The right wing continues to try to paint U.S. President Barack Obama as a socialist, but as host Bill Maher said on his "New Rules" segment on "Real Time" Friday, of Obama is a socialist, he's a lousy one.
As Maher noted in "New Rules"
"Newt Gingrich called Obama the most radical Leftist President in history. Senator Marco Rubio called him the most divisive figure in American history. Michelle Bachmann said Obama is the most radical President we have ever seen in the history of the country …John Bolton said Obama just doesn’t care about national security. Honestly, there are Mexican drug mules who don’t pull this much stuff out of their a**.
“If Obama were as radical as they claim, here’s what he would have already done: Pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, given us ‘Medicare for all,’ ended the drug war, cut the defense budget in half, and turned Dick Cheney over to the Hague.”
Truly, the word socialist isn't anywhere near as pejorative and contentious a term in other countries as it is in the United States. In France, in fact, a declared socialist, Francois Hollande, just won the presidential election, defeating Nicolas Sarkozy. While France has only had one other Socialist president, he was Francois Mitterrand (who was Hollande's mentor). Mitterrand was elected in 1981, and was re-elected in 1988, which meant he was reasonably popular.
Socialism in the U.S. is a bad word because folks equate socialism with communism. They are not the same. A quick visit to Wikipedia shows that. It's also because of communism and the Cold War, equated with the U.S.S.R. and China that folks fear socialism. The right wing has attempted to use socialism as a scare tactic.
Strangely, they attempt to call Barack Obama both a socialist and a Fascist. Socialism is considered left-wing. Fascism is considered right wing. Wikipedia says ", fascism's goal to promote the rule of people deemed innately superior while seeking to purge society of people deemed innately inferior is a prominent far-right stance."
In effect, by definition, Fascism could not be equated with the Democratic party, left wing as it is, but only the right wing GOP ... and a quick look at that statement about Fascism and those with an open mind might leap to "Occupy Wall Street" and the One Percent.
Watch the clip from "Real Time," below.
Source
Image Source Wikimedia Commons
Comments
#1 The Intersection of Socialism and National Socialialism
"Strangely, they attempt to call Barack Obama both a socialist and a Fascist. Socialism is considered left-wing. Fascism is considered right wing."
Socialism and National Socialism are kissing cousins, with the latter only being considered "right wing" because it warred with the variation of Socialism called Communism.
The reason some historically literate folks equate Barack Obama with both socialism and fascism is because Obama's "clean energy economy" and Obamacare policies are faithful applications of German Zwangswirtshaft socialism, where the government allows nominal private ownership of business, but uses its police, taxing and spending powers to direct business to redistribute wealth. The Nazis employed Zwangswirtshaft socialism during WWII.
Bart DePalma
The author of Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste: Barack Obama and the Evolution of American Socilalism
#2 People have misused those
People have misused those terms throughout history, just as you're misusing them. It doesn't make you smart, or literate. Socialism is a left wing social structure. Fascism is a right wing one. Either system can be combined with authoritarian rule. That doesn't make them the same, and it doesn't make Obama either one, nor does it make him authoritarian. Regulation is not socialism. Direct ownership of the means of production by the state is socialism.
You're wrong. Period.
#3 "The American fascists are
"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added, "They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. 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."
Finally, Wallace said, "The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."
Fascism is control of the government by private interests, for private gain.
Socialism is ownership of the economy by a government of the people.
BIG difference. The Nazis were fascists, not socialists, regardless of what they called themselves.