u/CosmicGunman - originally from r/GenZhou
The usage of quote “Liberalism is the Moderate wing of Fascism” is more to outline that Liberalism enables fascism. I only got the concept when recent events with Ukraine and Western coverage, and statements from parties unfolded.

In the context that the quote presents itself today:

2. Liberalism enables and creates apologia for Fascism (See Western support of Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian Neo-Nazis against Russians).
3. Liberalism enables and creates apologia for Imperialism (See Western support of U.S-Anglo and/or NATO invasions/coups from Iraq to Lybia to Chile).

The quote isn’t to show that Liberalism is literally Fascism, but rather Fascism can embed itself within a Liberal order, and so by enabling its existence, Liberalism can cultivate the growth of Fascist movements until those movements mature, and try to create a counter-order to the current liberal “rules-based global order”.

Liberals don’t care, because they are able to use those Fascist movements to suppress or eliminate Progressive movements.

u/BobbyCostner - originally from r/GenZhou
The problem with using Italy and Germany as examples of Facism is they were operating their economy leading up and during WW2. A war economy is very different to an everyday one. The Western ones certainly were. I think long term they would not have operated with everything state owned.

u/corporatebeefstew - originally from r/GenZhou
The point is though that throughout history Liberals end up on the side of fascists. Mussolini only rose to power because of help from the Liberal Party. Liberalism keeps the gate open for Fascism.

u/FerrisTriangle - originally from r/GenZhou
I’ll take a stab at this one.

The reason why liberalism and fascism are so often equated is that the contradictions inherent to the organizing principles of liberalism are what lead to fascism. It’s a cause and effect relationship.

The end result of Free Market Competition, for example, is that eventually winners and losers emerge on the market. The losers go out of business, and the winners get to capture a larger market share, and get to concentrate more wealth and more power into fewer and fewer hands.

Since liberalism asserts the necessity of a government that protects and enshrines private property rights as a natural and inalienable right, then as these contradictions progress the end result will always be ever increasing levels of oligarchy and corporate domination over public life. Whether or not early liberal philosophers had the foresight to realize that this would be the end state of the organizing principles they crafted isn’t really relevant to me when evaluating liberalism. The end result is the same regardless of intent. Whether or not they are equivalent philosophies, they undeniably share a cause and effect relationship. As a result, anyone who is opposed to the horrors of fascism must necessarily oppose liberalism as fiercely as they oppose fascism.

u/roosterkun - originally from r/GenZhou
Lot of good points here already but I also think that “scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds” refers to the fact that a significant contingent of liberals have fascist ideals and are simply afraid to associate with them because of the historical context surrounding fascism. It’s much the same reason a lot of new anarchists are hesitant to identify with Marxism-Leninism - the horrors they’ve heard about Stalin must be true, so that must mean that ML is flawed as an ideology.

Every tech bro that worships Elon Musk, every suburban white woman that treats The View as gospel, every “Disney adult” - these people are allowing their worldview to revolve around the corporate hegemony. They may fetishize “small business” and they probably don’t harbor any genuine hatred for minorities, but if the political path of least resistance ended in fascism they wouldn’t even recognize it as it happened around them.

From an even broader standpoint, that’s the natural endpoint for classical liberalism. The “free market”, in practice, just means the market becomes dominated by its most savvy players. Corporations buy one another to grow in size and influence until the free market has eroded entirely. Meanwhile, politicans develop a relationship with the players in this corporate game. As that relationship becomes more symbiotic, society at large takes on more and more obvious characteristics of fascism.

u/Elektribe - originally from r/GenZhou

Fascism as an ideology is inherently ANTI-liberalism and ANTI-democracy,

Fascism isn’t an actual coherent ideology, individual fascists may develop something akin to one but again incoherent and contradictory. Lkkewise, capitalism IS fundamentally anti-democracy. Fascism is anti-worker bigotry that arises from campaigns to push out class consciousness and workers unionizing with the contradictions of capitalism squeezing. Fascism is NOT anti-liberalism, it is pro-liberalism. All fascists are funded and supported and driven predominantly by a multitude of capitalist sources for profit and material or tactical gains.

Fascists were clearly opposed to the Laissez-faire capitalism advocated for by todays US Conservatives and Libertarians.

No one is. Every capitalist on the planet calls for laisez-faire economics while simultaneously doing everything against it. This is like promoting meritocracy and individualism, which are both against any actual merit or individuality. Similar for democracy, as capitalism is functionally and ideologically anti-democratic.

No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State.

Fascists historically have no problems with being outside the state, likewise, the state is the organ of the ruling class - capitalists. Fascists are not a class relation

we can all agree that Fascist has been obscenely overused as an insult to the point of meaning absolutely nothing today.

I can’t. It hasn’t been used nearly enough or harsh. I see people constantly giving a pass to fascists and fascism leading up to anti-worker false consciousness all the time because nothing is ever fascist - even the things which are literally fucking fascist. We should all be angrier and harsher about the apologetics for fascism if anything. People have been supporting nazis and no ones gives a flying fuck. Because liberal fascists are throwing out garbage revisionism and apologetica and disinformation and false histories.

u/High_Speed_Idiot - originally from r/GenZhou
My thing with taking the fascists at their word is they’re either in on the grift or themselves manipulated/taken advantage of by capital and so their very idealist ideology, outside of aesthetic trappings, is not really what is going on under the hood of any fascist state. You point out that Italy had a large amount of industry under state control but as others pointed out that was in the lead up to war time where they also were suffering from the depression - originally they lead the world in privatization, same as nazi germany. I think its kind of similar to how the proponents of crypto currencies spin (and many likely fully believe in) these lies about decentralized currency giving power to the people and ending the tyranny of fiat currency and etc etc but we can all see in reality its just a speculative asset that largely enriches those who already have capital.

I agree with you that we really shouldn’t be calling liberals or conservatives fascists, or at the least not calling working class people who’ve duped into siding with liberal/conservative politicians. But at the same time political projects sponsored/enacted by the bourgeoisie like neoliberalism or libertarianism are very fascist in a materialist sense though they lack the classical fascist ideology that was present in European fascist movements - this I think is largely because fascism is unique to the countries/cultures in which it arises. In the US for example there was never anywhere near the amount of socialist threat to capital that Europe had, likewise US workers (especially after all the red scares, mccarthyist purges and the cold war conditioning) do not identify with the sort of somewhat collectivist ethos of national syndicalism/corporatism, and certainly not any kind of “national socialism” - this was effective in the time and place that it happened because of the conditions of that time and place.

We see that neoliberalism achieves many of the material goals of fascism: Crushing of worker power/rights/labor protections, privatization, setting up the state/economy for the benefit of the haut bourgeoisie’s profit accumulation, mass imprisonment/slave labor, brazen imperialism, etc. but it doesn’t require the same early-mid 20th century collectivist ideological social control nor do we see the open dictatorship and open discarding of liberal democracy - instead, socially, we see the rise of hyper-individualism and the maintenance of the façade of liberal democracy that is very obviously not democratic in the least to anyone who takes the time to peek behind the curtain.

The ideology of libertarianism even more so than neoliberalism (which is more of a explicit political project than a “pure ideology” sniff) seems to be the modern echo of fascist ideology in that it’s purely idealist and more of a grift to convince followers to believe in it than it is any functional way to give people the freedoms it promises. Almost like the OG fascist ‘rebirth myth’ it harkens back to the glory of a supposedly better past - but instead of the recreation of Rome, or a tenuous claim to an ancient ‘master race’ ascending to its rightful place as ruler of other races, libertarianism glorifies the rugged individualism, self reliance, entrepreneurial spirit and “bootstraps for everyone” US mythology of the classical liberal period, before the ‘evil statists’ came in with their ‘big government’ and ‘took our freedom’. Of course any cursory study of the history of capitalism shows this entire concept to be entirely silly, the ‘statists’ have always been the capitalists, we’re all aware of the marxist conception of the state and its history so I don’t need to get into that here, but the point stands that libertarianism cannot be put into practice any more than the ‘class collaboration’ of classical fascism could result in anything but the continued rule of the bourgeoisie. It’s purely a grift, an undeliverable promise that sounds amazing to the masses that exist here and now, just as the original fascists promises sounded good to the people then and there.

So overall I do agree that we shouldn’t just call liberals/conservatives fascists, but at the same time we should absolutely be aware just how much these bourgeoisie sponsored movements like neoliberalism and libertarianism are a new type of fascism that is unique to the conditions and prevailing attitudes of the era that we live in.

At least that’s my take, would love to hear people’s thoughts.

u/MiakodaOK - originally from r/GenZhou
Do you have any sources on Germany and Italy persecuting liberals/conservatives? Because from what I read, most socialist leaders were killed but liberal/conservatives of Weimar were just banned from politics and had to lead different occupations.