what is fascism

Fascism ( /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology
 Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood through a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics.

 Fascism seeks to purify the nation of foreign influences that are deemed to be causing degeneration of the nation or of not fitting into the national culture. Fascists have commonly presented themselves as politically syncretic—opposing firm association with any section of the left-right spectrum, considering it inadequate to describe their beliefs, and being critical of the left, right, and centre.

 However, fascism's goal to promote the rule of people deemed innately superior while seeking to purge society of people deemed innately inferior is a prominent far-right stance.
Fascism promotes political violence and war, as forms of direct action that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.

Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violence against opponents or to overthrow a political system.Fascism opposes multiple ideologies: conservatism, liberalism, and two major forms of socialism—communism and social democracy.

 Fascism claims to represent a synthesis of cohesive ideas previously divided between traditional political ideologies.To achieve its goals, the fascist state purges forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration.

The fascist party is a vanguard party designed to initiate a revolution from above and to organize the nation upon fascist principles. The fascist party and state is led by a supreme leader who exercises a dictatorship over the party, the government and other state institutions.

Fascism rejects liberal democracy based upon majority rule and the parliamentary system but fascists deny that they are against democracy as a whole.
 Fascism condemns liberal democracy for basing government legitimacy on quantity rather than quality, and for causing quarreling partisan politics.

Fascists claim that their ideology is a trans-class movement, advocating resolution to domestic class conflict within a nation to secure national solidarity. It claims that its goal of cultural nationalization of society emancipates the nation's proletariat, and promotes the assimilation of all classes into proletarian national culture.[While fascism opposes domestic class conflict, fascism believes that bourgeois-proletarian conflict primarily exists in national conflict between proletarian nations versus bourgeois nations; fascism declares its opposition to bourgeois nations and declares its support for the victory of proletarian nations.

Fascists advocate a state-directed, regulated market economy that is dedicated to the nation; the use and primacy of regulated private property and private enterprise contingent upon service to the nation, the use of state enterprise where private enterprise is failing or is inefficient, and autarky. It supports criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers because it deems these acts as prejudicial to the national community.

helpful perspective on racism

Helpful Perspectives on Race and Racism


1.   WE ARE MORE ALIKE THAN DIFFERENT

As human beings we are all more alike than we are different, regardless of the color of our skin.  (What do you notice that you have in common with someone from a different racial background than yours?)



2.   "RACES" DON'T EXIST

Classifying people by skin color and some minor facial features and calling the categories “races” is an idea that was made up a few hundred years ago.  (“Races” do not exist as distinct biological groups with significant genetic differences among them.  Skin color is biologically a trivial difference.)  The idea of race, as we know it now, was invented by white people to justify their mistreatment of people of color (especially the enslaving of Africans and the colonizing of many groups) and/or to assert the superiority of white people.  (Can you think of other ways that we could sort people into groups?)



3.   STILL ... PAY ATTENTION TO "RACE"

Although “race” is an artificial idea that serves to separate people, we need still need to pay attention to “race” because of the ways it continues to be used to advantage white people and to oppress people of color, and to affect the experiences that people tend to have in our society.  (How has being the "race" you are affected you?)



4.   WE ARE ALL BORN GOOD

All people, including both people of color and white people, are born good.  As people get mistreated, hurt, isolated, don’t have their needs met, and are taught harmful ideas, they come to behave in ways that are harmful to others.  No one is born “racist”.  (When have you been able to notice the goodness of someone of a different “race”?)



5.   CONNECT WITH PEOPLE OF ALL RACES

It makes sense for people of all races to be connected to each other.  Life is richer and more interesting if you have friends and acquaintances from many racial backgrounds.  We can all become aware that racial differences need not cut us off from other people. (When have you enjoyed being with someone who was different from you in some way?)



6.   BEING COLORBLIND IS NOT THE GOAL

Being “colorblind” is not the goal.  It is one of our goals that people not be judged on the basis of their skin color or have stereotyped assumptions made about them.  This is different from not noticing, or pretending not to notice, someone’s skin color or “race”.  We need to notice skin color and “race” because it can help us understand people’s identities and cultures, and may help us understand something about their experiences.  As one African-American woman said, “If you only see that I’m black, you don’t see me.  If you don’t see that I’m black, you also don’t see me.”  (Has it sometimes felt that you needed to pretend skin color differences didn’t exist to be friends with someone of a racial background different from yours?)



7.   RACISM EXISTS TODAY

Racism still exists today in all parts of the United States and beyond.  People of color are disadvantaged, excluded, limited, and mistreated systematically. (What example of recent racism have you experienced, seen, read about, heard about, etc.?)



8.   PERSONAL RACISM

Some racism, both today and in the past, is personal racism - ideas and feelings held in the minds of individuals, and individual behavior. These include feeling superior to another race, stereotyped views of one or more races, fear of people because of their skin color, hatred of a race, etc. Personal racism also includes individual behaviors that mistreat people of color.  (Can you think of an historical figure or group of people who showed their personal racism in some way?)



9.   SYSTEMIC RACISM

Much racism today is systemic racism - the way many advantages in the society are set up systematically, or built into the structure of society or how we do things, to benefit one racial group (white people) and disadvantage others.  For example, public schools are financed primarily on property taxes (based on the value of people’s houses) and this results in students in poor urban areas (where many students of color live) going to schools that don't have as much money to pay teachers, buy books, etc. as the schools that many white students go to.  If we financed schools differently, we could provide equally good schools for all students, regardless of their “race”.  (How would you feel about schools being changed so that your school wasn’t any better, or worse, than anyone else’s?)



10.   APPEARANCE OF RACISM

Racism in the U.S. today often takes on a different appearance than it did in the past. Much racism is cloaked in “coded” or “race-neutral” language such as “crime in the streets”, the “war on drugs”, and “un-American”. Users of such language can claim to be “colorblind” while intentionally (or unintentionally) triggering racist feelings or fears in many listeners. Systematic attempts to portray people of color and leaders of color as “other” are also expressions of racism. Actions that further disadvantage large numbers of people of color are part of racism whether some white people are also disadvantaged or not. (What do you think of recent efforts to make it more difficult to register to vote? Are these an expression of racism?)




11. EFFECT, RATHER THAN INTENT

If a comment, action, or policy is hurtful to people of color, it is racism even if it was not intended to be. Such actions are part of the overall system of racism. Every expression of racism should be interrupted, whether it was intentional or not. This is just as true in situations where only white people are present. The passing on of racism from white person to white person is part of the system of racism that must be dismantled. (How would you talk with someone about how local financing of schools is racist, even if no one intends it to be?)


12.  SELF RESPECT FOR ALL

People of all racial identities deserve to feel pleased with who they are and deserve respect, including self-respect.  This is true for African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Whites and all people of mixed heritages. (What are you pleased about when you think about your “race” or other people of your “race”?)



13.  ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE CONDITIONED TO RACISM

Every white person growing up in this society has been trained to feel some superiority, fear, and/or separation from various people of color.  These attitudes and the behaviors and lack of awareness that come from them are personal racism.  This does not mean that the person is a racist.  He or she is still a good human being, but they have attitudes and behaviors that they need to take responsibility for changing.  This will be necessary for ending racism. (If you are white, have you ever felt scared of people of color?  Have you ever felt “better than” people of color?  If you are a person of color, have you noticed these feelings or attitudes in white people?)



14.  SYSTEMIC ADVANTAGES TO WHITES

Every white person is also born into a system that advantages white people and disadvantages people of color in many ways.  This is not the fault of any individual white person, but it is important that white people learn about how this occurs in society and work to eliminate this systemic racism.  (What’s one of the advantages that white people tend to have in this society?)



15. RACISM HURTS WHITE PEOPLE TOO

Despite the advantages that accrue to white people as a result of racism, white people are hurt by racism too. Racism, both personal and systemic, tends to leave white people more disconnected from the majority of the world's population; with more fear, powerlessness and alienation; and with some of their full humanity obstructed. (If you are white, how has racism, or facing the existence of racism, been painful to you, limited your sense of your goodness, interfered with your connections with people, or frustrated your dreams of justice?)


16.  INTERNALIZED RACISM

Every person of color growing up in this society has been subjected to attitudes and behaviors that imply that he or she is somehow inferior and deserves disadvantages.  To the extent that people of color have inadvertently internalized any of these attitudes about themselves, other members of their own “race” or other people of color, they carry what is called “internalized racism”.  In order for racism to end it will be necessary to root out internalized racism as well as the racism carried by white people.  (If you are a person of color, what challenges do you face, if any, in trying to feel pleased with yourself consistently?)


17.  RESPONSIBILITY, NOT BLAME

No one is to blame for harmful attitudes that have been instilled in them or for lack of awareness.  Everyone is responsible for changing those attitudes, developing awareness, and committing themselves to treating all people with respect.  Feeling guilty generally gets in the way of effective action to eliminate racism.  It is appropriate to take responsibility for correcting and repairing mistakes, both personal and historical.  (What’s a mistake you have made with a person of another “race”?  What did you do, or would you like to do to repair the results of that mistake?)


18.   HEALING FROM RACISM - WHITE PEOPLE

The attitudes, feelings, and false ideas that make up individual racism in white people are connected to experiences that involve painful feelings, vulnerability, and insecurity. Although getting accurate information is important, it is not sufficient for removing racism. Healing from personal racism requires that people be listened to while they talk thoroughly about their experiences that are related to race and racism. They also need to feel and release the emotions that accompanied those experiences, through crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc. Building relationships with people of different racial backgrounds; learning more about race, racism and the experiences of other groups; and taking action to help end racism, all assist in the process of eliminating personal racism. (If you are a white person, what feelings do you have about race, about issues of racism, and about experiences you have had with people of other races?)


19.   HEALING FROM RACISM - PEOPLE OF COLOR

Similarly, for people of color experiences of racism and internalized racism have painful emotion connected to them. Healing from those experiences requires that people be listened to extensively while they talk about their experiences and feel and release the emotions connected with them. (If you are a person of color, what feelings do you have about race, about racism, and about experiences you have had related to race and racism?)


20.  YOUR VIEWS

What are other perspectives and ideas that you have found helpful?

understanding racism

Understanding Racism

Race and racism are complex phenomena. We can come to understand them over time through personal experiences, reading, relationships, etc. Here are some sections that are interesting reading have some good information. They are not the whole story, though. We hope you will continue to learn about race and racism in many ways.




Here are a few examples of racism in the United States. What other examples can you think of?



School Finance:    Millions of African American and Latino young people in the United States don’t get an education equal to that of most whites, partly because the urban schools they go to don’t have as much money as the schools in the white suburbs.  This is because the country has decided that much of the money for schools should come from local property taxes. So in communities where the houses and businesses are less expensive, the schools don’t get enough money to provide a high quality education.  This is unfair.  This is institutional racism.  If we financed schools differently every student, regardless of his or her "race", could go to a high quality school that was the equal of the schools other students attend.


Wealth Created During Slavery:    From the 1600’s to 1863 slave labor by African Americans created a tremendous amount of wealth in the United States.  This wealth was all taken by white people.  When slavery was ended, the wealth that the former slaves had created was not shared with them.  The effects of this continue today because whites have been able to pass wealth down from generation to generation through inheritance. In addition, discrimination in jobs has continued to limit access to wealth for many people of color. So white people as a whole are still wealthier today than people of color because of the wealth whites took from the labor of slaves.

RACISM

Racism is generally understood as either belief that different racial groups are characterized by intrinsic characteristics or abilities and that some such groups are therefore naturally superior to others  or as practices that discriminate against members of particular racial groups, for example by perpetuating unequal access to resources between groups.

The definition of racism is controversial both because there is little scholarly agreement about what the word "race" means, and because there is also little agreement about what does and doesn't constitute discrimination.Some definitions would have it that any assumption that a person's behavior would be influenced by their racial categorization is racist, regardless of how seemingly benign such assumptions might be. Other definitions would only include conscious malignant forms of discrimination.Among the questions about how to define racism are the question of whether to include forms of discrimination that are unintentional, such as making assumptions about preferences or abilities of others based on racial stereotypes, whether to include institutionalized forms of discrimination such as the circulation of racial stereotypes through the media and whether to include the socio-political dynamics of social stratification that sometimes have a racial component.

"Racism" and "racial discrimination" are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the terms racial discrimination and ethnicity discrimination.

In politics, racism is commonly located on the far right due to the far right’s common association with nativism, racism, and xenophobia.In history, racism has been a major part of the political and ideological underpinning of genocides such as the holocaust, but also in colonial contexts such as the rubber booms in South America and the Congo, and in the European conquest of the Americas and colonization of Africa, Asia and Australia. It was also a driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade, and behind states based on racial segregation such as the USA in the 19th and early twentieth centuries and South Africa under apartheid. Practices and ideologies of racism are universally condemned by the United Nations in the Declaration of Human Rights.

what is oligarchy

Oligarchy ;  meaning "a few", meaning "to rule or to command") is a form of power structure in whichpower effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control. Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who pass their influence from one generation to the next.

Throughout history, some oligarchies have been tyrannical, relying on public servitude to exist, although others have been relatively benign. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, but oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by bloodlines as in a monarchy. Some city-states from ancient Greece were oligarchies.



Examples


Some other examples include the former Soviet Union where only members of the Communist Party were allowed to vote or hold office; the French First Republic government under the Directory; and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (only the nobility could vote). In the time of the ancient Greeks, Sparta was an oligarchy that clashed with the democratic city-state of Athens, (these two nations eventually clashed in the Peloponnesian war in which Sparta defeated Athens causing the city state to rule much of Greece for some time)


A modern example of oligarchy could be seen in South Africa during the twentieth century. Here, the basic characteristics of oligarchy are particularly easy to observe, since the South African form of oligarchy was based on race. After the Second Boer War, a tacit agreement or understanding was reached between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. Together, they made up about twenty percent of the population, but this small percentage ruled the vast non-white and mixed-race population. Whites had access to virtually all the educational and trade opportunities, and they proceeded to deny this to the black majority even further than before.[citation needed]


Although this process had been going on since the mid-17th- 18th century, after 1948 it became official government policy and became known worldwide as apartheid. This lasted until the arrival of democracy in South Africa in 1994, punctuated by the transition to a democratically-elected government dominated by the black majority.


Since the collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991, privately owned Russia-based multinational corporations, including producers of petroleum, natural gas, and metal have become oligarchs. Privatization allowed executives to amass phenomenal wealth and power almost overnight. In May 2004, the Russian edition of Forbes identified 36 of these oligarchs as being worth at least $1 billion
A well-known fictional oligarchy is represented by the Party in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

what is monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which sovereignty is actually or nominally embodied in a single individual (the monarch)

Forms of monarchy differ widely based on the level of legal autonomy the monarch holds in governance, the method of selection of the monarch, and any predetermined limits on the length of their tenure. When the monarch has no or few legal restraints in state and political matters, it is called an absolute monarchy and is a form of autocracy. Cases in which the monarch's discretion is formally limited (most common today) are called constitutional monarchies. In hereditary monarchies, the office is passed through inheritance within a family group, whereas elective monarchies are selected by some system of voting. Historically these systems are most commonly combined, either formally or informally, in some manner. (For instance, in some elected monarchies only those of certain pedigrees are considered eligible, whereas many hereditary monarchies have legal requirements regarding the religion, age, gender, mental capacity, and other factors that act both as de facto elections and to create situations of rival claimants whoselegitimacy is subject to effective election.) Finally, there are situations in which the expiration of a monarch’s reign is set based either on the calendar or on the achievement of certain goals (repulse of invasion, for instance.) The effect of historical and geographic difference along each of these three axes is to create widely divergent structures and traditions defining “monarchy.”

Monarchy was the most common form of government into the 19th century, but it is no longer prevalent, at least at the national level. Where it exists, it now often takes the form ofconstitutional monarchy, in which the monarch retains a unique legal and ceremonial role, but exercises limited or no political power pursuant to a constitution or tradition which allocates governing authority elsewhere. Currently, 44 sovereign nations in the world have monarchs acting as heads of state, 16 of which are Commonwealth realms that recognize Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. AllEuropean monarchies are constitutional ones, with the exception of the Vatican City, but sovereigns in the smaller states exercise greater political influence than in the larger. The monarchs of Cambodia, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia and Morocco "reign, but do not rule" although there is considerable variation in the amount of authority they wield. Although they reign under constitutions, the monarchs of Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Swaziland appear to continue to exercise more political influence than any other single source of authority in their nations, either by constitutional mandate or by tradition.

what is autocracy

An autocracy is a system of government in which a supreme political power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'état or mass insurrection)


Comparison with other forms of government

Both totalitarianism and military dictatorship, are often identified with, but need not be, autocracy. Totalitarism is a system where the state strives to control every aspect of life and civil society. It can be headed by a supreme dictator, making it autocratic, but it can have a collective leadership such as a commune or soviet. Likewise, military dictatorships often take the form of "collective presidencies" such as the South American juntas of the late 20th century, meaning that no one person wields supreme power.

The term monarchy is only a synonym for autocracy in the case of an absolute monarchy.For this reason, some historical Slavic monarchs, such as Russian Emperors, included the title "autocrat" as part of their official styles, distinguishing them from the constitutional monarchs elsewhere in Europe.

Because autocrats need a power structure to rule, it can be difficult to draw a clear line between historical autocracies and oligarchies. Most historical autocrats depended on theirnobles, the military, the priesthood or other elite groups.