Reading the relations between the German Reich and the Kingdom of Italy, I’m almost awestruck by the sheer amount of crossover and the raging hard‐ons that the German and Italian Fascists had for each other (with a few, ultimately inconsequential interruptions). For example:
Adolf Schicklgruber was a Mussolini fanboy whose party received some modest donations from him, their governments became important economic partners (most of the time), their militaries swapped technologies and directly collaborated in Spain, Yugoslavia, Greece, Egypt, the Eastern Front, and elsewhere, the Reich rescued Mussolini in 1943 and helped establish a collaborationist state in northern Italy, and
That should be unsurprising:
‘Indeed, the German fascination with Italian rule in Africa can hardly be overestimated. As recent research has shown, such enthusiasm was not limited to a few technical experts or fringe right-wing parties, but rather permeated broader segments of German postcolonial society, including particular conservative and nationalist circles. This interest must be understood against the backdrop of a specific colonial culture that gained ground in Germany after 1919. Probably as a consequence of the traumatic loss of its overseas territories, this culture was not nationally defined, but was drawn from a European reservoir. Indeed, insofar as German cultural elites were engaged with colonial issues after 1918, their inspiration came from France, Britain, and, to an increasing degree, Italy.’
(Source.)
Italian Fascism would be several dozen times more logical as the natural analogue to German Fascism than either of them would be to socialism in one country. But no, half of the time when somebody brings up one they have to bring up the other too, and G‐d forbid anybody (other than maybe WHATABOUTISTS!!!) bring up British colonialism at all. Boring.
Anyway, I could exhaust myself (and have) talking about how the repetitive comparisons between German Fascism and socialism in one country are themselves crap, but that’s a bit of another discussion and hopefully one that you’ve already visited. I just want to study in peace without seeing this meme over and over again.
As an addendum to that comparison, I also find it incredibly frustrating (and yet equally effective) that naziism and fascism are represented as extremely racist ideologies and not extremely classist and capitalist ideologies. Of course this serves the capitalist class very well, and works in tandem with anti-communist horseshoe theory to both delegitimize communism and obfuscate the true nature of fascism.
Every racist is also classist, so they fit right in with the other classists.
I’d even go to say that every classist is also a racist, because they really don’t care as long as they are above someone else.
To me it’s really just about hierarchy, whichever way it is formed. Fascism gains sympathy from racists, classists, monarchists, sexists, homophobes, and all flavors of bigots because they view it as a force against the “undeserved” people who embarrass the in-group. It’s all the flavors of Idealism trying to exercise the ideal against the real world.
I don’t disagree with that. I meant those terms more in the commonly understood way. Classism is very rarely discussed in modern western society, while racism is. Classism is rarely discussed while sexism is. The concepts are kept separate and classism is all but hidden for a purpose, just as the underpinnings of fascism are.
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I may be falling into a similar thought trap, but if historians want to draw comparisons between fascism and an ostensible “left” movement they should turn their gaze from Marxism-Leninism to anarchism, particularly anarcho-syndicalism, egoist anarchism, individualist anarchism, post-left anarchism, etc. Especially any “anarchism” that bases its ideological foundation exclusively on concepts based within the field of Western philosophy while eschewing any other fields.
There is nowhere near enough writing on it done to draw definitive conclusions inextricably tying the two together, but from my own research I can see the threads connecting the two. George Sorel, Sorelianism, syndicalism generally, Bakunin, Proudhon, Max Stirner… all influenced many fascist thinkers greatly. Anarchism takes much from nihilism, nihilism takes much from anarchism, and fascism takes much from nihilism in this quasi-ideologically-incestuous relationship. Mussolini was raised by Bakuninites. Bakunin himself holds some responsibility for the popularity of the “Jewish bankers” myth that is integral to modern fascist discourse. Proudhon was pro-slavery, virulently antisemitic and anti-woman. CNT officials who held government positions during the Second Republic of Spain were instrumental in outlawing “communist propaganda”. They destroyed the popular front, attempted to systematically dismantle any relationship Republican Spain had with the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, and coup’d the only government basically keeping the Nationalists from seizing all of Spain before murdering all the communists opposed to the coup. They wantonly murdered and raped nuns and priests – there is no coincidence in that anarchism and fascism are both ideologies with a penchant for revanchism/revenge fantasies and violence fetishism with a focus on political terrorism. The much loved Makhnovchyna (“Free Territory”) was controlled by a clique of warlords who stole rations from the peasantry, killed Jews and communists, and then claimed to be “liberating” them, just as Nazi Germany “liberated” nations during their imperial conquest.
There are more examples but I’m getting rambly. If mods or readers feel like I’m being too infighty or sectarian I understand. This is just something that’s been on my mind recently that I feel warrants further study in the fight to correct and rectify historical and modern socialist ideals, and I find the connections interesting.
You can also find this occurring in modern anarchist and anarchist-adjacent thought. The most prominent anarchists like Nick Land, Murray Bookchin, Bob Black and others adopted ideas of extreme “accelerationism”, “post-leftism”, and uniting with far-right radicals (“libertarians”, Randite Objectivists) against “authoritarians”, communists and capitalists both included. Eco-fascism and eco-anarchism/anarcho-primitivism is an incestuous ideological pit of many of the same thinkers. You can also find connections in art and spiritualism. The avant-garde and futurist movements were the breeding ground of many anarchists and many fascists who often knew each other early in their careers. Like I said, many more examples.
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I feel like I could have handled this better, rather than snapping at you and freezing this topic for a month, so this time I’ll try to respectfully explain why this is not a good post:
First of all, George Sorel was an ex‐socialist, who (briefly) flirted with various socialist concepts, including scientific socialism, before declaring socialism to be dead. So this is a weak link between anarchism and fascism.
Second, you haven’t shown how Proudhon, Bakunin, and Stirner influenced fascist thinkers greatly. Mussolini, like Sorel, may have had significant contact with anarchists (and scientific socialists), but he was also an ex‐socialist, so this is not a strong link either. Italian Fascism in particular didn’t turn unambiguously antisemitic until the late 1930s, when German Fascism’s influence overwhelmed its Italian equivalent, and the German Fascists banned Bakunin’s works.
You showed a bunch of possible similarities, which is hardly sufficient to show a strong link between anarchism and fascism. Fascism didn’t need the influence of a few antisemitic anarchists to create a metaphorical sponge to soak up the worst of capitalism’s consequences. The influence that anarchists had on fascism was (at best) tiny, especially in comparison to the influence that the haute‐bourgeoisie and petite‐bourgeoisie had, and the bourgeois state’s track record with anarchism—an anti‐state philosophy—isn’t exactly what I would call cordial.
I could get into how you are oversimplifying both the Makhnovshchina and the CNT, but that’s another topic entirely, and to be honest I’d rather spend my time on something else anyway.
I don’t like to compliment myself, but this is a pretty good topic, because it needs to be said that the relations between German and Italian Fascism were far more significant and substantial than either one had between socialism in one country (in fact, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Schicklgruber met together in person more than any of the Allied leaders did!), and yet too many people overlook or gloss over those and instead prefer to focus on whatever superficial similarities and any possible links that they can find between German Fascism and Bolshevism. I have…mixed feelings regarding the Stalin administration, and even I find the constant comparisons between his government and Schicklgruber’s shallow, tiresome and completely unnecessary.
So being so excited to talk about this for the first time, and seeing the positive feedback, it was frustrating for me to see somebody derail the topic, especially into the same anarchist bashing that I see on Lemmygrad regularly. I feel like maybe I should be the one apologizing since my response to you and how I retaliated by freezing the thread were both somewhat immature, but I hope that you understand now why I was so irritated. Don’t think that there was a grudge between us; trust me when I say that I’ve had to deal with far worse than this. I have respect for you.
I respect you and regret the approach I used as well. I do not recall exactly how I was feeling at the time of writing, but I’m certain some anarchist had pissed me off around the same time 😅 I will say that I meant only to indicate at my then-desire to see one of those ‘comparative analyses’, so often weaponized against MLs, done in pursuit of discerning potential connections between fascist and anarchist/adjacent thinkers, especially beyond the basics of Bakunin’s antisemitism etc.
I would love to read more about this too. Especially the terrorism / revenge fantasy stuff.
Oh man… thank you so much for ruining my thread.
The only thing missing was a claim that Leon Trotsky invented neoconservatism. If you had included that, we’d be golden.
