Transcription
My name's Heather. I'm from Los Angeles. I just wanted to get your thoughts and explanation on the differences between socialism, fascism, and communism, especially with this last election cycle. I feel like we saw those words thrown around a lot, but I just wanted to know, like, what exactly are the differences between those three?
So the words are thrown around, that is largely true, and they've taken on a life of their own. I'll tell you what they really mean, and I'll tell you what they mean in usage. Not the same thing. So, uh, let's see. Fascist, Socialist, Communist. Okay.
So fascist is what left-wingers use to describe everyone who's anti-left. This has been true, by the way. I'm not kidding about that. My field of study in graduate school at Columbia, of all places, was the left, was communism. I studied Russian in order to be able to read Soviet communist papers. I visited communist countries repeatedly. And, uh, the first to do this was Stalin, the monster. Tens of millions of people slaughtered. It countries enslaved. If a human could be a monster, he was a monster. He came to power. See, let's see. Lenin died in '24, 1924, if I'm not mistaken. So he came to power by about 1928. And he, he, he battled for power in the Soviet Union with Kirov, Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Trotsky. Those, right? So there were four rivals plus Stalin. And Trotsky, who was the founder of the Red Army and Communist Party, would let Lenin fled the Soviet Union. And he fled to Mexico, where Stalin sent some goons to kill him with an ice pick, and they did kill him with an ice pick. Stalin introduced the idea that if you oppose the left, you're a fascist. Basically, if you oppose me, the leading leftist, you're a fascist. So fascist became the term that anyone anti-left was called. To the American election at this day, or even in Europe, not just leftists, the liberals even do that. And I draw a distinction between liberal and left, but they, they frequently will say that the anti-leftists are fascists.
What is a fascist? Fascist is essentially an ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic, authoritarian regime. Okay? So Italy had it. They use the term. Fascism comes from, uh, from an Italian word. Mussolini was the, the obvious example. Hitler is it was a fascist, but Hitler was really a Nazi. Nazism was a more severe form because Nazism introduced what is not necessarily part of fascism: racism. Nazism was race-based fascism, whereas for Mussolini, fascism was just fascism. Mussolini, to the best of my knowledge, was not particularly an anti-Semite, for example. But, but Hitler was, of course, the great Jew hater of all time. So fascism is the ultra-nationalist, uh, authoritarian government. It, it suppresses, uh, democracy, and it is ultra-nationalist among, among other things, but those are the major ones.
So both socialist and communist, they're on the left. Socialist is one who believes in socialism. Obvious. Socialism is a bigger and bigger government where the government takes care of, of the social order, if you will. The bigger the government, the more likely you are to head towards socialism. But socialism does not abolish mom-and-pop stores. You could still keep Dennis's Pizza Pizza Parlor open under a socialist government. But generally speaking, they will nationalize big things: the railroads, the oil industry, etc., etc.
Communist allows no free enterprise whatsoever. When I visited the Soviet Union, there wasn't a single private restaurant. All you had was "restoran," which is Russian for restaurant, and that that's all. Or, or a place that sold bread would say "khleb," which is bread in Russia. Not, not Vladimir's Khleb Joint, just khleb, because it was, it was owned by the state. And but communist is, is not just economic. Communist is a suppression of all, essentially all individuality because, because of the belief that everybody should end up in the same place. It's not for equality, it's for equity. Equality is opportunity. Equity is result. The left in America is very close to communist in that view. They want equity. Everybody should end up in the same equal playing field, and if they don't, it's proof of, of racism or sexism or what, or misogyny or, or whatever you have.
So I hope that helps you.