The thing that stood out to me in particular about this first part was how well Parenti explains Italian fascism. It's one of those topics that is not talked about that much, probably because it contains far fewer of the scary occult things that come with the Nazis. It is harder to ignore the liberal similarities in Italian fascism.

Another thing that stood out was Schlageter and the way that play portrays class politics against the Volk. Hitler was not devoid of the rhetoric that Mussolini employed, the stuff that acknowledged the existence of class and showed some vague populism. It is more evident with the Brownshirts, but even in a refined form it can be seen.

Look, Papa, upper, lower, poor, rich, that always exists. It is only the importance one places on that question that's decisive. To us life is not chopped up into working hours and furnished with price charts. Rather, we believe in human existence as a whole. None of us regards making money as the most important thing; we want to serve. The individual is a corpuscle in the bloodstream of his people.

Parenti:

The son's comments are revealing: "the class struggle is dying out." Papa's concern about the abuses of class power and class injustice is facilely dismissed as just a frame of mind with no objective reality. It is even falsely equated with a crass concern for money. ("None of us regard making money as important.") Presumably matters of wealth are to be left to those who have it. We have something better, August is saying: a totalistic, monistic experience as a people, all of us, rich and poor, working together for some greater glory. Conveniently overlooked is how the "glorious sacrifices" are borne by the poor for the benefit of the rich.

The position enunciated in that play and in other Nazi propaganda does not reveal an indifference to class; quite the contrary, it represents a keen awareness of class interests, a well-engineered effort to mask and mute the strong class consciousness that existed among workers in Germany. In the crafty denial, we often find the hidden admission.

Back when I was getting into leftism and thought I knew what fascism was, this unexplainable thing that cannot be fathomed and holds no internal consistency or rational, I would not have understood the importance of something like this. Fascism is not just right wing populist rhetoric, you cannot just look at fiery right wing speeches and say that's just like the Nazis, or machismo = Mussolini, fascism has a distinct character to it and the Volk is not just patriotism or nationalism