User talk:WHEELER/Archive1
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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 17:13, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Republic[edit]
Looks like you've been digging through a lot of ancient history books to work out republic. The text you have to offer may be useful for "republic in ancient times". Note that your text hasn't actually vanished, you can get it from page history, or from talk:republic/removed. The reason I excised it from the main article is because it seems to both:
- Contain some amount of interpretation. (Which is fine for research articles, but not an encyclopedia.)
- Appears to fail to explain republic as it is currently understood (since the last couple of centuries), even though it might do a good job on how it was understood in BCE.
My remarks on Montesquieu actually are more relevant to separation of powers or trias politica, and you seem to be more concentrated on those concepts than on the government form of republic per-se or in general. Having read your text, it looks like you might be on to some of the ideas that influenced Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Perhaps your text is mostly ok, but belongs more in those more specialised areas?
If you think I'm in error, or would just like to talk things over , I'd appreciate having the discussion under talk:republic. That way other people will be alerted to the matter at hand, and might be able to help us out.
In any case, it's nice to see you're taking your time to write in the wikipedia. Kim Bruning 08:57, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Kim, The Criterion of Truth is Consistency. I believe Cicero coined the term and shall we not also let him define it. Ayn Rand, Isocrates, and George Orwell all said that forces always seek to change the meaning of words. You seem to want only the MARXIST view of the term Republic. All the basic political terminology is of CLASSICAL GREECE. Without understanding their terms and definitions, ANYBODY CAN MANIPULATE the word which you are doing.
Democracy and a Republic are far different from each other. I have proven my points by countless of references and quotes. Neither of the Classical authors, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero mixed these terms together. They were quite clear.
If I am wrong, KIM, then why was the Senate APPOINTED by state legislators and not elected by the People???? I tell you why because the SENATE as in Rome and as in the Ephors of Sparta as in the HOUSE of LORDS of Britain (which is a MODERN SOURCE) is the representation of the ARISTOCRACY. A Republic is MIXED GOVERNMENT.
You want modern sources. John Adams wasn't confused on the terms. Neither was any of the Founding Fathers. Yet, John Adams is somehow Wrong that we need "modern sources". The word "modern" is code word for communist and socialist ideology. The Founding Fathers thought of themselves as very MODERN. The founding Fathers not "marxist enough" for you.
When someone asked Benjamin Franklin what government they were forming he said, "A Republic, if you can keep it". What is he referring to Kim??? Do you have a clue????????????????????????????????????????????
I also noticed that you have no political education or wrote on it on your website, who are you to tell me what I cannot post. I can point to several political posts I have written. They are at Creternity.com under Interact, Forum, Lyceum. Can you write a position paper on Kosovo?
I don't think your qualified to delete my posts!!!!WHEELER 22 Mar 04
- Please do not be rude to others, especially when they are being polite. This is a wiki -- if you don't know what that means, you should read Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers. It says clearly all over this site that, when you post information, you must be willing to have your writing "edited mercilessly". That means anyone can cut portions of your contributions. You are supposed to work positively and collaboratively with them to agree on a good solution. If you can't do that or feel the contributors here are beneath you, you should probably consider going elsewhere. And I warn you -- it is a near certainty that there are a number of users here more educated and qualified than you (and than me, for that matter). Don't presume to know more than your interlocutors. Thank you. Jwrosenzweig 22:51, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I was not treated very fairly by this gentleman. My first post was not very professional. I grant that. Charles Matthews edited it many times and I had no problem with it.
This Kim come in and totally deletes it. What courtesy was given to me? When I reposted and used practically all quotes, he still deletes it all. This is not a man concerned with the truth. This is a man with a political edge. My second post was totally scientific and neutral as possibly I can make it. He still deleted it en toto. I can not believe this. If a man has no education in politics then don't edit.WHEELER 22 Mar 04
- Wheeler, regardless of whether or not you feel you have been dealt with fairly, rudeness is never appropriate. Furthermore, courtesy was given -- Kim offered you a very reasonable explanation on this page of why the deletions occurred. Your additions were learned, but they changed the article's tone and content from being encyclopedic to being more didactic and biased in favor of a particular point of view. They also have the effect of reducing the usefulness of the article for those individuals interested in "what people mean when they talk about a republic". An encylopedia must be more descriptive than prescriptive -- this is its nature. Furthermore, you have only made one edit to the republic article as wheeler -- Kim would have no way of knowing that anything had been sorted out previously. Quotations are not the issue. Neither is a so-called "political edge". The issue is that Kim feels your additions were biased and inappropriate within the scope and aims of this project. You are free to discuss this with Kim, but you are not free to insult and ridicule Kim for disagreeing with you. If you hold the discussion at Talk:Republic, perhaps others will join the conversation and a reasonable compromise can occur. Above all, treat contributors here with respect and do not tell them they have no right to edit here. None of us, including you, has a right to edit here -- it is a privilege which may be revoked if policy is not respected. Right now, Kim is respecting policy. You are not. I urge you to change your attitude, demeanor, and approach. Jwrosenzweig 23:13, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Mr. Jwrosenzweig: Cannot like many other sites have "a Historical definition". On the site "Right/Left" is just like that. Why didn't Kim edit the Republic in that sense? It has been done before.WHEELER 22 Mar 04
- I have a slight admission to make, though it was already there in public. On talk:republic I stated: "I'm going to boldly delete, and see how much flak I catch. I'll move content to talk:republic/removed".
The problem I was dealing with was that there were several edits to the republic article which seemed to me to be somewhat off-center, and no one was taking responsibility for them at all. Thank you for stepping up to the plate.
Now having a historical definition which is well attributed would be great. There's just some issues which I've mentioned that I still have with what you have written which need to be clarified. (On talk:republic) This is how several new articles on wikipedia started out in fact. Thank you very much for taking your time! Kim Bruning 09:47, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Great edit![edit]
Great edit on Fascism! Sam Spade 23:42, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Get off the soap box on fascism. You're getting annoying. 172 23:57, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You have offended me by questioning my faith. I have stated this publicly at Talk:Fascism. You have no right to presume anything about my relationship with God -- in fact, I believe in Jesus Christ and do my best to serve him. I expect an apology from you immediately. Jwrosenzweig 00:03, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Quotes and slander[edit]
I think the quotes you added have been great, and I agree with you about peoples poor reasoning for taking them down. I'd love to help you to put them back, and keep them there. On the other hand you need to be careful about how you interact with other users. What you said to Jwrosenzweig on talk:fascism was uncalled for, and had no bearing on discussing the article. Take a look at this policy page, and try very hard not to offend other users. P.S> I strongly reccomend you appologise for insinuating that Jwrosenzweig is a materialist, can you imagine how offensive that would be? Cheers, Sam Spade 00:32, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I am sorry and I deleted what I said Mr. Jwrosenzweig.
our faith does not damage our ability to be neutral. This is your quote. I am a Greek. The Greek mentality of Aristotle, Socrates, Phythogoras, Plato, would never think like that. Truth is an Harmony. Spiritual truth, physical truth and metaphysical truth is a continuous harmonious whole.
Truth does not contradict truth. I am a truth talker. I am a "lover of truth" to say that religion can not form what I think is true and be used by me to defend truth is not right. No one can demand that I not use my religion. Socrates does not think this. The Greek mind is not the Roman mind of compartmentalization. I am Greek not Roman. What you ask is that I compartmentalize religion from philosophy and common sense. That cannot be done.
Can I say to someone that one's marxism does not damage one's ability to be neutral but religion does. Wheeler 23 Mar 745pm
- I sympathize, to a certain extent, with what you say. I too believe that truth and faith are closely tied. But what we must do at this site is to set aside belief as much as we can, so that we can focus on what all rational, reasonable humans can accept as a neutrally informative project. I know this is hard, but Sam and I (among others) are men of faith who feel it is possible. You must either decide that this project's divorce from faith makes it an impossible place for you to work, or else choose to operate under its umbrella and abide by its policies. Only you can make that decision for yourself -- there are many who have made decisions in either direction. I am glad of your words here and believe now that you are sincere in apologizing: I thank you. I am sorry for the harsher things I have said of you, and hope you will forgive me for any words that were unkind. But you must now make the difficult decision of either following this site's rules (though it seems counter to reality to you), or else going elsewhere because your idea of truth is too different from what we can accept here. I wish you luck. Jwrosenzweig 00:53, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- And to clarify, Marxists also must abide by NPOV. I don't know why you think they don't. Read Wikipedia:Neutral point of view again -- it allows no exceptions. It's a difficult standard, and many can't stand it, but it's the way we operate here. As I noted before, there are encyclopedia projects that allow you to express the truth as you see it, unhampered by NPOV. They may be more attractive to you. Jwrosenzweig 00:56, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- I sympathize, to a certain extent, with what you say. I too believe that truth and faith are closely tied. But what we must do at this site is to set aside belief as much as we can, so that we can focus on what all rational, reasonable humans can accept as a neutrally informative project. I know this is hard, but Sam and I (among others) are men of faith who feel it is possible. You must either decide that this project's divorce from faith makes it an impossible place for you to work, or else choose to operate under its umbrella and abide by its policies. Only you can make that decision for yourself -- there are many who have made decisions in either direction. I am glad of your words here and believe now that you are sincere in apologizing: I thank you. I am sorry for the harsher things I have said of you, and hope you will forgive me for any words that were unkind. But you must now make the difficult decision of either following this site's rules (though it seems counter to reality to you), or else going elsewhere because your idea of truth is too different from what we can accept here. I wish you luck. Jwrosenzweig 00:53, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I would like to politely and respectfully disagree with some of what Jwrosenzweig has just said. I do the best I can not to seperate God from anything I do, and bringing truth to others is something I do with God in mind. That is my primary intent here, to bring the truth to others. I have had it said to me that my philosophy (absolutism) interferes with my abilities here, as well as my faith, politics (generally misjudged of course), and probably other factors as well (perhaps my general lack of political correctness and perceived chauvenism ;). None of that has proven true. Because I am a reasonable man, and can respect the NPOV policy, allowing others to place alternate POV's within articles, properly worded (and properly cited preferably), I have made my time here as fruitful as possible. But... there is another area I disagree with Jwrosenzweig on in the above statements, and that is how Marxists are treated on the wiki. I do feel that they are allowed to consistantly enforce their POV, both within articles, and by reverting the edits of, or eventually banning those they disagree with, or suspect of "unnacceptable" politics. I find the treatment of one Paul Vogel, an anonymous editor (find evidence of him and his conflicts on cosmotheism and white seperatism) to be a signal of such unnaceptable bias, and articles such as socialism and libertarian socialism are still solidly POV (keeping out non-marxist/anarchist/extreme left opinions) despite my attempts to the contrary. In any case, you must assume good faith, even after what seems to be an unreasonable decision or two from another user, and you must always strive to forgive and move on. Please stay, and work towards wikiquette as well as Wikipedia:Verifiability. Sam Spade 05:10, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Greek Philosophies on Republic[edit]
I've gone ahead and placed the content which didn't quite fit on Republic into a new page where I think it'll do great: Greek Philosophies on Republic. I think all can agree there's not much to argue about NPOV if your text goes there. You can probably also drop having to cover so many bases at once this way, which should allow you to make your text quite clear and concice :-) .
I'm sorry to see you've gotten bitten by culture conflict so badly in your first edits on wikipedia. I hope things go better for you in future.
Have a great day. Kim Bruning 09:40, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Fascism[edit]
Hmm, I found that user:172 had removed content from Fascism which seemed to have been NPOVed already. I told him that you and several others were still busy and that I had reverted his changes, and would he please be patient. Unfortunately he disasgrees, and I can't afford to have edit wars with both of you at the same time. *sigh*. Oh well.
Let's see if we can come to agreement on how to go about greek philosphies on republic, and then I'll be free to help you out under fascism, if you like. That way I'll be doing one thing at a time, and be more likely to be doing all of the things right. :-)
Read you soon, Kim Bruning 13:48, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Where do you think this article is going Wheeler? TDC 17:07, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The Kyklos[edit]
Added a new page under The Kyklos.
- And not a half bad page at that! You're getting the hang of it :-) Kim Bruning 22:09, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
re my talk[edit]
Your quite right, there are those who are out to get you due to your ideology, or your ideology as they see it. I hope that doesn't chase you off, we need some real diversity amongst the editors here if NPOV is ever going to be approached. I strongly appreciate your citations, and the reasoning for removing them are based on bias, if they know why they are doing it or not. Do be careful to follow the rules, its easy for a non-conformist to be rode out of here on a rail if he doesn't follow the guidelines to a tee. So please stay, please keep providing quotes, references and citations, and please be careful to follow the rules. Here are some links you might find useful.
Wikipedia:Policy Library Wikipedia:Cite your sources Wikipedia:Verifiability Wikipedia:Wikiquette Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles Wikipedia:Conflict resolution Wikipedia:Brilliant prose Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians Wikipedia:Neutral point of view Wikipedia:Pages needing attention Wikipedia:Peer review Wikipedia:Poll Wikipedia:Requests for adminship Wikipedia:Requests for mediation Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Wikipedia:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense Wikipedia:IRC channel Wikipedia:Mailing lists Metawiki User's Guide m:Wikipedia needs editors Wikipedia 1.0 m:Referees
Fascism, Monarchy and Religion[edit]
If fascism was anti-religious how do you explain 1) Mussolini's concordat with the Vatican 2) Opus Dei, the Falange and the open collaboration of the Catholic Church with Franco 3) the fact that a Catholic priest served in the fascist government of Croatia during the war and collaboration between the church and fascist movements in that country 4) the Arrow Cross movement in Hungary that was closely tied with the Catholic Church.
As for monarchy, if fascism is anti-monarchy why did a) Franco name Juan Carlos as his successor b) the King of Italy happily let Mussolini rule for two decades c) the Italian monarchy only come to be abolished after the fall of fascism d) King Beudouin work with the fascist movement in Belgium e) the Duke of Windsor (ex Edward VII) admire fascism and Nazism, go to meet Hilter etc.
- (1) Fascism is part and parcel of socialism--it is anti-clerical. Mussolini's concordat with the Vatican was nothing but a showpiece of cooperation with the Vatican in order to secure peace with parts of Italian society. (2) Franco was not a Fascist. This term came about because he recieved military assistance from Adolf Hitler. Franco was a Christian Dictator who seized power to prevent communist takeover of Spain. Franco is a Christian Hero. (3) There are many heresies within the Catholic Church, not every member is pure in doctrine. Many Catholic Christians and liberal Protestant Christians support abortion. Doesn't make abortion right or Christian. (4) Have no idea of the Arrow Cross movement.
- (a) Franco is not a fascist see answer above. (b) because the stupid king thought to appease the Devil just like Neville Chamberlain thought to do with Hitler (c) if fascism did not erupt in Italy, there would still be a monarchy in Italy, (d) and (e) So did FDR admire Fascism. Herbert Hoover wrote against the fascist policies of FDR. Fascism was alluring and showed promise of solving societal ills brought about by industrialization.WHEELER 00:01, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Why do you think Hitler and Mussolini were so eager to side with Franco rather than with the left? The Falange was fascist even if you want to claim Franco wasn't. I suggest you read up on the arrow cross movement, it will teach you something about the anti-modernist collaboration between Catholicism and fascism. As for Italy, more accurate to say Italy would still be a monarchy if the royal family hadn't supported fascism. And not just Italy, Crown Prince Wilhelm joined the Nazi Party and the ex-Kaiser was a Nazi sympathiser. Why did the Vatican help so many Nazi war criminals escape? And don't forget the links between the clergy and Petain.
Interesting that in every country the clergy cooperated with fascist governments. I'm not talking about Catholic lay people supporting fascism, I'm talking about *clergy* without any censure from the Vatican.
You love quotations. Here are some quotes from Hitler you can mull overFormeruser-83 00:45, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC) :
From a speech made by Hitler on April 12, 1922:
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
"Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.
"As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.
"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
"When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited."
Catholicism and Fascism[edit]
The following is an excerpt of a speech by Mike Budak, Croatian Minister of Religion, made on July 22, 1941, three months after the Croats won their independence from Yugoslavia by joining the Axis cause during World War II. (From Spy in the Vatican):
"The Ustashi movement is based on the Catholic Religion. For the minorities, Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. A part of these minorities has already been eliminated and many are waiting to be killed. Some will be sent to Serbia and the rest will be forced to change their religion to Catholicism. Our new Croatia will therefore be free of all heretics, becoming purely Catholic for the future years."
Bokun quoted a Roman Catholic priest as having made the following remarks on June 13, 1941:
"Brethren, up to now we have worked for the Holy Roman Apostolic Church with the cross and the missal. Now the moment has come to work with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. The more Serbs and Jews you succeed in eliminating, the more you will be raised in esteem in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church."
One highly-placed person in the Vatican bureaucracy, Cardinal Eugene Tiserant, Secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, was informed about what was happening in Croatia in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. He informed Pope Pius XII but to no avail.
The Vatican was especially proud of one facet of Croatian domestic policy: new abortion laws in Croatia justifying the persecution of Jews since "most practitioners of abortion were Jewish."
Source:CATHOLICISM & FASCISM: A BRIEF RETROSPECTIVE
Please you are to sign and date your additions according to Wikietiquette. Please hold this discussion in the Fascist User:talk.WHEELER 00:22, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
More
More on Fascism and Christianity[edit]
Italy
Italy gave the world both the word ‘fascist’ (after the Latin ‘fasces’: the bundle of sticks and projecting axe that was a symbol of the authority of the Roman consul) and the first fascist movement. Although Italian fascism was initially anti-clerical, Mussolini quickly appreciated the need to find an accommodation with the Church and the Church was happy to reciprocate. In the Lateran Pacts of 1929, the Church endorsed the Italian state in return for the state accepting the autonomy of the Vatican City, the right of the Church to teach Catholic doctrine in the state schools, and the Church’s moral authority. Many senior clergy actively supported Mussolini and played a prominent part in devising elaborate civic liturgies for the fascists. The Church also approved Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and his help for Franco in the Spanish civil war. And the views of ordinary Italian Catholics are clear from the popular support Mussolini enjoyed until the Axis powers began to lose the war.
Germany
The attitude of German Catholics to Nazism is less easy to discern. That Germany had had representative politics for longer than Italy meant that German Catholics were already well organized into parties and organizations with which the Nazi party competed. Catholics were initially more reluctant than Lutherans to support the Nazis but that probably has more to do with loyalty to existing right-wing Catholic organizations than to ideological distaste.
In many predominantly Protestant German states, Catholics initially opposed Hitler but in overwhelmingly Catholic Bavaria the Catholic BVP advocated cooperating with the Nazis. Franz Von Papen, who became Hitler’s vice-chancellor in January 1933, was a conservative Catholic and leader of the Catholic Centre party. He not only provided an acceptable civilian front for Hitler; he was also active in negotiating the 1933 concordat between Hitler and the Vatican that saw the Church drop its opposition to the Nazis and dissolve its Centre party in return for the protection of Church interests. Parts of the Catholic press encouraged their readers to support the Nazi revitalization of Germany. The Church officially supported Hitler’s first international challenge (the occupation of the Saarland in 1935) and his 1938 hostile take-over of Austria. Many German lay Catholics and clergy bravely opposed Nazism and suffered the consequences. But most supported Hitler because they shared his nationalism, anti-Semitism and his antipathy for socialism and liberalism.
Spain and Portugal
On 17 July 1936 the Spanish army in Morocco rebelled against the government of the Spanish republic, which it accused of dismembering the fatherland (because it was negotiating with Basque and Catalan separatists) and of Bolshevism. With considerable assistance from Germany and Italy, Francisco Franco won the three-year war and began a dictatorship that survived until his death in 1975. The Catholic Church did not hesitate to support the rebels.
Portugal avoided a civil war but it also abandoned democracy for clerical authoritarianism. For most of the nineteenth century Portugal had enjoyed a liberal constitutional monarchy but it was overthrown by a military coup in 1926. In 1932, António de Oliveira Salazar became prime minister. In 1933 he introduced an authoritarian corporatist regime that stayed in place until 1974.
In many rural areas of Austria the Catholic Christian Social party worked closely with the right-wing Heimwehr (or ‘home guard’) militia and this support brought Dollfuss to power in 1932. In February 1934, he crushed the social democratic militias in Vienna and four months later he produced his authoritarian constitution: ‘We shall establish a state on the basis of a Christian weltanschaung’. By Christian he meant Catholic and the Pope was impressed. He described Dolfuss as a ‘Christian, giant-hearted man ... who rules Austria so well, so resolutely and in such a Christian manner. His actions are witness to Catholic visions and convictions. The Austrian people, Our beloved Austria, now has the government it deserves’.
Catholic Poland’s liberal democracy was overthrown by a military coup in 1926.
After 1918 Hungary had a brief spell as a liberal democracy before an even briefer ‘ dictatorship of the proletariat’ led by the communist Béla Kun. Finally it became a fully independent kingdom effectively ruled by Admiral Miklós Horthy. With very strong support from the Catholic hierarchy, he sustained a mildly authoritarian democracy until 1944. When the Germans invaded in 1944 they imposed a dictatorship of the fascist Arrow Cross party.
In 1941 German and Italian forces occupying Yugoslavia allowed the Croats to fulfil their ambitions of an independent state and put in power the fascist Ustaše movement. As Conway notes: ‘The new state was eager to make much of its Catholic character, nominating members of the clergy to prominent posts and passing laws against freemasonry, contraception and even blasphemy’. In the Ustaše state and in the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina that it controlled, Orthodox Serbs and Muslims were forcibly converted to Catholicism or expelled. Orthodox priests were particularly targeted and hundreds of Orthodox churches were destroyed. Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb initially reacted enthusiastically to Croatian independence and in April 1941 issued a pastoral letter urging clergy to follow the Poglavnic in which he wrote: ‘It is easy here to discern the hand of God’. Croat Catholic clergy fought alongside the militias and took part in forcible conversions and atrocities’.
Czechoslovakia, another state formed from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, was dismembered at the start of the Second World War. Germany seized the Czech lands and established a fascist regime in Slovakia under Catholic priest Josef Tiso. As well as being head of state and head of the security forces, Tiso was the leader of the paramilitary Hlinka Guard, which wore the Catholic Episcopal cross on its armbands. ‘The new state took on … the air of a modern theocracy. The Catholic clergy and laity were prominent at all levels of the regime, which in its corporatist and educational policies explicitly based itself on the principles of papal encyclicals’.
And Lithuania. The small Baltic state had a few years of liberal democracy before the 1926 military coup brought in an authoritarian regime that lasted until the Soviet invasion of 1940.
France and Belgium
Although neither France nor Belgium was taken over by extreme right-wing movements, both countries had their fascists. One instance was Action Française (AF), founded by Charles Maurras, a poet, journalist and editor of a newspaper of the same name. The movement campaigned for the return of the monarchy and for aggressive action against Jews. Although its relationships with the Catholic Church were not always easy, it was supported by 11 out of 17 cardinals and bishops and a great many priests. In Belgium the extreme right-wing movement was called Christus Rex (or Christ the King).
Protestant Cases
The Protestant side of the equation is harder to construct, largely because there were so few Protestant states in Europe. Britain had Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts but beyond orchestrating anti-Semitic violence in London, they had no political success and absolutely no religious legitimation. The only predominantly Protestant country to acquire a fascist regime was Norway and that owed almost nothing to local popularity. Vidkun Quisling had a brilliant army career and was made a general staff officer at the age of 24. In 1931 he entered politics and two years later he founded the fascist Nasjonal Samling party. It was never popular and Quisling came to power entirely through the agency of the German army. Quisling helped Hitler prepare for the invasion of Norway and was rewarded by being appointed prime minister: an office from which he was forcibly removed in 1945.
Complications
In the 1930s Romania had its own fascist movement: the Legion of the Archangel Michael, better known by the name of its paramilitary wing: the Iron Guard. The Legion was anti-Western, anti-democracy, deeply anti-Semitic and, like the Slavophile movements in nineteenth century Russia, its proposed solution to economic crisis and obvious corruption was a return to the Church. The Church reciprocated. It is estimated that a fifth of the clergy joined the Iron Guard. But – and this is the interesting complication – Romania was not Catholic. Its Church was Orthodox: part of the same Eastern tradition as the Russian and Greek churches.
And although I put Lithuania in the list of Catholic authoritarian regimes, it is worth noting that the history of the other two Baltic states -- Latvia and Estonia – was very similar. All three were fragile new democracies with electoral systems that produced lots of small parties and thus prevented effective government. They were hit badly by the world depression and they were taken over by authoritarian right-ing politicians. But only Lithuania is Catholic. The other two are mostly Lutheran Protestants.
Formeruser-83 00:27, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I hope I've helped lift the veil of ignorance from your eyes. Not only was fascism not "anti-Christian" but the clergy and fascist movements were closely allied in several countries most notably Belgium, Croatia and Hungary but also Italy and Germany and of course Slovakia where a Catholic monsigneur was the fascist dictator!. In Belgium the fascist movement was even called "Christ the King" and in Hungary the cross was used as a fascist symbol. Clergy were involved intimately with the regimes even taking prominent positions. This isn't the case of some "rogue Catholics" but of deliberate collaboration that the Vatican knew about and either did nothing to stop or openly approved of.
Sorry to burst your bubble. I know you really don't want this to be true but you really should open your eyes and face the facts. Formeruser-83 00:55, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You claim fascism is anti-monarchist yet in no country where fascism took power or in which the Nazis occupied was a republic declared. Indeed, even in the few monarchist countries where the King or Queen opposed fascism the monarchy was retained. Yet whenever the Communists took power they declared republics quite quickly. Moreover, in several countries the monarchy worked with or supported the fascists. King Beuadoin of Belgium had to abdicate because of his collaboration with the Nazis and the Italian monarchy had to abdicate because of their support of the fascists. There seems to be quite a lot of evidence that fascists and monarchists worked together but there's no evidence that the fascists were republicans so on what, besides wishful thinking, do you base your claim? 130.15.162.71 15:37, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Please hold this discussion elsewhere not here PLEASE!!!WHEELER 15:57, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)