All forms of fascism including Progressivism are statist’ philosophies. All are atheistic like their Bolshevik cousins. As Christianity declined in the late 19th and early 20th centuries humanist’ philosophies centered on “mankind” often replaced a defeated Christian worldview.
Much of this was imported into our institutions of higher learning from Europe. The state replaced god and was supposed to in theory to have represented the masses. The question became was how to control the masses?
American Progressivism mimics a Christian religious crusade though being entirely secular. No more waiting for some mythical god to provide paradise after death when man through science and reason could produce a paradise here on earth. Individual salvation through Christ has been replaced by collective salvation through the state. The state was often led through “faith” in a messiah like figure.
The Bolsheviks came to power by armed force overthrowing the nascent attempt in Russia to form a democracy. That “Provisional Government was an alliance between liberals and socialists who wanted political reform.” (Wiki) We know who got the firing squad.
Think about those deluded liberals and leftists that joined forces with Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who are now finding themselves threatened by their ex-partners. Islamists today have merged European fascism with Muslim culture-religion.
In the case of Italy and Germany both Hitler and Mussolini (as the Islamists in Egypt, Libya, etc.) were elected to office in dysfunctional stabs at democracy. The idea of thrusting democracy on unstable nations and cultures has had dire consequences as we are learning with the so-called “Arab Spring.”
Mussolini was a die-hard Marxist who rejected the international socialism of the Bolsheviks for a more Italian brand socialism. Hitler too was a socialist elected during a time of crisis and upheaval. Both simply ended democracy for the mess it was and most of their people were happy as long as the “trains ran on time.”
This is where American Progressivism differs from its European cousins in they never overthrew democracy as such, just violated the Constitution by legal maneuvering or simply ignored it. Woodrow Wilson was in every way a war-mongering fascist’ tyrant. He wanted into the war in Europe and simply used the Lusitania sinking and the loss of 1200 lives as an excuse to enter the war. It was proven later on by divers the ship was in fact carrying munitions as the Germans claimed and was a legitimate target.*
In a propaganda campaign inciting hatred against Germans (later copied by the Nazis) the government was very successful in stirring up ethnic hatred as an excuse for a war Wilson wanted and finally got. Using the crisis of manufactured war he then stripped citizens of their civil rights jailing over 100,000 political prisoners.
He used government force to seize control of entire industries using the crisis of war as an excuse to implement his Progressive social and political agendas. He would later invade Siberia as a means to embroil the county in more wars.
The only problem for Wilson and later FDR was they couldn’t create a crisis so severe they could do away with democracy and the Constitution in the manner Hitler and Mussolini did. Public support just wasn’t there.
The Progressive tyrant Wilson left office in 1921 to the relief of millions and his attempts at “war socialism” gave way to the “Roaring 20s”. But Wilson’s tactics, methods of propaganda and stirring up ethnic-racial hatred, and use of a crisis to seize unlimited power would be model followed by other fascist tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini.
Until the late 1930s when Hitler and Mussolini were revealed to be war mongers like Wilson, they were much admired by American Progressives desiring to “fix” what they saw as a broken society awash in the sins of poverty and inequality. And what kind of crisis could come along to enable the government to once again expand its power and abuse its citizens?
That crisis would be the Great Depression which all of FDR’s New Deal central planing never really fixed until World War II. He wanted America into war and partly instigated it when he shut off Japan’s access to oil and raw materials. We had another repeat of Wilson’s war socialism.
To summarize Progressives and fascists share common philosophical roots from the French and German Enlightenments. Progressivism differs from its European cousins in that it still maintained facade of democracy.
Source http://www.sullivan-county.com/id5/peck22008.htm
