alt Hacker NewsThat's what you heard in school, defending the US style of fascism as "democratic".
Fascism was a scheme to keep the old aristocrats turning industrialists to keep control of the state, whilst still keeping it under the democratic name. This was devised in the US in the 30ies and then in the old states also. Heavily supported by the US industrialists. Without them the fascism movement had no chance.
The US scheme of fascism came up with cooperate contracts overriding state laws, also pleasing the Chicago crowd, with decentralized control. At the will of the cooperations, who know better than the government of course. That's why Rockefeller could gun down strikers without any repercussions. That's why the Railroad Commission could call state military to gun down independent oil cooperations which undercut prizes of the industrialists. That's not liberalism, that's pure fascism/cooperatism/aristocratism.
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"Corporatism" not "cooperatism" though, right?
Nothing wrong with cooperatism I think.
> This was devised in the US in the 30ies
Fascism first evolved in Italy, where Mussolini and his Partito Nazionale Fascista took power in 1922.
That's pretty far from the usual views of fascism. Generally fascism can be seen as a form of right wing collectivism organizing all of society into one big hierarchy, with industrialist somewhat below the top and subservient to political leadership. In a fascist society political decrees override both laws and contracts. This means that fascism is inherently centralized and that what companies receive state support depends on who are political favourites at the moment. E.g. a fascist state might support the independent oil companies if it felt the established industrialists were getting too influential, i.e. classical divide and conquer.
By the way, I'm not claiming the things you describe didn't take place for the reasons you claimed. I just don't think it's accurate to describe it as based on fascism.