The veterans of WW II, like my father who fought at Dieppe and in a Canadian unit seconded to the British 1st Army in North Africa and Italy, fought against fascism. Fascism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. Over thirty years of far-right crypto-fascist propaganda starting with the likes of Reagan and Thatcher have created an entire generation that have unwittingly absorbed the bulk of what fascism was as what they think of as freedom. Mussolini wrote in 1932 that The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful [to the state] freedom... and also that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism and The veterans did not fight for capitalism and state-sanctioned corporatism and profiteering. They are the generation that brought us socialised medicine, social welfare and the minimum wage so that people could be free from the poor health and privation that plagued the 1930s and thereby live as individuals free of the spectre of oppression from both totalitarian government AND state-backed corporate monopolies.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 21:20:24 +0000
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