I think that we need to start using language that actually reflects reality. The definition of fascism, as Benito Mussolini invented the word, comes from the Latin word fasces which was the old symbol of the Roman Empire.

Our Congress has it engraved at the speaker's podium. A fasces is a bundle of sticks with a rope around it, with a little axe stuck in the top and this was the symbol of the Roman Empire.

And the idea was that individual sticks can easily be broken, but if you bundle them together and tie a rope around them, you can't break it. You can't even destroy it with an axe.

So Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of corporate and state interests.

And in Italy in the 1930s he dissolved the Parliament that had been elected by the people and replaced it with a parliament where each Italian equivalent of a congressional district, instead of sending an elected representative to serve in the Italian parliament, the largest corporation in that district sent a representative to serve in Parliament.

And the name of the Parliament was changed during Mussolini's rule to the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni - the chamber of fascist corporations.

How is what's going on right now any different from that?

-Thom


(What do you think? Tell us here.)