The Batlord

I originally started my fascist nation for the amusement factor, but in trying to conform my nation's policies to fascism I've had to do some casual research when deciding issues, and it's actually been an interesting learning experience.

For instance, I had little to no understanding of how fascist economic policies actually functioned, so I've really had to look up internet articles every time an economic policy issue pops up. It's pretty interesting to learn that many of America and Europe's democratic socialist economic policies have actually been as influenced by Italian fascism as actual socialism.

Whereas socialism dictates complete government control of the private sector, there was more of an incestuous partnership between the two in fascism, which apparently was an influence on FDR's New Deal. Basically, private companies were allowed to remain private, and their profits remained in private hands, but they were dictated to an extent by different government committees that partnered with each specific industry in order to direct the economy as a whole to the state's ultimate goals.

Obviously this led to corruption, and many government and business leaders would transfer between the two sectors (apparently many retired Italian generals served on company boards, just like many government officials in America end up in the business sector and vice versa). And if a business lost profits, the loss would be subsidized by the state, so that "profits were private, but losses were public".

For a time this worked fantastically, which is why so many leaders in Democratic countries looked to Italy for inspiration when creating more interventionist economic policies, but eventually ended up in disaster -- I guess when Mussolini became unable to adapt to shifting economic conditions.

A lot of modern, democratic socialist economic policies actually seem to reflect old fascist ideals more than they do legitimate socialist ones, the main difference being that Western democracies generally don't engage in centralized economic planning. The banking bailout at the beginning of the American recession being a prime example, along with the quasi-oligarchical relationship between big business and politicians.

I don't pretend to draw any conclusions about all this, as I'm only just educating myself on the subject, but it's definitely interesting. At the very least, I find it funny that fiscal conservatives don't try to make more comparisons between modern liberalism and fascism, rather than socialism. I guess they're either not aware of the seeming parallels, or they just don't think the public would get the comparisons, and just roll their eyes at trying to make Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton look like Hitler.

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