/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>If fascisms is capitalist response to a mass organized communist movement
It isnt. Like even back in Italy, by 1922 the possibility of communist revolution has already been quenched through social-democratic reforms.

>If fascisms is capitalist response to a mass organized communist movement
It's not. As >>2528262 points out.

You don't need fascists to kill communists. Liberals will do just fine.

>>2528262
>>2528265
Then what‘s fascism?

>>2528311
Fascism is Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and Fascist Spain.

Analysis of fascism becomes needlessly complex because people remove it from it's historic context in order to create a false unscientific pan-historical fascism.

Fascism no longer exists in 2025. There are far right governments that do indeed still perform genocides and ethnic cleansing and preach racial superiority. They are what they actually are - far-right governments. No further deep analysis is needed. They exist not purely because of the threat of communism, they exist because of multiple reasons. Far right ideas are popular in some places. Some people want their enemies to be genocides and ethnically cleansed. Some people want a strong government that exists as a big daddy who will protect them from the evil enemies. And the ruling classes either have the same ideas, or they might be opportunistically using these sentiments for their own end.

So you see. Nothing here is complicated, and ther e is no need for further analysis.

>>2528334
>Analysis of fascism becomes needlessly complex because people remove it from it's historic context in order to create a false unscientific pan-historical fascism.
>nazi germany
>fascist spain
I mean all these are only generally united by palegentic ultranationalism, so if you want to go this vague of a defintion then a lot of modern states are fascist

>>2528311
I thinks Eco Umberto's text puts it pretty well. Some points I find disputable, but the most important part is
>ascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated ᴉuᴉlossnW) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

So there is no point in making a rigid all-encompassing definition, but there is a list of traits which might describe this or that government/ideology/person to various degrees.
On the topic of current US government, I think at this point its pretty clear that mask of liberal democracy is off. More fascist than most agreed upon fascist regimes I would say, completely unbound by any pretenses of socialism or liberalism, as many fascist regimes were. The base is driven by pure cultural resentment, like even the classical scapegoating ala "you cant get job because immigrants are stealing them" seems to be barely there, there is just no effort to even pretend anything you do will improve lives of your supporters.

>>2528334
>and there is no need for further analysis
<they exist because of multiple reasons
<Far right ideas are popular in some places.
<Some people want their enemies to be genocides and ethnically cleansed.
<Some people want a strong government that exists as a big daddy who will protect them from the evil enemies
<And the ruling classes either have the same ideas, or they might be opportunistically using these sentiments for their own end.
It seems there is actually quite a lot to analyse here anon.

>>2528259
>If fascisms is capitalist response to a mass organized communist movement
Well sure, there was fear of Bolshevism, but there were other things going on too. I think fascists were afraid of a lot of things. They were also afraid of liberalism. They viewed it as weak and decadent.

>and Trump is arguably a fascist and pushing for fascism, where is the organized communist movement of our day?
I think you can look at Trump and the fascists as expressions of a reactionary potentiality in their time. But there are some differences. Fascist rallies were really extreme BTW. They went for hyper-coreographed, mass military-style rallies and formations with torches and flags to make people feel really powerful and to awe/intimidate people.

We have the exact same thread about fascism every day and no one learns anything after 400 replies.

Fascism is not "capitalist response to a mass organized communist movement"

Fascism is a populist reactionary response to the failure of the imperialist/capitalist system.

>>2528311
a rejection of both elite society and worker society

>>2528386
Oh my fucking god the definitions of fascism just get stupider and stupider.

>>2528404
that's true though

forgot vid
>>2528311
Fascism is structural i.e. >>2528334 is wrong. It's what happens when national capital (through the national bourgeois) finds it can only survive and thrive through violent expansion and dropping any liberal universalist enlightenment pretenses. It's a crossing of the rubicon. A purely bourgeois dictatorship as the "highest" stage of capitalism. A bit like what absolutism is to 'feudalism'.
Lenin talked about Imperialism as driving the capitalist great powers to world war. And he was right. But the kind of fascism which became recognized in the interwar period was already present in pre-war Germany, and many of the same capitalists who profited from the first world war were also involved in its sequel.
>>2528350
The issue with umberto eco is that he looks at fascism purely 'ideologically', which is fine as far as it might help explain why people decide to join the brown shirts instead of a militant trade union, but it doesn't explain how fascism changes the bourgeois state structurally. For example, how the "military-industrial complex" becomes inseparable from the rest of the "economy".
Absolutism wasn't the end of feudalism, but it did bring changes to how these states were governed and operated.

See vidrel. I also recommend checking out the channel itself as it covers how fascism expressed itself in Poland, Italy, Japan and Germany at the time. I do disagree with Pinochet being fascist. Instead, I think Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Ba'ath party at the time is a far better example of a post-war Fascist dictatorship. And liberals are right when they argue the US is turning into a fascist dictatorship.

>>2528422
uh, there's no society there at all lol. the class struggle hasn't begun yet

>>2528427
No no no. Fascism, is like, when, like, you use rhetoric that appeals to people, and, fascism is when you have the masculine personality and it's when aesthetics aren't wholesome. Fascism is just when a leader has more charisma than Joe Brandon and the other Democrats. It's when people feel like society can improve (this is palingenesis and is EVIL).
Fascism has nothing to do with the bourgoeisie it's when people dislike the free market actually. Fascism is when the free liberal open society is challenged, so the Georgian Law forcing my NGOs to disclose their foreign funding is literally fascism. Fascism is when the government has any authority in the economy.

Can we just either filter or ban the term fascist?

>>2528427
>A purely bourgeois dictatorship as the "highest" stage of capitalism. A bit like what absolutism is to 'feudalism'.
Wrong. This implies that fascism actually unifies the bourgoeisie on any long-term basis. The bourgoeisie is not a unified class, they are in constant competition and can only unite under a fascist banner if they are compelled to. Otherwise they prefer their parliaments to argue with each other. Fascism obviously isn't the end stage of capitalism because the bourgoeisie stopped favoring fascism in most of the formerly fascist states.

Fascism is Capital's response to organized worker movements, yes. But there doesn't *need* to be an actual organized worker presence, Capital just needs to feel as if it exists and feel threatened by it even if it doesn't exist. Basically they see the cultural and ideological shift leftwards even though it is broadly liberal still and they are overreacting. So yes Trump and the modern MAGA movement is fascism in response to something that's not there but they feel is there, because the modern capitalist elite is not as competent or as aware as their predecessors were

>>2528448
true true

>>2528453
But it is there. Its not revolutionary, but it is present and cuts into their profit margins.

The defining characteristic of fascism is that it is a nationalist-populist movement which arises organically as a response to political failure of the existing regime. It's not some conspiracy started by the existing regime to protect itself, it's more like a symptom/side effect of the existing regime's destruction and the power vacuum it leaves behind. A nation falls into decline after a period of destructive war and/or economic collapse and the people become restless and dissatisfied with the existing regime and therefore become highly susceptible to indoctrination by some ambitious and charismatic leader who starts a nationalist-populist movement. That is fascism.

>>2528448
The video and the rest of the channel explain it in detail. It's dictatorship of finance capital through (financial) oligarchs. It requires a certain level of centralization/oligopoly/monopoly capitalism which does away with liberal democracy itself.
Japanese, Italian, German and Polish oligarchs actively funded and organized their respective fascist regimes.
>Fascism obviously isn't the end stage of capitalism because the bourgoeisie stopped favoring fascism in most of the formerly fascist states.
This ignores the part where, after WW2, the entire west consolidated into a single market. Doing away with the previous divisions between national capital among Western states (including "westernized" Japan and South Korea) in favor of a united front against the USSR/communism.
But now old divisions are rising again, including between both sides of the Atlantic. The final stage in the capitalist battle royale is the fascist dictatorship.
>>2528453
>Fascism is Capital's response to organized worker movements, yes. But there doesn't *need* to be an actual organized worker presence,
You don't. The channel explains it in more detail. Fascists kill communists, but so do liberals. The threat of communism is used to whip footsoldiers into a frenzy (be it brownshirts, Kempeitai, black shirts/squadrists, etc.), but it is not foundation of the Fascist dictatorship itself, which is structural.

>>2528485
You might as well call Mao and the Bolsheviks fascists too in that case. It doesn't explain how these "nationalist-populist" movements relate to capital and the bourgeoisie itself.

>>2528494
>You might as well call Mao and the Bolsheviks fascists too in that case

If the boot fits

>>2528489
in your opinion, does fascism or liberalism represent more of a danger to a vanguard state

The only difference between fascism and communism is that fascism is a partnership between the state and private power, whereas communism is a more like buyout or hostile takeover. But the end result is the same in either scenario - a handful of elite individuals own and control all of the wealth and means of production and the workers get nothing.

Trump is not a fascist. Ameritards have been calling every Republican president since George Bush a Fascist and every Democrat president sincd Clinton a Communist. Ignore the retarded ramblings of Americans and understand that fascism is not needed in America by the bourgeoisie because the left is extinct.

>>2528511
Both will kill you for organizing eventually, but the threshold is much lower for a fascist (full on bourgeois) dictatorship.
>>2528525
Read a book please.

>>2528535
You have contributed nothing to the discussion.

>>2528540

It's not enough to just read the books, you have to actually think about them too.

>>2528535
see >>2528262
If fascism only exists to squash the left, why did Germany and Imperial Japan not revert to liberal democracy after getting rid of socialist trade unions, communists and socialist parties? Why did the bourgeois dictatorship in Japan consolidate in absence of a militant socialist mass movement threatening capital?
Besides Trump already designated anti-fascists as domestic terrorists lol.

>>2528544
That poster has failed at least one of those.

China and trans people that use linux

>>2528552
>why did Germany and Imperial Japan not revert to liberal democracy after getting rid of socialist

Because the soviet union still existed dummy along with the worldwide worker movements. Germany and Italy were allowed by the bourgeoisie to pacify Europe and they were also hoping they could take out the USSR. That faiiled and then look how fast Franco's Spain switched back to liberal democracy. Imperial Japan was not fascist their government structure dates back to the prior century. Sure they were brutal but they were equivalent to the colonizing European monarchies.

>>2528614
Japan had liberal democracy during the Taisho era

What difference does it make whether the state overpowers and absorbs the private sector (communism) or the state mutually merges with the private sector (fascism)? The state will inevitably abandon their communist/fascist principles and adopt the exact same destructive and unsustainable business model of the private sector it replaced, investing all surplus capital into limitless expansion at the expense of social equality and long-term stability and transferring all the wealth away from the workers to the unaccountable ruling class. This is why every major industrial superpower, regardless of their officially-stated national ideology, shows the same rising trend towards higher wealth inequality, because that is the nature of power - power feeds and sustains itself, people in power will always leverage their power to attain more power, and power is not a means; it is an end.

>"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." - George Orwell

>>2528741
In none of the countries on the graph state absorbed the private sector though.

>>2528748

Russia and China did, what do you think the Communist revolution was?

>>2528749
The graph starts in 1980, and if you want to pick this angle it clearly shows relinquishing state control of economy leads to growth of inequality.

>>2528741
>the state overpowers and absorbs the private sector (communism)
I'm tired of retards

>>2528758
>it clearly shows relinquishing state control of economy leads to growth of inequality.

Then why is Europe's line flatter than China? If it was just a matter of state control, then surely China, being the most state-controlled economy, should have less wealth inequality than liberal free market capitalist Europe.

Obviously it's not a matter of whether the state or private monopolies control the means of production - what matters is the actual workers themselves, the people, whether *they* control the means of production. Europe has maintained a more stable level of wealth equality than the other countries thanks to bottom-up collective efforts such as labor parties, labor unions, and more free democratic governments that are less restrictive of free speech and assembly and allow public participation in the political arena to some degree, giving workers some degree of leverage against both the state and private power. The countries with the highest inequality are the ones where workers have the least control over the means of production, whether the state or the monopoly is the instrument of the Empire is irrelevant.

>>2528802

To put it more bluntly - power is never given, only taken. If the people want power they must take it themselves, not expect someone else to take it and give it back to them because that will never ever happen in a million years.

>>2528311
Defense program of capitalism when the system keeps crumbling and workers need an enemy that isn't their bourgeoise leaders

>>2528802
You yourself mentioned labour parties and democratic governments though. Those exercise power through state. rt

>>2528741
That Post Soviet curve is so depressing

>>2528311
Anything I don't like

>>2528377
>Well sure, there was fear of Bolshevism, but there were other things going on too. I think fascists were afraid of a lot of things. They were also afraid of liberalism. They viewed it as weak and decadent.

Yknow there was an old Radio War Nerd episode I remember listening to. They were talking about Ukraine and specifically the dichotomy between the liberal Ukrainian politicians/oligarchs and the Nationalists. Something they mentioned is that now, at least, it seems like the nationalists may be the more “cautious” figures in Ukrainian politics, while the liberals have no problems sociopathically sending thousands of people to die in doomed counteroffensives as long as it maintains western support. Like the nationalists are genuinely concerned they’ll run out of people.

And I think this might help illuminate the true mindset of fascism more than just trying to come up with a list of traits—or maybe “fascist anti-liberalism”. I think that the psychology of it can be defined contra liberalism.

So liberalism, in its purest form, doesn’t truly care for the distinction of “nations”. All those Ukrainians that die in meaningless counteroffensives? They’re nothing more than a row on a spreadsheet containing a tabulation of all their assets and debts. A “Ukrainian” is just whoever has a Ukrainian passport, whoever can be taxed by the Ukrainian state, whoever has assets beneath the umbrella of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile to the nationalists: it’s their countrymen.

How do you solve the emptying out of the Ukrainian populace? Just import more. Theres always some poor bastard out there you can start taxing. Of course to someone with deep national feeling, a nationalist, this seems insane. It’d be like learning your family just got brutally murdered then having the detective on the case say: “well looks like you should get a new wife.”

Fascism can be seen as perhaps an irrationalist revolt against liberalism. Perhaps not even socialism in particular, its enmity towards socialism perhaps spring boarding off its hatred of liberalism, and in many ways socialism evolved out of those liberal ideals. The socialist similarly says these “irrational” elements that the nationalist is deeply committed to are just that, irrational. The Saint that dies on the cross and fixes his gaze towards the heavens is just staring at the sky. Your language is just a function of communication and can simply be exchanged for any other; who cares if you’re told you’ll speak Russian or Spanish or Esperanto from now on, words are just dead. They’re static. Whether you say “hello” or “hola” is meaningless. Those religious festivals? Eh, just replace them with secular ones if they’re so important to you.

Hence Fascists seek some “third way” or whatever, it’s why they sometimes think they’re “neither right nor left”, because the way they see shit it’s the same thing. The capitalists and the socialists are both indifferent to their language dying out or some other country waltzing in and conquering theirs, as long as economic processes remain unaffected.

All this semantics about "fascism" or "capitalism" or "western liberalism" etc. everyone is really talking about the same thing, they just can't agree on what to call it. This malevolent oppressive force that has plagued human civilization throughout all of history that we perpetually do battle with and it constantly takes different forms and rebrands itself as different ideologies but its central motives remain the same - to conquer and rule the world, to be a force of total control and domination, to be a machine that grinds up the entire human species into a fine homogenous paste. I think it's good to have a more general and timeless word for it than "capitalism" or "industrial society" or "the West", something that describes exactly what we are all talking about that people of any political persuasion can immediately understand. The Empire is what I've settled on calling it. Babylon is what Rastas call it which is also a good word.

>>2528838
I broadly agree, but object to implication that nationalists have affection for their nation in itself. It is merely an expression of their ingroup-outgroup outlook, and generally have very little concern for their fellow citizens outside of conflict with other nations. The best example of that is standard right wing talking point about how government should not waste money on immigrants or foreign aid and instead take care of its own people, while taking "fuck you, got mine" attitude when it comes to actually helping locals.

>>2528824

The state does not provide those things to people, the people form labor unions on their own with certainly no help or encouragement from the state or anyone else. The workers organize and start strikes and protests and riots and they fight in the streets with strikebreakers and the police and they get sprayed with tear gas and busted in the head with clubs and thrown in jail and after years and years of this, if the workers can hold out and endure the beatings and the starvation long enough, the state will be forced to back down and cave to their demands. People tend to forget that all of the progress that has ever been made in the labor movement, and all social progress really, is extremely hard-fought and easily-eroded in the absence of constant vigilance. The workers who participated in these legendary strikes and riots in early 20th century were not students of Marx or academics or intellectuals of any kind, most of them were probably not even literate, they were just workers who seized the means of production through direct action and they figured it out for themselves, they didn't need any leader or book or ideology to guide them.

>>2528929
I am just kind of confused because you seem to treat "state" as a separate thing from "government".