4 Reasons Why Fascism is Left-Wing | MTA Ep #44

The Left loves to accuse anyone on the right of being a “fascist,” but a quick review of fascist ideology shows that it’s not American conservatives they should be worried about.

~

[pegefounder]

I work since 1991 for the change to renewable energy and I had all the times huge problems with the Greens.
I wanted always the change to renewable energy by the free market and some changes in the tax system.
The Green wanted to enforce it in a fascist way.
As the Greens in Austria promoted forced vaccination, the Austrian health minister is a Green, I thought how fascist they are.
Now I have the explanation: We are the people and we know what is best for the people.

[kdgzhle]

It's a syncretic 3rd position that's neither left nor right, Huey Long is probably the closest thing in US history.

It's important to note that Nasser in Egypt was in a fascist party, had a "green shirts' movement based on the German brown shirts, and had multiple SS officers as personal advisors. The Justicialism of Juan Perón was explicitly based on Italian fascism, then there's Ba'athism in Syria and Iraq which is very similar, Michel Aflaq being inspired by both. Even the Jamahiriya of Muamar Gaddafi is similar, as are Hezbollah, the S.S.N.P in Syria and Lebanon, and the R.S.S in India. Modern China with socialism with Chinese characteristics is probably the closest thing currently in power, especially with the post 78 Dengist reforms and the revival of Confucianism.

Lots of people had good things to say, the word has lost all

"What a man! I have lost my heart!... Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism."

Winston Churchill


"Mussolini's care of the poor, his opposition to super-urbanization, his efforts to bring about coordination between capital and labor, seem to me to demand special attention. My own fundamental objection is that these reforms are compulsory. But it is the same in all democratic institutions. What strikes me is that behind Mussolini's implacability is a desire to serve his people. Even behind his emphatic speeches there is a nucleus of sincerity and of passionate love for his people. It seems to me that the majority of the Italian people love the iron government of Mussolini.

He is the great statesmen of our time.”

Gandhi


"Long live Mussolini! Long live socialism!"

(Last words of Italian communist party leader Nicola Bombacci)


"A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve."

G. K. Chesterton


"The greatest genius of the modern age."

Thomas Edison


"To Benito Mussolini, from an old man who greets in the ruler, the Hero of Culture."

Sigmund Freud


"Unfortunately, I am no superman like Mussolini."

Gandhi


"What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy."

Vladimir Lenin


"Mussolini was the only one among you with the mind and temperament to make a revolution. Why did you allow him to leave?"

Vladimir Lenin


"In Italy, comrades, in Italy there was but a Socialist able enough to lead the people through a revolutionary path, Benito Mussolini."

Vladimir Lenin


"Mussolini was the greatest man of our century, but he committed certain disastrous errors. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his errors."

Juan Perón


"There seems to be no question that Mussolini is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy."

Franklin D. Roosevelt


"I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman."

Franklin D. Roosevelt


"Some of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power."

George Bernard Shaw


"Mussolini was farther to the Left in his political opinions than any of his socialist rivals."

George Bernard Shaw


"Mussolin is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin.

Georges Sorel


"Mussolini was the only man who could have brought about the revolution of the proletariat in Italy."

Leon Trotsky

[jackcarraway]

Authoritarianism and totalitarianism in general are both left-wing ideologies

[brianlane]

Great job explaining it all. Been trying to explain it myself, much less eloquently, to people for years.

[davep]

Well laid out, thanks!
Biggest overlooked conclusion I've found with liberals and comm's alike is that fascism and national socialism may not be your ideology, and I'm sure you don't agree with anything regarding racism or totalitarianism, you likely abhor it and that's fantastic, but that sure as heck doesn't make fascism and national socialism right wing.
Cold War era lie; exposed then, but far overdue to be discussed again given the renewed attempts.

[braedondavies]

So many people try to dismiss or brush off claims that fascism is far left-wing, even though it is totally is. This is one of the most articulate explanations that I've ever heard on fascism.

[robertiozzia]

Just listened to this podcast.... excellent excellent wealth of information. I will be sharing this with a lot of people.

[davep]

“Our programs are definitely equal to our revolutionary ideas and they belong to what in democratic regime is called “left”; our institutions are a direct result of our programs and our ideal is the Labor State. In this case there can be no doubt: we are the working class in struggle for life and death, against capitalism. We are the revolutionaries in search of a new order. If this is so, to invoke help from the bourgeoisie by waving the red peril is an absurdity. The real scarecrow, the real danger, the threat against which we fight relentlessly, comes from the right. It is not at all in our interest to have the capitalist bourgeoisie as an ally against the threat of the red peril, even at best it would be an unfaithful ally, which is trying to make us serve its ends, as it has done more than once with some success. I will spare words as it is totally superfluous. In fact, it is harmful, because it makes us confuse the types of genuine revolutionaries of whatever hue, with the man of reaction who sometimes uses our very language.”
Mussolini

[invernessfan]

I have read up on Mussolini and he wrote "Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the twentieth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the "right", a Fascist century.'
The original Italian text says, "Si può pensare che questo sia il secolo dell’autorità, un secolo di «destra», un secolo fascista'
Destra means right in Itallan..
So Mussolini even admitted he was right wing.

[Aintbovvered]

Or, you know, from the encyclopedia britannica:

“Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. At the end of World War II, the major European fascist parties were broken up, and in some countries (such as Italy and West Germany) they were officially banned.”

[kimobrien.]

The reason for calling things Left or Right wing has to do with the seating in first the French Parliament. The Revolutionaries sat on the Left and the Monachists on the Right so when voting took place they would be easier to count. Germany also followed that tradition and the Communist Sat on the far Left the Social Democrats to their left The NAZI on the far Right with the Conservatives to their left. Now just because the German capitalist lost the war doesn't mean they were not enablers of the NAZI's.

[cataphracts]

Hey, Nick. I agree with you most everything you say in the video here. What are your thoughts on the theory of the political quadrant where you have left wing/right wing cultural beliefs on the X axis and tendency towards government control on the Y axis? Also, what do you think about horseshoe theory?

[robinmcmichael]

WOW!! Can I get college units for this!!! Excellent definition and explanation ! Thank you!!!

[jamesyoung]

One of the things I have learned in life is that spin artists are never in short supply. This video reminds me of that fact.
I have taken the time to seriously research fascism, constantly taking notes to identify the traits and characteristics of fascism.
Just when I think I have a good picture of what it is and how it works, from sources I'm told are experts, I encounter interlocutors like this guy, producing videos like this one, that flips what I have learned on its head.
Sophists are rhetorical experts at deception in service to their ideological agenda. Some interlocutors are trying to educate us, while others are trying to dumb us down.
So... who is lying?
Is fascism really a left-wing ideology or is it a right-wing ideology?
Can we set aside our ideological agendas and biases to answer this question or will we allow agendas and biases to dictate our judgments?
I recommend extensive objective research from a variety of sources before you make up your mind.
If you really care about finding the best answers on this topic, Dr. Jason Stanley's book, "How Fascism Works" is, in my opinion, invaluable.

[Ayo]

Father Caughlin, Huey long, Francis Townsend. Father caughlin was on the cover of time magazine in 1934, Democrat fascist.

[Aspirintax]

This explanation is borne out of a complete misunderstanding of Socialism and Communism.

[cdk]

(Edited for typos) Thanks for the effort, but much of what is being said here falls into the “not even wrong” category – For a start: there was, in fact, a huge transfer of institutions formerly in public ownership to the private sector during the early years of the Nazi regime – commercial banks, insurance companies, energy and water providers, and many other industries and services formerly under government control were privatized en masse – the largest wave of privatizations in the entire history of Germany. This was the way in which the Nazis thanked their wealthy supporters and donors. Occasional anti-capitalist rhetoric was purely populist, serving only to please the masses. The general economic policies of the NSDAP, which were unarguably capitalist, must not be conflated with the later war economy, during which all participants, including the U.S, put much of the respective nation's industrial power under centralized government control.

Neither the Italian Fascists nor the the German National Socialists can be considered “left-wing” in any meaningful sense - there is a reason why you still see swastikas and the like at marches by far-right organizations even today; and the latter were “socialist“ only in the same sense that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is “democratic” - i.e. by simply re-defining what “socialism” (or "democracy") is supposed to mean.

The definition of “socialism” here was that of a “national” or “German” socialism. The bearers were not the working masses, Marx's “proletariat”, but the so-called “Volksganze”, an imaginary homogeneous totality of the “Germanic”, and only the “Germanic”, people; an exclusive ethno-collective, which the National Socialists in turn defined in strictly racial and ideological terms. Those who were not allowed to belong (Jews, Gypsies, people of color, the disabled, homosexuals, the very poor, pacifists, social democrats, socialists, communists, freemasons and many others) did not even enjoy the same fundamental rights – in fact, no rights at all.

Fascism and Nazism were extreme right-wing ideologies, and no amount of cherry picking, relativization, and twisting of established facts will change that. In addition to radical nationalism, rabid militarism, the ideological justification by constant reference to a given “natural order” and “divine providence”, and the protection of the authority and privilege of traditional or hereditary elites (e.g. clergy, military, aristocracy, industrial capitalists), the basis of the National Socialist world view was the belief in the inherent inequality of people based on their “blood”, which ultimately led to the murderous racial mania of the Nazi regime.

This is diametrically opposed to the fundamental left-wing ideal of the equal value of all human beings in an egalitarian world society, the ideal of a global common good. Not surprisingly, the Nazis thus saw their ideological arch-enemy in Soviet Bolshevism, an equally murderous but clearly left-wing ideology.

[toaster]

You automatically know not to trust someone when they say holly wood is left wjng

[davep]

“Our programs are definitely equal to our revolutionary ideas and they belong to what in democratic regime is called “left”; our institutions are a direct result of our programs and our ideal is the Labor State. In this case there can be no doubt: we are the working class in struggle for life and death, against capitalism. We are the revolutionaries in search of a new order. If this is so, to invoke help from the bourgeoisie by waving the red peril is an absurdity. The real scarecrow, the real danger, the threat against which we fight relentlessly, comes from the right. It is not at all in our interest to have the capitalist bourgeoisie as an ally against the threat of the red peril, even at best it would be an unfaithful ally, which is trying to make us serve its ends, as it has done more than once with some success. I will spare words as it is totally superfluous. In fact, it is harmful, because it makes us confuse the types of genuine revolutionaries of whatever hue, with the man of reaction who sometimes uses our very language.”
Mussolini