`What, then, is the essence of fascism? It is the outcome of
capitalism in decay. It is the retort of the propertied interests to a democracy
which seeks to transcend the relations of production implied in a capitalist
society...Success means using the state-power over the nation partly to coerce
and partly to cajole it into acquiescence in his rule. That acquiescence is the
sole purpose of, and the sole justification for, the methods that he uses. The
only values he considers are those which seem likely to contribute to his
success.' Harold J Laski, Reflections of the Revolution of Our Time
Gordon Brown is sometimes described as a `statist'. I doubt if even his
closest admirers could disagree with that description.
Statism is
described in the dictionary as a political system in which the state has
substantial central control over social and economic affairs. The word `statism'
accurately summarises the sort of policy favoured by New Labour for if ever
there was a nation which could be described as statist it is Britain as it has
been moulded by Brown. I cannot think of a significant British politician who
has been more of a statist than Brown.
But the word `statist' doesn't go
quite far enough.
And the important question is: what, if anything, is
the difference between statism, communism and fascism?
Communism is a
political system in which all property is owned by the community. The word
originated in 19th France and is based on the principle of `common property'.
The communist system was, of course, best illustrated by the kind of government
practised in the former Soviet Union. Gordon Brown's Britain is not a communist
country. (Nor, since socialism is merely a slightly weakened version of
communism, is Britain a socialist country.)
But what about
fascism?
There is much confusion about precisely what fascism entails and
the word is thrown around rather wildly as a term of abuse. Those who oppose the
EU are dismissed as fascists. (Though the EU is probably the most perfectly
fascist organisation in history). And politicians and commentators sometimes
seem to suggest that fascism and racism are the same thing. (This simply isn't
true. Fascism isn't racism. Mussolini's Italy was not racist).
It is,
however, fairly simple to find a definition.
The official Oxford English
Dictionary definition of a fascist is: `One of a body of Italian nationalists
organised in 1919 under Benito Mussolini to oppose Bolshevism.'
So, in
order to find out what a fascist really is, all we need to do is find out what
Mussolini meant by fascism. Mussolini defined fascism as a political system in
which the rights of the state expressed the real essence of the individual. And
he went on to say that: `We were the first to assert that the more complicated
the forms of civilisation, the more restricted the freedom of the individual
must become.'
It is, incidentally, assumed that fascism always comes from
the right. But fascism can also come from the left. Indeed, today most fascism
comes from the left. And there is absolutely no difference between the two
varieties. To the victims it doesn't matter whether the fascism is created by
right wingers or left wingers.
Fascism reduces our freedom and privacy
because only the state really matters and the state (and those who work for it
and control it) takes precedence over everyone and everything else.
In
principle, the state exists to provide citizens with an infrastructure. To pay
for this the state is allowed to tax the electorate.
But this Government
now uses the taxes it raises for other things (funding wars, hiring civil
servants to vote Labour and hiring expensive spin-doctors to make the lies ever
more convincing) so that there is virtually nothing left for the essential
infrastructure.
The British Government now spends nearly half of the
nation's Gross Domestic Product but it spends most of the money on the wrong
things and so the country is falling apart.
In a fascist country the
government doesn't nationalise the means of production because it doesn't need
to. Instead it merely assumes total control through regulation and legislation.
Small businesses, regarded as a dangerous sign of independence and freedom, are
controlled by regulations and red tape. In other words, although fascism leaves
ownership in the hands of individuals it gives effective control of those
businesses to the state. But, of course, ownership without control is a
contradiction and what this means in reality is that the individual has all the
responsibility while the state has all the authority.
A fascist country
is one where the state controls virtually everything; it is a country where the
state bureaucrats decide what is good for the ordinary citizens; it is a country
where the state makes all or most of the decisions about how money should be
spent; it is a country where the state grabs most of the wealth and then doles
the cash out in dribs and drabs. A fascist state is paternalism gone mad:
everyone works and the state hands out pocket money. Fascism is the annihilation
of democracy.
The UK, without doubt a fascist country, is now one of the
most centralised political systems in the world. People have stopped bothering
to vote because politicians no longer take any notice of them. Today, more
people in Britain vote in television talent shows than vote in parliamentary
elections. The subordination of the individual to the state is an integral part
of fascism. The fascist has no real doctrine except a passionate desire to
remain in authority.
People won't complain about what is going on
because they have been institutionalised by the system - in the same way that
prisoners or long-term hospital patients become institutionalised. Real people,
with real passions, real interests in their community, have been replaced by
apparatchiks, Labour party gofers, hacks and professional expense claimers,
people who once shared a train compartment with Tony Blair, people whose sole
ability is to fill in forms and who live within the system, for whom the system
is the end rather than a form of management, and people whose only real skills
are perjury, fraud and extortion.
The Tories were bad enough, but Labour
has finally shown us the extent to which politicians will go, just how dangerous
they can be and how crucial it is to control their power.
We don't have a
Prime Minister (in the sense that Winston Churchill was a Prime Minister).
Instead we have a malevolent dictator, a man for whom most of us never voted in
any election, a man whose primary motive seems to be self-aggrandisement and
self-enrichment rather than any sense of public service. The Government is
anti-worker, anti-poor, anti-peace, anti-freedom, anti-ambition and
anti-democracy.
Modern politics, as practised by Gordon is all about
self-preservation and self-glorification. It has nothing to do with the needs of
the electorate or the country.
***
If you are British there are now 266 ways that
Government-employed thugs can enter your home. Britain has more public and
private closed circuit television cameras per person than any other country in
the world. The 4.2 million CCTV cameras work out at one for every 14
people.
***
In a fascist country it is the sick, the weak
and the needy who suffer most, and we are now seeing, at first hand, the
institutionalised economic oppression of the masses by the state. Remember:
fascism means that the state comes first and the people come a long way second.
The state's employees exist to defend the state (rather than to care for the
people) and that is why their loyalties are to the state. Civil servants whose
working lives are dominated by the need to satisfy the state machinery by
hitting performance targets are working not for the people but for the party
machinery - the state.
The only honest purpose of a Government is to
protect its citizens; to work for them.
But Brown has acted like a ruler
not a servant, and our individual rights have been eroded and replaced with
state rights.
In a real democracy the state should have no rights; it
should only have responsibilities. In a real democracy the Government should
only be entitled to use force to protect the rights of the
individual.
But our Government controls us with fear and force.
We
have been destroyed by a potent and poisonous mixture of statism,
multiculturalism, political correctness and political
self-interest.
Fascism is effectively gang rule. Gangsters loot the
efforts of productive citizens and constantly search for new ways to do so.
Individual rights are ignored or suppressed. The people are controlled by laws,
by regulations and by fear.
In a democratic country, the state has
responsibilities to the individual. The state collects money from individuals
(through taxes) and then uses that money to provide an
infrastructure.
But in our utterly fascist society the state accepts no
responsibilities. Instead, the state makes up unfair, unreasonable, laws. And
collects money to sustain itself, its hierarchy and their
thugs.
Taken from Vernon Coleman's book Gordon Is A Moron,
which is available from the bookshop on this website and from all good bookshops
everywhere.
