Dannon's Journal: A bit of etymology

Words are fascinating, aren't they?

Take Fascism, for example. Most folks associate this word with Hitler and Nazis, and these days, it's all too often used as an emotional attack against the President by hyperventalating leftists who wouldn't know real Fascism if it bit 'em.

If these nutcases had checked the dictionary, they would see that Fascism is formally defined as a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. In economic terms, a fascist system is generally defined as one in which the state owns the means of production but hands them over to citizens and citizen-run corporations for day-to-day running.

So, where does the etymology come in? Well, I discovered a short while ago where the word comes from. It comes from the Latin fascis, plural fasces. And what's a fascis? It's a bundle of sticks, usually tied with a red strap, often wrapped around or attached to an axe. Back in Roman times, officials carried them around as a symbol of authority and penal power.

The ancient Roman symbol is still used in a lot of places today. Take a look at the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Hard to see it in this picture, but there are two gold fasces on that wall behind the Speaker's chair, one on each side of the flag. This commemorative five-dollar coin has a pair. There's one on the back of this WWI victory medal, and the LAPD badge boasts a border design based on the bundle and straps.

Just some interesting stuff to know.

Red tape?

[GMontag]

Glad you posted that. I never realized that the strap was red as all of these I had seen were in sculpture or madallions and not paintings or pictures.

I wonder if that is where the "red tape" symbolizing bureaucracy came from?

"Red tape"

[Ethelred Unraed]

"Red tape" comes from Britain's colonial-era civil service. Traditionally paperwork and reports were bundled and wrapped in red tape (i.e. red ribbons), then sent around to the various offices (today it's sent around in red boxes).

The red color didn't have any particular meaning; red was just a symbolic color for the English (later British) state.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:"Red tape"

[GMontag]

Ah, very cool. Thank you!

So today I bring the new trite phrase "The Editors of The Nation/The BBC would not know a Fascist if he were beating them with a bundle of sticks in a red box."

You made it into the big JE

[GMontag]

Check out your big brain here [slashdot.org]!

One more (and more on etymology)

[neocon]

Two more notes: First off, you missed the most obvious use of the Fasces in American symbology -- the back of the dime!

Second, here's how ``Fasces'' became ``Fascist'': when Benito Mussolini stopped being an internationalist socialist and turned his movement and his thuggish followers into a nationalist socialist movement, they declared that they were out to rebuild the Roman empire, and thus picked the Fasces, the symbol of Roman imperial power, as their emblem. In due time, they became known as the

I should know better than to argue with someone

[Interrobang]

...with a nick like that, but please, there was nothing Socialist -- nationalist or otherwise -- about Mussolini. He was the one who said, "Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Both you and Danon seem to have it backwards in this respect -- the state itself does not control the means of production in this case (as it does in classical Marxism or any of its descendants), but those who control the means of production also control the mechanics o

Re:I should know better than to argue with someone

[neocon]

You're more than a little confused, I fear. Don't confuse the Fascist's anti-Bolshevism, which was largely racial in nature, with anti-Socialism.

Mussolini, for instance, was himself a trotskyist socialist for years before founding Italian fascism, and when he did become a fascist, he described this as a `truer socialism', as it defended the `proletarian nations' of the world from `international capitalism'. Even your own quote confirms this -- unless you are arguing that the state absorbing corporatio