okay bear with me here because this is going to be a really long post lol

fascism is an incredibly complicated ideology because throughout history its implementation and popular actors have been influenced more by historical factors than they by the actual ideology itself. it is incredibly complicated to even begin to dissect because the history is linked to the ideology itself in terms of discussion.because of this there really isn't a great example of what "fascism" means; virtually everyone to get near the term as a ruling class interpreted it idiosyncratically or were cross-influenced by others who basically forced the ideology in a certain direction.

to begin with, the original idea of fascism is itself distinct historically; there are basically a handful of distinct ideologies which originated the term which create confusion. Before getting into that, the first thing which is important to understand is there have always been two roots lineages of fascism; that of integral nationalism, or that which believes in counter-revolutionary theory, and that of revolutionary revolt. This confusing and highly distinct set of lineages sometimes crossed lines or cross-influenced each other despite being diametrically opposed philosophically, which is one reason much of the emerging fascist states of the 20th century were so ideologically scattered and nonsensical. At its core, the idea of fascism is relatively simple: the order at which the world works naturally is detrimental, and humans must disrupt natural order. The belief is that the full line of human history and lineage has essentially stagnated or been a mistake, and thus has resulted in a broken society. The idea is that ALL ideology and ALL politics and ALL systems resulting from such are intrinsically broken, and the purpose is to disrupt the order of such to re-create a nation which is fully distinct from the boundaries, ideas, politics, etc. of the old world. Especially post-industrialization and the state of the world in the 19th-20th century, you can see how this was increasingly appealing.

Fascists at their core reject the enlightenment and every derivative of such - this is why as I've mentioned in other threads the Dadaists were fascists. Absurdism & Nihilism are the core proponents of fascism; the ideology fundamentally cannot be understood without knowing this. I will get to the points about religion and culture in a bit. It's also incredibly important to note that there's a reason many of the people who eventually became fascists were originally anarchists or even loosely socialist. There is indeed semantically a common goal albeit not in practice, and there is actually a large overlap of anarchist theory with fascist theory - beyond the acknowledgement of nihilism, this is also historically because one of the two root lineages of Fascism in part stems from the French Revolution; many of the early fascists were Sorellians (and why Sorel is considered a proto-fascist), or even non-orthodox Marxists, and cited the same ideas as syndicalists and proto-anarchists. The reason fascists ideologically came to despise communism is because they believed it was simply a re-organization of capitalism; fascists do not believe in anything. They do not think there should be an economy for example. They do not believe in material society because they think material society only exists as a fabrication, and because society has dictacted such; thus they believe abolishing society they could restructure things under a means where material distinctions or class conflict simply does not exist at all.They believe all aspects of society is fabricated - as such much of the original absurdism that inspired fascist philosophy is ironically that which later can be seen in post-structuralism under a different lens and interpretation.

That is, that everything is interpreted, everything is detached, and just as everything is fabricated, everything can be re-fabricated with the right political tools and populism of the people. Fascists also hate the bourgeois because while they don't care about economics on an intrinsic level, they do not actually reject dialectics inherently; it's just that instead believe that dialectics only exist as a fabricated means of which if the bourgeois did not exist, the dialectic would also cease to exist because the bourgeois are the ones driving simultaneously the contradictions of culture (which they believe is of utmost importance) and hoarding the wealth of which determines culture to begin with. Fascists were of course, essentially idealistically utopian, and represented a flip coin side of a ultra-nihilistic post-structural (again, historically before post-structuralism, but still) anarchism where instead of believing the best means of dealing with this is a reversion to syndicalized tribes and anti-nation building, instead the best solution was to rebuild society under a means where contradictions simply did not exist and culture could thrive, since the belief was culture is the greatest apparatus of stability and the sole thing that keeps humans from delving into suicidal nihilism. There is no specific framework for fascism and no intrinsic political idealism; the core idea is simply "who gives a s*** if everything is fake, economics is fake, politics is fake, the government is fake, geopolitical relations are fake, the only thing that matters is the population being stable and our culture overcoming nihilism".

This is simultaneously why, as you can probably imagine, Fascism went into hundreds of incredibly distinct inconceivable directions - there is no again actual political belief, it is entirely obsessed with philosophy and carrying out philosophical ideals.Fascism can affirm anything which it thinks can achieve this goal; original fascists supported syndicalism because they thought a post-syndicalist union-based society would best achieve this goal. Some fascists supported the monarchy or religious totalitarianism for the reasons below. I also would add that there is a reason fascists did not care about race originally - it is because they rejected race as a post-enlightenment fabrication. In order to rebuild their utopian society, they believed identity should be defined by shared culture under the guise of nationalism; this can actually be seen in early italian fascist or french fascieu policy for example. You can also probably see how similarly the obsession with overcoming societal nihilism lead to the obsession with futurism.

Back to the original "two root lineages", this is basically what lead to the split of counter-revolutionary vs revolutionary theory. If you believe everything is fabricated, there are essentially only two logical end-goals:
1) If everything is meaningless, then the preservation of life as we know it is more important than anything, because with the acknowledgement of absurdism, we are subject to infinite change, and infinite change will disrupt life, because we can only place meaning ultimately in what we know. these are the types who flocked to integralism, monarchism, etc. - this lineage was supposed to have been discarded once the latter was created but the counter-revolutionary branch of the ideology kept it; the same way that Marxists would consider these people reactionary, actual early Fascists would too, albeit under a different word.
2) If everything is meaningless, we must abolish all that we know, and create a society which creates meaning. these are the types who overlapped often with emerging anarchist theory and were the dadaists. the influence here was way more broad - this even influenced non-fascists such as Salazar for example who thought the abolishment of all politics was the only way to best rule a country, and make decisions according to the people rather than according law or economics

now with that said, i have to note that the historical emergence of fascism was incredibly complicated. Nazi germany, which is the current touchstone for fascism, emerged out of a weird mixture of the above two lineages. This is largely because Nazi Germany was reactionary and took ideas from tons of inconsistent and unequivocal sources; the idea of Nazism was a synthesis of societal reactions essentially compressed together. The understand of marxists ideas of fascism is essentially nazism, despite Nazism not actually being a lineage of fascism - the origin of Nazism was a idiosyncratic mishmash of reactionary and counter-revolutionary ideas mixed with Volkisch Nationalism - something which actual original fascists would have abhorred. There are indeed overlaps which later happened historically and ideologically, but I'd note that this is because Nazism is not a real belief system. Almost every nazi philosopher disagreed. Spengler, Schmitt, Stapel, Strasser, Rosenberg, and even esoteric root philosophers like Evola and Weininger rarely overlapped and pushed and pulled in arbitrary directions. Were they a nationalist party seeking identitarian rebirth? A party espousing a resurrective spiritualism? Were they an economic means of upholding cultural virtue? Were they revolutionary? Anti-revolutionary? Atheistic? Spiritual? None of them would agree. But they became virtually the most powerful country in the Axis and their meaningelss policy came to dominate countries like Italy which had no choice but to bend to them - after all, how could a country that literally did not even believe in economics succeed? Meanwhile you can see how the influence of the above lineage 1 influenced someone like Franco.

sorry would write more but im a bit burnt out and this is like legit writing a full on dissertation because of how complicated of a topic this is might come back in a few days and finish writing it or turn it into a substack post or something

Hitler fought in the Bavarian People's Republic and Mussolini was a socialist once too. IMO fascism in the 1920s were people who understood capitalism was failing them but who were too spooked about race and ethnicity and religion to support an internationalist class struggle so they went to blaming foreigners Jews communists etc while taking a lot of the communist aesthetic and revolutionary rhetoric. This later got watered down a lot as more and more petite-bourgeois reactionaries joined the parties and basically drowned out any a lot of the socialist connections (see Strasserism and its decline).

The big irony of course is that fascism and big-time capitalists were always linked, whether in Italy or in Nazi Germany. Hitler only got into power through the support of German industrialists and the richest family in Germany, the Quandt family of BMW, got their big breakthrough in Nazi Germany along with countless other German billionaires. Ultimately they bargained that supporting the far-right would stop the far-left from coming into power and expropriating them. Fascism cannot be properly understood without seeing it as an antithesis to the rise of communism in the 1920s fueled by the success of the October Revolution.

Considering,

That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of s***or race;

That the producers can be free only when they are in possession of the means of production;

That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them

1. The individual form which has never existed in a general state and which is increasingly eliminated by industrial progress;
2. The collective form the material and intellectual elements of which are constituted by the very development of capitalist society;

Considering,

That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat - organized in a distinct political party;

That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation;

The French socialist workers, in adopting as the aim of their efforts the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to community of all the means of production, have decided, as a means of organization and struggle, to enter the elections with the following immediate demands:

...

I mentioned that as well, or at least hinted about it, in the above, it's not like I downplayed or didn't recognize that angle. It's still important to note the philosophical roots of it differ from the modern understood historical ones and that the ideology - even as a outright failed one - differs heavily from the flanderized definition under which it's not used as an arbitrary perjorative.
You're right that historically fascism and capitalism were linked; that was basically part of my point. The origins of fascism were so grandiose historically and philosophically but were so unlinked to any aimed political framework (theoretical or otherwise) it was impossible for it to ever sustain or ever be a real ideology. Fascists literally believed economics were fake. Of course that would lead to them become capitalist because they still had to sustain themselves and if you just think everything is fake how else are you going to like, have a country. The world is still capitalist. Something that doesn't acknowledge said system will obviously just become a cog in it. The belief system was never fleshed out as anything more than a top level aesthetic.
Capitalism as an abstract collectively liked european fascism because it literally was not a real political framework under any means, hence it was easy to co-opt. This is also what my last point was about why Nazis didn't agree on anything. It was not a real belief system.
Fascism was incredibly easy of a husk to turn into a reactionary machine against communism because of the fact it was so highly mutable and contextually dependent. As I mentioned in the above this is like a dissertation level thesis, had I written more I was going to obv talk about the decline of the philosophy just leading it to be a hollow reactionary effort.
The reason I bring it up though is because the intrinsic philosophy associated with the origins of the ideology greatly differ from its history. You would have to be pants on head stupid to defend Italian Fascism itself - they were a mess of a state and had no idea how to do anything except become a puppet to the wider reactionary movement.
However I think from an a***ytical point of view the origins and meanings associated with it are interesting separately from a pondering standpoint. Like anyone who upright calls themselves a fascist is clearly a tryhard or under-educated. But how many people talk about how its geneology is linked so closely to anarchism, or how its originating philosophy was basically post-structuralism before even modernism itself was concrete? Like I think it's interesting in the same way I think the lineages and branching of Christianity or something are interesting. And if anything else? I feel like it's a cautionary tale about political idealism under capitalism. especially in light of discussing anarchists or something.

@krishna_bound The problem of all third-positionism is that there isn't really such a thing as a fascist mode of production or an Islamist mode of production (their left-wing often also claimed they were "neither Moscow nor Washington"). If you're lucky you end up with state capitalism, if you're unlucky you end up with either a corporatist mess like 20s/30s Italy or with a regular capitalist economy like current-day Iran that is being sanctioned despite economically doing the same stuff as the USA

i know thats what i was saying basically just more stretched out, idk if youre arguing with me or what because i basically agree with you

We don't gotta disagree to post replies my mayne

i was kinda confused by the tone of the response and since it was like separate and not actually a reply lol

It's all good baybay

We should avoid quoting long ass posts if we are the response below it IMO bc the lay-out doesnt hide long quotes

I think you have it backwards fascists don't believe in disrupting "natural order" they believe in enforcing whatever they perceive to be as "natural order" which for the Nazis came in the form of the "Lebensraum". This is the major pitfall of Fascism because enforcing "natural order" supersedes making pragmatic decisions and alliances

This obsession with "natural order" caused huge logistic problems, in 1941 many Russians hated the Bolsheviks and would of have gladly joined the Germans in fighting the Reds. However since Slavs in the NSDAP "natural order" were viewed as "uttermensch" they were killed, raped and treated awfully compared to like occupied France where the average Frenchman lived his life no differently under Nazi rule then French rule.

Of course this played right into Stalins hand and gave the then divided Soviet Union an existential threat to unite over and fight

Then later when Nazi troops were running out of oil and freezing to death in Stalingrad, Hitler was wasting time and resources rounding up poor Yiddish Jews and training them around the country to gas chambers

I do agree that fascists don't really think about economy very much at all as long as the economy doesn't interfere with the "natural order"

It's kinda hard to explain and i basically trying to mince and compress words because its such a topically dense idea. The historical fascism that emerged and the brand of esoteric/spiritual superfascism from people like Evola were obsessed with the perception natural order and their interpretations of it from a spiritual sense.
Prototypical fascism as a philosophy before it was "fascism" as a european political party or as a holistic political movement wasn't - this is why i wanted to highlight that there are two main lineages of fascism as a terminology.
politically the ones who moved toward the idea of counter-revolution and conservation drew more from the acceptance of natural order as the sole means of overcoming nihilism; this is why i highlighted distinctions in regards to meaninglessness.
the latter of lineages (and i say this loosely...obviously there was more nuance but because of how complicated this is it's easier to put it in overhead umbrellas) would have believed the natural order was an obstacle meant to be overcome; hence Futurism. some nazis actually did dabble in the last part but i mean, as ive said above, there is legitimately no real foundation of nazism, its a mess of ideologies and beliefs inconsistently which differed between sects of the party and even individual theorists within the party.

@krishna_bound didnt read lol

@krishna_bound thanks for the post guess that explains why ideologically its such a mess, and how it was able to turned into this tool against socialist movements despite it origins never intended to.

I found the lineage concept interesting I wonder how Pinochet fits in with it, as "Fascists" dont believe in economy, and his whole ordeal was to privatise, or maybe that should be intended to be taken as Fascist dont believe in s*** they dont wanna believe in rather than being a concrete postion.

Also love how Nazisim became this 3rd type of Lineage that is hated by both of his parents and everyone around him.

It explains why so many different movements like Integralism to Nazism are both fascists.

Also reminds me of this debate I was watching between a fascist and a marxist Leninist and the fascist f***ed with the USSR and viewed Communist a***ysis of Fascism as a big cope. Which I understand why he had that position if they refuse to see the difference between the USSR economy under Stalin vs Nazi Germany or any capitalist economy.

Also that bit with Anarchist I find funny, since their go to insults towards communist tends to be red fash.

Well Pinochet wasn't really a fascist; as in like, he didn't study fascism or anything, and he had no intrinsic links to any historical or philosophically fascist politics. He was just far right and co-opted european military aesthetics. Pinochet's regime was obsessed with austrian economics and neoliberal economics, and self-described reactionary anti-communist conservatism. In contrast to a philosophically driven fascism, Pinochet literally may as well have had the belief of "liberalism by any means necessary". When people want to conjure what extreme reactionary conservatism looks like, Pinochet is way better of an example than someone like Hitler or Franco or something. Also by comparison to Fascists, Pinochet had an extremely specific set of goal and political framework in mind.

Regarding the anarchism bit, it's kind of funny. It's not to say that like "all anarchists are fascists" or something dumb and provably not true, but their history is way more linked than any side would like to admit. When you look at core ideas and traits there is also surprising overlap. I actually think this is why in modern times you see a lot of libertarian and anarchists shift back and forth from that to fringe authoritarian ideologies. It's also (somewhat partially) why early anarcho-capitalists were so sympathetic to Fascism (Mises, now people like Hoppe).

i have the physical of this book which I should finish, but generally I think it's a good primer on the history of fascism, going from the proto-era to the modern neo-nazi s***

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-reid-ross-against-the-fascist-creep

fascism mainly rose out of general syndicalist movements, where there was anarchist elements, as well as non-anarchist, but it was generally leftist. the main appeal at that time was the fallacious suggestion of the "third-way", trade unions turning into vulgar nationalism

to suggest anarchism and fascism are ephemerally linked would be kind of odd, considering this was a blood-sucking ideology that pulled in people from all over the spectrum, including ex-marxist communists and ex-anarchists

i believe the modern interpretation of anarchism can largely avoid this co-optation compared to the more classical stuff

Russia was socially conservative, I don’t really have support for their anti LGBT views but it’s obviously something that’s been improved upon

some of the earliest criticisms of nazism in germany - from the left literally - was literally that it was gay. before there was an established party and nazi state, it was not uncommon to consider slander them as such; not only because of the fact there were gay nazis (Rohm) but because of the obsession with nature and faux-paganism among other things. beyond this, before there was evola, there was weininger, who hitler, himmler, and otherslf stole many of the more esoteric spiritual/volkisch ideas from (I believe it was hitler himself who said something like "weininger was the only great jew i've ever known") - and weininger was a self-hating gay who believed in the establishment of a post-female utopia and the glorification of the male image. Early dada also looked to sexual freedoms and decadence. So while it's obviously not like the mythological """homofascism""" is real or anything (once gays like Rohm served their purpose they were killed and Weininger's ideas were quickly shed in lieu of even more esoteric ones too), there are kinda funny small truths there which inspired statements like this.

For the record I obviously don't think anarchism and fascism are the same ideology or anything and i don't really mean that. Obviously that's not true. However many of the same root ontological beliefs and ideas that underline why people embrace anarchist solutions are often the same root beliefs of why others embrace fascism. Many of them identify the same philosophies and conceptualizations, but branch into strongly distinct means of addressing them.
Even past proto-fascism and past early sorellianism and syndicalism, the epistemological philosophy of which anarchism lends itself too is often very similar to fascism, albeit of different philosophers/theorists, but with honestly very similar observations and concepts, just with obviously radically different branching ideas of what to do given those observations.

Can’t wait to read these posts

Principled in KTT2 thought

yeah thats the perfect description I heard of Pinochet.

Yeah I dont think anyone is saying that, just found the root philosophy being similar interesting

marxist-leninist-maoism-scottism, principally scottism

man is that Anna, I listened to her last free podcast episode, and she seems to be on her socialist to conservative arc, saying Kyle Rittenhouse is a working class hero, who represents how tired people are of liberal democracy.

Then again I never listened to Red Scare for their takes, and I do it for Dasha.