In today’s Times Mary Kenny sets out some ground rules for using the terms ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’.
A Fascist may be a racist but he is not necessarily so; a racist is not always a Fascist either. The Spanish dictator Franco was a Fascist but not a racist: in the 1930s, the left-wing New Statesman disparaged Franco as a “negrophile” (he employed Moroccan troops with gusto). And Franco gave asylum to more Jewish refugees than democratic Sweden.
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Fascism is the political philosophy of the authoritarian, corporate and militarised state and is historically hostile to capitalism. Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, was a clerico-Fascist (corporate state plus clergy) but something of a liberal on race. The Portuguese were more racially multicultural than other European colonialists, and intermarried more with colonised peoples than other Europeans. Thus the ethnically mixed Brazil
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The late and much lamented comedian Linda Smith told a darkly droll story about visiting her granny in Birmingham, who was obsessed with, and prejudiced against, “the blacks”. Linda was mortified that “Granny was a Fascist”. No: Granny was a racist. She had nothing at all to say about the corporate state.
Comments box denizens take note.
