The most important and foundational aspect of fascism is anti-communism
The OG diplomatic agreement between Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan and Italy wasn't called the "Anti-Comintern Pact" because of a wacky coincidence. Anti-communism is a shared threat through all instances of Fascism.
XXth century fascism was the west's capitalists reaction to communists taking power all around them. Rich assholes started financing rabid anti-communists to kill leftists.
An early version of fascism is described in Marx's 18th Brumaire, in which he describes a failed revolution being followed by a period of terror, when anyone the cops thought was involved with workers movement could be killed in the street.
From the end of WWII to now, imperialists have been financing far-right groups to counter communists/leftist/progressive groups wherever they seem to be getting some power. See operations Gladio and Condor, and also the Jakarta Method
Or the allied powers deliberately building up Hitler's Germany while signing non-aggression pacts in the hope he'd take care of thr USSR for them.
Thank you for coming here and asking good faith questions and being open to learning. Always warms my heart.
A great, short book about this is Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Or if you’d prefer a short pamphlet about what Fascists are all about and how they came to power in Italy and Germany, there’s a collection of writings by Leon Trotsky called Fascism: What it is and how to fight it. Reading up on how fascism was further funded and used around the world by the United States after WW2 to fight communism is also a great idea, there’s the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins which gets into this somewhat and generally researching things like the Operation Paperclip and Klaus Barbie and the rehabilitation of former Nazis in NATO etc.
But a short version: fascism is fundamentally a violent reaction against socialism and communism (movements which seek to take power for the working class). It’s footsoldiers tend to be of the petit-bourgeoisie, armed and organized by the Big Bourgeoisie (capitalists) to violently destroy any opposition to capitalism when capitalism inevitably fails to meet the needs of a functional society. The Nazis came to power by promising to destroy communism in Germany, obtaining funding and support from domestic and international capitalists to do so, and making good on that promise by using armed force to destroy leftist movements in the streets and eventually taking state power and using that state power to unabashedly persecute and kill communists and leftists. The first concentration camps were opened to hold communists, socialists and trade unionists.
First and foremost, the Sturmabteilung was mainly formed out of the Freikorps, which was formed and used to crush the Spartakusbund and communist uprisings in 1918 Germany. The Nazis and Italian Fascist Party's first targets were always trade unions and the communist parties. The famous poem records the actual order of Nazi Priorities
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
As Moshe Postone elaborated in his analysis of Structural Anti-Semitism, that anti-semitism and using the Jew as a scapegoat allowed the separation of positive sides of modernity and capitalism (mass consumer goods, relative autonomy, etc.) from the negative aspects (alienation, volatility due to speculative finance, the parasitism of rent seeking, etc.) and say that the positive aspects were real capitalism, while the negative aspects were due to the Jewish controlled finance (a.k.a. cosmopolitanism, crony capitalism, woke-ism, etc.). Additionally, things like Judeo-Bolshevism allowed the Nazis to avoid questions like "who do we hate more, Jews or communists", and how they were opposed to finance capital and communism simultaneously.
But to be more direct, Fascism is fundamentally the white blood cells of capitalism. Where major cataclysms like the great depression, hyper-inflation, or the broader alienation of capitalist life prevents people from really believing in capitalism as this ever present progress that provides a "rising tide that lifts all boats". Fascism comes in to prevent any structural critiques or implication of capitalism by using scapegoats like the Jews controlling the banks or immigrants coming in and taking jobs. Fascism's fundamental material basis and mass support is based around people that don't want to give up on the idea of capitalism and their position in it (which is why the Petit Bourgeois is the most important basis of fascism and reaction) despite having to deal with the failures and consequences of capitalism by deflecting the blame onto socialism and some other group like the Jews. "The problem with the economy is that we still haven't privatized (Privatiserung) and deregulated enough of the economy. There is still some occluded socialism somewhere."
Not really the post for the most in depth analyses, i think, but would like to say that I've been convinced by Cesaire, Fanon, and other global southern scholars that fascism isn't just a reaction of capitalism to internal resistance or such, but instead the contant necessity for expropriation that sometimes cannot be accomplished geographically (how it happens often at the periphery) but instead must be brought internally to expropriate from groups of peoples and leftists. This comes with whatever liberal justification possible (usually about undeserving wealth or so). Often this is easily combined with class warfare and creates hell for leftists, especially if their attacks on capitalism are what is preventing the fascism externally from working as effectively or are decreasing the profits that can be reaped internally. The destruction of capital that some use to define fascism seems just a consequence of fascism and not a defining feature to me, something that must be done to maintain a periphery constantly in need of supply from production within the industries which are prioritized for profit. That follows very easily from the material conditions when the expanding periphery stops expanding or begins to shrink. Sometimes that destruction happens by just giving shitty equipment that falls apart, sometimes by treating humans as the capital itself through enslavement and killing them, and other times by war.
It's not a full-on disagreement, I just find it something that is often talked about as if it's far away Horror Story as opposed to something that's been the basis of capitalism for a long time that is still happening. The most successful countries managed to perform fascism best and that's how they got there. The US is the ultimate success story of fascism
This is also where I think Stalin understood fascism better than Trotsky, because Stalin understood it as normal capitalism just aimed at the "Judeo-Bolsheviks" (including the slavs and USSR) at the time (and the right hand of the social democrats who are the left wing of fascism) while Trotsky considered it more of an abberation
As Moshe Postone elaborated in his analysis of Structural Anti-Semitism
For a moment I misread this as Post Malone and had to do a double take.
But this is a great posts and a good recommendation.
i wish we had some masterpost about fascist italy not being a joke. from ww2 paper-tiger and the reapproachment of the west toward fascism after the war we tend to forget that besides being The First fascist nation, the fascisti murderered and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of people
and yeah mussolini was a blow hard dork but all i can think of when i see that face are real people. trade unionists, communists, feminists, etc. getting liters of castor oil forced down their throats; ethiopians, libyans, spanish, albanians, slavs and greeks getting murdered and thrown in shallow mass graves
The fascists in Italy would grab a target, beat them, and force them to drink large quantities of castor oil to humiliate and sometimes kill their victims by inducing diarrhea
A masterpost on the Italian Fascists’ atrocities? It may take me a few days, but I’ll give it a shot.
Please do share it to our (hexbear) history comm as well should you publish anything on the subject, or anything else for that matter.
Brain training exercise to better prepare you to rotate the cube in your head.
Smh @ ableist hexbear tankies. No I will not rotate the picture or the series of cubes and god damn your funky iq tests!
I am so irony poisoned I genuinely though
was the original orientationNo you're correct, the posted image is in fact upside down
fascists are all just upside down. if we turn them around properly, the problem is immediately solved. you have the correct orientation.
No but you see in North Korea the trains always run on time because the workers push the trains and evil kim jong un makes them go on time, and if they don't they're executed, then revived with Juche necromancy and sent back in time with Juche space-time manipulation and forced to be on time, but it's bad when the tankies do it!
this is especially egregious now considering how good chinas train infrastructure is
I wish anyone who throws around the word tankie could define it in real politik terms instead of "it means facist, to me" or "muh authoritarianism and imperialism." What are the "tankie" political theories that they disagree with? Anti-colonialism? Anti-capitalism? Peace before war when in power? Closed door approaches to capital infiltration as state defense tactics? Planned economy?
I guess this is just a normal response to the existential horror that you've been poisoned by capital and told it was medicine and now have to look the demons of capital in the face and try to deal with it.
The only common thread I've noticed is that it always refers to an imperial core person admiring something foreign. You're somehow not a tankie if you're actually from China and you're a Marxist-Leninist. In that case you're just an authoritarian. But if you're from Canada and you say nice things about China? Then you're a tankie.
There's some kind of nationalist brainworm built into the term. There's some kind of conception that foreigners just do socialism incorrectly, but white people can do it properly through...I don't know, voting every 4 years, or begging for it nicely or making a utopian settlement in the woods. But if you're a white person who wants revolutionary socialism, you've allowed scary foreign devils to pollute your mind and you're a tankie now. Telling liberals that being a "tankie" is the overwhelmingly most normal position for communists worldwide shortcircuits their brains. They can only conceive of three types of communists: Idiot white teenagers from imperialist countries, cynical dictators, and brainwashed foreigners who can't think properly because they're foreign.
Way too many times I've been talking with someone who called me a tankie, and I ask them why it seems like China and Vietnam have such high approval for their respective states. That's when it starts coming out. They'll say communism is just a better fit for their culture, or that the people there are more easily brainwashed, or that the approval ratings are all lies. It's so racist and disgusting.
Yeah, I can see that. Just inherent nationalism and racism but it's acceptable because gommunism bad
I get it. We're in our third financial crisis "of a lifetime." You can't afford a groceries, restaurants, cars, healthcare, or a house. Rights are stripped away from us daily. Neo-nazis are even more mainstream than Nazis in West Germany. We are told things are looking up, but we all know things are worse than ever. What can we do if all we know is vote blue (or UK labour)? Scream at the void. Blame someone, anyone. An amorphous blob with no more meaning than a comic book villain becomes the outlet for capitalism's torture, and it is not questioned until it is confronted by Lemmy users, in what you thought was a shitposting meme about le china.
He tried to fund that bridge in Kentucky when a local sent a letter to him cause the US government wouldn't, so make that three
Is this instance another lemmmygrad? Supporting the CCP and all its antics?
at what point in your life do you become the sort of person to get defensive over people making fun of Mussolini
Only no, make fun of Mussolini by all means, but dont think CCP and Soviet actions arent any different, both wanted to eradicate minorities and built concentration camps, both were against the lgbtq.
I dont complain about Vietnam. They never caused problems to their neighbours.
Downplay fascists all you want. But Tankies arent very different from fascists.
Downplay fascists all you want. But Tankies arent very different from fascists.
The historical origin of the term tankie is CPGB members getting mad that Khruschev put down an antisemitic, fascist, CIA-backed fake revolution in Hungary lol.
"Hello fellow leftists I think crushing fascists with tanks is the same as crushing civilians with tanks"
fuck outta here
I dont complain about Vietnam. They never caused problems to their neighbours.
It's always about civility and lawns with liberals. 😫
Its funny how libs that think they're socialists or very left, or whatever may have one AES that for some reason is okay. Vietnam with this lib, I've seen some that believe all the State Dep shit, except about Cuba. Its like, why just that one place? Have you considered the rest?
With Vietnam in particular, some US liberals have a sort of guilt thing because of the Vietnam war, but something both Cuba and Vietnam have in common (with respect to both): They're not very big, they're not very powerful. I think the support you sometimes see for them is extremely dependent on them remaining largely powerless. Kind of the same reason for the whole "supporting every revolution, except the ones that succeeded" thing.
Also, with Cuba in particular, for many of them it was the family planning law that made Cuba the most LGBT-friendly nation on earth. Like, people who shat on Cuba and derided it as "authoritarian" before that had a sudden change of heart, almost as though it was the first real thing they learned about Cuba and it fucking blew their minds or something.
You literally came into a thread where people are dunking on Mussolini and started pissing and crying saying we're bigots. You made up some wild claims about the people here being anti-lgbtq (lol) in another comment thread; you clearly don't understand any of our positions and if I had to guess you know all you know about politics from either streamers, clowns, or both.
we're evil communists here to, uh, feed the poor, secure housing for everyone, oppose violence against innocent people. you know, all those horrible things liberals kill people for
You can be communists but dont be tankies. Dont try one language and one culture everywhere, also stop veing against the lgbtq.
you're talking to an instance that's 70% LGBT - would appreciate if you didn't condescend to tell us what's good for us.
also stop veing against the lgbtq.
Oh, buddy, you must have no idea where you are.
Can you point me towards further reading on these state sponsored gay bars? It sounds really cool and I'd love to know more!
Dont try one language and one culture everywhere, also stop veing against the lgbtq.
Nobody here supports "one language and one culture everywhere" and this site has so many lgbt people, like I think all or at least the strong majority of the mods and admins, and I estimate at least a third or more of the regular users are some flavor of lgbt.
No. Everyone will speak Esperanto or I will die trying.
And sending in the tanks was the best thing Khrushchev did.
call me when the SEESEEPEE has aircraft carriers in the gulf of mexico the way amerikkka has aircraft carriers in the south china sea. call me when china is building military bases in other countries without their consent the way Amerikkka keeps guantanamo bay open despite the cuban government not consenting to it for over 60 years. Call me when China has over 800 military bases all around the world. Call me when China is couping, sanctioning, embargoing, and assassinating anyone who inconveniences their foreign policy. Call me when you have something besides disproven atrocity propaganda from Adrian Zenz.
Please, you're spiritually a burgerland inhabitant
'I'm a leftist but I think everything to actually do with leftism is bad. Everyone knows real leftism is when you vote for the anticommunist girlboss liberal who wants to means test food stamps more and subsequently raise the military budget by 50%, slava ukraini'
Im not liberal, im a socialist.
A "socialist" who believes capitalist propaganda and refers to the largest and most successful actually existing socialist state's functionality as "antics"? Sounds pretty liberal to me.
And im not American either :)
The person you're replying to wasn't suggesting that you were. He signs all his comments with that phrase at the end, and strangely enough, it's almost always fitting.
Anyway, yes, this instance does tend to try to talk about China accurately, and it does so in the face of overwhelming torrents of western propaganda cultivated by the capitalist's/imperialist's demonization of the state that poses the largest contemporary threat to their hegemony.
I just edited my comment to fix my use of "they/their" into "he/him" as per the other commenter's pronouns. I mention this specifically because you said in another comment for us to "stop being against lgbtq." This instance is the most lgbtq-positive space I've ever encountered on the internet. We frequently get hated on by transphobes because we include pronouns next to usernames. We were, and to my knowledge still are, the only instance to do so.
Fascists and tankies are the same to me, neither have voting rights and both want to eradicate minority cultures. Only wanting a homogeneous societies.
Im a socialist myself, but CCP ideology just means only a few people get to stay in power just like feudal lords.
Be a communist but dont think that CCP are communists, they are nothing but new age fuedal lords.
What is "feudal" about them to you? These words have meanings and you use them as though they're just vibes or something.
Fascists and tankies are the same to me, neither have voting rights and both want to eradicate minority cultures.
Which is why the concepts of "whole process peoples democracy" and "mass line" originate in China. And why China exempted minorities from the one child policy and does affirmative action in schooling and government positions
Also, in regards to minority cultures, aren't there literally autonomous ethnic republics in China?
What alternatives do you recommend? What is some literature we can look at?
Im a socialist myself
You're objectively misinformed first, allegedly socialist second
Where do you nerds get these weird ideas? CPC (if you weren't rascist you'd know) are fuedal lords? Homogenous societies? Eradicate minorities?
Reminds me of something about every accusation being a confession
all its antics?
idk about that; but, like, most of them, yeah?
Putting Uigyurs in concentration camps, being against the LGBTQ, colonising Tibet and eradicating their language and culture. Disputing borders with every neighbour. Claiming control for the entire South China Sea.
Putting Uigyurs in concentration camps
According the the fundamentalist Arian Zenz who is on a 'divine mission from god to destroy the ccp', but according to UN represenativies who have actually visited the region; https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/05/statement-un-high-commissioner-human-rights-michelle-bachelet-after-official?fbclid=IwAR2AOnouU529HJwYiZphgIyD4ZgRaK5la7x03mJ5Ep5r75S2glpXXS_3LfY
being against the LGBTQ
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/11/china-court-rules-against-forced-conversion-therapy while the US and other Western states still has gay conversion torture legal and active in many states
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-11-11/china-s-first-clinic-for-transgender-kids-opens-in-shanghai
colonising Tibet and eradicating their language and culture.
Eradicating the slave theocracy ruling Tibet, with the support of the Tibetan working class you mean?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/tibet-china-feudalism
http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/gyzg/xizang/200804/t20080417_8410890.htm#:~:text=Serf%20owners%20in%20Tibet%20were,and%20most%20of%20the%20livestock.
https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadFile?gId=37345#:~:text=The%20Chinese%20Government%20attaches%20great,own%20spoken%20and%20written%20language.
guarantees the freedom of Tibetan compatriots to use and develop their own spoken and written language
Of all the claims against China, the one I always find the strangest is that they want to control the South China Sea. As opposed the US who wants to control like every ocean with its Navy?
this is a picture of Mussolini. where on earth did you get China from this post?
I support the broad direction in which they perform their antics, though there are particular frolics, japes, and escapades of which I do not approve
Ccp aint even communists... its like any other capitalistic country
They just have the word in their name. Doesnt mean shit.
Just like the countries with the word "democratic" in their full name, are the least democratic of all. (Democratic republic of congo... its actually a dictatorship)
A party of 90 million members and 500,000 municipal level labor cohorts voting in local and regional elections to create a central goverment that defuses most of its authority to regional economic blocs is far more democratic than any of the horseshit top down neoliberal technocracy that passes as "democracy" in the west
Harvard University’s Ash Center released a 2020 study of Chinese public opinion showing that, as of 2016, “95.5 percent of respondents were either ‘relatively satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ with Beijing,”
[...]
Li: At the moment, the Chinese the party state has proven an extraordinary ability to change. I mean, I make the joke: “in America you can change the political party, but you can’t change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies.” So, in the past 66 years, China has been run by one single party. Yet the political changes that have taken place in China in these past 66 years have been wider, and broader, and greater than probably any other major country in modern memory.
Pilger: So in that time China ceased to be communist. Is that what you’re saying?
Li: Well, China is a market economy, and it’s a vibrant market economy. But it is not a capitalist country. Here’s why: there’s no way a group of billionaires could control the Politburo as billionaires control American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America, capital — the interests of capital and capital itself — has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. That’s why America is a capitalist country, and China is not.
from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
also hey look, you're in this picture:
Marxists view "success" as improving people's lives, i.e. increasing the amount of wealth each individual has, getting people out poverty, improving life expectancy, improving literacy, improving home ownership rates, improving access to health care, so on and so forth.
Liberals view "success" as bringing people "freedumb and democrazy", even if that entails completely destroying their living standards, killing tons of people, driving people into immense poverty, preventing their country from developing.
But it makes no sense because if "democracy" comes from the Greek, "demos kratia," meaning, "people's power." If the people actually had the power, why would they not use the political institutions to improve their livelihoods? So how do liberals reconcile this contradiction that you can have "democracy" while at the same time not having expected outcomes from democracy?
They resolve this contradiction by reducing "democracy" down to mere rituals. If you perform the rituals, you're a "democracy." If you don't, you're a ”dictatorship." The actual outcomes of the rituals don't matter, if people's lives aren't improving, if they're even getting worse, it's all justified as long as people are performing the correct rituals.
This makes liberal understanding of "democracy" better understood as a state religion rather than any actual real desire to give power to the people. They, in fact, always, consistently, praise the destruction of living standards as long as those rituals get to be performed. Libya is a great example of this, but so is all of eastern Europe, so is the million who died of COVID in the US while they call China "authoritarian" for protecting its people.
Full disclosure I'm half educating half trolling:
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has a better constitution than the US. Instead of a president appointing all of the heads of executive departments people get to vote for them.
So if you look at global poverty over the last (say) 40 years or so, there's been a downward trend. Take China out, no downward trend. The World Bank likes to crow about how their policies have lead to the lowest levels of poverty in history, but if you look at places like sub Saharan Africa and Latin America where the World Bank and the IMF have been most active, poverty has been stagnant at best and actively increasing at worst - something the UN has remarked upon repeatedly.
So what gives? If China is just like any other capitalistic country, why is poverty going down there so much faster than anywhere else? Is the fact that China has been so apparently successful at reducing poverty and food insecurity an endorsement of authoritarianism?
The only one of two things I'll praise him for.
look at this lib
I'm out again.
