What was the original appeal of modern fascism (or at least the fascism of the post-wwi era)?

Basically dictatorship for the middle class. Rather than a socialist "dictatorship of the proletariat" that upends the entire culture and religion, or a capitalistic free market that ensures the very rich elite have all political, social and economic power, it's somewhere in between.

A dictatorship that provides for the middle class by ensuring welfare and regulations, but also allowing private business and property rights to remain in place, and securing the place of culture, national identity, and in many cases, religion (Spain, Austria, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia).

It's basically state enforced Keynesian dictatorship with nationalism.

If you're an ordinary person that hates being screwed over by corporate capitalist bosses but also don't want to get screwed by a communist revolution that destroys society, fascism seems like a decent alternative

Fascism isn't very capitalist. It's just more friendly towards private entrepreneurship as long as they decide who's in charge, what's produced etc.
With different proportions of course but in the most authoritarian regimes you had to be loyal to the government.

>Fascism isn't very capitalist.

youtube.com/watch?v=pQ3q9QTIn50

>reactionary collectivist capitalism.

So Stalin was a fascist then

Fascism indeed involve capitalism directed by the state, but not advocate for an unrestricted or uncontrolled market. this is why most (if don't all) the fascist regimes can be considered followers of keynesianism.

As a principle I never use the "fascists liked it" argument against things I don't like but with Keynes I find it very tempting

?
How exactly was Stalin reactionary though?

What's so bad about Keynes?

I find other economic schools to be better.

>How exactly was Stalin reactionary though?

>Hate gays and sex wierdos and sent them to the gulag
>Advocate to conservation of family values over the bourgoise degeneracy.
>communism for the motherland (nationalism).
>Traditional view of gender roles.
>Diplomacy of tanks (imperialism)
>State capitalism
>Cult of personality

>Each nations had theirs including the Jews.
There's a difference between fascism and nationalism. Of course there were elements among zionists that were extremely militaristic like the Irgun but it was the left and centrist wing of the goal for a jewish state in israel that prevailed (though, the idea of just up and settling in Palestine because your ancestors 2k years before had lived there is a bit "radical" and had the implicit idea of violently expelling those inhabitants that lived there at the present, though the more "tolerant" zionists either didn't think about it or turned a blind eye to it because the ideology clouded their judgement)

>What? Before Hitler it was just a new political ideology.
If you think Mussolini's takeover was peaceful, then you haven't read enough about it, user. Mussolini's rise started in earnest as a huge reaction to a two year strike by leftist workers after WWI known as the "red biennial". The Blackshirts of mussolini basically unleashed a flurry of violence against urban workers by attacking their headquarters, beating and killing their leaders and demolishing these bases. It was also sparked by socialist attempts to organize agricultural laborers, which is where blackshirt violence first erupted as redistributionary measures after WWI made many small farmers that now had land absolutely intolerant of field laborers being organized and asking for higher wages. These small landowners were in alliance with larger estate owners and you see both joining blackshirts in huge numbers

State Capitalism was Lenin and a bunch of that other stuff isn't inherently reactionary.

By the standards of the dictatorships, Mussolini's was by far the least brutal. There was repression of the Communists in the trade unions, but not the large-scale torture and genocide of political opponents to be found elsewhere in Europe. He needs to be judged in the context of the insurrectionary Italian post-Great War experience, rather than by the peaceful liberal standards of modern "democracy".

>State Capitalism was Lenin

Man, Stalin extracted the surplus labour of the workers as well as any other capitalist.

Also the other stuff can be considered reactionary, otherwise what kind of stuff can be considered inherently reactionary in your opinion?

fpbp

>By the standards of the dictatorships, Mussolini's was by far the least brutal.
agreed, but even contemporary observers saw that the way he came to power was quite dirty, though many chose to ignore that and only see the good in the regime.
>There was repression of the Communists in the trade unions,
repression certainly, but it does not do justice to the opening rounds of violence which was just brutal beatings and killings by black shirt thugs that were responsible for catapulting mussolini to power. Now, this outbreak of violence was actually quite spontaneous and beyond mussolini's control, perhaps even moreso than Hitler's thugs, but mussolini condoned the violence and used it as a threat and a bargaining chip to get a position in government, which is quite cynical and illegal in my mind.
> the insurrectionary Italian post-Great War experience
There's no doubt that the biennio rosso spooked a lot of larger industrialists and estate owners, and from their perspective it was fucking scary. But we also know that the threat was largely exaggerated and the workers utterly failed to achieve any of their goals in stirring up trouble. We also need to see it as an Elite abandonment of democracy/parliamentary government as a tool of control and as a search for another authoritarian alternative, because the Italian liberal (not in the american sense) elite were tiring of the system and wanted to combat communism. Of course, we can't really blame them for doing so, but ultimately I think it was an irresponsible withdrawal from taking responsibility and handing it over to a party that actually was hostile to their interests, and would soon extinguish their base of power in the parliamentary system.

A lot of debate can be had about what fascism is, but its appeal was pretty straight forward at the time. Their argument went like this:

Capitalist societies are soulless and destructive. They promote mindless consumption for the sake of personal profit. This in turn leads to an upper class that is removed from the rest of society and owes allegiance to no one within that society. The rich, like a parasite, will continue to feed off the masses for profit until they have nothing. At that point the masses will turn to communism, having nothing left to lose. This would not truly be a victory for the people though. Communism might rid the masses of their capitalist oppressors, but they would be enslaved by the collective. Communism could tolerate no competing allegiances, whether it be to family, the state, or god. Everyone must be wholly and solely devoted the collective.

Fascism was promoted as a third path, a way to avoid exploitation by a capitalist oligarchy while also avoiding a collapse into the faceless collectivism of communism.

I don't aprove everything mussolini did, but I still respect his legacy, Today most of the people remember him like a clown or a weak sidekick of Hilter, without even see his importance and relevance not only in Italy but in the history of fascism itself.

How do you know what surplus value is without knowing why Lenin did what he? He wanted to accelerate the capitalism stage to socialism. Whether or not you approve of it( I don't) it doesn't change the fact that he was different from capitalists

Those things aren't reactionary for his time

State capitalism is still capitalism, in marxism, socialism is when the very workers have democratic control of the mean of production. Both Lenin (NEP included) and Stalin are still capitalists in that definition.

>Those things aren't reactionary for his time

Then seems like "reactionary" is a very arbitrary concept don't you think?

Aesthetics man

All manly and cool ideologies are fueled solely by aesthetics, it has nothing to do with economics, logic, ethics and so on. Unfortunately the world is ran by gay english nerds and jews.

NAZBOL GANG WE IN HERE

>>Leftypol memes

You ruined the thread

He came to power not by his own hand but the paralysis of the state. He was willfully chosen to lead by the hand of the electorate and was removed by that same hand when he was no longer needed.

You don't have to think for yourself and about your consequences

And in time of crisis it works when you can hold on to a strong leader

Also that said Fascisms appeal was empowerment. Rather than being a powerless whore as democracy or the gluttonous power hoarding pig of communism Fascism provided an avenue for the average person to rise to prominence based off their skill and commitment. It abrogated the idea of rights such as liberty being universal by supplanting them with the right to existence. That someone having a job, to be able to feed themselves, and live a proper life were more important than those bigger ideas of universal rights. It also offered a powered hand to intervene and correct the issues that plagued the state. In Italy, fascism saw universal education standardization and fighting the Mafia. In Germany the rural community saw the appropriation of farms that had been divided and sold off after the war reorganized into Heirloom farms that could not be destroyed and had to be owned by Germans.

Is modern China fascist?

>thinks nazbol is a meme
Bugman detected

>Communism could tolerate no competing allegiances, whether it be to family, the state, or god. Everyone must be wholly and solely devoted the collective.
I must have missed the part where Marx endorsed the Borg.

Generally speaking communism promotes the idea that class struggle is the one thing that unites all the people of the world. They might be from different religions, ethnicities, or states, but that unites them. Consequently, to put these things ahead of the collective struggle is seen as detrimental to the greater cause, creating divisions within the working class. Fascists, along with many conservatives, seized this as proof that communism was a godless and soulless ideology. Obviously there's been a lot more nuance to this in practice, but Hitler and Mussolini were arguing against communism on an ideological level, so reality didn't factor into it much.

>moloch above bogdanoffs
how fucking dare you

Why the fuck is DeGaulle on there?

>fascists murdered anybody who opposed them.

not every fascist group did though, it wasn't considered evil until after ww2, the nazis wrongly got labelled fascists and then it was ruined for everyone else

>tfw Mussolini was based but made a huge mistake and got in on the wrong side of the war

it's somehow taken the worst capitalist excesses and the extreme brutality and oppression of totalitarian communism and fused them into this complete fucking nightmare, Xi is an unstoppable demon

The only form of socialism that actually worked