I’m a fan of Marxist poster C_Plot on Reddit. I’ve gained a lot of good insights from them. Here, they talk about what fascism is/isn’t, but not in a way that excludes other angles on it imo. Link to Reddit in the post but I’m copying & pasting the whole comment here so you don’t have to go there to see it. Overall I agree but would love to hear your takes.
Fascism is not at all an ideology. Fascism is a tactic to maintain tyrannical class-rule. So fascism is not extreme capitalism. However, fascism is a tactic to maintain tyrannical capitalist class rule with a rise in the conscious of the oppressed classes. In feudalism, the ruling class rule by divine right. The bourgeois revolutions shattered that and promoted the view that “all are created equal”.
Republicanism (even in a stunted constitutional monarchy form), along with legislative supremacy, threatens the reign of the capitalist ruling class unless either the working class submits obsequiously to capitalist tyranny OR the franchise of the working class can be diverted into basal hatreds and bigotries through the tactic of fascism. If the working class remains steeped in obsequiousness, the capitalist tyrants can maintain the myth of rule of the People and republicanism. However as consciousness rises, even slightly, and the working class becomes conscious of themselves as an oppressed class, the ruling class panics and promotes hatreds and bigotries toward a cultivated out-group set and promises to smite the members of that out-group.
Those anti-Agápē hatreds and bigotries come to dominate what passes for civic discourse. Instead of government administering our common resources and addressing our common concerns, as civic discourse, the hatreds and bigotries of the out-group members and the hyper oppression of the out-group eclipses all genuine civic discourse. The fascist tactic allows the capitalist ruling class tyrants to maintain their rule while maintaining the semblance of a republic (though recently a return to divine right for tyrants is being promoted too).
Therefore capitalism cannot sustain itself without the docility of oppressed classes or instead the panic and pervasive deployment of the fascist tactic. That is not about societal decay but the decay of the tyrannical reign of the capitalist ruling class itself. So fascism is entirely about the capitalist counterrevolution reaction to the socialist call for advancing the bourgeois revolutions beyond capitalist tyranny.
We have been conditioned, like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water, to accept fascism as the very water in which we swim. Fascism was the result of the Great Depression, not because of the downturn in the economy itself but because of meager advances in working class consciousness. It’s just that the fascist tyrants demanded we never use the proper moniker to delineate what they had imposed upon us (rampant ridicule of those using the term “fascist” as if it is absurd to use the term when instead it is entirely appropriate).
I’m explaining things very directly. I won’t do a “no u” for your responses because it’s possible you just aren’t following it at all, but it’s deeply frustrating to have the accusations slung at me with no fucking substantiation while you are misrepresenting my claim this badly (which again, might be sincere).
No, and this is a completely ridiculous reading, and it goes from being a bad reading to a totally indefensible one with that last conjunct (“serving . . . the world”), since my claim involves fascist ideology functionally condemning the world, which is what “ingroup preference” as applied to nationalism is an excuse framework for. That’s what Vance is saying, among other things, that “America First” is Christian because it is Christian to have this quasi-Confucian ingroup preference.
Furthermore, as I was very explicit about in the previous comment, this is not the whole of what fascist ideology is, though I’d say it’s easily one of the most important parts. But obviously nationalism is not itself fascism. Nationalism in the modern sense substantially precedes fascism by centuries (though it’s not as old as people think). Fascism is, at least in part, a system of popular beliefs* promulgated by their leadership (usually insincerely), and not only nationalism. Other facets include the unlimited perpetuation of capitalism and capitalist class relations and, framed negatively, the rejection of class consciousness and socialism.
*Popular in the sense of being oriented toward the masses, not in the sense of being especially prevalent. I am using this term to repeat, because I have somehow not repeated this enough for it to be understood, that the true opinions of the leadership and their supporters are usually not the same and this is especially true of fascism.
. . . I could also just show you the mass beliefs in a population where fascism has taken hold. You know, the people who are lied to by the leadership as you just described (though, as I’m sure you’d agree, it’s not simply a matter of them being duped). You’re calling me a debate bro and all these other things and then you repeat my conclusions back to me like you’re contradicting me. Of course, some of the leadership inevitably are going to also be “true believers,” though I think that your criteria for falsification is not justified, because it ignores the class-collaborationism aspect of their nationalism that is the core thing that I’m talking about. If I showed you someone who was not a class collaborationist, then I would not be showing you much of a fascist.
No, it’s the footmen out their dying for the Volk, worker and capitalist alike, who are usually the best example of people who believe in fascist ideology. That said, if you want an example of someone in power who also seemed to really believe at least most of this framework, I’d point you to Himmler, who functionally undermined the Nazi war effort for the sake of carrying out the Holocaust. That, surely, is someone who truly believes that the Jews are a mortal enemy of his Volk and not just a useful boogeyman, because he was treating their killing as though it was truly part of the war effort itself and not just a sick theater for the German masses and a vehicle for economic extraction. Himmler was not alone, and I think the SS generally is full of examples of true believers, he’s just a more familiar case.
I fully agree with you on this, but you’re proving my point. If the leaders hold one set of ideals that are ultimately self-serving, and the population has a completely different set of ideals that are ultimately self-serving, then how is fascism truly and genuinely an ideology? There does not exist one set of consistent beliefs across the board.
Communism is an ideology, there is a consistent set of shared beliefs in class consciousness across the leadership and population.
That doesn’t mean anything! A fascist population might have mass beliefs that bacon and eggs are breakfast foods, does that mean having bacon and eggs for breakfast makes you a fascist? Correlation does not prove causation.
Nationalism and class-collaborationism are incompatible values, you can have one, not both. At any time you will have to choose one over the other, at at the expense of the other. Again, again, again, this is my point, fascism does not hold a set of consistent principles values, fascism morphs to use whatever value is most self-serving to the individual at that moment.
I mean, in 1935 Hilter started forced mandatory conscription that included intimidation, incentives, and forced recruitment. If it’s an important shared value I don’t see why you need to force people into it.
I think Himmler was just a hateful sadistic bastard who got off on it, to the point that he was willing to throw his nation under the bus to satisfy himself.
You’re basically trying to make the point with this one that racism is a principled ideology and I wildly disagree. Xenophobia is probably the closest thing to a shared value across fascist leadership and population, but even then racists will suspend their racism when they can benefit from doing so.