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
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
