I love how confidently ignorant someone can be. It’s not my definition of fascism, it’s the definition of fascism.
I am presuming that you were referring to this:
“Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce.”
This redefinition would logically imply that fascism existed even before Benito Mussolini was born; Napoleon Bonaparte would qualify as ‘fascist’ under this oversimplification. In reality, ‘the’ definition of fascism does not exist, and most scholars are well aware of that. Quoting Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism, page 8:
Though many more interpretations and definitions were to be proposed over the years, even now, more than eighty years after the San Sepolcro meeting, none of them has obtained universal assent as a completely satisfactory account of a phenomenon that seemed to come from nowhere, took on multiple and varied forms, exalted hatred and violence in the name of national prowess, and yet managed to appeal to prestigious and well-educated statesmen, entrepreneurs, professionals, artists, and intellectuals.
In both the Kingdom of Italy and the late Weimar Republic, fascism was a predominantly petty bourgeois movement which the haute bourgeoisie—the ruling class—promoted to institutional power to forcibly eliminate the concessions to the lower classes, thereby preserving capitalism. No such development happened in the immediate foremaths of either the RSFSR or the People’s Republic of China.
As for the rest of your essay, I am not going to exhaust myself writing a response since I don’t see the point, but I do find it telling how there was not even an attempt to explain why the Bolsheviks ‘craved power’, which was apparently their motive for everything that they did. Why did the Bolsheviks ‘hijack a popular revolution’? For power. Why did the Bolsheviks instigate Red Terror? For power. Why did they rapidly industrialize? For power. Why did they make people dependent on the party? For power. Why did they wage class war on the kulaks? For power. Why did Beijing launch ‘murderous witch-hunts against supposed ‘reactionaries’ who had the wrong haircut, wore makeup, happened to own a cat, write anti-authoritarian literature or have furniture in their home’? For power, presumably.
As I said, it isn’t the only problem that I have with the essay—which I am not going to waste my time addressing in depth—but how anybody can find such shallow ‘analysis’ satisfying is something that I’ll never understand. I detest fascism but even I would not reduce all of its developments and atrocities to power hunger.
I am presuming that you were referring to this:
This redefinition would logically imply that fascism existed even before Benito Mussolini was born; Napoleon Bonaparte would qualify as ‘fascist’ under this oversimplification. In reality, ‘the’ definition of fascism does not exist, and most scholars are well aware of that. Quoting Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism, page 8:
In both the Kingdom of Italy and the late Weimar Republic, fascism was a predominantly petty bourgeois movement which the haute bourgeoisie—the ruling class—promoted to institutional power to forcibly eliminate the concessions to the lower classes, thereby preserving capitalism. No such development happened in the immediate foremaths of either the RSFSR or the People’s Republic of China.
As for the rest of your essay, I am not going to exhaust myself writing a response since I don’t see the point, but I do find it telling how there was not even an attempt to explain why the Bolsheviks ‘craved power’, which was apparently their motive for everything that they did. Why did the Bolsheviks ‘hijack a popular revolution’? For power. Why did the Bolsheviks instigate Red Terror? For power. Why did they rapidly industrialize? For power. Why did they make people dependent on the party? For power. Why did they wage class war on the kulaks? For power. Why did Beijing launch ‘murderous witch-hunts against supposed ‘reactionaries’ who had the wrong haircut, wore makeup, happened to own a cat, write anti-authoritarian literature or have furniture in their home’? For power, presumably.
As I said, it isn’t the only problem that I have with the essay—which I am not going to waste my time addressing in depth—but how anybody can find such shallow ‘analysis’ satisfying is something that I’ll never understand. I detest fascism but even I would not reduce all of its developments and atrocities to power hunger.