Both sides of the political spectrum keeps using words in ways to scare their base from the other side. This became most noticeable recently at the 9/12 tax party and at the ever so scary Value Voters Summit (where Carrie Prejean had the nerve to say” the level of intolerance is unbelievable”, this from a lady who is herself intolerant of those she opposes, and in fact keeps spreading the lie she was fired for said intolerance despite the fact she was fired for not making her public appearances as required by her contract).
At the tax party there were lots of signs and posters accusing Obama of being a Nazi and a Fascist, something pushed by conservative radio/TV hosts. The same thing with Communism and Socialism. All of which are so ridiculous that one has to conclude that the hosts, who probably know better, are using as a scare tactic to scare a gullible group of people into a fury that shouldn’t be. Both terms are misused and overused.
Socialism is confused with State Socialism, which one could argue is in direct violation of the goal of Socialism. In State Socialism the government controls the means of production, and is what people are normally talking about, and what people fear when talking about socialism. However, socialism in reality is where the workers themselves control the means of production. Socialism doesn’t mean the government or anyone else will tell you where to work, how to work and the like. It doesn’t mean that if you work your butt off and Joe Smoe slacks off that you both get the same pay, promotions, raises and rewards. In socialism you get out what you put in, to quote a Marxist ideology of this to each according to his contribution, so if you don’t work, you don’t eat, both of which are contrary to what people think of when they think of socialism and Communism. Socialism moves the power of production from a single owner, or a group of owners in the case of a corporation, and moves it to all the workers. It doesn’t stop you from forming a new company. If you are at a company and you come up with an idea, you need only to convince enough people to follow your lead and you become a project leader and put it into action. The government has nothing to do with it. One’s chances of success is just as good under a true socialist society as they are under a capitalist one. Though to be fair, you couldn’t get as rich under a socialist system, though there would be no need either.
The right likes to talk about how the left want to spread the wealth around. That is they believe the left wants to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. The fear tactic of course is to imply that you take from a hard working person and give it to a lazy person, which socialism and basically most economic and political forms would oppose. True, the Democrats believe in a progressive tax, that is the higher your income the higher your tax burden should be. They then believe the government should have programs to help the poor receive goods and services that they can’t afford, such as health care. And indeed, one way of looking at it is to say they are spreading the wealth around. However, this ignores the fact that one could easily argue the wealthy steal from the workers. The CEO of Wal-Mart makes nearly $7 million a year in total compensation, while he and his fellow executives keep their employees below a living wage. Let’s say the CEO took only $520,000 a year total (which is still excessive, who needs $10,000 a week?), with fellow executives and upper management cutting back as well, we are not forcing this on them, this is their choice. From the CEO’s check alone that gives them over $6 million to provide better health care and pay to the lower level employees. The saving on executive and upper management alone would allow everyone working at Wal-Mart to make a living wage, receive first class health care and still be highly profitable, to a point they could possibly lower prices. However, the executives and upper management choose not to go down that path and take that money away from the workers and give it to themselves. This is spreading the wealth from the workers to the rich.
Communism is another accusation we see a lot. The trouble is we have never seen a true Communist country, perhaps in part Communism as Marx saw it doesn’t really work, nor obviously does it work in the forms we have and still see and those are the ones people think of when they think of the term. While one could accuse the Democrats for pushing for more State Socialism mixed with Capitalism, this is a far cry from Communism in any form. The term is used more to scare the Christian right since Communism suppresses religion. Obama and the Democrats, the ACLU and the like are suggesting to suppress or oppress religion and the free excercise there of. The ACLU has in fact defended Christian rights more often than it has opposed them. However, they do oppose religion having a role in government, which should be agnostic, and a large topic in of itself that I have covered many times. One can be religious and separate their religion from their politics. Anyhow, because said groups tend to support Democrats, the Democrats are linked to such ideas. How fair this is depends on the individual, but even if they don’t believe that religion should play a role in government that they are a Communists. Neither does being a socialist or even a state socialist doesn’t make one a communists. While communism demands socialism, or in the case of the forms we have normally seen communism, state socialism, one can support socialism and even state socialism and be very opposed to communism. As a matter of fact, I would wager that most socialist would argue against communism, especially as we have seen it exercised.
The calling Obama a Fascist or a Nazi is so far off the wall I am at a loss to explain how the accusation got there… The Nazi’s and fascist are forever linked, though being a fascist doesn’t mean they are a Nazi as fascism started in Italy and was adopted by Hitler. Now I have an idea of how the argument goes. The fear is that Obama supports Sate Socialism, and since Hitler’s party was the National Socialist Party, the conservatives pull the word “Socialist” from that and say that makes the Nazi’s a far left position not a far right. I used to make the same argument myself. So once again the focus is on the fear of state socialism. Fascist believe that nations/races (and in theory one could add religion) are in conflict and only the strong survive. Fascist argue against communism. They are dynamically opposed to one another… You can’t argue that somebody is both. Fascist opposes intellectualism, a view normally espoused by the right in this country. Not to say that the right opposes being educated, but some, especially the evangelicals, feel threatened as people learn more facts and take those facts over beliefs. This is noticeable by the evangelical opposition to teaching only scientific theories of origins and wanting to introduce Creationism, or Intelligent Design, neither of which has any actual science (a big issue that I have covered before and beyond the scope of this post). The fear is that if students aren’t taught “alternatives” to the actual science that the students would loose faith. This post is already getting to large, so I suggest reading the Wiki article on Fascism as it is far to complicated to cover here. In short Obama and the Democrats are far from such evil.