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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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You have your definitions mixed up. The integration of business and state is authoritarianism, and that has many forms, such as socialism (the means of production is business) and fascism.
Fascism is better defined as putting "the nation" above the people, and the definition of "the nation" changes as needed to maintain control. In essence, it finds some enemy to blame for failures and attacks that enemy, and repeat ad infinitum. For Nazi Germany, that was Jews and other minorities, for Franco in Spain that was communists and trade unions, and so on.
I don't think DeSantis rises to that standard. I guess you could say trans people are the target, but there's no focused energy here, it's just a general fight against "woke," whatever that means. So I think it's just normal conservative activism, not fascism. The goal doesn't seem to assert control, the goal seems to be to roll back progressive changes.
So no, I don't think the term fascist applies, but I guess we'll see how his rhetoric changes in the upcoming election.
Key to fascism is deep integration of business and state.
The mere one way road of socialist integration does not approach the deep rooted unification of corporate enterprise and government interest that defines fascism. That, and the complete eradication of liberal individualism.
A lot of people yell fascist at things they don’t like. And there is nothing to like about fascism.
We probably agree and I am not sure Desantis has it in him to be fascist. At worst you could say he was conservative, which … well … he has not claimed to be anything but.
Socialism is a complete unification of state and economy. That's what "social ownership of the means of production" means. The government controls the economy in most scenarios (though libertarian socialism is a thing).
Facism is similar, but it usually has a market economy to some extent with the government only seizing what it needs to accomplish its goals. It'll likely eventually seize pretty much everything, but that's not the end goal. For example, in Nazi Germany, the government seized the car dealerships to make tanks and whatnot, but probably didn't seize the local bakeries and whatnot because there was no need to (unless it was run by an enemy of the state, like Jews or whatever the flavor of the week is).
The goal with facism is to pursue the goals of the state, which is usually to subjugate enemies. The goal for Nazi Germany was to become the most powerful country in the world, and to get the necessary power, they blamed all of their problems on "undesirables" (in this case Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities), arguing that if they eliminate those enemies, Germany would be greater. Once those enemies are exhausted, they'd find a new minority to blame their problems on.
The goal of socialism is equality for its people. To enforce that, it needs control over the economy.
They use similar tools to meet their goals, but that doesn't mean either is defined by a union of business and the state, it just means that's a common tactic they use.
Facism is defined by hate against some minority in order to get power to unify some definition of "the state." That's it. If it can do it without controlling the economy, fine, it's just another tool in its toolbox.