Fascism is the original Red-Brown Alliance

Neither popular answer to the question of why “Socialism” is in the name of “National Socialism” is entirely correct.  They were not indistinguishable from other Socialists on everything but the Nationalism v Internationalism question.  But neither can a claim it was all a lie to trick the working class with no sincerity behind it hold up to scrutiny.

The term “Red-Brown Alliance” is one of many used for the concept of the Far Left and Far Right being sometimes allied in mutual disdain for some aspect of the current Status Quo.  The reason the color Brown is referenced in that term is because in the post WW2 era Fascism is the Far Right.   But in the 19th Century the Far Right was regular old fashioned Royalism, in France it was being a Bourbon-Legitimist.  While the Far Left included both Internationalists and Nationalists, both Socialists and Jacobins, while The Center was Burkean Conservatism and Constitutional Monarchy.

The Philosophical groundwork for trying to be both a Monarchist and Revolutionary at once was laid by Thomas Carlyle who romanticized Medieval Europe and French Revolutionaries at the same time.  His works were popular in the Antebellum South and in Germany.  In The South it helped the Proto-Confederates from a justifying ideology that married Robert Filmer Paternalism with Jeffersonianism.

However the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War is where Proto-Fascism begins to take shape on the ground in Europe.  

In France it resulted in Revanchism and the creation of the Ligue des Patriotes in 1882 by Paul Déroulède.  In 1883 the last heir to Charles X died and so the Legitimists were split between those who now supported the Orleans line and the Carlists, this opened the door for a fusion of Ultra Royalism with the Bourgeois Nationalism of the Oleanists.  But importantly this was contemporary with the rise of Revanchism, that was the pan ideological phenomena.  Revanchism helped spawn a new mode of Antisemitism in France as France’s Ashkenazi population became included in French Germanophobia.  In 1886 Édouard Drumont published La France juive (Jewish France).  

In Germany meanwhile their Victory in the Franco-Prussian War emboldened the Volkisch Movement allowing Pan-Germanism to become no longer just a liberal but also an Imperialist goal as well as appealing to Social Reactionaries.  All while Modern Antisemitism got its start there.

1888 and early 1889 saw the rise and fall of Georges Ernest Boulanger whose ideologically vague movement was founded on three Principles, Revanchism, Revision of the Constitution and Restoration of The Monarchy.  One influential student of that movement was Maurice Barres. 

Later 1889 also saw the formation of the Second International where Nationalists were formally disowned from the Socialist movement.

From 1984 the Dreyfus Affair became a new animating movement that untied Socialists and Royalists. Maurice Barres wrote La Cocarde (The Cockade) to defend his ideas, attempting to bridge the gap between the far-left and the far-right and went on to become a leader of the before mentioned Ligue des Patriotes.

At this time Action Française was founded by Maurice Pujo, Henri Vaugeois, Jacques Bainville and Léon de Montesquiou, and then was later lead by Charles Maurras.  Charles Maurras created the ideology of Integral Nationalism combining Olreanist Royalism with the Mutualist Anarchism of Proudhon.  A student of his was Georges Valois. And he would also influence Jean Denis and the Rexist Party in Belgium.

Hubert Lagardelle and Gustave Hervé were other Anti-Reformist French Socialists who became radicalized by Nationalism during the WWI era, Mussolini himself cited Lagardelle as an origin point for Fascism. Herve founded in 1919 the Parti socialiste national (PSN) which was openly Class Collaborationist, and he openly vocally supported Mussolini.

Most of the key founders of Italian Fascism were former Leftists of some kind, not just Mussolini himself.  The common denominator was not which ideological subgenre they came from, they included former Marxists and Leninists and Syndicalists and Futurists and Anarchists of both Collectivist and Individualist varieties.  The common denominator was they were all people who supported Italy entering WWI because of their Nationalism. 

And today the primary unifying issue of the Far Right and Far Left is Anti-Zionism, and has been since Fancis Parker Yockey and Francois Genoud.

Gnosticism and Marcionism are Chaotically used terms

Marcion is one of many Christian Heretics who's name has become shorthand for just one particular idea he taught and thus Marcionism as a label will be applied to people or belief systems that are maybe even the opposite of Marcion on everything else.  In Marcion's case that is teaching that the God of the Hebrew Bible, YHWH, is not the same entity as The New Testament God who is The Father of Jesus.

I have recently learned that Marcion didn't even believe YHWH was Evil per se but more like Lawful Neutral to use some Gamer lingo. 

Others who separated the OT God from the NT God were even less hostile to the OT God.  Cerinthus separated them while still being a Legalist who said Christian should still keep The Torah.

Using Gnostic as a catch all term for everyone who believed anything even kind of like this or other related ideas was not being done at the time.  Irenaeus in Against Heresies used the word Gnostic only of the Valentinians and even that was not as a term to describe anything about their Theology or metaphysical world view but simply as his way of calling them pretentious.  Gnosis was a Greek word for knowledge, so you could translate calling someone a Gnostic as "know it all".

My past desire to define Gnosticism as simply the most extreme end result of 2nd Century Christians being too influenced by Middle Platonism and Neopythagoreanism is hindered by Wikipedia giving that label to Epiphanes who was clearly the opposite of that being more like a Zenonian Stoic.

The first theological system that tends to enter my mind when I think "Gnosticism" is primarily that of the Sethians.  So for example on my other blog in Gnosticism in Anime and Video Games the Sethian system is mainly what I had in mind when I suggested that SSSS.Gridman, Serial Experiment Lain and Revolutionary Girl Utena could perhaps be considered Reverse Gnosticism, using a Gnostic Mythological Framework but to actually convey the exact opposite attitude towards the material world.  

There are few topics where I am more susceptible to Godwin's Law then the subject of nominally Christian theologies that reject YHWH.  Thomas Carlyle had expressed a similar sentiment though he didn't go in-depth on it mostly not seeing himself as Christian at all anymore.  Volkish Antisemitism began doing this with Paul de Lagarde in the late 1870s.  Houston Stewart Chamberlain gave it a more refined expression in Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in 1899 followed by Rudolf Jung in 1919 and from there it was incorporated into the writings of NSDAP Propagandists like Alfred Rosenberg, Ludwig Muller and Ernst Bergman in forming their "Positive Christianity".  And in post-War Neonazism we see it even in how George Lincoln Rockwell describes the Old Testament in his Autobiography, but for him it lead to rejecting Christianity entirely.

However I have grown uncomfortable with calling this tendency "Nazi-Marcionism" as I have in the past, partly because of the above but also because I know plenty of others do not connect their rejection of the Jewish God to any hostility to Jews themselves.  There is definitely a type of Antisemitism in viewing The Jews as the ultimate victims of a cruel evil god who Jesus came to save them from rather then for.  But that would be distinct from Nazi Antisemitism.

If I were to compare any ancient Anti-Yhwists to those Nazis it would be the Cainites.  They were the ones who were explicit that the followers of the Evil God were also Evil.  And they also loved identifying themselves with those YHWH was seemingly hostile to in The Hebrew Bible.  

Houston Stewart Chamberlain argued Jesus was an Aryan by arguing he was a Canaanite, this and a few other ideas of his imply he felt the Aryans were Biblically Hamites, an idea that wouldn't hold up to historical scrutiny but I know a few still try to argue it in the obscure corners the Internet to this day.

Meanwhile Cain and his descendants are presented as the first violent warmongers in my reading of Genesis 4 making them natural people for Fascists to identify with.  Cain is the perfect Biblical Symbol for the Nietzschean conception of Master Morality.

And then there is the bizarre Islamophilia of the Nazis which would lend itself to identifying with the Arabian antagonists of Israel, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomites/Amalekites.  Meanwhile modern Palestinian nationalists often falsely claim descent from the Philistines and Canaanites. 

Now a lot of people online talking about the Nazis and Gnosticism tie into it some Conspiratorial belief in an unbroken continuity between Ancient Gnostics and groups active today.  That is obviously not the case, the Cainites died out during Late Antiquity. The Manicheans survived into the "Middle Ages" in the East but even they eventually died out.  Only the Mandeans survived to today but as isolated communities in the Middle East with no connection to any "Secret Societies" in The West.

The Symbiotic relationship between the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Step Back History did a video once about the relationship between the KKK and Neo-Nazis that claimed up until the end of the Vietnam Era they were always two separate strains of White Supremacy that were if anything hostile to each.  And he even says that is partly because many Klansman were WW2 Veterans and WW2 Vets didn't like Nazis for "obvious reasons".

Sure would be embarrassing for him if any research at all would have shown that the founder of post-War American Self-identifying Nazism was a WW2 Veteran named George Lincoln Rockwell, and the first American Holocaust Denier was a WW2 Veteran named Eustace Mullins (see also Revilo P. Oliver and Willis Carlo).  You see a lot of the kinds of people who become Soldiers have a mindset that actually makes them inclined to respect and even admire the enemies they fought against, it's more the people back home cheering on the war effort from the sidelines who buy into propaganda that completely dehumanizes the enemy.  And in general the Warrior mentality inherently feeds into Nazism and Fascism.  So no fighting on the Allied side in WW2 didn't inoculate anyone agaisnt Nazism or Fascism.

But even leaving that point aside, the tendency towards partnership between the Klan and the Nazis goes back to way before WW2 and thus certainly before Vietnam.

In some of my recent posts I've gotten into the sticky question of how to define Nazism and Fascism, but for this post I shall use the strictest definition for what makes a Nazi, before and during the War it refers to documented confirmed members of the NSDAP or derived organizations like the SA (Stormtroopers/Brown Shirts), SD and SS, and groups in other countries openly operating as extensions of that Party like the German American Bund. I have another definition of Nazi that essentially includes groups like the Klan, and well this post is part of arguing for that really, and even that is more narrow then how I use Fascist.

The main philosophical difference that does exist is the Klan favors Anglo-Israelism to reconcile their Racial Antisemitism and White Supremacy with believing in a Bible entirely about Semites being God's Chosen people.  While Nazis, if they are actively Christian at all, favor Marcionism.

And it's important to remember that the Second Klan's main focus was never on Anti-Black Racism (The Segregationists had already won in The South, when they Lynched Black People they did it openly no Hoods necessary.)  It was opposition to Immigrants, Catholics and Jews, the same things that animate Nazism.

Lothrop Stoddard was a known member of the Second Klan, he'd been exposed as one as early as 1923 and his books were required reading for Klan members.  His books about White Supremacist Social Darwinism alongside Madisen Grant's work were an important influence on Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of The Twentieth Century.  In 1939 and 1940 he was a in Nazi Germany as a journalist and received preferential treatment.

In the mid 1920s there was a Klan offshoot operating in northern Germany founded by American Immigrants to Germany called The Knights of The Fiery Cross.  Information about it online is mainly through old Newspaper Articles, there really should be more research into it.  But it seems there is known to have been members of this Klan who were also SA (the SA was temporarily officially banned for a time in the 20s).  However the main German Political Party it was tied to was the Germany Social Party founded and lead by Richard Kunze, but that party's platform was essentially the same thing as the Nazis and by the end of the 20s they like a lot of other rival Volk Nationalist Parties had been absorbed into the NSDAP including Kunze himself who joined in 1930.

In the 1930s Britain had a Klan imitation group called the White Knights of Britain that operated out of the same building as the Nordic League.  The Nordic League was founded by agents of Alfred Rosenberg's Nordische Gesellschaft and Archibald Ramsay for the purpose of networking between different Nazi Sympathizing groups and politicians in Britain.  Oswald Mosley wasn't a member because he intended to model his Fascism more after Mussolini, but he did allow other BUF members to participate.  It had stronger ties to Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League which despite it's name actually hated Mussolini style Fascism and got into Street Fights with Mosley's Black Shirts.  The Nordic League was mainly lead by Archibald Maule Ramsay but the President of it's Liberty Restoration league front group was Lord Arthur Wellesley the 5th Duke of Wellington.

George W. Christians is another link between the Second Klan and actual Nazi Spies, by working with Klansman C. A. Hester and Nazi Spy Oscar C. Pfaus.

From 1938-1944 the House Un-American Activities Committee was lead by Maritn Dies and John E. Rankin, they were open Klan sympathizers and possibly even members, even compared to most other openly Racist Segregationist Southern Democrats their ties to the Klan were uniquely strong.  The KKK even sent a letter to the Committee informing them of how it had their full support.

This form of the Committee was already primarily doing what we would later call McCarthyism, what nominal effort it did put into investigating Nazi sympathizers was half hearted and came to naught.  Instead it's fixation on Communists resulted in it going after the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, they considered being Anti-Nazi the same as being Communist.

Theodore G. Bilbo was an admitted KKK member and he also openly praised Nazi Race Laws.  (He was also closely associated with Earnest Sevier Cox co-founder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America and future ally of Post-War SS survivors like Leers and even sent a letter of support to George Lincoln Rockwell.)

Eugene Talmadge was a Klan linked Governor of Georgia who bragged about reading Mein Kampf seven times.

But don't forget the Second Klan had Republicans too, like Oregon Senator Rufus C. Holman who expressed admiration for Hitler.

If you go to the Wikipedia Page for the man who was Grand Wizard of the KKK during WW2 James A. Colescott, it will talk about how the Kan had fought alongside Nazi Sympathizers in Race Riots like the one in Detroit in 1943. The National Workers League was the key front group for their collaboration.

Tyler Kent the American Ambassador to Britain who committed Treason helping Archibald Ramsay spy for the Nazis, went on to work for a KKK linked Newspaper in Florida.

In Chile in 1964 Franz Pfeiffer's Nazi party also founded a Chilean branch of the KKK.

Ecofascism is a Problematic term.

The problem with Ecofascism discourse is that we use the term Ecofascism to describe two distinctly different bad Environmentalist ideologies.  Only one of which was ever actually a part of any Fascist movement and that was a specific sub-type of Fascism that some do argue doesn't really qualify.  They only have in common that they're Malthusian.

The first is what should really be called Eco-Nazism, the explicitly White Supremacist Environmentalism of Madisen Grant and other conservationists who were close to Teddy Roosevelt who in turn had a strong influence on Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg.  

Interestingly what a certain YouTube Channel keeps calling "Fossil Fascism" is also actually Nazism and also has it's roots in the influence American White Supremacists held over German Nazism principally in their idolization of Henry Ford who's International Jew essays were translated into German and very popular over there in the early 1920s.

The other "Ecofascism" is really Eco-Nihilism or Eco-Misanthropy, this is the bad Environmentalism sometimes believed by people who think they qualify as Leftists as well as what certain people keep falsely accusing Degrowth of being a disguised version of.

The problem with associating that second ideology with Fascism is that Fascism is a fundamentally Anti--Nihilist and Pro-Human worldview.  Mussolini style Fascism doesn't tend toward being Environmentalist at all (and Mussolini ultimately rejected Malthusianism) but when they are it's a form predicated on belief in Man's Dominion over Nature.

And the thing is even among Nazis it has today become far more common for the Far Right to believe we actually have a declining birthrate problem.  The Overpopulation delusion has become almost exclusively the delusion of Liberals and Pseudo-Leftists.

Socialism and Third Positions

Arguing that the Socio-Economic aspects of the ideologies of Italian Fascism and the NSDAP legitimately qualify as types of Socialism is usually done for the purpose of condemning Socialism, (or more rarely to defend Fascism like Povl Riis-Knudsen).  I however am a Socialist who is still willing to say not all Socialisms are good.

In my Fascism is Heroarchy post on my main blog I was talking about the core Psychology of Fascism in a way that mostly transcends any actual policies.  That definition of Fascism can apply to more than just the kinds of Socialism I shall define as Third Positions here but can also manifest as Capitalist like in the fiction of Ayn Rand or among Marxists like what Stalinism eventually became.

People arguing against the equation of Fascism with Socialism can’t agree on how.  To Progressive Liberals it’s more about proving Progressive Liberalism isn’t Fascist since Conservatives think Progressive Liberalism is Socialism.  And then Breadtubers don’t just want to distinguish their Socialism from Fascism but want to make Fascism somehow a type of Capitalism.

And then of course Conservatives and Libertarians and whatever TIK is don’t actually understand what is and isn’t Socialist about any kind of Socialism because they just think it's anytime the Government does anything.  

At its core Socialism originally just meant Collectivism with the goal of making Society more Equal, and generally involved critiquing Capitalism with a forward rather than backward looking perspective.  It was always a much broader concept than Communism.  Marx himself wrote about how he prefers to use the term Communism because "respectable" Socialism had become associated with "Middle Class" tendencies he didn't like.  I'm going to argue that some of those Middle Class Socialisms of the 19th Century are the Grandparents of National Socialism and Fascism.  Even Thomas Carlyle was considered a Socialist at the time, even though the core of his ideology was Reactionary.

Today self described Socialists with a notable platform are mostly people identifying as either Marxist or Anarchist.  The thing is as much as Marxism and Anarchism seem like such diametrically different kinds of Socialism in that context, they actually have two maybe three things in common that were not Universal among those called Socialists in the 19th Century, or even all that common in the first half of that century.

First is that even Anarchists are Marxists in the sense that a “Marxist Reading” of a fictional story is about how much it can be interpreted as calling for Class Warfare.  Anarchists also believe the goal of Communism is a Classless Society, since Class is also an unjust hierarchy.  So Marxists and Anarchists are both supposed to oppose Class Collaboration.  Class based rhetoric is often associated with Marxism first because Marxism is strictly speaking not a political ideology at all but an analysis of History as being driven by Class Struggle, Anarchist philosophers mostly agree with the Marxist analysis of history even if they sometimes try to be less strictly economically determinist about it.

Now Class Collaboration is not about denying the lower classes have it bad and need to be treated better.  Rather they see the answer to Class Conflict as reconciliation rather than abolition.  Class Collaboration is often associated with Nationalist rather than Internationalist forms of Socialism, but H.G. Wells' political ideology was absolutely a Globalist Class Collaborationist Socialism.

The classic silent film Metropolis is one people love to give their Marxist readings of, but the ending of the film is in fact Class Collaboration with the protagonist becoming the mediator between the owners and the workers.  Most forms of Class Collaboration intend the mediator to be The State, but Fascist Class Collaboration often sees the State as principally embodied in a Strongman Leader.  That’s the real reason Metropolis is part of the Caligari to Hitler thesis.

It’s possible to see a mild Statist Class Collaborationism is Keynesian Liberalism and Social Democracy.  But to me a true Class Collaborationist Socialism has to go further than that, it still sees society as in need of massive restructuring, not merely tweaked by Social Safety Nets and allowing Unions to exist.

However I also feel an Anarchist Class Collaborationism existed in the Anarcho-Mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.  Today Proudhon’s legacy is fought over between Anarcho-Capitalists and Anarcho-Communists but in my view both should disown him for his Misogyny and Anti-Semitism (the contemporary Frenchman who Libertarian-Communists should claim as a forbearer is Joseph Dejacque).  Proudhon was also a direct influence on French Proto-Fascism via both Georges Sorel and Charles Maurass’s Integral Nationalism (Georges Valois then synthesized those two ideologies while still citing Proudhon himself), and on Nazism via Houston Stewart Chamberlain.  Proudhonian Anarchism is also probably what Tolkien meant when he described himself as an Anarchist but I’m not sure he knew that.

Sadly many of the people called Christian Socialists in the 19th Century were a type of Class Collaborationist.  The Denominationally more High Church Types wanted the Institutional Church of wherever they were to be the mediator.  But others took a more Christianized form of Proudhonian Mutualism sometimes called the "Community of Love".  Thing is Jesus was clear The Rich can't enter His Community until they are no longer Rich.

The second is that ultimately Marxists are also Anarchists, they also see the long term goal of Communism as a Stateless Society. Communists who are considered Anarchists in contrast to Marxists simply have no Faith in the Marxist belief that the State will wither away on its own, and also tend to have a very “Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely” attitude towards the very concept of trying to use the State to achieve Socialist aims.

This is often the core of arguing Fascism can’t be a kind of Socialism. Anarchists and Marxists are so used to arguing with each other about when the State should be abolished that they have lost the ability to imagine a Socialism that says it shouldn’t be at all.  

However almost all Pre-Marx Secular Socialists believed the State shouldn't be abolished at all, as well as Louis Blanc in France who was the first person to criticize Capitalism by that name and was an apologist for the Jacobin dictatorship (his ideas also already contain the gist of Corporatism).  And then contemporary with Marx in his own country there was Ferdinand Lassalle who was a very vocal Statist, but I won’t accuse Lassalle of Class Collaborationism.  In England Henry Hyndman and the Fabian Socialists including H.G. Wells were also Statist Socialists.

The third is that Marxists and Anarchists are also generally Internationalist rather than Nationalist.  But there is some nuance here as there is a type of Nationalism that is ultimately compatible with Internationalism, Nationalist Resistance/Liberation movements for Colonized and Marginalized peoples.  And then there’s National Bolshevism which originally referred to Nationalists who saw themselves as still qualifying as Marxist-Lenninists before it became a generic insult for any Communist who seems Socially Conservative on some issues.

There are a lot of different kinds of Nationalism just based on how you define what makes a Nation.  The Volkish Nationalism of the NSDAP as well as the Christian Identity Anglo-Israelism of certain American White Nationalists are both Nationalisms where Citizenship is determined by Biological Race, but there are others that define it by more abstract cultural factors.  The more exclusivist the Nationalism is the more inherently Reactionary it will be.  But there’s also the matter of scale, people assume all Nationalists oppose the European Union because of its conflict with the Nationalism of more specific European countries, but there is also a Paneuropean Nationalism that supports the E.U. or at least forming something like it, Fascists and Nazis were considering Paneurpeanism already even before WW2 and today the E.U. is supported by Richard Spencer.

During the 19th Century Nationalism was considered an inherently Left Wing ideology even though tensions between Nationalists like Mazzini and Marxists were always there, and yes even Mazzini was sometimes considered a Socialist.  The formation of the Second International in 1889 was when mainstream Marxism decided Nationalism shouldn’t be tolerated anymore.

On all three of these I agree with Marxists and Anarchists which is why I feel I qualify as a Communist, yet on where Marxists and Anarchists disagree with each other I'm still a bit torn between them.

The first two of the three things I just talked about are the core of what a Third Positionist Socio-Economic ideology breaks with Marxism and Anarchism on, and even then needs to be combined with the Heroarchy to fully qualify as either Nazi or Fascist.  The third is the one that’s optional.

But most Breadtubers feel the opposite, because they’re obsessed with the flimsy Palingenetic Ultranationalism thesis and really want to insist that Fascists are just taking a modified Capitalist position on Economics, while also accusing Anti-Government Conservatives and Libertarians of being Fascist.  The same Breadtubers will often base much of their criticism of Capitalism on saying it’s a relatively new development in Human history so can’t actually be Human nature.  But if Capitalism is indeed New in the grand scheme of things then it is absolutely possible to be Anti-Capitalist in a Reactionary way.  But not even all Fascists see themselves as Reactionary, Nazism often does, but proper Mussolini and Mosley style Fascists did not.

My problem with treating Nationalism (or some other Exclusivist Identitarianism) as the most nonnegotiable characteristic of Fascism is that it precludes the possibility of a Globalist Fascism.  Now I don’t think a truly Globalist Nazism is possible (unless Extraterrestrials actually started migrating to Earth, then you could have an NSTAP), but again H.G. Wells' ideology was a Globalist Socialism with both my requirements to be an Economic Third Position, it just as far as I'm aware lacks the Heroarchy.  In Modern Hero Myth making Heroes who save and/or unite the entire World not just one tribe are increasingly becoming the standard.  So the pieces are already in place for a Globalist Fascism.  A government doesn’t need to be based on any specific bigotry to be authoritarian and oppressive. 

Mussolini’s Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought by A. James Gregor is a very interesting and well researched book.  It's early chapters document how the Italian Fascist ideology of Mussolini and Giovani Gentile evolved organically out of developments happening in Italy in the late 19th Century, where Mazzini style Nationalism and Syndicalism (which in Italy was already using the language and imagery of the Roman Fascio) were influencing each other in an increasingly fully symbiotic relationship while also taking influence from Sorel.

I’m someone who is interested in the differences between Fascism in the sense Mussolini intended and Nazism.  It has been common, (including by me earlier in this post and other recent ones I’ve made) to use Fascism as the umbrella term and National Socialism (what Nazi is short for) as the more specific subtype.  But this book has made me consider that maybe they should be switched, because it has quotes on pages 52 and 54 where the term “National Socialism” is used by Italian Proto-Fascists in 1914 before it ever was in Germany in 1918, including by Mussolini himself.  The particular kind of National Socialism associated with the NSDAP and some other German Parties should be labeled Volkish National Socialism.

Indeed there were a lot of groups popping up calling themselves National Socialist during this era, not all of them even fit the definition I’ve given for Third Positionist at all.  But another one that could be considered a Third Position was the National Socialist Party founded in Britain in 1916 by Henry Hyndman.  Hyndman was like Mussolini in how he left the Socialist Party he was previously in because he supported WW1.  But he was also a promoter of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories related to the Second Boer War, and after the Russian Revolution he became very Anti-Bolshevik.  

In France a "Parti socialiste national" was founded in 1919 by Gustave Herve who like the founders of Italian Fascism had previously been a Pro-War Leftist.  But before that Maurice Barrès in 1889 used the phrase "Républicain nationaliste et socialiste".

The first use of National Socialism in Germany predates the founding of the party Hitler would later take over and rename adding that term to it.  It was in late 1918 associated with the Anti-Bolshevik League.  So in Germany National Socialism was always somewhat fundamentally reactionary, a reaction to the Russian Revolution.  But again the core original definition of Socialism can still apply to a reactionary viewpoint, because reactionaries are not actually backward looking but being in someway the opposite of the progressives they're reacting to.  

Within the NSDAP there was always a tension between those who took the Socialism part seriously like Feder and the Strassers, and the growing influence of German Industrialists who were financing the Party.  Hitler himself was actually more of a follower than a leader as far as this tension went, all he really cared about was hating the Jews and restoring Germany’s “Heroic” Pride.  

The Prussian Socialism of Oswald Spengler was another German Third Position.

France had Fascist movements emerge organically and independently of simply being influenced by Germany and Italy. In addition to Valois there was the Neosocialism movement, and in Belgium Henry De Man came from the same Belgian Socialist Party that produced key leaders of the Second International.

After the War new Third Positions continued to emerge.  Juan Peron in Argentina was perhaps the most successful implementation of Mussolini style Fascism.  In The Middle East we had Nasser in Egypt, Baathism in Syria and Iraq and then the Fatah Party in Palestine.  Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalism was originally a Third Positionist ideology but like the NSDAP gave way to Capitalist influence in Taiwan over time.  Then Juche and Dengism are both functionally Third Positionist even though they nominally still claim to be Communists.

Saying there is no true Socialism in National Socialism because they disagree with us on Class and The State and Nationalism is a blatant No True Scotsman Argument that a certain type of the Internet Reactionaries we’re arguing with have a long history of not tolerating from Christian Apologists in which context Secular Leftists agree.  So doing the same thing when it comes to Socialism isn’t a good look.

Communism/Communist is the term that applies to Marxists and Kopropkin style Anarchists and other Socialists who take the correct position on Class Warfare rather then any Third Position.  But even Communism can be corrupted by Bad Actors.  We need to stop concerning ourselves with whether any given Dictator was a true Socialist or Communist and instead argue their moral, ethical and practical failings don’t mean Socialism and Communism can’t work at all.

Likewise a lot of Internet Leftists base their responses to calling Mussolini or Hitler Socialist on defining them based on what they did rather then anything said in their ideological Manifestos, and the problem is that's not how defining an ideology works.  Anarchists, non Leninist Marxists and Trotskyists feel the USSR also failed to actually be Socialist in practice, but few would deny that Leninism is a Socialist, Communist and Marxist ideology.  The USSR also wound up crushing Unions when Unions become inconvenient for them.

A given regime's failure to do what it was supposed to do may or may not be a valid argument against an Ideology being correct, but it isn't an excuse to redefine one.

Saying "the term Privatization was coined to describe what the Nazis did" doesn't change the fact that the Privatizations the Nazis did were fake because of all the strings attached.  The people who support Privatization for Liberal/Capitalist reasons would look at that as functionally indistinguishable from Nationalization even if it wasn't done by the one government absolutely no one wants to be compared to.

Plato and Fascism

A lot of people have talked about how Plato can be considered a Proto-Fascist, and I somewhat agree but there is nuance to this that I feel needs to be acknowledged.

Plato’s discussion of the “Five Regimes” in Republic Books VIII-IX uses most Greek Political terms with different meanings then Aristotle used them, (with Aristotle’s meanings usually being the default meanings used by modern scholars and Wikipedia).  Plato’s Five Regimes were Aristocracy which was how things should be in his view, Timocracy which was a corruption but still preferable to any state Athens was in during Classical Antiquity, Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny.

While you can define Plato’s Aristocracy as Fascist based on which traits of the Philosophy of Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile one prioritizes in deciding what the defining traits of Fascism are, in practice Mussolini’s regime was more Timocracy and Nazism was definitely more Timocracy.  But again I’m not referring to Aristotle’s definition of Timocracy (land ownership as basis of citizenship) which the Wikipedia page for Timocracy cites as the default.  I’m gonna quote a sentence from Wikipedia’s page for Plato’s Republic. “In a timocracy, governors will apply great effort in gymnastics and the arts of war, as well as the virtue that pertains to them, that of courage.” This definition for Timocracy is also essentially a part of what I meant by Heroarchy in a recent post I made on my main blog.

While on this subject I’d like to point out that some YouTube criticism of the Philosopher King concept is kind of missing the point.  Plato was not arguing that the kinds of people doing Philosophy as their profession in then contemporary Athens are inherently the kinds of people best fit to rule. He’s going back to the core Etymology of Philosopher to say that an ideal ruler should be bred, raised and trained their whole life from birth to be a Wise King. Think about the A Song of Fire and Ice Books and why Varys believes Young Griff will be an ideal King, that’s what Plato means by a Philosopher King.  I’m not pointing this out to defend the idea, I think it is misguided especially when combined with the other aspects of how Plato’s Aristocracy is supposed to work, but I do feel it’s important to know what he meant.

Another thing people are often confused by is how Plato speaks about the Five Regimes as a sequence as if that’s what history especially in Athens has demonstrated when it doesn’t fit our understanding of the history of Athenian Democracy. But the key is that Plato and most Athenians in his time believed certain things about the history of Athens modern Historians know are probably mostly not entirely true.  

Part of the whole premise of Timaeus-Critias is that it’s claiming Athens was this Ideal Aristocracy in the very distant past, that’s the Athens that defeated Atlantis and is probably meant to correlate to the Golden-Silver ages of Greek Mythology.  And then I would guess that the Timocracy period of Athens was supposed to be the Athens of the Heroic Age, the Athens of Theseus, then the Oligarchy was the Athens of Draco, and then the tension between between Democracy and Tyranny was how Plato saw the Classical history of Athens he was living in.

But in the long term Platonism isn’t just defined by Plato himself.  One theory I’ve entertained on this blog already is that The Laws was maybe not an authentic writing of Plato but a Pythagorean Pseudepigrapha.  The Laws does seem to have a similar yet different underlying Political ideology to it from The Republic, so can the hypothetical State described in The Laws be considered more of a Timocracy?  The Gymnasium having an important status in the center of The City alongside The Temple of Zeus is one clue that it could be thought of that way.

When people seek to trace the roots of Fascism back to Ancient Greece Plato isn’t the only source, they also look to Sparta, but more specifically Sparta as it was imagined by Athenian Laconophiles.  Plato and Aristotle are often placed among those but they both did have criticisms of Sparta, even in The Laws where the unnamed Athenian blames Sparta for all the Gay stuff he hates.  But I do think what both Plato and Aristotle’s conception of Timocracy have in common is that they were in part thinking of Sparta.  The principal true unqualified Athenian Laconophile was Xenophon.  Xenophon also wrote the Anabasis which very much fits into the kind of Militaristic Hero Myths I talked about in the Heroarchy post, and perhaps his Cyropaedia laid the seed for the Great Man Theory of History since it would be the first Greek History text to be written as a Biography.

Middle Platonism is in my view the actually most influential period of Platonism.  It was during this period that the Greek Church Fathers started allowing Platonist ideas to influence them and lead them away from the generally more Stoic perspective of The New Testament.   And then there’s Plutarch, again since I see a symbiotic relationship between the Great Many Theory and Fascism it’s notable that Plutarch was perhaps unintentionally a key influence on that theory, his most well known work is The Parallel Lives, and many don’t know this but before him writing history in the form of Biographies was not the standard.  In particular his Biography of Alexander can at points seem like Thomas Carlyle’s Heroarchy thesis almost fully formed.  I don’t know if any smoking gun proof Carlyle was a fan of Plutarch exists, but I would be surprised if he was not.  Plutarch also had a lot of interest in Sparta.

I feel like Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Christianity is the closest thing we’ve had to a real life attempt to implement Plato’s Aristocracy, with The Emperor as the Philosopher King and The Monastic Church itself as the Guardians.  But perhaps a more Secular Version of it would be the “Socialism” of H.G. Wells in his non Fiction writings.

Plato’s definition of Oligarchy applies pretty well to Conservative Capitalism while his definition of Democracy applies to both Liberal Capitalism in its various forms and many forms of Socialism.  While Tyranny is probably how Plato would view Marxist-Leninist Regimes.

Your definition of Fascism is probably wrong, including Umberto Eco.

Including myself in some of my past attempts to talk about Fascism.

Being a Leftist who doesn't like how loosely my fellow Leftists use the word Fascism is an awkward situation to be in.  The problem is we've gotten so used to Fascism as a Synonym for evil that people assume the only reason to argue someone or some ideology isn't Fascist is to defend them as not evil.

What I'm going to argue Fascism means is something I do not like, but the various things most people seem to mean when they say Fascism are things I dislike even more, Authoritarianism, Militarism, Imperialism, Totalitarianism, Nationalism, Xenophobia, Racism, Antisemitism, Bigoty, Eugenics ect, and so I kind of wish they would just use those words which already have negative connotations, saying "Fascism" when you mean one of those just muddies the waters.  The most well known Fascist regimes tend to also involve some or all of those, but what those words mean are still different.

If something I like is being called Fascist by a Leftist then the accuser probably isn't even applying their own definition properly, but if you're accusing someone associated with the American Republican Party or any form of Conservatism then rest assured they're not someone I have any desire to defend as the right path.  If I'm disagreeing with you about how "Fascist" a certain Movie or Anime or Comic Book is, I probably also disagree about how "Conservative" it is.

But it's not just people using it as a derogatory, even some of the people who've called themselves Fascists have in my view not actually understood what the term meant.  Of the three Fascist parties that existed in 1920s-30s Brittan I'd argue only Mosley actually had any idea what he was talking about.  All three were jerks who I'm glad never actually took power, but only one was using the word properly.  Douglas Francis Jerrold was another example of someone Pro-Mussolini but Anti-Hitler, as was Sir Charles Petrie.

Umberto Eco is who I singled out in the title because a lot of Breadtubers treat his Ur Fascism as the Infallible Word of God for how to define Fascism.  The problem is he is one of many who's goal in defining Fascism was not intellectual honestly but a desire to define both Mussolini's Fascism and German Nazism based on what they appeared to have in common rather then how either of those parties defined themselves so that he could back up the mainstream liberal narrative of WW2 as a war against an evil ideology rather then a War fought for the same reasons the first one was.

Yes you got that right, I'm questioning the term's applicability even to the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler, the elaboration on that will come later, my point right now is that's the ideology where the "Palingenetic Ultra Nationalism" was the core of what they were about, for Mussolini the appeals to nationalism were merely a means to an end.

Mussolini invented Fascism as an ideology, he made it clear what he meant Fascism to be was simply his form of the Socio-Economic system called Corporatism which in turn he defined as a "third way" between Capitalism and Socialism.

I say "his form" because I would not even call all forms of Corporatism inherently Fascist, in fact at it's broadest definition Corporatism can be compatible with Leftism.  An American in 2020 may look at that term and think it refers to "corporations" as in big business, however the Cooperatives in mind here are actually more like Unions or medieval Trade Guilds, or collectively owned Co-Ops.  The Corporatism traditionally advocated by the Catholic Church and Syndicalism is a bottom up Corporatism while Mussolini's was a top down Corporatism.  But more importantly then that it was a State run Corporatism.

The chief motto of Mussolini's Fascist party was "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").  Of all the traits we commonly associate with Fascism, Statism is actually the most important.  And that's why it annoys me when certain American political movements get called (or even call themselves) Fascist that are actually strongly anti-State ideologies, from Anarcho-Capitalism to Posse Comitatus who's ideology is literally Mob Rule.  Again both are ideologies I consider wrong, one is more evil then the other with it's blatant white supremacy but both are bad ideas.

Mussolini and Hitler actually hated each other, they almost went to war over Austria in 1934.  Mussolini did not believe in Biological Racism (he was Nationalist but anyone in Italy was Italian even if you moved there just before WW1 broke out) or Antisemitism.  In 1938 racial laws were passed in Italy because at the time they had become dependent on Nazi Germany, but they were never fully enforced.  I'm not pointing this out to paint Mussolini as some Saint unfairly demonized by his forced association with Hitler, he was a Statist and Imperialist.

I'm simply pointing out that Nazism was not simply Mussolini's ideology applied to Germany.  None of the Far Right Parties of Weimar Germany called themselves Fascist (it seems only former Roman provinces actually used the term which makes sense) but there were a couple of Hitler's rivals on the German Far-Right I would say were much closer to being what German Mussolini might've looked like.  Ernst Niekisch actually had a relationship with Mussolini along with whom we could add the other National Bolsheviks (Heinrich Laufenberg, Karl Otto Paetel) or figures like Waldemar Pabst, Friedrich Minoux, Walter Caspari, Ernst Junger and Herman Ehrhardt.  I'm hesitant to mention Alfred Hugenberg or Oswald Spengler, they were influenced by Mussolini's Corporatism but still more Capitalist then he was.  

Then there Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten the Paramilitary Veterans organization of the DVNP that received political backing from Mussolini during the 20s and called themselves 'German Fascists" in the 1932 Election specifically to distinguish themselves from the Nazis.

Meanwhile if you want to know what Italian Nazism would look like I'd say look no further then Julius Evola.

The fact is Nazism (and what gets called French Fascism) was much more homegrown then this lazy "Hitler copied Mussolini" narrative implies.  The philosophical core of Nazism was laid out by Houston Stewart Chamberlain in his Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in 1899 and there were Antisemitic German Nationalist movements even before then, Hitler's style was very influenced by Gerog Ritter von Schonerer, there were groups like the Pan German League and the Fatherland Party, but even before them the Berlin Movement of the 1870s-80s.  Meanwhile Ernst Haeckel and Alfred Ploetz laid the groundwork for Nazi Eugenics.

Sometimes people seek to define Fascism based on it's methods of obtaining power rather then actual ideology.  In this case however Hitler actually failed when he tried to copy the March on Rome, meanwhile the Kapp Putsch and various Freikorps came before the March on Rome.  Mussolini's Black Shirts were also predated by the Camelots du Roi founded in France in 1908 and the Red Shirts of the American south in the late nineteenth century who's height of political influence were the elections of 1900 (they actually did much of what Birth of A Nation and the books it's based on attributes to the KKK).

What's interesting about the French far right people we call Fascists of the 20s and 30s is that many became Collaborators with the Nazis and the Vichy Regime during the War like Charles Maurras, Marcel Bucard, Marcel Deat, Jacques Doriot, Eugene Deloncle, Joseph Darnand, Pierre Sidos, Robert Brasillach, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Peirre Plantard and if you count Belgium Henri de Man. But some became part of The Resistance like Georges Valois, Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, Jacques Arthuys, Henri Giraud, Colonel Passy, and some would argue Charles de Gaulle himself had Fascist leanings.  Others played both sides like Perrie Taittinger, Francois de le Rocque and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour.  Those who were unambiguous collaborators certainly can't be said to have actually cared about Nationalism, they were clearly more about opposing Democracy, though Maurras probably cared about Antisemitism more then anything else.

While Mussolini's Corporatism defined itself as neither Capitalist or Socialist, it's not the only way to be neither of those things.  The Nazi Party was originally partly founded on that too, particularly co-founders Drexler and Feder were explicitly opposed to both Capitalism and Bolshevism and that legacy was carried on by the Strasser brothers.  However under Hitler's Leadership the Nazi Party betrayed it's anti-Capitalist roots in 1932 when while in debt they made a deal with IG Farben and Krupp, Hitler's alliance with Emil Kirdorf in 1927 also helped lay the ground work for this change.  Friedrich Flick was another key business partner of the Nazis, along with the Thyssen corporation, and François Genoud was their Banker.

A fact that people today forget is that in the early modern era Capitalism was still new and was itself still seen aa Progressive in that context, even Marx viewed it as an improvement over Feudalism.  Throughout the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries you were only socio-economically conservative if you wanted to maintain or return to Feudalism.  

Reactionary anti-Capitalists included the Confederate States of America with the whole "Southern Gentlemen" stereotype being based on their Neo-Feudalism, the Royalists of Nineteenth and early 20th Century France, Houston Stewart Chamberlain mentioned above along with Theodor Fritsch and Guido von List in Germany and the British Empire Union founded in 1916.  All Reactionary Anticapitalists also opposed Socialism, Communism, Anarchism and Marxism, which is what's left out when Procapitalists talk about the anitcapiitalism of the Fascists, Nazis and Confederates.

Today I feel like Reactionary objections to Capitalism still exist on the American Right, especially among Evangelical Christians, they just don't want to admit they're being anti-Capitalist.  When you're complaining that "degenerate" Art is popular because it sells, when you want Drugs, Gambling, Prostitution and Pornography to be illegal, you are not taking the "Free Market" position.  Also the general attitude that Rural Life is morally better then Urban life is founded upon objections to the influence of industrial capitalism.  Also the Protectionism favored by Trump and Paleo-Conservatives is not a Free Market position, literally the only actual policy position Adam Smith was arguing for was Free Trade in opposition to Protectionism.

And because the Left has forgotten that you can be to the Right of Capitalism, on the modern internet a lot of reactionary objections to Capitalism get mingled in with the progressive ones and unwittingly supported by Leftists.  Cyber Punk is a popular genre of fiction among Communists who feel technological innovation is inherently bad, this also gets tied in with supposedly Leftist objections to the Basic Income, instead of preparing for the inevitability of workers being replaced by machines they would rather stubbornly fight it.  I also feel like anytime you just generically say Consumerism is bad you are being unwittingly Conservative.

I've kind of gone a bit off topic.  The gist of what separates Fascist Corporatism from other "Third Positions" is that it's specifically Top-Down and run by the State.  Putin's Russia actually defines itself as Corporatist, so see I'm still allowing you to call one of the modern Left's contemporary boogeymen a Fascist.

In The Doctrine of Fascism written by Mussolini and Giovani Gentile there are sections about opposition to Marxim and Individualism but also a section called "evolution from Socialism".  In the section "the Totalitarian Fascist vision of The Future" Mussolini defines Fascism as being from his own POV at least Progressive not Reactionary, stating it's not about returning to before 1789 and saying that he's drawing on Marx the same way Marx drew on the "Utopian Socialists" who came before him.  In this Manifesto the word "Capitalism" isn't used instead it's referred to as "Economic Liberalism" which is what Capitalists called themselves back then.  Mussolini did use the word Capitalism elsewhere like when he coined the terms Heroic Capitalism and Supercapitalism where it's clear he views Capitalism as inherently bad.  

My pointing out that Mussolini saw himself as Progressive doesn't mean I'm agreeing, one only has to look at Plato's Laws and Sparta to see how the core of Fascism is really quite Ancient.  I also think Mussolini has more in common with Robespierre then he was willing to admit in this text.

The same points about Corporatist AntiCapitalism apply to the French Fascism of Georges Valois however he combined it with the Orelanist Royalist French Nationalism of Mauraas.  And again the same is true of Oswald Mosley.

My most important point in bringing up TDoF however is that there isn't a hint of Palingenetic Ultranationalism in it, in fact because of points I just made it's outright incompatible with the Palingenetic part.  There is a section on "tradition" but it's the shortest section and really vague in what it's saying.  But he outright rejects the idea of a PreLabsarian Utopia.  "But what about his obsession with Rome? The word Fascism itself comes from a Roman symbol!" you may object. Borrowing terminology and symbols from Ancient Greco-Romans politics was also done by Liberals and Socialists throughout the post 1789 period, that was simply the norm across the Political Spectrum, and it's hard to avoid in a nation that's speaking a descendent of Rome's language.  In fact that same Roman Symbol was already associated with Unions and Syndicalism in Italy by 1889.  That symbol is a Collectivist symbol meaning "stronger together" which does show the absurdity of when people try to paint Fascism as Individualist.

TDoF also says "It is not the nation which generates the State; that is an antiquated naturalistic concept which afforded a basis for XIXth century publicity in favor of national governments. Rather is it the State which creates the nation, conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of their moral unity."  That is absolutely the opposite of what a Nazi or "Palingenetic Ultra Nationalist" would say.  It also later say "Race: it is a feeling and not a reality", meaning no room for Race realism.

The reason that Fascissm, Strasserism and National Bolshevism aren't Marxist theories in-spite of how much they borrow from Marx is that they reject the Class Struggle narrative in-favor of Class Collaboration.  This aspect of Fascism is one of the traits it inherited from Giuseppe Mazzini.

Peter Coffin said in one video, I don't recall which one, that "Communism that's only for White People isn't Communism", I'm sure people defining Communism from the outside won't always agree with that, but my point here is that Communism for Whites Only is exactly what Strasserite Nazism is.

The difference between Fascism and Nazism is that in Fascism the State is more important then the Nation however much it may appeal to Patriotism, in Nazism the State is powerful only to serve the Nation and Citizenship in said nations is usually limited to specific ingroups, often biological "race".  Eco came up with a good thesis for identifying the underlying soul of Nazism ("Nazi" was originally just a derogatory diminutive form of the German word for Nationalist), but it isn't universally applicable to Fascism.  In Brittan Arnold Leese was really a Nazi in-spite of what he called his Party.

Of all the fictional Empires that have been called "Space Nazis", the only one that really fits the proper philosophy of Fascism is maybe the Cardassians of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.  And I'm yet to see one I'm willing to properly call Nazism.  The Empire in Star Wars is more inspired by Bonepartism. [Update: now that I think about it maybe Britannia in Code Geass is sufficiently Nazi.]

American "small government" Conservatives are wrong when they try to define Fascism and Socialism as being the same thing.  But the problem with how Liberals try to prove them wrong is that it is Socialism these Conservatives are defining incorrectly, their definition of Fascism is mostly correct, or at least more correct then how most people define it.  Socialism is not Statism but Fascism is.  And unfortunately too many modern YouTube and Twitter Socialists are still dealing with that problem the same way Liberals do.

Calling Nazism a form of Fascism isn't that far off all things considered, "Reich" by that time basically meant "State".  The real problem with trying to paint the entire Axis with the Fascist brush is Japan, but that's mostly off topic.  

And at the same time there were Fascists and Nazis who fought on the Allies side, the French ones I already alluded to, but also Wilhelm Canaris, Otto Strasser's Black Front and the NazBols in Germany as well as some remnants of the Austrofascists and the Metaxas regime in Greece.  Meanwhile in The U.S. MacArthur, Patton and George Lincoln Rockwell.

Update 2022: Peter Coffin recently told me on Facebook that "defining things base don ideology is an expression of Liberalism" which is typical Marxist "we need to make our definitions for everything" nonsense.  Like or not Fascism was a word coined to define an ideology.  If you want to create a theory on what the Fascists, Nazis and other similar reactionary movements of the 1920s and 30s have in common that's fine but Fascism isn't the word to use for that.  

However defining what these groups had in common isn't that complicated, they were Anti-Communists, they were reactions to the Bolshevik Revolution, it really is that simple.  Now you may respond "not all Anti-Communists joins these kinds of groups" and in this context I will distinguish between being a non Communist from being a militant Anti-Communist.  Robert Taft had less ideologically in common with Communism then the Fascists, but he also believed in the right of people who disagreed with him to exist.