Split Thread What authoritarian regimes in history could be described as Fascist?

[Venom]

Christopher Hitchens described Iraq under Saddam as fascist. The Arab Baath parties were partly inspired by European fascism.

I think a large chunk of the people have to buy into the ideology. I don't think it's enough for the ruler(s) to just be a really powerful jackass.

 

[HansMustermann]

Don't buy it. What's the State in a communist country? What's the State in the USSR, China, or N. Korea? If you swap "the people" for "the State" is there functionally a difference.

Of course there is, including quite a big one: communism required collective ownership of the means of production. Well, in practice, nationalizing them. All three countries you mentioned did that quite early in their communism phase.

Fascism doesn't.

That's a direct consequence of that difference in ideology. One defines its group as the workers and peasants, so there is no room for such a thing as a communist venture capitalist. The other defines its group by geographic or ethnic borders, regardless of whether you're a peasant or an industrialist.


Here's another important one: there can be solidarity across borders in socialist or communist movement, and an interest to "export" that socialism. Which is literally what happened in the early 20'th century, before it started meaning just Stalin's puppet states.

Just as an example, since we're talking fascism, Italian Socialist Party was in fact strongly for internationalism, while fascism was strongly against it. Or since you mention the USSR, the main ideology split between Trotsky and Stalin was that Trotsky wanted to continue the internationalism and trying to export the revolution all over the place.

For fascism (and nazism if you want to count that separately), it wouldn't even make sense. Fascism just plain old wanted bigger borders. See that Lebensraum or, for the Italians, "spazio vitale". Anything else only helps in as much as you realistically still need allies and puppet states for their resources.

I get that you are more interested in the theory of what makes fascism but I don't think that matters as much as the functional reality of various statist systems. Its what makes it so hard to decide what counts as fascism. If its all about theory, then it is only Italy in 1940.

Even if it meant, reducing it to only Italy (which I actually disagree,) is it necessarily bad? Not everything has to be fascist or nazi.

 

[Wudang]

Perhaps instead of "state" use "nation". It's a rather more nebulous word that can mean the state, the land, the people as needed to sway the masses, often in the same sentence or speech.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I rather see a longer historical dynamic at work, one of capital repeatedly fleeing from control, making swing a historical pendulum between freedom and tyranny.

The rise of capitalism came hard on the heels of mercantilism, under which merchants and trade cartels started to gain power independently of the landed gentry, upending the traditional source of power under feudalism, land being the essential productive asset. As merchants, like many early Americans, were subject to royal whim and costs which could seem onerous or unfair, many at the time of the French and American revolutions were motivated by a revolt against taxes and royal whim, today taking the form of taxes and regulations.

Soon enough, the rise of democracy coincided with the brutality of the repetitive kind of work in factory jobs, the rise of many company towns, and widespread labor abuse, apart from slavery and indentured labor (railroads). Thus, socialism and labor movements arose, creating an economic rival to capital. It is at this time that the power of the voting public to make policy and of government to tax began to seem the same threat as before to the most wealthy. It was not long until collusion between the state, in the form of corrupt officials, and capital, in the form of wealthy groups and individuals, became part of governance. How this approaches state capitalism and its loving partner, some form of ethnic or national bigotry (fascism), is a matter of degree, as these factors remain strongly in play today across the developed world. Fascism could be best described as when this collusion formally invades the rule of law and neutralizes the threat of popular will.

And they have a point, to a degree. The popular will, possessed of some viral ideology of one kind or another, is a danger to capital. Not that this endorses their backroom shenanigans.

At any rate, when fascist collusion, in the form of a Hitler backed by capital, did arise, capital found that, gulp, "we've gone gone back from taxes and logical regulations to taxes and populist whim, an effing downgrade." The "best", and most stable combination, is formal democracy masking backroom collusion, with big shots running the show (Heritage Foundation, store-bought SCOTUS, GOP... and Democrats) enough for there to be the illusion of a popular say.

Carlin said it best: "It's a big club... and you ain't in it!"

 

[HansMustermann]

Perhaps instead of "state" use "nation". It's a rather more nebulous word that can mean the state, the land, the people as needed to sway the masses, often in the same sentence or speech.

I'll have to agree that that describes the nationalism part better.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I'd argue, along with others, that is why, fascism isn't strictly left or right. Its right in that it is reactionary to socialism and marxism but its left in that it is a kind of socialism, despite folks denying that. It's a very specific and usualyl ethnocentric socialism. Socialism for us but not you. Mussolini more or less created it as a synthesis of Marxism and Nationalism. I'm pretty sure he even used the phrase third way.

Anyrate, I think you could say N. Korea is essentially a fascist state regardelss of what they call themselves, you could call modern China a fascist state, or even the USSR during and after WWII. They are all basically National socialist governments. NAZI Germany had all sorts of sociallisty stuff as long as you were Ayrian enough.

And you would be as wrong in that argument as somebody claiming creationism is scientific.

What about fascism or nazism was socialist?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I think a key, yet under described, feature of Fascism is the focus on the individual as some kind of superior being instead of a single, central figure (historical or contemporary) having quasi-divine aspects.
In Fascism the Ideology, The Leader is actually replaceable by someone who carries the movement forward, and that person only needs the ability to take over the reigns of power; no relation or even blessing of the previous Leader required.
(in practice, of course, the movement usually collapses without The Leader, proving that Fascism is not actually a State Ideology, but a Personality Cult dressed up as a system of government).

This is why N. Korea doesn't count as a Fascist State, as no one but a Un could replace an Un.

 

[HansMustermann]

I can see how someone looking very superficially at it, would be confused though.

Not the least because the phrase third way/position would be used in OTHER places and times to more or less propose exactly a cooperation between fascists and communists. It invariably failed. It's also been used in Italy to propose a kinda related neo-fascist way in... 1978. So it would surprise the pants off me if that's what Benito Mussolini was talking about

More specifically, yes, Benny did describe his movement as a sort of another way, but he didn't mean a middle ground. (Though whether he ever explicitly called it "third", I'm not sure.) It was as an ALTERNATIVE to liberalism and Marxism and pretty much everything else, really. It was a third way, in the same sense as taking Ivermectin for COVID-19 is a third alternative to going to a doctor or to a homeopath. It's not a middle ground, it's an alternative.

In fact, his idea was explicitly a way that would not stifle individual initiative and whatnot, like Marxism did. (I'm sure someone can find a similarity to right wing talking points about how the lefties are stiffling this or that.)

That said, he did sell the myth of how great the nation would be if everybody were all united like the fasces that gave his movement the name. Like, any demagogue, his myth basically was that once they *ahem* make Italy great again, it will be the land of milk and honey, everyone will be well fed and in fact fat, and so on.

Remember though that part from Le Bon: you have to tell the crowd what they want to hear, not the truth. Nobody ever was a successful populist by telling the crowd, "Not gonna lie, it's going to suck ass for most of you."

 

[HansMustermann]

That said, and I'll split it in a different message because it's a different idea, I think the confusion is based on the simplified way of thinking where everything is on a line between left and right. It's not. Even the two-dimensional chart is too simplified, especially when comparing things separated by literally a century. (Benny's march on Rome was 102 years ago.)

Not the least because even the terms changed meaning. And sometimes didn't even mean the same thing in 2 different places.

E.g., in the 19'th century and early 20'th, in Europe, the "conservative" "right-wing" meant mostly the elitist aristocracy, while "liberal" "left-wing" meant the industrialists in favour of the kind of absolute individual rights and lack of regulation that let those with money shaft those without. In the meantime, the latter position is usually regarded as right wing (although the name has been recycled for something else), while the former is obsolete.

In that sense both Marxism and Fascism weren't strictly left or right, they weren't even on the flippin' spectrum. They added elements that forked in new directions on a more correct multi-dimensional representation.

But I can see how that would confuse someone who thinks in terms of having a segment of line with conservatives at one end and Marxists on the other end. Makes one think that any third way must be somewhere in the middle.

 

[HansMustermann]

@The Great Zaganza
To be fair,

1. I don't think even that accurately describes the oddity that is N Korea. Technically speaking, the Eternal President of N Korea is still Kim Il Sung. I don't think anyone including Un CAN grab that post without amending the constitution

And, for that matter, Kim Jong Il is still the Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission.

Yeah, Hitch was right, it IS a necrocracy

2. Any dictatorship eventually turns into a cult of personality, really. Plus you kinda need one from the start if you want to gain the power via populist means.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

but you need a kind of Monarchy to extend a Dictatorship beyond the lifespan of a single person.

 

[HansMustermann]

Apparently they don't. Kim Il Sung is still the president. There was no transfer of that post of president to anyone else since he died. It's more like a God-King than just monarchy.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, since we're at intellectual academic discussions (and don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining; it's exactly what I was hoping for,) let me throw in my two cents about this aspect too:

I think a key, yet under described, feature of Fascism is the focus on the individual as some kind of superior being instead of a single, central figure (historical or contemporary) having quasi-divine aspects.
In Fascism the Ideology, The Leader is actually replaceable by someone who carries the movement forward, and that person only needs the ability to take over the reigns of power; no relation or even blessing of the previous Leader required.
(in practice, of course, the movement usually collapses without The Leader, proving that Fascism is not actually a State Ideology, but a Personality Cult dressed up as a system of government).

Kinda, sorta, but it does add another reason to Andy Ross's argument that the two were not exactly the same: that Übermensch myth and the Aryan will to conquer by backstabbing each other, was almost (but not entirely) confined to the Nazis, but was almost absent from Italian fascism, as well as (at least in that form) from Japanese fascism. (Which really was kinda in between the two on the whole, all things considered, and all that.)

The Italians did have something to say about a "New Man", but that was largely just a cult of virile manly men. (And patriotic at that.) As in, biological men with suitably big balls of steel, rather than "man" as in "mankind". In fact, as a contrast to the Social Darwinism popular in Germany, the Italian fascists idealized some of the less successful people, like the virile manly men among the peasants.

You know, just like some recent right-wingers bemoan "soy-boys" and how much we decayed since the good old days when Men were REAL MEN. (And presumably, like that internet quip went, women were also men, and teenage girls were FBI agents)

Mussolini didn't really have all that much of a justification for why he's uniquely fit to be the leader (and literally "Il Duce" = "The Leader") -- other than maybe, "I'm more hyper-patriotic than thou" -- which is also why his own party could just depose him when he was no longer convenient for them. Italy had long been effectively a one party state, so, yeah, it wasn't the opposition, but his own party that eventually decided that they can do just fine, and in fact better, without him.

 

[HansMustermann]

As a tangent, as it's not a defining characteristic nor unique to it, but if anyone wants modern day parallels or parallels with some Marxists (e.g., Pol Pot), Italian fascism was fairly (but not completely) anti-intellectual in its rhetoric. Kind of strange, in a way. They actually sought support from intellectuals who were on their side (I mean at least one distinguished philosophy professor was Mussolini's partner in defining fascism), but on the other hand their rhetoric was that they're not against intelligence, but against the "disease" of the mind that is intellectualism. (Insert your own parallels to modern day complaints about the "woke brain virus", or the like. Or don't.)

In practice it just meant that you're intelligent if you agree with them, but some kind of drain-bamaged intellectual if you put up a well thought argument for why not

As I was saying, it's tangent to my point, but I'm like the US DOJ: won't withhold evidence for the other side to defend their case

 

[ponderingturtle]

This is why N. Korea doesn't count as a Fascist State, as no one but a Un could replace an Un.

I think you mean Kim as that is the family name, unless things have radically changed now and it would be some random guy with the name Un could become the leader.

 

[HansMustermann]

Correct. But personally I didn't feel like also derailing into a discussion about the difference between Earth and Bajoran... err... Western and Asian name and surname order