Fascism Quotes

Fascism Quotes
Quotes tagged as "fascism" Showing 1-30 of 329
Mahatma Gandhi
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
― Mahatma Gandhi
tags: democracy, fascism, liberty, loss, politics, society, totalitarianism, war 1839 likes Like

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Christopher Hitchens
“[Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Nazism:]

Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime.

Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms – the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one: that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome – if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system?

Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us. To suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”
― Christopher Hitchens
tags: adolf-hitler, albert-einstein, barbaric, catholicism, charles-darwin, darwin, darwinism, einstein, evolution, fascism, fascistic, freud, fuhrer, germany, hitler, jewish, mein-kampf, nazi, nazism, pope, science, separation-of-church-and-state, sigmund-freud, superstitious, united-states, vatican 339 likes Like
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
tags: capitalism, democracy, fascism 250 likes Like
Albert Einstein
“Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind.”
― Albert Einstein
tags: fascism, irresponsibility, nationalism 207 likes Like
Michel Foucault
“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
― Michel Foucault
tags: fascism, love, power 192 likes Like
Upton Sinclair
“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
― Upton Sinclair
tags: capitalism, fascism, upton-sinclair 166 likes Like
Jonah Goldberg
“If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
― Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
tags: conservatism, fascism, government, liberalism, political, politics, socialism 131 likes Like
Simone Weil
“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”
― Simone Weil
tags: bureaucracy, democracy, fascism, military, police 124 likes Like
Benito Mussolini
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini
tags: corporate, corporatism, fascism, mussolini, state 119 likes Like
Friedrich A. Hayek
“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
― Friedrich von Hayek
tags: communism, fascism 103 likes Like
Christopher Hitchens
“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir
tags: atheism, bastille, bullying, censorship, demagogy, dictatorship, enlightenment, fascism, fatwa, first-amendment, free-speech, friendship, george-hw-bush, hate, humor, individualism, intimidation, iran, irony, khomeini, literature, love, principles, religion, rushdie, satanic-verses, stupidity, theocracy, united-states, united-states-constitution, washington-post 92 likes Like
Hannah Arendt
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
tags: 1968, adolf-hitler, big-lie, donald-trump, fascism, post-factual, post-truth, propaganda, reality-control, totalitarianism 88 likes Like
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”
― Franklin Delano Roosevelt
tags: fascism 79 likes Like
Henry A. Wallace
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”
― Henry Wallace
tags: fascism, greed, money, politics, power 78 likes Like
Henry A. Wallace
“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.”
― Henry Wallace
tags: fascism, politics, tolerance 74 likes Like
Henry A. Wallace
“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”
― Henry Wallace
tags: big-business, fascism, greed, patriotism, politics, wealth 69 likes Like
Chris Hedges
“The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.”
― Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
tags: atheists, christianity, dominionism, dominionists, evangelists, fascism, humanism, religion, sceptics, science 67 likes Like
Henry A. Wallace
“The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
― Henry Wallace
tags: fascism, fox-news, media, politics, press, propaganda 46 likes Like
Ernest Hemingway
“Are you a communist?"
"No I am an anti-fascist"
"For a long time?"
"Since I have understood fascism.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
tags: civil-war, communism, fascism, spain, war 45 likes Like
Helmut Newton
“The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes.”
― Helmut Newton
tags: censorship, fascism, ideas, language, orwellian, political-correctness, thought-police, words 38 likes Like
Norman Mailer
“I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.”
― Norman Mailer
tags: democracy, fascism 37 likes Like
Jonah Goldberg
“The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.”
― Jonah Goldberg
tags: fascism, government, jonah-goldberg, liberal, politics 36 likes Like
Stefan Molyneux
“The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.”
― Stefan Molyneux
tags: anarcho-capitalism, anarchy, ancap, collectivism, communism, countries, delusion, democracy, evil, fascism, freedom, government, knowledge, libertarian, liberty, mafia, nationalism, nations, nazis, patriotism, philosophy, politics, psychopath, rationality, religion, self-esteem, self-knowledge, socialism, states, statism, superstition, taxation, theft, voluntaryism 28 likes Like
“No school can supply an anti-liberal education, or a fascist education, as these terms are contradictory. Liberalism and education are one.”
― George Seldes
tags: education, fascism, liberalism 27 likes Like
Philip K. Dick
“Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And—how many of us do know it?”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
tags: 1962, fascism, future, german, government, nazism, power, psychosis, totalitarianism 26 likes Like
Winston S. Churchill
“If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism."

(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)”
― Winston Churchill
tags: england, fascism, history, italy, lenin, politics 24 likes Like
Jon Stewart
“1. Society needs laws. While anarchy can often turn a humdrum weekend into something unforgettable, eventually the mob must be kept from stealing the conch and killing Piggy. And while it would be nice if that "something" was simple human decency, anybody who has witnessed the "50% Off Wedding Dress Sale" at Filene's Basement knows we need a backup plan—preferably in writing. On the other hand, too many laws can result in outright tyranny, particularly if one of those laws is "Kneel before Zod." Somewhere between these two extremes lies the legislative sweet-spot that produces just the right amount of laws for a well-adjusted society—more than zero, less than fascism.”
― Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
tags: 2004, anarchy, congress, fascism, legislature 22 likes Like
Madeleine K. Albright
“We cannot, of course, expect every leader to possess the wisdom of Lincoln or Mandela’s largeness of soul. But when we think about what questions might be most useful to ask, perhaps we should begin by discerning what our prospective leaders believe it worthwhile for us to hear.

Do they cater to our prejudices by suggesting that we treat people outside our ethnicity, race, creed or party as unworthy of dignity and respect?

Do they want us to nurture our anger toward those who we believe have done us wrong, rub raw our grievances and set our sights on revenge?

Do they encourage us to have contempt for our governing institutions and the electoral process?

Do they seek to destroy our faith in essential contributors to democracy, such as an independent press, and a professional judiciary?

Do they exploit the symbols of patriotism, the flag, the pledge in a conscious effort to turn us against one another?

If defeated at the polls, will they accept the verdict, or insist without evidence they have won?

Do they go beyond asking about our votes to brag about their ability to solve all problems put to rest all anxieties and satisfy every desire?

Do they solicit our cheers by speaking casually and with pumped up machismo about using violence to blow enemies away?

Do they echo the attitude of Musolini: “The crowd doesn’t have to know, all they have to do is believe and submit to being shaped.”?

Or do they invite us to join with them in building and maintaining a healthy center for our society, a place where rights and duties are apportioned fairly, the social contract is honored, and all have room to dream and grow.

The answers to these questions will not tell us whether a prospective leader is left or right-wing, conservative or liberal, or, in the American context, a Democrat or a Republican. However, they will us much that we need to know about those wanting to lead us, and much also about ourselves.

For those who cherish freedom, the answers will provide grounds for reassurance, or, a warning we dare not ignore.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning
tags: corruption-politics, democracy, fascism, leadership, politics 17 likes Like
Christopher Hitchens
“As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Enemy
tags: 2011, death-of-osama-bin-laden, fascism, mass-murder, obituary, osama-bin-laden, september-11-attacks 11 likes Like
Timothy Snyder
“As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. The president does this at a high rate and at a fast pace. One attempt during the 2016 campaign to track his utterances found that 78 percent of his factual claims were false. This proportion is so high that it makes the correct assertions seem like unintended oversights on the path toward total fiction. Demeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld.

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. The systematic use of nicknames such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” displaced certain character traits that might more appropriately have been affixed to the president himself. Yet through blunt repetition over Twitter, our president managed the transformation of individuals into stereotypes that people then spoke aloud. At rallies, the repeated chants of “Build that wall” and “Lock her up” did not describe anything that the president had specific plans to do, but their very grandiosity established a connection between him and his audience.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction. The president’s campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict. It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches.

Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason. Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. One of his former students implored him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at present.” Twelve years later, after all the atrocities, and at the end of a war that Germany had clearly lost, an amputated soldier told Klemperer that Hitler “has never lied yet. I believe in Hitler.”

The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. I believe in the Führer.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century