If you think fascism is unique or different from capitalism… Why? What unique differences to capitalism do you see in it?

Fascism is not unique or different from capitalism. It is capitalism converted into a format that allows the highest level of extreme violence to be carried out against its enemies. It occurs when capitalists feel threatened by socialists, at which point it gains their monetary support, media and backing from the bourgeoisie who recognise the need to use ultra-violence to exterminate the revolutionary threat to their existence from the growing red within society. It is not a separate or unique thing to capitalism. It is still capitalism. It is capitalism protecting itself.

We only need to look at the places where fascism was not defeated to see proof of this. The fascists won in Spain and in Chile, they were not defeated like they were in Italy or Germany. What happened there? Did fascism ever become anything unique? No it did not. The fascists maintained and even increased capitalism, the term “privatisation” comes from Hitler himself. Over time in the countries where fascism won, once they defeated the left, exterminated them and their leadership, rendered them inert and no longer a threat to their bourgeoisie, these countries simply morphed back into liberalism which is a more efficient form of exploitation and extraction. Once the ultra violence was no longer required they morph back into “friendly” versions.

You’ve probably realised yourself that liberal definitions of fascism always fail to be very good or definitive because fascism comes in different styles depending on the nation it finds itself within. This is because the details of fascism are not the point, the ultra-violence that fascism enables is the point. Everything else is irrelevant and can differ from country to country to country, it will be whatever it needs to be to succeed, but it will always have 2 things - the ability to perform ultra-violence to its enemies, and its biggest enemy is socialists. These 2 things are because killing the left is the goal, because it exists as a reaction to us. We call them reactionaries for a reason.

This is the only definition of fascism that you will find accurately applies to every version of it, no matter where it appears. The liberal definitions fail because they do not want to admit that the problem creating fascism is that it is capitalism defending itself from socialists.

Yeah, it’s reductive. But they really are pretty similar.

Violence against “undesirables” is shared. In fascism it’s whatever minority they decided is the worst one this decade, in capitalism it’s the poorest/homeless people who just happen to be mostly that minority.

Privatization of public goods is completely shared. All of history’s fascist governments privatized everything as much as neoliberals do.

The warrior death cult mythology that fascists like to build for themselves is also baked into capitalist pop culture. Action movies are loaded with the shit.

So you can see where people are coming from when they say they’re the same. But I’d also say that the liberal obsession with rules does separate them from fascists. They might both want homeless people to die in the street, but the liberals won’t go do it themselves, because that’d be breaking the rules. A fascist government wouldn’t bother with a legal process, they’d find some aspiring murderers and tell them they wont be arrested for it.

I wrote out a big explainer thing for you but Lemmy ate my comment so here’s the simplified version

I don’t really like the meme because it’s reductionist imo. Fascism is a form of capitalism that comes about in times of crisis to protect capitalism from emerging working class anti-capitalist movements that have become more popular thanks to worsening conditions (that’s why the poem goes “first they came for the communists, but I said nothing because I wasn’t a communist”) - essentially fascists are the white blood cells of capitalism’s auto immune system.

So what we consider “normal” capitalism (in Marxist terms this is called either bourgeois democracy, liberal democracy or bourgeois liberal democracy usually interchangeably (in Marxist terms liberal means someone who supports capitalism but isn’t necessarily a capitalist / bourgeois themselves and isn’t a fascist, at least not currently)) has the potential to turn into fascism when the going gets tough and it looks like socialist movements are gaining power because of that.

So liberal democracy =/= fascism, but both liberal democracy and fascism are forms of capitalism and liberal democracy can potentially turn into fascism under the right conditions.

The first chapter of ‘Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism’ gives a more in depth explanation of how this works (it’s only about 20 pages or so and it’s well written so it shouldn’t be too hard a read).

Fascism is, and always has been, a ruling class response to capitalism in crisis. It directs the working class’ anger at worsening conditions toward convenient targets to keep capitalism going a little longer.