I wonder if having taught people in High School that Fascism is a definite social system & not just like people being mean would have made a difference for modern discourse.

Mostly I think not—there’s a way that certain subjects (Fascism, the Holocaust, MLK, Racism, Civil Right’s, Activism, Supply & Demand) can only enter the discourse partially & in a motivated substance-less manner

Fascism IS:
A social, political (& economic) system
Corporatist
Militarist
Personalist
Authoritarian
Often anti-Semitic, racist &/or colonial
Anti-Communist
Sometimes @ first superficially anti-liberal, anti-conservative & anti-clerical, but this is always dropped once in power

Fascism was supported by:
Military personnel & soldiers
The Police
Middle class, petite bourgeoisie small business owners, tradespeople, professionals
Industrialists
Rentiers
Large landowners
Sometimes the Church
Anti-Communists

Fascism was NOT supported by:
Laborers
Small peasants
Most lumpen
Communists
Anarchists
Jews
The Disabled
Jehovah’s Witnesses & pacifist Christians
Minorities & immigrants

Fascism is NOT ‘left wing’:

The term privatization was coined for Hitler & Mussolini’s mass sell off of assets

It suppressed & banned labor unions, communists, anarchists, pacifists & Jewish militants

The Stock market boomed, and while employment rose, incomes fell

Fascism is NOT ‘left wing’ (cont.):

Industrialists, rentiers, aristocrats, monarchists & conservatives were at all the highest points of government

The ‘left wing’ of the German/Italian fascist parties (still fash scum tho, mind you) were purged in several events

Fascism is NOT ‘left wing’ (cont.):

While Salazar, Franco, Peron, the Integralists & Showa practiced varying degrees of ‘national syndicalism’, they always kept private property & liberalized their economy at the 1st sign of trouble.

Nationalizations were war driven.

Fascism is BOTH hyper modernist & revanchist:
It celebrate speed, power, industrial might & violence AND

A return to a mythical past before a fall, to “make Spain/Italy/Germany great again” (a phrasing they actually used, btw)

It mixes spiritual esotericism & techno-optimism

Fascism did NOT emerge all at once:

Mussolini & Hitler both started off as nobodies running a group of nobodies. It took them almost 15 years each to come to power and it happened slowly, often by chance in contingent ways that could have happened otherwise.

Fascism did NOT emerge all at once (cont.):

Franco adopted fascism after the fact, his main concern was military revanchism, and he was cited as being a person “lacking all virtues but ambition”

Salazar actually killed his fascist party equivalents b4 later re-appropriating it

Fascism did NOT emerge all at once (cont.):

Japan’s descent into fascism took 30 years, and much of it was convergent evolution due to alliance w the Axis, conflict with US, and the structure of its colonial empire.

Peron & Integralism are 2nd wave fash-adjacents w a diff path

Fascism did NOT emerge all at once (cont.):

While persecution of Jews, Roma, communists, the disabled, etc began right away, “The Holocaust” took time to materialize & wasn’t planned from the beginning. It was, however, carried out with unseen ruthless efficiency once in place.

Fascism was supported by allies in the US, UK etc & resisted by communists/anarchists/militant socialists (though not social democrats):

The US had Ford, Coughlin, & others who funneled money, resources & legitimacy to Hitler, Franco & Mussolini despite it being illegal

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

Aristocrats & petite boug in the UK were very supportive of fascism (see Mosley, Daily Mail etc), many wanted to ally with Hitler AGAINST the USSR

US, France etc all had isolationist & pro-Nazi/pro-fascist bunds, associations etc

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

US/UK/France not only didn’t support the Spanish Republic but banned those who did

Upon returning, Lincoln Brigaders were repressed as “prematurely anti/fascist” often arrested

Roosevelt later said this was among his biggest regrets

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

Allies capitulated—for example, symbolically to the Olympics in Berlin

But also Roosevelt & others repressed anti-Nazi activists in the US & apologized to Hitler for their existence. UK repressed anti fascist activists & militants.

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

Hitler was appointed not elected chancellor as it was assumed he was jk about the fascism part (Narrator: he wasn’t)

Naysayers, such as commies, anarchs & Jews were criticized by liberal & soc dem press & then were repressed

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

The leader of the social democrats brought a cyanide pill w him to the vote on the nat sec law & was horrified at his party who gleefully voted Hitler’s security law in while the Nazis laughed. So began the Holocaust/Naziism as we know it

Fascism was supported by allies (cont.):

The USSR REPEATEDLY asked UK, France, other Euros etc to help hem in the Nazis ahead of time; they repeatedly refused.

After the allies refused to help the Spanish Republic, Stalin initiated the infamously tragic Molotov-Ribbentrop.

FASCISM IS NOT:

Solely or exclusively about the suppression of free speech. EVERY SINGLE STATE IN HUMAN HISTORY HAS REGULATED POLITICAL SPEECH WITH COERCION NO EXCEPTIONS BOTH DE JURE & DE FACTO.

WHAT’S MORE FREE SPEECH DOESNT GUARANTEE A PLATFORM ONLY FREEDOM FROM CENSORSHIP!

Fascism is NOT solely or exclusively defined by the authoritarian use of force, repression of enemies & use of state power, as AGAIN. EVERY. SINGLE. STATE. IN. HISTORY. DOES. THIS.

STATES ARE LITERALLY DEFINED AS THE ORGANIZED USE OF FORCE IN A GEOGRAPHIC TERRITORY!!!!!

Fascist ideology is prejudiced, biased & discriminatory, but their policy is RACIAL. In other words—fascists attempt to reproduce, enforce or create racial categories once they are in power. Fascist racism is revanchist but it is also declarative & performative, not descriptive.

Bc Jews are now considered white in Anglo-Europe many fascists have switched focus to Muslims (esp in Europe) & immigrants & poc—this is why many right wing Zionists feel comfortable sharing spaces with neo-Fascists like Trump or Bannon. Do NOT be deceived by this.

That said, the standard Nazi position is still anti-Semitism but precisely bc Jews are considered white, their first task is to racialize them. This is why Nazi anti-Semitism is of a different character than their white supremacy & anti-Black racism, tho they’re obvi connected

While Naziism does not exhaust fascism, it is, in the modern day, the main lingering inspiration.

Altho technically not fascists, Oath Keepers, SovCits, neo-Confeds, alt-lites, Hindu/Japanese & other nationalists—civic AND ethno—are ALL fascist allies & part of their dark army.

Debating fascists does not stop them nor does open & loving engagement, at least when they’re organized. All it does is legitimate them, give them a platform, and allow them space to organize, advocate, terrorize, collaborate and form alliances. This is key when they’re ascendant

Nazis and Fascists have ALWAYS claimed to have been victims & censored. This tactic goes back to the 20s! They do this to gain sympathy & appear rebellious. It is a tired hacky trick. Hitler & Mussolini BOTH used it when rising to power.

Militant Anti-Fascism Works:
It worked in the UK on Mosley & in other European countries

It helped slow its rise in Italy & Germany tho it was betrayed by liberals etc

It has worked in the post-war context in Europe & the Americas

Partisans played a key role in WWII everywhere

Militant Anti-Fascism Works (cont.):

Pacifist towns in Spain were destroyed by Franco immediately, while originally militant ones survived until the final day.

Militant anti Fascism would probably have won in Spain if the US/UK/France didn’t abandon the Republic & aid Franco.

Militant Anti-Fascism Works (cont.):

Suffice it to say, conversation did not beat the Nazis, the USSR & heroic partisans did with a little help from the UK, US & France.

Pacifists like Scholl were heroic but unsuccessful. Pacifists who aided escape were heroes but not warriors.

Militant anti-Fascism works:

When Nazis & Fascists are not organized, when they’re disconnected, alienated, and mostly a ‘scene’ rather than a group, ‘Hope not Hate’ & conversation can work (slowly) BUT THEN & ONLY THEN NEVER WHEN THEYRE ON THE RISE AS THEY ARE SOCIALLY ENFORCED

Militant Anti-Fascism works:
De-Nazification proceeded in Europe with laws banning Naziism, that said, it happened quicker in the GDR where Nazis were suppressed that the FGR/Italy where fascists were re-promoted to previous positions of power—this made De Nazification take yrs

Militant Anti Fascism works:
While, by and large, laws banning Naziism & Holocaust denial work when enforced, the one key issue is that they’re often either enforced lightly/differentially or are used against left wing groups, this has happened all over Europe & is cautionary

Fascist Propaganda is incoherent but effective:
Fascists do not rely on facts, and often not even on semantically coherent ideas—they rely on emotional appeals, implied presuppositions, statements of declarative intent, confusion, distrust & pre existing propaganda

Fascism often appeals to mass sentiment at first to build a base but then drops it:
Fascists often take superficial stands against usury, rentiers, exploitation of labor, the Church, the monarchy, Aristocrats & conservatives & for healthcare, education & employment. BUT!!!!!!!!!

THERE IS NO SINGLE INSTANCE WHERE THESE WERE EITHER NOT DROPPED IMMEDIATELY ONCE THEY WERE CLOSE TO POWER OR TOTALLY ABANDONED IN PRACTICE ONCE ACTUALLY IN POWER. THEY ARE A PLOY NOT A REAL APPEAL. THE BASE OF FASCISM ALWAYS USES THE MASSES BUT IS CONSTITUTED BY THE MIDDLE CLASS.

FASCIST. DID. NOT. MAKE. THE. TRAINS. RUN. ON. TIME.

This is a revisionist myth that began in the 70s & it is frankly a form of apologia & obfuscatory anti semitism.

The only time trains ran on time in Italy & Spain was when the workers took them over and ran them themselves!!

Fascism is not sui genesis or unprecedented:

Hitler took legal inspiration from US Jim Crow.

Hitler took policy inspiration from eugenics & indigenous genocide in the US.

Mussolini gassed Ethiopians while the world looked on.

Fash was theorized in France, UK, etc

Previous forms of nationalism were somewhat self limiting bc alliances can only work in war, otherwise, expansionism & militarism will lead to war. MODERN NATIONALISTS HAVE LEARNED FROM THIS WHICH IS WHY THEY PROPOSE A FORM OF GLOBAL POLY-NATIONALISM. THIS IS FUCKING SCARY.

VETERANS, MILITARY, POLICE & NATSEC, FROM US 2 UK 2 INDIA 2 KOREA 2 JAPAN 2 FRANCE 2 SOUTH AFRICA 2 CHILE 2 ARGENTINA 2 AUSTRALIA 2 ISRAEL 2 GREECE 2 UKRAINE 2 ITALY 2 SERBIA 2 HUNGARY 2 TURKEY ARE THE LARGEST SOURCE OF NATIONALISTS, FASCISTS, WHITE SUPREMACISTS & NAZIS 2DAY

Fascists, nationalists & Nazis are either a visible problem, on the rise or in power in:
The US
Canada
France
UK
Italy
Germany
France
Netherlands
Serbia
Hungary
Greece
Turkey
Israel
Ukraine
Japan
R. of Korea
India
Philippines
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
& MORE

ALMOST EVERY REACTIONARY NATIONALIST PERIOD IS AN INDEX OF A FAILED REVOLUTION

For the US this was 2007, Anti-Globalization, Occupy, Wisconsin, BLM etc

For Europe it’s the Eurocrisis & failure of SocDem

For post-Communist countries it’s obvious

That said, DO NOT OVER ESTIMATE THE OVERLAP OF THE POTENTIAL COMMUNIST/ANARCHIST/SOCIALIST/SOCDEM/MUTUALIST OR OTHER LEFT BASE AND THAT OF FASCISM—THE OVERLAP IS SUPERFICIAL AND BASED OFF MADE UP ECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

The US & other media want to convince you to think:
a. in terms of income &
b. that middle income is the working class

NO!

Class is functional—who owns the land & capital; does one own a wage or profit or rent, is one a laborer or a criminal or a small business over etc

While some petite bourgeoisie go left—especially artists, academics, intellectuals, trades people & some professionals—most, especially small business owners or privileged trade workers are naturally conservative & ally with the capitalist class, as do managers, troops & cops!!!!

Yes some laborers & lumpen turn to fascism but by and large this isn’t the norm—the laboring & lumpen classes today are largely women, children, the disabled, poc, queer, neurodivergent, criminalized, undocumented & so on—not idealized buff white male factory workers!!

That said among white laborers in industry, services & agriculture that aren’t managers & do not receive inducements (full benefits, homeownership, stocks etc), you’ll be hard to pressed to find that much support for fascism despite what the media tells you.

The biggest exceptions to these are truly rural where people in absolutely destroyed post industrial communities & white people radicalized in prison—that said, these are also the people most receptive to the Hope Not Hate style deprogramming & this has been studied.

for example studies of skin heads & people from laboring class neighborhoods in the US & UK are often in it for the ‘culture’ & ‘the scene’, they are groomed, but they often grow out of it or are convinced out of it, as it is instrumental & cultural not political THAT SAID

While de programming & resources for these people for those who want to under take this project is noble, it is not the job of anti fascists generally whose main goal is preventing the rise of fascism. In that case, laborers or not, deceived or not, SELF DEFENSE TRUMPS PROPRIETY

The idea that troops & cops, who are usually from petite boug backgrounds & end up petite boug too, and who naturally support fascism are ‘workers’ & marginalized is part of the same wwc mythology. It is harmful to believe this if you’re a leftist. These are not our allies!

Cops, Troops, Managers & Homeowning Tradespeople/Professionals are effectively bourgeoisie, while nurses, teachers, many academics, social workers etc, while technically professionals, are sympathetic to the left. This is important for anti-fascism & leftism in general!!!

The reason the state promoted homeownership, a stock owning society, wealthy white trades people & homeownership/education for cops & troops was precisely to turn a laboring class population into one that owned capital & rents! This has been to proven to make ppl conservative.

Hell hath no fury like a middle class scorned! Once you take a group of white people, tell them they should run the world, own a house, have a business or investments or manage, and are special if troops or cops, you have create a monster, fascism waiting to happen!

The same pathologies of resentment generating the culture wars, MRAs/Incels/MGTOWs, red pills, alt right, alt light, PC war, campus bs, misogynist & racist violence, police violence, Trump, anti intellectualism etc are ALL THE SAME COMMON FORCES OF RESENTMENT AND POWER

People privileged along a vector—gender, class, income, military/leo service, race—who experience a decline in RELATIVE prestige experience it as rage & resentment. THIS IS THE BASIS FOR FASCISM JUST AS IT IS FOR MASS SHOOTINGS AND FOR POLICE VIOLENCE.

What’s more is that in the context of white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, extractivism, ecocide, economic/technological/demographic dislocation, war, etc, this is all laying the context for EXTERMINATIONISM IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIO ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE!!!!

Just as reactionary culture warriors are useful to neoliberals in their assault on the university, academia, science, the arts, healthcare, education, social services & for prisons, so too are they useful to neoliberals for setting the stage of containing future collapse backlash

They also serve another role: they are neoliberals way of suppressing anti-capitalism & anti-state forces, be they commies, anarchists or whatever, fascism disciplines the laboring class while also protecting private property & current status quo relations of power. win win !

What’s more corporatism is the policy of integrating privileged laborers, tradespeople, professionals etc into a covenant with industry, finance, land, government & capital, thus displacing antagonisms through dividing & conquering where it need b & allows command centric capital

Thus fascism serves neoliberalism/state capitalism by:

Conditioning exterminationism for collapse

Catalyzing the death of the public, social & cultural spheres

Constituting the new corporate state

Causing the repression & subversion of revolutionary & insurrectionary projects

What is called social democracy is really just progressive corporatism—as practiced by Roosevelt, Johnson, Bretton Woods Golden Era Europe, or Modern day Scandinavia is not socialism, it does not even resemble it!

Social Democracy works by integrating privileged workers, trades & professionals into the state & using rents generated in imperialism, resource extraction, white supremacy, patriarchy, finance & monopoly to fund benefits for the privileged workers

I used to mock the phrase “social democracy is the left hand of fascism” but suffice it to say, I have to come to see it that way. Social democracy combines political corporatism, electoral republicanism & imperialist extractivist bureaucratic financial monopoly capitalism

Social democracy collapsed when super rents from colonialism, extraction, finance, the rebuilding of Europe, racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, monopoly etc could no longer sustain the rentiers/capitalists AND the laborers/lumpen/affective laborers. It cannot rise again today.

As decolonization, communism, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, the rebuilding of Europe, the rise of competitors in the Global South & monetary conflict proceeded apace, a rentier revolt of Global North finance & OPEC/oil rentiers sabotaged the global economy.

Capitalists & the state had to choose between their pacifying compact with labor & PBs or rentier & they chose rentiers. It is no accident then that Neoliberalism, Multinational globalization, mass incarceration & perpetual professional war followed this !!

Prisons/police/surveillance/borders/natsec had the advantage of generating returns for capital, protecting the wealthy, buying off privileged PBs & generating rents through dispossession by accumulation. Social welfare generates no rents & it allows people to organize.

Perpetual professional armies were a free gift to capital in the arms & finance industries, a way to pacify & stabilize the economy, extract neo imperial super rents, maintain the US currency of reserve position & access oil, raw materials & logistical resources.

Neoliberalism via colonialism, the Cold War, globalization, multi lateral orgs, were sent out to break communist, anti imperialist & social democratic states. Meanwhile the so called “excess of democracy” had to be handled at home—so the drug war, war on terror, austerity etc

Fascism, it seems, may have been destroyed in its most virulent forms, but it was the winner of WWII, as its political economic logic was directly imported & then exported globally, albeit it in a more smoothly distributed & operating fashion.

Thus social democracy is really just fascism with a human face, and neoliberalism is the punitive & global solution to the failures of that project. The rise of forces of reaction, then, are not paradoxical any longer—they are the immune system of this entire configuration.

Fascism, nationalism & Naziism are the ‘objet petit a’ of neoliberalism to use an annoying locution—they are the logic of its indecipherable kernal, that which it cannot name publicly but also without which it cannot survive! Fascism is the white blood cells of a cancerous order.

Heck, fascism isn’t even just the white blood cells suppressing revolution, but also anti biotic (assisting in killing public space), its organs (maintains the structure) & its gametes—setting the stage for producing/reproducing a new order just in case of ecological collapse

Anyway, the point is: Punch Nazis.