Although definitions of fascism vary, the key component is all-encompassing state control over every aspect of life, as the Gillard government is presently aiming to achieve. Increasingly frequent laments about the ‘Nanny State’ don’t go far enough to identify the present and sinister political trajectory. As the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, explained:
“The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State ... interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people”. According to Mussolini, the essence of fascism can be summed up as follows: “Everything in the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State”.
What Cameron didn’t mention was that more than 50% already rely on government handouts, increasingly promoted as ‘entitlements’. This promotes the ideal fascist society composed of millions of isolated individuals dependent on the state for the quality of their existence and therefore beholden to the political party prepared to guarantee them ongoing state largesse. This contrasts with the pluralistic approach of the Coalition, whose family and community spokesman, Kevin Andrews, told the same conference the following day that an Abbott government would seek to strengthen civil society, preserve the social fabric, mobilize private resources, and empower local communities to assume greater responsibility for the provision and direction of assistance to those in need.
A core element of left fascism is exemplified by the Gillard government’s fierce desire to establish state control over the media and to criminalize free speech. Possibly nothing better illuminates the political crisis into which Australia has fallen than these complementary pieces of legislation, designed to brutally suppress criticism and dissent, even to the extent of reversing the burden of proof to generate the desired level of fear amongst journalists and editors. Complementing this plan to suppress private media was the government’s gift of $10 million to the ABC ahead of its coverage of the upcoming federal election.
Left fascism also expresses itself in the corruption-ridden, corporate-state relationship between the government and the so-called union movement, which is not strictly a ‘movement’ at all, but rather a system of patronage, nepotism, and influence controlled by a small self-perpetuating elite which exploits its control over government decision-making for personal advancement and benefit. It is present also in the Gillard administration’s acceptance of high levels of fraud and criminality within the unions, and also within organizations claiming to represent favoured ethnic and racial groups.
Left fascism expresses itself also in Labor’s desire to centralize control over ideology and propaganda through the education system at all levels. A particularly appalling example of this is the vital history component of the national curriculum, which largely dismisses the achievements of Western Civilization, instead absurdly elevating the destructive protest activity of the far-left and extreme environmentalism to Gandhi-like status. The universities, which have been made financially dependent upon the state, are also now happily complicit in the left fascism project. Virtually all academic criticism has been brutally stifled while a group of major universities have set up ‘The Conversation’ as a major on-line propaganda vehicle.
Another core aspect of fascism is the state’s desire to achieve the ‘total mobilization’ of the population against some mythical threat. In the case of Labor-led left fascism, total mobilization has been promoted against alleged climate change (“the great moral challenge of our generation”). And this led only a few years ago to Labor declaring its intention to sign up to a plan that amounted to establishing a world government and total mobilization on a global scale. Associated with this are proposals, promoted by leftists and radical environmentalists, for the suspension of the democratic process and the rule of law. Another example is Gillard’s class-war rhetoric, and her typically inept but persistent attempt to mobilize mass opposition against ‘bosses’ and ‘big miners’ and, most recently, foreign workers.
