Was Teddy Roosevelt a Fascist?

Was Teddy Roosevelt a Fascist?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 3.2%
  • No

    Votes: 38 60.3%
  • Sorta

    Votes: 4 6.3%
  • What?

    Votes: 19 30.2%
  • Blame Thande

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Bacon

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    63
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Not open for further replies.

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Well, I mean, looking at the List you got there, he matches the idea of Glory through War and reclaiming past glory of the nation, and also believed in the state telling businesses what to do (Good Trusts vs Bad Trusts), fits the idea nationalism and meritocratic principles, fits the idea of mostly (if proto-) Keynesian economic theory, fits the creation of public works, and he looked less to international law and more towards the protection of the American Sphere of Influence by any means.

So, he isn't a fascist per say, but he fits enough to maybe click on the "Sorta" option.

That's pretty much what I was going for, but simply couldn't articulate. Yes, Roosevelt bears a great resemblance to it, however he falls short of even reaching it.
 
Since he was anti-trust and progressive regarding a lot of areas, and never encouraged the state to partner or own corporations, then no he's not fascist. People tend to think of Communism as state-owning enterprises, but fascism is not the opposite of Communism, more of a little sister. Volkswagen was founded by the German Labour Front, which was a Nazi organization.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Since he was anti-trust and progressive regarding a lot of areas, and never encouraged the state to partner or own corporations, then no he's not fascist. People tend to think of Communism as state-owning enterprises, but fascism is not the opposite of Communism, more of a little sister. Volkswagen was founded by the German Labour Front, which was a Nazi organization.

Indeed, until Hitler took over the National Socialist party actually focused more on the Socialist bit and I think they were less obsessed with Anti-Semitism, but I could be wrong.


Honestly, the term "Fascist/Fascism" nowadays seems to be a catchall word people with little to no historical knowledge use against anything they don't like(assuming they're leftists).

Socialism is the same thing except for (Neo-)Conservatives.


At least in America. Can't and won't speak for the rest of the world.
 
He could not have been fascist as he was not against liberal democracy and was not for "economic corporatism"
 
Indeed, until Hitler took over the National Socialist party actually focused more on the Socialist bit and I think they were less obsessed with Anti-Semitism, but I could be wrong.

Correct. The National Socialist (NAZI) party was anti-semitic to the extent that it fell in with the "Nationalist" part of the name, Jews were considered non-German and conflicted with a "Germany for Germans" philosophy. Likewise with Romani, Czechs, Sorbs, and Slavs.
 
Since he was anti-trust and progressive regarding a lot of areas, and never encouraged the state to partner or own corporations, then no he's not fascist. People tend to think of Communism as state-owning enterprises, but fascism is not the opposite of Communism, more of a little sister. Volkswagen was founded by the German Labour Front, which was a Nazi organization.

Fascism is the Gozer of ideologies: it's whatever it wants to be.

State ownership of corporations was a staple of Nazi Germany, and to a certain extent Fascist Italy, but it's more a marriage of convenience than any strong ideological position. The NSDAP was a big tent political party (I mean, the name basically translates to the "American Democratic Republican Liberal Conservative Party"), united by their whacked out racial politics, anti-Semitism, and militarism. Anything that supported those goals/positions was co-opted and abandoned in equal measure.

I direct you to Thespitron's excellent essay about what Fascism breaks down to:

I don't normally post on the Political Chat threads; however, I've been seeing a lot of threads discussing the nature of fascism, and as a result I've been meaning to post this essay I wrote for a while. Please be aware, these are my opinions. I am aware this is a contentious subject, and I am fully aware my opinions might be controversial. But before you lambaste me, I would appreciate it if you read the following essay. :D

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Fascism: What Is It?

Since its inception during the 1920s, those outside the fascist philosophy have had a great deal of trouble stating just what it is, and how it relates to other political philosophies. Obviously, for those who are concerned with the possibility that fascism might arise in their own countries, having a working definition of fascism is a requirement. At the same time, the great difficulty we have in defining it is strongly related to the loaded connotations of the word; as George Orwell pointed out, today the word is used primarily to indicate something politically unpleasant, something we disapprove of. The restriction of handguns is called fascistic by those who support firearm use and ownership, and the possession of handguns is called fascistic by those who oppose it. What is needed, therefore, is an examination of what fascism is, and what it is not.

To begin with, some clarification. In this essay, I will be using ‘fascism’ (with a small ‘f’) to indicate the political philosophy as a whole. ‘Fascism’ (with a capital ‘F’) will be used to indicate specifically the political party that existed in Italy from 1921 to 1943. I will use the term ‘Nazism’ rather than ‘National Socialism’, as the latter term is used by proponents to distance themselves from the very political phenomena that I wish to discuss.

Virtually all people would, of course, agree that the Fascist Party was fascist (they called themselves so, after all) and most would agree that the Nazi Party of Germany was likewise fascist. This seemingly obvious fact is actually rather odd, because the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany held very different beliefs and had very different aims in terms of their governance. As an example, from the beginning Nazism contained a very broad streak of anti-Semitism, and began enacting anti-Semitic laws as soon as they gained power. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that anti-Semitism was at the core of the Nazi program. Yet in Italy, anti-Semitism did not become part of the Fascist program until 1938, having been in power for sixteen years. Why the difference, and why, instinctively, do we group Fascism and Nazism together, despite their obvious differences? To understand this, we need to look more closely at partisan government, and the philosophies that underlie it.

Partisan Government

Philosophies of partisan government can be broken down into three layers, or arms: the structure of the government, the style of the government, and the substance of the government.

By structure we mean how power is distributed, how decisions are made, who makes them—in essence, the form of the state. For example, the modern United States and modern Canada have very similar structures of government; both are federal democracies. Of course, there are some differences, but on the whole the structures are the same. Similarly, the Soviet Union under Stalin and Hitler’s Germany had the similar structure of a one-man dictatorship.

The style of government can be stated as how the power is used: is it used openly, as in the United States, or in secret, as in the medieval Republic of Venice? Is there pageantry, or is the government subdued? Do the political parties consist of a mass movement, or are they small groups of oligarchs? Each of these questions helps define the style of government.

Lastly, we have the substance of the government: what the power is used to accomplish. In the United States, the Democratic and Republican parties have the same structure of government, and similar styles of governance (both have university adjuncts, both have smaller subgroups that help define policy, both are affiliated with independent philosophical think tanks, etc.) but within American politics, their substances—their platforms—are very different. The Republicans favor, for example, fewer restrictions on gun ownership, while Democrats favor the opposite.

What, then, is fascism? Is it a structure, a style, or a substance? From the beginning, we can state that fascism is not a distinct structure of government. Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and other fascist states are almost invariably one-man, one-party dictatorships (for reasons that will be discussed below), but in that they are not distinct. Indeed, that model is perhaps the most common model of governance in history: the tyrant and his faction of followers. To claim, therefore, that fascism composes a distinct structure of government is false.

As we saw above, the substance of the fascist program can vary dramatically from country to country; indeed, even inside the same country. Italian fascism had an initially republican philosophy which switched to a monarchist one when support from the Italian king was necessary. In German fascism there was never a strong monarchist element.

Features of Fascism

Therefore, we can conclude that fascism is a style of government, and indeed, we will see that the features of fascism most closely correlate with the method of governance, rather than what the governance is intended to accomplish. These features can best be understood by first understanding fascism’s core value.

Every political philosophy can be considered to have a core value. Anarchism’s core value is liberty. Communism’s core value is equality. For fascism, the core value is unity. Not for nothing is the symbol and name of fascism derived from the fasces, an ancient symbol that most likely predates Rome. A bundle of sticks, the fasces is unbreakable, unlike the individual sticks that comprise it. Unity, rather than equality or liberty, comprises the core value of fascism, and completes the trinity expressed in the slogan of the French Revolution: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

This also explains why fascism does not fit well on the American left-right spectrum. Americans have never placed a high value on unity; their history, diverse in cultures, races, and religions, means that unity is not highly prized. The statement “E pluribus unum”—out of many, one—is incomprehensible to the fascist, because the notion that one nation can be drawn together from many diverse parts is alien to them. The American spectrum is broken down between highly abstract notions of “left” and “right” which are themselves not particularly useful. To the extent that they are, it is that the left tends—and this is a tendency only—to be more associated with political and economic equality, while the right tends to be associated with political and economic liberty. Unity appears nowhere on that spectrum.

Indeed, fascists themselves are contemptuous of such a spectrum, and of any attempts to place them on it. That is what they are against, not what they are for. In valuing unity, they naturally see themselves as being its defenders; anything that divides the unity of society—political parties, for example—is their enemy.

This brings us to the first feature of fascism: post-partisanship. To the fascist, political parties are bad; they divide the nation, the society, the group, and detract from unity. Therefore from the beginning, the fascists will promote themselves as being ‘outside politics as usual’ or ‘post-partisan’. They may even refuse to identify themselves as a party, depending on how friendly the public is to the notion of political parties. The Nazis, although they were officially the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, in all their literature and their public and private correspondences referred to themselves as ‘the movement’.

Inevitably, when the fascists take power, this results in a one-party state. Since the fascists claim to represent the unity of whatever group to which they belong, other parties are not only unnecessary but actively dangerous. At this stage, violence against other political parties is inevitable.

At this point, a brief tangent might be useful. Until now, we have been discussing the fascist’s need for unity, but unity of what? Traditionally, this has been seen as ‘the nation’, and indeed, that is the term that, preferably, we would like to use. But it has been excessively constricted to the notion of the modern nation-state: presumably, fascists promote unity in whatever nation-state they live in. But this view is historically inaccurate. The Austrian fascists sought not to promote Austrian interests but instead to join Austria with Germany. They were part of a pan-Germanic movement; the nation they saw themselves as belonging to was not identical to the nation they lived in. They saw themselves as Germans, and to them the German nation was not contiguous with the physical borders of Germany. This is important. In this sense, the ‘nation’ is simply the group to which the fascist feels most strongly attached, which forms the core of his identity. To that end, I will use the term ‘society’ to describe the group with which the fascist identifies. ‘Group’, as a term, is too general, containing many concepts that the fascist would not identify with, as we shall see when we discuss bolshevism and fascism.

Violence against other political groups and parties naturally brings us to the second feature of fascism: violence as catharsis and the fetishism of violence. Fascist movements are violent. That virtually everyone can agree on. But why? Communist revolutions are violent, too, but violence is not so strongly identified with communism; indeed, late-stage Soviet communism was less violent than the late-stage Tsarism it replaced, although equally oppressive. Why is violence so identifiably fascist?

Fascism as an ideology arose in the years following World War I. Many of the earliest fascists were either the younger brothers of veterans or veterans themselves. What they noted was the fact that in the extreme stress of combat, soldiers banded together tightly, achieving a high degree of unity not seen in peacetime. The high emotion caused soldiers to identify strongly with the group, whether that group was the squad, the platoon, the Army, or the nation. The group’s struggle was their struggle. Any sufficiently strong emotion, generated from an outside source, could achieve such results, but the strongest emotions were raised by violence.

Violence has the added benefit, from the point of view of the fascist, of purging society of its disunifying elements if properly directed. Therefore, in promoting violence against minorities, whether minorities of creed, religion, race, culture, or class, and against political parties who divide society politically, the fascist causes society to draw together while expelling those bad elements that the fascist opposes. The fascist sees violence, therefore, not merely as necessary but desirable.

Because fascism puts such a strong emphasis on unity, it is constrained in how it achieves power. This is the third major feature of fascism: fascism is a mass movement. Fascism claims to represent the will of the society, the nation; they are the champions of unity, and therefore speak for the unified society. This means that almost invariably the fascist party must come to power through democratic means. Although fascists are opposed to the current system (political, cultural, economic), they do not wish to overthrow the system. The system is part of society, which they claim to represent. After coming to power, they plan to make massive changes to the system, but only once they have the mandate of society itself.

It is worth noting that, despite the enormous changes made to the cultures, economies, and polities of Germany, Italy, and other countries in which fascist movements have come to power, these historical moments are never referred to as ‘revolutions’ (with one exception). This is because in modern parlance, the revolution marks a break with the past, while the continuance and unity of the society is of paramount importance to the fascist.

Do not confuse this desire for continuity with conservatism. The fascist wishes to conserve nothing about their society save for a few cultural forms that they consider to represent the society’s ‘character’. Everything else, they wish to change. However, it is evolutionary change, rather than revolutionary change, that they seek. In other words, they wish to improve the old order rather than throwing it out.

In order to claim they have a mandate for change, in order to claim that they represent society, the fascists must come to power democratically. They will stand for elections, and then, having won, they will abolish them as no longer necessary. Only in democratic nations can fascist movements come to power, or indeed even emerge. Movements similar to Fascism or Nazism in substance may appear, but fascism as a political style will not appear, as it is based on the idea of a politically unified and active society.

The fourth major feature of fascism emerges from this concept of the politically unified and active society: politics as public religion. In a fascist society, in order to achieve the sort of political unity they deem necessary, large-scale public political activities must be held by the fascists. Participation is an extremely important concept in fascism; those who do not participate are separating themselves from the group. All citizens must be encouraged to participate, to promote unity.

This means that the fascist society will feature large political rallies, political clubs under the auspices of the fascist party, activities designed to promote group work (see Hitler Youth, Kraft durch Freude, etc.). These group political activities will take on religious aspects. As the group supersedes the individual, the individual will be encouraged to regard the group as being his superior, and its needs as being more important than his needs.

It should be noted that fascists are hostile to religious groups not controlled or started by themselves, since such groups divide society and divert the attention of the individual from the needs of the group. Religions are tolerated only so far as they are politically useful; otherwise, they are persecuted, usually through cathartic violence.

This proliferation of fascist-sponsored groups and activities, which quickly come to dominate the citizen’s life, point to the fifth major feature of fascism: totalitarianism. Fascism is totalitarian because, in the fascist’s view, anything that is not in and of the society serves to disrupt it. These bad elements must be eliminated, and ultimately all aspects of society and the life of the citizen must fall under fascist control, in order to avoid potentially disunity. Citizens must constantly be surveilled, or encouraged to report on one another, to avoid the possibility that private activities might undermine the unity of society. The fascist state is a police state. The private world disappears, replaced by the notion that all aspects of life are political, and must align with the principles laid down by the fascist party and its leadership.

The final major feature of fascism is the leader principle. Councils and committees are subject to faction. Faction is anathema to unity. Therefore, supreme power, the power of society as a whole, must be manifest in one individual. This individual is the leader. The leader acts as the natural personification of societal will, and in turn dictates the course and nature of society. This is why all fascist states are dictatorships.

Of course, no real-life state has ever reached the level of control personified in one man as theorized by fascist intellectuals. Even Hitler required the consent of many of his advisors and subordinates in order to govern. In the ideal, however, the leader principle is the stated goal of the fascist.

There are, therefore, six features that define fascism:

• post-partisanship
• violence as catharsis and the fetishism of violence
• fascism is a mass movement
• politics as public religion
• totalitarianism
• the leader principle.

A movement must have all six to qualify as fascist. Those who possess, say, four or five might be reasonably described as ‘quasi-fascist’.

Fascism and Bolshevism

These six features are in marked contrast to bolshevism. ‘Bolshevism’ (with a small ‘b’) is a political style, just as fascism is a political style, but in practically every respect it is fascism’s opposite. Bolshevism is worth examining, because it is the political style practiced by most communists throughout the twentieth century. This examination will be brief; bolshevism is not the subject of this essay.

Bolshevism is hyper-partisan. Bolshevists identify strongly with a very narrow segment of society, usually ‘peasants’ or ‘workers.’ Unlike the fascist, the bolshevist is not concerned with unity; in fact, they are hostile to it, since the bolshevist’s core value is egalitarianism, rather than unity. As a result, the bolshevist will do what they can to disrupt societal unity, in the interest of flattening out differences.

Bolshevism is not a mass movement; in fact, it is conspiratorial. In the bolshevist worldview, the segment of society they represent is voiceless; if that segment could achieve power through democratic means, it would in essence falsify the bolshevist position. Therefore, for the bolshevist, the only way to power is through revolution.

Violence for the bolshevist is a necessary but not essentially desirable adjunct to the seizure of power. Terrorism may be acceptable, as may violence against political opponents, but if power can be seized without violence, so much the better. Compare this with the fascist, for whom properly directed violence is a good in itself.

Just as bolshevism is conspiratorial, it is not particularly interested in mass displays or other mass activities designed to promote unity. These are unnecessary and may, indeed, prove counterproductive, as mass activities may cause feelings of unity between ‘good’ or ‘revolutionary’ segments of society and those which are ‘counterrevolutionary’ or ‘reactionary’.

The bolshevist style is not based on the leader principle; it is based on the cell. Conspiracies with one, easily identified leader do not last long. The bolshevist must, therefore, be a party of one.

The only aspect both fascists and bolshevists have in common is they are both totalitarians. Both desire that all aspects of society eventually come under their control, so that they can be properly remolded in the image of the appropriate ideology.

Conclusions

Note that at no point was anything said about the substance of fascist movements. This is because fascist movements may take on any number of planks in their platforms, which may or may not be in common with neighboring or allied fascist movements.

The result is that calling fascism a movement of the right, or of the left, is a misnomer. In the supplement to this essay, Case Studies of Fascist Movements, we will see several fascist or quasi-fascist movements that could be dubbed ‘leftist’ and several that could be dubbed ‘rightist.’ Fascist platforms commonly take planks from both the right and the left of their host countries. Fascism explicitly regards itself as a third way, distinct from left or right. Fascists in Germany and in Italy fought with bolshevist communists and other leftists primarily because they were in competition for the same political space. Neither had much use for the establishment, and both sought to replace the current system—revolutionarily for the bolshevists, evolutionarily for the fascists—with one more to their liking, and regarded the current establishment with contempt. However, it was the fascists’ emphasis on national unity that allowed them to ally with the established conservatives in both Italy and Germany without betraying their principles in a way that was not available to the bolshevists. In the end, the fascists gradually purged their movements of the old-line conservatives who had helped them to power; the conservatives found themselves betrayed as the fascists became more radical.

Fascism as a political style has no particular substance. One may be a capitalist fascist as easily and readily as one may be a communist fascist. The deciding factor for the fascist in choosing what substance of governance he wishes to adopt is how much he regards the substances in question of promoting societal unity. It must be emphasized: the society the fascist acts on behalf of is not necessarily contiguous with a nation-state. It may be a race, a creed, a gender, a religion, an ethnicity. For example, lthough it will, inevitably, prompt outrage among Jews, it is indeed possible to have a Jewish fascism, just as it is possible to have a Catholic fascism, an Islamic fascism, a Hindu fascism. It is not, however, possible to be a Jewish Nazi, since one of the planks of Nazism is anti-Semitism.

Fascism takes many substances, many forms, but one style. Therefore, those who wish to prevent fascist movements in their own countries must take great pains to avoid confusing the style with its many disparate platforms, or else they will find themselves unpleasantly surprised one day.

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We would like you to share those opinions.

Please.

Originally my position was "Yes",as he mirrored some of the tenants of Fascist policy making enough for me to subjectively consider him a Fascist.

Due the responses so far on the question, I'm now in the "Sorta" category primarily due to his Economic Corporatist polices (Good Trust vs Bad Trust) and his staunch public advocacy of American Imperialism, both very similar to Mussolini's reign.
 
Originally my position was "Yes",as he mirrored some of the tenements of Fascist policy making enough for me to subjectively consider him a Fascist.

Due the responses so far on the question, I'm now in the "Sorta" category primarily due to his Economic Corporatist polices (Good Trust vs Bad Trust) and his staunch public advocacy of American Imperialism, both very similar to Mussolini's reign.

If fascism was based on imperial ambition then one could say that almost every 19th century European power had a fascist government.
 

Japhy

Banned
Literally the only case you can make on this front is that Roosevelt was about as Proto-Fascist as The Bonapartists. Progressivism helped inspire aspects of the ideology, but it was only one component in the witches' brew and certainly wasn't the most important.
 
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