Guest Post: Fascism and the "Progressive" Left by Fr. William Aitcheson

Today's "progressives" embrace the same old fascism of Hitler and Mussolini!

Editor's Note: Because Fr. Aitcheson is addressing so many historical issues with which many of us are unfamiliar, I'm adding some additional information in red. To understand current events, it helps to know the history that precedes them. The present moment doesn't occur in isolation from the past, and what happens today affects tomorrow as Susan pointed out so eloquently in yesterday's post. Study history because it repeats itself and, as George Santayana so famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He also said, "A country without a memory is a country of madmen." Aren't we living that reality today?

Tyrants depend on their people's forgetfulness. Look at our recent experience with COVID-19 and the daily changing narrative. We need to keep a record and document these things like a prosecutor building a case. Our liberal politicians and talking heads don't want you to remember the past because what they thought before breakfast is likely to change by lunch and they don't want you to notice. The one thing you can depend upon from a liberal is that "their truth" is as malleable as play dough. So study history! It matters. And the best sources are primary sources, i.e., newspapers, letters, diaries, historical documents, etc. from the time period. It's hard to rewrite the reality or debunk the testimony of those who lived through what you're studying. Of course, you always have to ask, "Is this a reliable witness?" When I read Margaret Sanger's autobiography, for example, I knew she was a liar painting herself as a persecuted heroine. But there are many reliable eyewitnesses to history worth our attention and respect. 

FASCISM AND THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT

BY FR. WILLIAM AITCHESON

"And rising up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea: 'Peace, be still.' And the wind ceased and there was a great calm." (Mk 4:39)

The threat of fascism today comes from the left. One can accurately say that fascism is leftist, because it has always been collectivist ideology, which is leftist by nature. Furthermore, Hitler was a nihilist first, whatever else he was, and Mussolini was a socialist and an atheist from childhood. Along with collectivism; nihilism, socialism, and atheism are leftist traits. In addition, for those who consider fascism a monarchically based system, it's important for you to know that both Hitler and Mussolini were firmly anti-monarchical.

What made so many ex-communists join the SA (Storm Troopers)? What made average Germans call these brownclad thugs "beefsteak Nazis - brown on the outside, red on the inside?" Could it be that SA men took Hitler seriously when he said that his party was "anti-capitalist?" Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an ex-communist who joined the Nazi Party and became, after the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, the number two man in the S.S. after Himmler. Roland Freisler, another ex-communist, a raging madman, orchestrated the trials of the July 20, 1944 plotters who tried valiantly to overthrow the Hitler regime.  Freisler was also the judge who presided over the trials of Sophie Scholl and her companions in the White Rose Movement, students who printed and distributed information about the Nazis. They were caught, tried in Freisler's court, condemned, and guillotined.

And what about Mussolini's earliest "fascists?" They were all leftists, mainly syndicalists (syndicalism is a form of socialism that's akin to anarchism), for example syndicalist Giovanni Gentile who became the National Fascist Party's chief ideologue after Mussolini. 

There are some differences between classical fascism, national socialism, and the present fascist threat. All involve coercion, but the fascism and national socialism of yesteryear was "macho," while the fascism of today is "feminine." Nancy Pelosi doesn't walk around with a rhinoceros hide whip, like Hitler, or go bare-chested in public while gathering in the wheat, like Mussolini. But this power-mad, anti-democratic woman does hypocritically pontificate about "protecting our democracy" with her select committee which is used to intimidate political opposition. Like Hitler and Mussolini, she believes in domination and control of the people, because the acquisition of political power is her sole creed.

Hitler with his whip.

Both yesterday's fascists and today's fascists use violence and the threat of violence in order to gain absolute power. The Nazis had the "brownshirts" and the fascists their "blackshirts," while the Democrats have "ANTIFA," which should be called "PROFA," and Black Lives Matter (a misnamed organization if there ever was one) both with black-shirted thugs in the totalitarian tradition.

In 1938, under pressure from Hitler, Mussolini adopted Hitler's Jew hatred to a lesser degree than did the Germans. Like their brand of fascism, the fascism of today is racist at its core. These fascists call everyone "racist" who disagrees with them and, yet, they are the ones who are obsessed with race. They say their racism is needed to end racism, but racism provokes racism; it doesn't end it. The fascists of today talk freely about abolishing "whiteness" as if just being a certain race is the problem. They indoctrinate all children with "hate whitey" and infantilize black and brown children in the name of "equity," which is not equality. Race-hatred indoctrination has one goal: to break down this nation into tribes warring against each other, so that everyone will become dependent on an over-bloated, intrusive government and be slaves to the Super-State out of fear.

The promotion of chaos by today's fascists is reminiscent of the post-World War I years in Italy and Germany and, for the same reason, it's deliberate. Here are some examples of the present chaos incited by the ruling class and fascist goons:

• Inflation is out of control which is particularly devastating to the middle class;

• Due to "dictator" Biden, the ruling class puppet, the incitement of race hatred by fascist race hustlers is on megadrive;

• Hostility towards local police is rampant! (Why not defund federal police agencies like the FBI and BATF?) which are clearly political and engage in illegal activities to support progressive politicians like the FBI's collusion in Russiagate to assist Hillary Clinton.

• The Justice Department has been politicized and used to bully into silence normal opposition to "dictator" Biden's regime. (Welcome to the United Fascist States of America!);

• The systematic abuse of "political prisoners" from the January 6th demonstrations by "agents" of the federal government continues;

• The federal government, in cahoots with "Big Tech, the dominant media culture and the Demonazi Party, censors dissenting voices on views ranging from the Wuhan virus, race relations, Hunter Biden's corruption in service to the Obama-Biden regime and the Biden-Harris regime, etc.;

• Onerous mask mandates, especially for children,  continue in order to force conformity to the state;

• The wearing down of nation-state sovereignty through a massive influx of illegal aliens;

• A massive number of  of abortions, well over sixty million babies murdered (in the U.S. alone since Roe v. Wade) in order to replace the family with the State; According to the World Health Organization there are 73 million abortions a year worldwide. That does not include the "invisible abortions" that occur through abortifacient "contraception."

• "Warmongering" by both Democrats and Republicans to force us into a war with Russia over Ukraine. (Ukraine is not worth one American life!) Humanitarian aid absolutely, expanding the war machine absolutely not!

In summary then, the fascists of today call themselves "progressives," when, in actuality, they are "regressives" or reactionaries. Here are a few ideological positions progressives and fascists have in common:

• Corporatism (Wall Street and the "woke" bosses);

• Statism ("Statolatry") -- Merriam Webster definition of statolatry -- worship of the state : advocacy of a highly centralized and all-powerful national government;

• Supremacy of the "administrative state;" the bureaucracy envisioned by C.S. Lewis described in That Hideous Strength;

• Totalitarianism - (Remember the "protofascist" Woodrow Wilson and all the many Americans he had imprisoned for their outspoken anti-war positions?) You can read about the internment of Americans of German heritage during World War I here. 

• Eugenics (Remember Margaret Sanger and Josef Mengele?)

Like the fascists, national socialists, and communists of old, the goal of the progressive/fascist power grab is dictatorship: one world, one state. The old hallucination of megalomaniacs from Alexander to George Soros continues. And it will all come to a violent end. 

"In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33b)