile. Nice.

Then previously, the Latin root fascis or fascis. I take it as fissis. Fissis. And that is a bundle of sticks tied to a single ax. And that kind of says it all. It is. It's pretty much a, again, Mussolini has a master stroke. This is a perfect descriptor of what fascism is.

The state is the ax. Yeah. And the people are the sticks that support the head. Right. Or break. Depending. Fascism has a tendency to push people to the breaking point, doesn't it? I would say so.

Well, fascism also kind of brings out the absolute worst and conformist in human beings as well. So fascism is basically the opposite of democracy. The whole point is the state. There is no individualism. There is no- No capitalism, really. No, no. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's communist.

And actually, communism and fascism are opposite sides of the coin. To a lot of, at least economically. Yeah, yeah. Right? Because with communism, it's one social class. Right. And with fascism, there are very distinct social classes that you cannot get out of. Yeah.

If you're in a social class, under fascism, then be prepared to stay there. Right. And another defining characteristic of fascism is that the whole point of the state is war. Yeah. It's based on natural selection, Darwinian evolution, where 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 are naturally selected. You're absorbed by another state.

You're conquered. You're subjugated. And the state that did the subjugating was selected as the fittest. It was the strongest. So the entire point of the state is to wage war. Imperialism, baby. Yeah. It's pretty rotten stuff, really.

And Mussolini put it that war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. Right. What a jerk. But you know, it was a rallying point. People got into it for a while. Yeah. And how?

Well, 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 and your little snowflake is wrong. And your entire purpose in life is to support the glory of the state, which is going to go wage war indiscriminately. How do people get duped into this? How do they follow along? I'll tell you how, buddy. One thing that the fascist prayed on, and we say prayed because it's not strictly defined,

fascism isn't really around anymore, although there are tendencies in smaller groups. But as far as big time governments, it's gone. But one thing they do is they take a nation in crisis. For instance, let's say Europe after World War One. 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. We 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 restriction placed on the losing nations. Their normal working class people in countries like Germany suffered tremendously. And they had to repay to rebuild nations that they went to war with. And there was no trust whatsoever.

So it was kind of a bad treaty, actually. But it did set the stage for fascism, right? Right. So you've got the people who are suffering, and you're saying you've got to buy into it. What are they buying into? Well, they're buying into the state and only the state. And everything you do is for the good of the state. That pretty much sums it up.

And a lot of times it's based on some sort of idealized past, right? Which again, after World War One, that made it easy because this nation like Germany was suffering tremendously. And so they were saying, well, we used to be great. We need to reclaim our superiority. Right. Even if they weren't great, it doesn't matter. No.

It could be mythical as long as they buy into it. Right. Yeah, like the 50s. Right. And it tends to be one ethnic group that is singled out as the important one. And 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 lowercase F, right, as far as fascism goes. I didn't know this. Apparently Mussolini's is capitalized and Hitler's is not. Yeah. And he was probably pretty angry about that. I would think so, too. He wanted a capital F.

Yeah. He got angry a lot. 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 actually had a method to the madness, right?

Right. His was basically based on furthering the Aryan race through conquest. Yeah. I got a cool quote for you. All right. This Italian fascist philosopher, who knew? Giovanni, oddly enough, his name is Giovanni Gentile. 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 are dividing people and conquering. So there you have it. That's what my dad always said. And his name is Gentile. Yeah. Or Gentile. Nice.

Thanks, Chuck. I was looking forward to this one because I knew that you'd bust the Italian accent out. No, you know, it's in my blood. There's another characteristic that we didn't mention, and it's 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 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. Yeah.

That's why they have their flags and their posters all over the place. Right. They love their posters. They do. They did. There's also a tremendous amount of violence in these societies as well. You can't have war without violence. You can't have, well, not only that, it's not, domestically, you also have violence.

So in addition to, say, Hitler's process of the final solution where he's furthering the Aryan race by murdering anybody who's not a member of it, there's domestic violence for anyone who speaks out, any resistance movements, anything like that, they're going to be crushed. Yes. You're not supposed to, you're not supposed to wage war indiscriminately for the glory of the state. You're really not supposed to turn on your own people.

No. Right? Roundupon. Most decidedly. So what's life like if you are one of those people who 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 car driving past? Well, it's not a very happy place because Mussolini flat out rejected what he called

the myth of happiness. Yeah, he did, didn't he? And it's not a good place if you're a woman because the only thing you are under a fascist regime as a woman is a little fascist maker. Yeah. They don't want you working or anything. They want you making little fascists. And the youth are accentuated in the societies, right?

Survival of the fittest. It is survival of the fittest, 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. Yeah. Right? It's also not very good if you're gay because aside from Hitler and the gang thinking it's

like mass perversion, it's also you can't make little fascists. So that was no good. I didn't know that. Is that why homosexuals were targeted so much under Hitler and Mussolini? Well, for both of those reasons, they thought it was perverse and then they 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 lots of rallies, parades, like you said, posters everywhere. It's ubiquitous, the sentiment of fascism, everything for the state and the leader. They're everywhere you go. So if you're 16, 17 and you're a court, 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 reject religion in a lot of ways. But in the article that pointed out Mussolini and 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 of the same as well, right? Sure. He was a protector of the church. Right.

So they say. God, these guys are crazy. Luckily, this whole fascism didn't take off all that well. No. They tried. But run 1918 to 1945 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. Yes. Spain sort of did. Spain did. Yeah. When Franco led the revolution, he was colluding with the fascists, but they apparently weren't organized enough or widespread enough to really come on as the functioning government. So he just took on, he adopted some of their fascist values in Spain.

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, we're kind of bad guys now, and I don't know if I like that. Right. We're sick of the shock troops. Yeah, exactly.

Just cracking our skulls for smiling because happiness is a myth, an absurd myth, right? Yes. World War II, the chaos is gone, which they depend on that kind of chaos to rally the people. Right. And the fascism was seen even before World War II or during World War II as leading the world to war. Yeah.

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 II I think is viewed as such a positive war. Right. It's a clear, mind-bogglingly distinct bad guys. Yeah. Yeah.

Right? The rest of the world was like, we're going to take you down. Sure. And they did and fought well together, and it was as far as wars go, a pretty great war. Yeah. We're not war guys, obviously, the kind of wars we wage today, but back then I think I would have grabbed my musket, oh wait, probably not a musket, I would have grabbed my musket.

You would have been really in trouble had you gone to the front lines of World War II. I would have grabbed my bolt action rifle, and I would have gone after Hitler. Yeah. I would have tried to. Yeah. I bet you love Inglourious Baxter. Oh, I was just about to say that. I just saw it again this weekend.

Yeah, that's a good one. Awesome movie. Unfortunately, fascism didn't completely go away. Like you said, there are small pockets of movements around the world, right? Are we going to talk about skinheads? No. These putzes? No.

They're just stupid. I don't think we should give them any airtime whatsoever. 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. 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's better, which we just like being different. Right. And being white. Yeah, 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.

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 greater security. Check. Isolationist foreign policy. No comment.

And government intervention in the means of production to secure the state from shortages and economic downturns. Definitely no comment. Creepy. 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, 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. Yeah. So I don't want to like make light of that.

They do bad things. No. London had some bombings in 1999. I was thinking about that. London's one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. Very progressive city. And it had bombings. It has bombings sometimes.

I know. 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. If you love to look at Hitler and hate him, you can find pictures of him on this fascist

article by typing fascism in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. So I guess it's listener mail time, right? Yes, indeed, Josh. I feel dirty. Yes, Josh. I'm going to call this one, How Could We Not Mention Boba Fett? That's what I'm going to call it. We heard from quite a few people on this in the Bounty Hunter episode because we failed

to mention Boba Fett. It was arguably the coolest bounty hunter. He drove a vet. Oh, did he? I didn't know that. Haven't you ever heard Fett's vet? No. MC Chris?

No. I'll send it to you. So this is from our pal, Aaron AC, who writes in a lot and he's a regular. I just got done listening to the latest joint, How Bounty Hunters Work, and I'm appalled because you did not hear a single mention of Boba Fett. And then he types, Wah? Yeah, okay. So maybe he's fictional, allegedly, but come on, this sounds cute.

During the Ninja podcast, I sat through what seemed like 10 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 Fett man. And I would agree.

I would too. So we didn't mention Boba Fett. We wanted to acknowledge that. And he also says, speaking of Boba Fett, 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? No.

I'd never heard of it either. But it is awesome. It was the scream that a sound engineer recorded for a movie in, I think, the 1940s. Man dies by alligator was what it was called. And that has since been used, the exact clip in over 200 movies since then. It's like an end joke with sound engineers. Really? The Wilhelm Scream.

I've never heard of it. So he asked if we can play one and I think, Jerry, we can probably rustle up a Wilhelm Scream. Should we play one now? 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, oh, 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. We just want to thank Aaron 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, Arkania, actually, Arkania of any variety, we're always very interested in that, wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom and send it to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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