But I believe that the outcome of WW2 is exactly the trump card against the "Fascism = effectiveness" argument that this thread has brought up.
Take 1: say, you get Hitler. Your nation prospers as he uses strong fiscal stimulus to restart the economy and end the depression (sounds familiar, eh). Your military becomes the finest on the planet and everyone fears you to the point that you can just annex other countries at will and no one lifts a finger. Everything is going great.
Then this Hitler guy decides to fight an all-out war on multiple fronts simultaneously and doesn't even care for consolidating resources that he conquered (say, Ukraine), instead preferring to engage in a dick-measuring contest with some other dictator. Even worse, when his war starts going badly, he prevents his largest army from retreating and recovering and loses almost a million soldiers because of pride. The war is irretrievably lost.
Your country is pillaged, raped and humiliated.
Take 2: This obscure asian guy gains power through a coup. The nation cheers his decisiveness and supports his measures that he claims will improve people's lives.
Then your leader suffers a bad case of toxoplasmosis and decides that half of the country is actually made of traitors and decides to exterminate them. Millions die from starvation, torture and execution.
Take 3: Your country is led by a single party, whose top official (with support of other top officials who want to lick his ass) has just won a long war and improved the country a lot. Then he decides that he simply must become the world's biggest exporter of steel. He starts a steel-production campaign that includes melting down agricultural implements such as ploughs or shovels. With not enough tools to work the land and an unfortunate drought, tens of millions die from starvation, sometimes eating each other in desperation.
My question is: what protects Fascism from a ruler (or a handful of most powerful advisors) going mad, evil, or both, and destroying the country? IMO, nothing.
The finest point of democracies is that they are immune to pride or individual quirks. Maybe not 100%, but for the most part they are.
That doesn't mean that I don't recognize the achievements of totalitarian regimes. My country had its greatest period of prosperity during Communist Yugoslavia and experienced a horrible degradation after people elected the worst possible criminals to lead it after the breakup of Yugoslavia. China today is also doing great, even if I have complaints about how it oppresses its people. But for every (modern) China and Yugoslavia, you have a dozen Castros, Chavezs, Saddams, Maos, Grand Ayatollahs, Kim Jongs and other madmen.
I firmly believe that it is because fascism has no check on power, so sooner or later it always leads to such lunacy. It depends on blindly trusting a small number of people, with no mechanism to remove them if they start making bad decisions. Democracy is a moderating force that provides a lot more protection against this, although of course it isn't infallible either. But leaving everything dependent on the smarts and goodwill of one or few people is not its feature like in fascism.
Take 1: say, you get Hitler. Your nation prospers as he uses strong fiscal stimulus to restart the economy and end the depression (sounds familiar, eh). Your military becomes the finest on the planet and everyone fears you to the point that you can just annex other countries at will and no one lifts a finger. Everything is going great.
Then this Hitler guy decides to fight an all-out war on multiple fronts simultaneously and doesn't even care for consolidating resources that he conquered (say, Ukraine), instead preferring to engage in a dick-measuring contest with some other dictator. Even worse, when his war starts going badly, he prevents his largest army from retreating and recovering and loses almost a million soldiers because of pride. The war is irretrievably lost.
Your country is pillaged, raped and humiliated.
Take 2: This obscure asian guy gains power through a coup. The nation cheers his decisiveness and supports his measures that he claims will improve people's lives.
Then your leader suffers a bad case of toxoplasmosis and decides that half of the country is actually made of traitors and decides to exterminate them. Millions die from starvation, torture and execution.
Take 3: Your country is led by a single party, whose top official (with support of other top officials who want to lick his ass) has just won a long war and improved the country a lot. Then he decides that he simply must become the world's biggest exporter of steel. He starts a steel-production campaign that includes melting down agricultural implements such as ploughs or shovels. With not enough tools to work the land and an unfortunate drought, tens of millions die from starvation, sometimes eating each other in desperation.
My question is: what protects Fascism from a ruler (or a handful of most powerful advisors) going mad, evil, or both, and destroying the country? IMO, nothing.
The finest point of democracies is that they are immune to pride or individual quirks. Maybe not 100%, but for the most part they are.
That doesn't mean that I don't recognize the achievements of totalitarian regimes. My country had its greatest period of prosperity during Communist Yugoslavia and experienced a horrible degradation after people elected the worst possible criminals to lead it after the breakup of Yugoslavia. China today is also doing great, even if I have complaints about how it oppresses its people. But for every (modern) China and Yugoslavia, you have a dozen Castros, Chavezs, Saddams, Maos, Grand Ayatollahs, Kim Jongs and other madmen.
I firmly believe that it is because fascism has no check on power, so sooner or later it always leads to such lunacy. It depends on blindly trusting a small number of people, with no mechanism to remove them if they start making bad decisions. Democracy is a moderating force that provides a lot more protection against this, although of course it isn't infallible either. But leaving everything dependent on the smarts and goodwill of one or few people is not its feature like in fascism.
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