Hi Steele,

And a fascist arm of Islamism murdered two hundred and fifty innocent men, women and children in Sri Lanka. As an atheist who does not believe that anybody has an after-life - this is their one and only, I do think that Christians have as much right to draw attention to that as Muslims have to the fascist atrocitiesof innocent people in Christchurch.

Fascism is a pre-civilized, evil, many-headed system: probably all religions and ideologies and philosophies can conceivably degenerate into fascism. Fascists often hate each other, since they are usually exclusivist - Aryan-German, Italian-Roman, Islamist and white-supremacist. In fact, they use each other as pretexts for their own atrocities. One could even say that they need each other, and feed off each other.

We must condemn fascism wherever we can identify it, including amongst white-supremacists and Islamists. I'm sure you would agree, Steele :)

Cheers,

Joe

Fascism,
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

What is the left-wing equivalent of Fascism ?

Dear Loudmouth,

Of course I agree.

The shootings in the synagogue in California we inspired by our own Fascist terrorist who holds the past leader Mosley of the British Fascists as his absolute role model.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-28/california-synagogue-shooting-suspect-named-one-dead-3-injured/11052196

Fascism is also feature of the Left; it is not restricted to the Right.

Individual said;
What is the left-wing equivalent of Fascism ?

National Socialist of Deutschland.

Individual,

What makes you think that there is a huge distance between fascism and some forms of left-wing ideology ? i.e. Leninism or Maoism - and I'm writing as an ex-Leninist and ex-Maoist. Pol Pot ? The Marxist regime in Ethiopia twenty five and thirty years ago ? Where Venezuela is heading ? In fact, where all socialist/communist regimes inevitably move to ?

Back in the twenties, many writers seemed to be favorable to both Mussolini's fascism and Lenin's 'socialism' - G. B. Shaw, Sorel, Titmuss, etc., and couldn't easily distinguish between the two. After all, Mussolini had been head of the Italian Socialist Party. And Hitler called his party the German National Socialist Workers' Party.

So perhaps there is some overlap between what appear now to have been opposites. To the extent that socialism and communism lurch to authoritarianism in practice, which we take for granted to be a mark of fascism, and to the extent that both ideologies make a fetish out of their Grand Utopian Plans, then it would be accurate to suggest that they do have many features in common.

And the common enemy of both is: democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression. Those are the benchmarks.

Joe