fascist or pro-crypto-Nazi

[moof]

referring to the exchange between buckley & Vidal during the 1968 convention.

http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/tapes.html

does anyone thing Gore was really unable to think of the term "fascist" to describe buckley and really, once you have said nazi, haven't you already said fascist ? Is this just a case of semantics or is there a big difference ?

[camero]

1. Semantics

A totalitarian is a totalitarian no matter which label you put on him.

[mitchum]

2. Vidal very carefully chose the term "crypto-Nazi" because...

he knew that it would get a rise out of his fellow WWII veteran. Buckley IS smart, but Vidal is smarter.

[Journeyman]

3. National Socialism was not a fascist state. . .

but was instead a totalitarian regime. Hitler's ambitions were far greater than the narrow confines that fascist nationalism would permit, and throughout his life he held a contemptuous view toward the shortcomings of his fascist allies.

National Socialism was always international in its scope and disdained the superficiality it perceived in fascism. In his diaries, Joseph Goebbels was often critical of fascism. Fascism, he wrote, "is nothing like National Socialism. While the latter goes deep down to the roots, Fascism is only a superficial thing." Elsewhere, Heinrich Himmler expressed similar disdain for fascism in a speech to SS Officers in 1943, when he described the two as "fundamentally different things. . . there is absolutely no comparison between Fascism and National Socialism as spiritual, ideological movements."

So the short answer to your question is yes, there are many fundamental differences between fascism and National Socialism, the terms fascism and totalitarianism are not interchangeable, and it is hardly a question of mere semantics when one considers these differences but is instead a subject of extensive study.