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The world is on the eve of great change. The so-called world order of the plutocrats, the so-called world order of American imperialism, these are false gods, these are false gods that are crumbling, their power is crumbling. What is coming could be called the global fascist revolution. This is what is coming. Now we need to define what fascism is and what fascism is not, people tend to lump together fascism and Nazism. This is a huge mistake and a lack of understanding of basic concepts of political theory.
HITLER MODELS HIS NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
ON MUSSOLINI'S FASCISM
Mussolini along with Robespierre is probably one of the most underestimated figures in history. Adolf Hitler was influenced by two key people, one was Richard Wagner, the other was Mussolini. it is really inconceivable to think about Hitler's national socialist movement without Mussolini, because it's modeled on that from the black shirts of Mussolini to the black uniforms of the SS, from the Nazi salute which was copied after the fascist salute, Hitler is always right comes from "il duce ha sempre ragioni." We could go on. There would be no Adolf Hitler if there was no Mussolini. Now Hitler in the 1920's greatly admired Mussolini and modeled his movement on Mussolini, the feeling was most definitely not mutual. Mussolini was adamantly opposed to integrating racism and anti-Semitism.
THE ORIGINAL FASCISM WAS NOT RACIST OR ANTI-SEMITIC
So you see fascism as it originally evolved under Mussolini was not connected to the racial and anti-Semitic ideas of Hitler. Now Mussolini would move closer to Hitler later, but up until about 1935 Mussolini was in fact one of Hitler's greatest enemies in Europe. the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini in 1934 was a complete disaster in Venice; and things even took a turn even for the worst when Nazis, who may have been under Hitler's directional may not of it's never been clarified, in Austria staged a failed coup attempt which murdered the leader of Austria, Dollfus, who was a friend of Mussolini. Mussolini in fact tried to set up a coalition against Hitler in Europe, but he found out at the beginning of the 1930's what Stalin would find out at the end of the 1930's, that the democracies were not reliable and not competent.
DEMOCRACIES GET INTO A QUARREL WITH MUSSOLINI
Now Mussolini got into a quarrel with the democracies about his effort to take over Ethiopia and match the imperialism of England and France and of America for its takeover of the North American continent. The hypocrisy was truly breathtaking with which the allies attacked Mussolini and that infuriated Mussolini and combined with the Spanish Civil War drove him into the arms of Hitler and led to Italy signing an agreement with Hitler. But we have to get back to the main point, that the authoritarian structure of fascism and the mass mobilization of the population and so on was originally not connected to racism and anti-Semitism, and when we talk about the global fascist revolution we are not talking about racism and anti-Semitism, this is extremely unlikely to happen.
THE TOTALITARIAN STATES OF THE LEFT
Now we prefer to use the term totalitarian, but that is perhaps less understood and the significance of Mussolini needs to be studied in more detail to understand what's happening. Mussolini was in many ways quite favorable toward Stalin and he saw Stalin's Russia eventually evolving towards Fascism. Now what is extremely interesting about that analysis is this is precisely what happened in Mao's China where you have an erstwhile communist state which has evolved into a kind of fascist state.
FASCISM: CONTROL OF ALL ASPECTS OF THE SOCIETY BY THE STATE
Now further discussing the concepts of fascism we need to clear up a mistranslation among many analyses of fascism when we talk about the corporate state. What Mussolini meant by the corporate state was the incorporation of different factions of society, people think it's always just about big business, no, no, no, no no - it's about labor, business, all of society coming together in a government directed economy which is in many ways similar to what you had in the post-World War II boom in Asia. The states in Asia that have been successful have ignored the American concept of free enterprise and have had state directed capitalism and this is a portent of what's to come. So this is something we need to keep in mind.
AMERICA'S TOTALITARIAN REVOLUTION
Now in America today under Bush and also under Obama you have a breathtaking totalitarian revolution. Under Obama it is revealed that the NSA is able to spot anybody anywhere at the click of a mouse and this is beyond the wildest totalitarian dreams of Hitler and Himmler. Under Bush you've had the open endorsement of torture and the recent debate about the new torture report is quite revealing for the fact that key sections of the American foreign policy leadership are openly celebrating torture. This really crosses over a line and it's one more portent of the move towards totalitarianism in the United States.
Obama has passed the national Defense authorization act and has claimed that he has the right to kill anybody anywhere on the planet, that he is judged jury and executioner for the entire planet. There is a word for this. This is megalomania. This isn't some nice person. Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon papers very correctly observes that Obama and his totalitarian revolution is not only trying to supersede the Bill of Rights, it is trying to supersede the Magna Carta and it is true. Now, so far there hasn't been a huge crisis. What's going to happen if there is a huge crisis? What's going to happen when there is a biological terror attack, an epidemic, an economic collapse?
Well you can use your creativity if we have this much totalitarianism now, you can just figure where all that goes. Now in future lectures we're going to define fascism a bit more clearly, but this is the point of this lecture to clarify things in the near term. End of lecture.