I have been reading lately about the heated argument among the anti-jihad websites concerning whether or not the Flemish secessionist party Vlaams Belang is fascist or white supremacist. Blogs such as Little Green Footballs, Gates of Vienna, and Brussels Journal have really locked horns over the issue. There is no point in me repeating their arguments here. I would just like to quote something I read on Vlaams Belang's website:
Wij kiezen voor een gecorrigeerde vrije markteconomie. De geschiedenis leert ons immers dat een door de overheid gecontroleerde economie niet zo gezond is. Het is wenselijk voorrang te geven aan de marktmechanismen. Die politiek leidt tot een toename van welvaart en welzijn voor het grootste deel van de bevolking.
In English:
We desire an adjusted free market economy. History teaches us that a government-controlled economy is unhealthy. It is best to give primacy to market mechanisms. Such a policy leads to an increase in prosperity and well-being to the greatest part of the population.
That doesn't sound fascist to me. In spite of the utter nonsense we often hear from the left, a necessary condition for fascism is a government-controlled economy. That's why the Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Whatever may have been the past of some of the members of Vlaams Belang, they certainly are not acting as fascists now. Unfortunately their critics at LGF and elsewhere have been employing the same smear tactics used for decades by the left.
2 comments:
Depends on what is meant by "free market economy" Does it mean labor arbitrage, unfettered corporate control or corruption? Does it mean a vicious attack on the middle class and working class?
Words are slippery, politics is a con job, and war is a racket.
Of course socialism is undesirable.
How about capitalism with protection from corporate and government collusion and corruption ?
Please define what is meant by "free market economy" here. Who's "economy" the economy of the fantastically rich, or the economy of the average citizen, who is struggling to find employment, to eat and afford medical care?
One of the things the Acton Institute is doing is educating those who would understand the limits and the good of the free market, a la Frederic Bastiat.
Unfettered anything is dangerous...as Lord Action famously said (and better, too, I might add)
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