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> Obama will follow the recommendations of a review group he set up, which suggested that the responsibility for the bulk domestic call records database should be transferred from the NSA to a third party, such as the phone companies

Mussolini: '' Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.''

It seems each 'reform' that these authoritarian sociopaths put forward just further enables/legalizes their crimes.



>Mussolini: '' Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.''

The word "corporatism" in this context is not a very good translation. It's a real quote, but "corporation" in Mussolini's time would be more accurately translated as "guild" or any arbitrary hierarchical group of people with common interests. Corporations as we know them (commercial enterprises) weren't a thing as far as Mussolini knew.

As much as I appreciate the sentiment this quote carries, it's just not applicable to anything today. Snopes thread about this:

message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=36218


> any arbitrary hierarchical group of people with common interests

From the Guardian article: ''Obama’s White House staff were meeting representatives of tech firms on Friday, concluding a packed week packed of meetings with surveillance stakeholders''

I damn well think you could call corporate surveillance stakeholders a ''guild'' or an ''arbitrary hierarchical group of people with common interests''.


Sure, and that's fine if you want to torture the meanings of words that way. I don't have any problem with you doing so.

I have the same contempt for these people as you do but if we always let off-context quotes, righteous as they may feel, go unchalleneged, it's a shame on all of us.

The context of the Mussolini quote was not uttered with a commercial enterprise in mind. Commercial enterprises called "corporations" were not a real thing in Mussolini's world. That's all I have to say here.




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