DC may feel that if both the left and the right accuse him of fascism that he is getting it right!

IEA rather than IAE.

However, I’m not sure you’re quite right in stating that there isn’t a whiff of fascism to all this. Phillip Blond’s stuff for example, all that Red Tory drivel. This is a straight copy of (and Blond himself says so) Chesterton and Belloc’s distributionism. And that, as they both acknowledged, was a straight copy of what they thought Mussolini was doing in Italy.

There really is a lot of real (as opposed to the Godwin’s Laws studd “you’re a Nazi nyaan nyaaa) fascism around at the moment….assuming that we define fascism as what fascists themselves actually did.

By chance, I came upon this entry for “Fascism” in the Oxford Companion to Politics, a source probably familiar to D Cameron, seeing as how he is a PPE graduate from Oxford:

“Fascist ideology also included a romantic, an antirational allure, an appeal to the emotions, to a quasi-religious longing for a mystic union of peoples and their prophetic leader. In reaction to a utilitarian liberal state, fascism revived aspirations towards a normative or ethical state. According to this view, the community existed not merely as a practical convenience but in order to fulfil the individual’s ethical and moral potential. How people perceived these themes depended on the eye of the beholder. Conservatives viewed fascism as a bulwark against Bolshevism or as a middle way between worn-out liberal capitalism and the communist horror. Radicals viewed fascism as a genuinely revolutionary ideology that would sweep away discredited ideals and institutions and replace them with a new disciplined and cohesive society.”

At least there wasn’t a whisper about “a third way” in Cameron’s speech.

Btw for comparison, we do have this from Germany during the time of the Third Reich:

“The tax department chief of the Association of Industrialists (Reichsgruppe Industrie) emphasized that it was useless to attempt precise comparisons between the new and old tax regulations because the important issue was ‘the new spirit of the reform, the spirit of national Socialism. **The principle of the common good precedes the good of the individual stands above everything else.** ‘”

Source: Avraham Barkai: Nazi Economics (Berg Publisher Ltd (1990)) p.183 – Mr Barkai is a research fellow at the Institute of German History, Tel Aviv.

@Tim,

Might it be better to call it corporatism as Mussolini would have?

It would make it a lot easier to have a debate like this without it being derailed.

However, corporatism is somewhat the norm in lots of places these days, so I’m not sure it would have the same effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Discourses of unity or individuality can be mobilised by either left or right. One person’s solidarity is another’s mob rule, one person’s liberty is another’s selfishness. They’re rhetorical positions rather than objective descriptions of the relationship between individual and society.

‘Might it be better to call it corporatism as Mussolini would have?’

Corporatism’s what we’ve had for 30 years so I’m happy with that description: a strong State operating in the interests of business.

Technically what we have now should be called neo-corporatism. The corporatism of Mussolini and Mosley (the BUF probably had the most elaborate and detailed programme for the “Corporate State”) involved a particular politico-economic structure which was based on the old guild system. The “corporations” were to be economic parliaments governing various industries.

” Cameron’s speech could have been by a ‘fascist despot’ says IEA wonk”

What do they mean “could?”

It was given by a fascist despot.

I think that what we are actually in is the general field of right-wing politics where someone recognises that the value of community exists, that the danger of control by state or corporation exists and that people should make their own choices. No more facism than it is libertarian or classically Conservative. It is like saying that some of Lula’s policies in Brazil are what could be expected of a Communist despot – technically true (especially considering what is happening in Cuba…), but only because there is a common ideological underpinning being drawn upon.

It will however offend the economically right-wing extremists who favour unbridled capitalism (‘Laissez-faire” if you wish) over unbridled liberty. Mr Cameron has so far been a long way from being in the pockets of anyone (Lord Ashcroft included) – and his determination to push the Big Society despite its lack of strong support suggests he is more visionary and determined than we might expect. I would not be surprised to see some of the more vigorously capitalistic groups on the right become more and more agitated with Mr Cameron – it is only if you see the right as a baby-eating monolithic movement which allows no dissent that this is significant as opposed to be expected.

sally,

What do they mean “could?”

It was given by a fascist despot.

Methinks you are trying to hard (as comes to that is anyone who starts a sentence methinks…). I fear that you are applying pointless labels to a man who is clearly not a despot (if he refuses to recognise parliament or hold another election, he will be, but otherwise he is merely an elected leader), but who may hold a whole new set of dangers/possibilities for the country. Trying to understand him and his cabinet through the prism of age-old rhetoric perhaps ignores the fact that he knows what he wants to do, and I am beginning to think it is surprisingly radical.

Call me Dave, despite his waffle about being middle class comes from the usual ‘born to rule’ aristocracy that was so supportive of Hitler 75 years ago.

Sally are you secretly the head of the IEA?

Was it Hitler who pioneered the Big Lie technique? Well, by accident or design…

(Though, of course, he isn’t a fascist. He’s a communist!!1!)

@#5:

Is somebody who adds nothing to a debate except tediously invoke “Godwin’s Law” (even when references to fascism are in fact perfectly germane) best described as a “Godwin’s Bore”?

“Nice to see the IAE taking lessons in political discourse from the US Tea Party movement”

Well at least the IAE aren’t calling themselves teabaggers…

@16 Careful, or Sally will call you a brownshirt tory troll.

When will sally be on twitter?

@12: “Call me Dave, despite his waffle about being middle class comes from the usual ‘born to rule’ aristocracy that was so supportive of Hitler 75 years ago.”

As best I can tell, the Prussian aristocracy tended to look down on Hitler and the Nazis as social upstarts without any ancestral pedigrees although many went along with the Nazis because the most likely alternative in prospect at the time was Bolshevism. But not all did, hence dissenters like the July 1944 bomb plotters such as von Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators, including Field Marshall Rommel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot

There is also the mysteriously ambivalent role of Canaris through the war:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/canaris.html

The critical early financial support for the Nazis came from German and foreign capitalists who had good personal and class reasons for concerns about being dispossessed – or worse – in the event the Bolshevists gained power:

“George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. . . . ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

As a direct descendant of King William IV, Queen Victoria’s predecessor as monarch, Cameron can claim genuine aristocratic ancestry.

@16 Hindrance

“Is somebody who adds nothing to a debate except tediously invoke “Godwin’s Law” (even when references to fascism are in fact perfectly germane) best described as a “Godwin’s Bore”?”

Have we witnessed the birth of Hindrance’s Corollary to Godwin’s Law?

@16

“Is somebody who adds nothing to a debate except tediously invoke “Godwin’s Law” (even when references to fascism are in fact perfectly germane) best described as a “Godwin’s Bore”?”

It is the new Trendy But Invalid Get-Out Clause.

http://xkcd.com/261/

OK, the reference to fascism is silly, but Cameron’s Big Society breaks with fundamental traditions of British liberty.
By and large we have never gone in for concepts of citizenship. The attitude on both left and right has largely been “Don’t break the law, pay your taxes, beyond that it’s none of our damn business what kind of citizen you are. Run the village fete or sit on the sofa scratching your arse – its up to you.” By and large individuals’ natural instincts to care for family, friends and neighbours, and for (according to taste) work colleagues or employees, will work towards social cohesion. Thatcher was trying to get at this with “no such thing as society”, but mangled it badly.
Blair broke with this tradition with his talk of rights and responsibilities. Cameron has continued where Blair left off with his notion of us all being part of something larger than ourselves. This puts Dave in the continental tradition, going back to Rousseau’s concept of the General Will, the higher collective consciousness which transcends our individual instincts and urges.
The concept of the General Will has led some European states down dangerous paths in the past two centuries – hence the IEA comment. I don’t believe for a moment that Cameron is a fascist. But I do believe a state-imposed definition of the good citizen is an infringement of British liberty. I’m staying on my sofa.

Liberty? Meaningless platitude.