Stop the Fascist Takeover of Cal Am

This material will be part of a half-page advertisement published in the Carmel Pine Cone, Sept. 28, 2018 to oppose Measure J

A group of social activists are attempting to use eminent domain tactics to engineer a government takeover of a privately-owned water company.  So what does that have to do with historical Fascism? Plenty!

For instance:

  • The 13-point plank of the 1920 National Socialist Program demanded the “nationalization of all trusts” (corporations).
  • In 1934, Mussolini boasted that “Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state.”[1] And in 1939 “This level of state intervention greatly surpassed that in Nazi Germany, giving Italy a public sector second only to that of Stalin’s Russia.”[2]
  • In 1937 Göring decided to nationalize private deposits of iron ore, “taking control of all privately owned steelworks and setting up a new company, known as the Hermann Göring Works.”[3]
  • By 1943, state ownership in the Third Reich had expanded rapidly where “the number of state-owned firms topped 500.”[4]
  • In 1944, Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, worried about a complete government takeover of the private sector in Germany, warning that “a kind of state socialism seemed to be gaining more and more ground, furthered by many of the [Nazi] party functionaries.”[5]
  • Albert Speer also mentioned that Hitler would go into tirades over companies that were bringing in “high earnings without work.” Shouting to Speer, Hitler declared: “One of these days I’ll sweep away this outrage and nationalize all corporations.”[6]
  • Fascism was a “very specific revision of Marxism.”[7]

Vote yes for freedom by voting NO on Measure J

Paid for by the Committee Against Fascist Economics (CAFE), Libertarian Party of Monterey County (LPMC) and Seaside Taxpayers Association (STA)

[1]  Gianni Toniolo, editor, The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification, Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 59; Mussolini’s speech to the Chamber of Deputies was on May 26, 1934.

[2]  Martin Blinkhorn, Mussolini and Fascist Italy, New York: NY, Routledge, 1991, p. 26.

[3]  Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, New York: NY, Penguin Press, 2005, p. 372.

[4]  R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Oxford University Press, 1994, p.16.

[5]  Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, New York: NY, Simon and Schuster, 1970, p. 359.

[6]  Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, New York, NY, Pocket Books, 1977, p. 84

[7] Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri. The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, Princeton: NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 5. Sternhell is one of the world’s leading experts on fascism.

Material comes from L.K. Samuels forthcoming book: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle Between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left’