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.
(You may find the foregoing material a useful basis for a brief introductory talk.)
How It Starts
(Question: How does fascism get in power? How can a violent program that enslaves the people win any support?)
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. The Japanese spoke of a "greater Asia co-prosperity sphere." Mussolini mouthed humanitarian ideals and promised a re-born Roman empire. Hitler and his associates adopted the name of National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) and announced objectives that attracted many German people. The official title of the Nazi party was deliberately worded for its propaganda value, appealing to "nationalists," "socialists," "workers," and all others who might be favorably influenced by these labels. At the very time that the fascists proclaimed that their party was the party of the "average citizen," they were in the pay of certain big industrialists and financiers who wanted to run the people with an iron hand.
The fascists promised everything to everyone: They would make the poor rich and the rich richer. To the farmers, the fascists promised land through elimination of large estates. To the workers they promised elimination of unemployment—jobs for all at high wages. To the small business men they promised more customers and profits through the elimination of large business enterprises. 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. At the same time that they proclaimed the "superiority" of the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, they proclaimed also that the German, the Italian, the Japanese peoples were really unfit to rule themselves. It became "Heil Hitler" in Germany, and "Believe, obey, fight" in Italy. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled against each other.
How It Works
(Question: How could the fascists keep their contradictory promises, once they got in power? How did their program actually work out?)
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.
Pastor Niemoeller was thrown into a concentration camp in Germany; Cardinal Innitzer was "stoned," and Catholic priests were imprisoned. Jews were murdered in cold blood and synagogues destroyed Christian ministers were ousted from Japan.
The fascists "solved" unemployment by converting their nations into giant war machines. The unemployed were either conscripted into the army or organized in labor battalions and put to work in war plants.
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