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Recently I have seen many conflicting views on Xitter about what Fascism truly is. I am not talking about the debate about whether National Socialism is Fascism or not, but rather the actual ideology of pure Fascism and what it entails. I’m writing this to address not only the common misconceptions of what Fascism is, but also more recent misconceptions I have seen recently that whilst minor, are still misconceptions much like the mainstream ones.

The first one I’d like to address is a popular one with the Marxist left that being:

“Fascism is Capitalism in decay”

(Genuinely flog Redditors and be the father that wasn’t there for the to beat them Jesus Christ)

The traditional Marxist assertion made by R. Palme Dutt and Trotsky that Fascism merely represents "Capitalism in decay" is a purely ideological understanding of Fascism that is an insult to those who understand the most basic of economics. By reducing all human history to conflict between economic classes, Marxist historiography creates a closed intellectual trap. This framework intentionally narrows all political ideology post mercantilism into a false dichotomy where a system is either Socialist, or is a variant of Capitalism. Consequently, Marxism is blind to non-Marxist revolutionary movements, such as radical nationalism and Fascism.

Instead of recognizing Fascism as a distinct, competing vision that fiercely sought to overthrow the liberal-bourgeois order like other contemporary revolutionary ideologies like anarchism, Marxism dismisses it as a defensive, withered reaction by the bourgeoisie. This structural bias poisons the well of political discourse, falsely positioning Communism as the sole alternative to Capitalism while ignoring how revolutionary nationalism replaces the old system, individualistic materialism, and free markets to forge its own centralised state.

It is effectively circular logic as Marxism takes Adam Smith’s work and condensed it into two points that can be applied to any ideology, including ones Adam Smith himself would decry as being against his ideas. By doing this it defines Capitalism in a unique theory based way rather than the system it is actually meant to describe (granted Adam Smith himself never used the term Capitalism). It cannot be tested with independent proof because it relies on a specific socio-economic view of history rather than independently analysing who owns the means of production or how much the economy is or isn’t regulated. 

It narrows down Capitalism to only two points which muddies discussion and discourse by reducing all systems without an endgame of the abolition of the state, capital, wage labour and surplus labour value extraction as Capitalism. This narrow framing is fundamentally flawed because it categorises all economic viewpoints during his time into "capitalist" simply by making everything about the worker relationship, rather than analyzing how the economy itself operates. It completely ignores critical structural elements like how taxes are used, fiscal policies, or distinct government interventions such as tripartism or Corporatism.

Furthermore, Marx himself did not invent the term Capitalism either. French Socialist Louis Blanc did and defined in more specifically so on the ownership of the means of production. This is because Blanc did not advocate for the abolition of the state. Marx argued that wage labour and surplus labour values existence and extraction defined the capitalist mode of production meaning the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat was justified in his view as it would move beyond wage labour and surplus labour value extraction. Blanc did not want to abolish the state and supported the idea of phasing out Capitalism through state policy whilst retaining the state. 

Marx criticised the creation of capital in Capitalist industrial society because it required wage labour to work and thus was inherently exploitative. Louis Blanc did not view the generation of capital negatively; rather, he viewed the concentration and monopolization of capital as the problem. Blanc famously defined Capitalism as “the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others”. Marx however hated capital as a whole.

Under the exact Marxist definition, historic state Socialist regimes, most notably Lenin’s Soviet Union, never actually overcame the capitalist mode of production. By adopting and secularizing the Biblical dictum "he who does not work shall not eat," the Soviet constitution replaced the abstract market threat of starvation with the direct legal coercion of state terror. The proletariat remained heavily policed state wage-laborers, fulfilling Friedrich Engels’ argument that "The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit." Meaning in simple terms that regardless of nationalisation or private ownership the mechanisms of Capitalism prevail in the modern state.

By calling Fascism Capitalism in decay, any system that attempts to change Capitalism that isn’t Communist can then be just called Capitalist as a smear despite objective economic differences between the more free market orientated state under Adam Smith’s principles and more state heavy models followed by the likes of nationalist ideologies like Fascism. Instead of being willing to acknowledge a change in the status quo, Marxists will turn a blind eye when the system seems like it is being challenged despite seemingly caring for a revolutionary war against Capitalism. Fascism promoted class collaboration over the class conflict which Marx argued was a tenet of all of history through a Marxist lens.

Fascism's abject rejection of this conflict between bourgeois and proletariat inherently displays its uniqueness because it tried to move past old relations between two classes in society by advocating for collaboration rather than exploitation or conflict. This is inherently a unique position because Marxism needs class conflict to exist to demonstrate their historical materialism is true. Fascism rejects this dichotomy of two classes in a society being at war by promoting national unity which isn’t reactionary at all since it wants to reconcile conflict caused by the liberal Capitalist system of its time, rather than preserve the division prior. Even if class existed in Italy, the point remains that the theory behind Fascism proposed these groups collaborate and be equals in the corporate state rather than be enemies. The ideology of class collaborationism itself demonstrates irreparable difference between Capitalism and Fascism as the existence of the ideology itself implies the alternate systems that exist do not propose collaboration but rather conflict.

Whether you believe this was achieved in practice or not in Italy’s early years is irrelevant for the reason that Soviet Communism failed to abolish money and retained wage labour as a result of the failures of war communism from 1921 until the introduction of “State Capitalism” through Lenin and Bukharin’s New Economic Plan. By pointing out Fascist failures in class collaboration to make it seem like a facade for the workers, it simultaneously fails to see Marxist and other Socialist failures that could be deemed as hypocritical such as the consequences of war communism causing mass famine and a collapse in proletariat productivity rather than the utopian vision envisioned by Marx. Both visions had major limitations when being implemented, but to argue that Fascism is Capitalism in decay because of political restrictions that existed at the time is disingenuous as it ignores major failures in Marxist Socialist states that resulted in policies contradiction to Marxism being proposed to save the revolution.

One of the most important examples to bring up is Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Italian Regency of Carnaro. D’Annunzio himself was labelled the “John the Baptist of Fascism” by Benito Mussolini himself as well making him effectively the first Fascist leader of a state in all but name bar from Mussolini’s naming which came after the fall of Italian Carnaro. Despite D’Annunzio himself describing his movement as a “Latinised Bolshevism” that mixed heavy Italian nationalism, Syndicalism and Corporatism, Vladimir Lenin and D’Annunzio collaborated and wished to work with each other despite competing visions on the global stage as well as their ideologies. Lenin stated “The D'Annunzian movement is perfectly and profoundly revolutionary, because D'Annunzio is a revolutionary.”

According to Emilio Settimelli, Lenin had stated “You Socialists are not revolutionaries. In Italy, there are only three men who can make the revolution: Mussolini, D'Annunzio, and Marinetti” when describing reformists and social democrats in Europe, versus the more revolutionary minds of Mussolini, D’Annunzio and Marinetti. This quote is of dubious veracity however and we have no primary sources for the quote however.

This exposes the deeply circular logic at the absolute core of Marxist theory. By defining  strictly through his own ideological lens of whether or not wage labour and surplus labour value extraction exist rather than testing it against objective economic reality, Marx creates a tautology where he defines Capitalism as the extraction of surplus value through wage labor, observes wage labor occurring, and then concludes the system must be capitalist. This circularity completely ignores how an economy is actually run, including its regulatory structures, ownership models, and fiscal policies. 

As a result, Marx's framework creates an absurd situation where a totalitarian state Socialist economy with no genuine path to communism is classified under the exact same capitalist umbrella as a hyper-individualistic libertarian covenant because under both workers earn a wage for their labour and surplus labour is extracted. Even though these two systems are polar opposites in how they manage property rights, set prices, and enforce laws, the Marxist binary flattens them into the same category simply because workers still perform wage labor to survive. This is an intentional semantic distraction designed to narrow the vast complexity of economics down to a few dogmatic points about the Labor Theory of Value and wage labor, constructing a mechanism to slander and dismiss entirely unique systems as mere variations of Capitalism while blinding followers to structural realities.

When contrasted with the actual economic structure of Fascist Italy, the theory of Fascism as a unique vehicle for capitalist preservation completely falls apart. By 1939, Mussolini’s regime had abandoned early free-market concessions, utilizing the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale to seize control of over four-fifths of Italy's heavy industry, shipping, and steel, creating an economy second only to the Soviet Union in total state dominance [Martin Blinkhorn, Mussolini and Fascist Italy, 2nd edition, New York: NY, Routledge, 1994, pp. 34-35]. A comparative analysis reveals that the Fascist and Soviet systems were not polar opposites, but converging management styles of the same underlying machine. Both regimes systematically stripped the proletariat of leverage by outlawing independent trade unions, banning strikes, and forcing workers into state-mandated rearmament goals. 

The only fundamental difference was a legal fiction where Fascism permitted traditional industrialists to retain titles and profits strictly as a state-sanctioned privilege contingent on absolute obedience, whereas the Soviet state assumed the deeds directly and installed the political Nomenklatura as a privileged managerial elite.

Classical Capitalism, defined by Adam Smith as the System of Natural Liberty. Smith's framework rests on individual freedom of work and investment, the removal of government monopolies, and a strict rejection of central planning. Fascism systematically violated every single pillar of this philosophy. It dictated capital flow, locked out foreign competition, and relied on the hubris of a National Council of Corporations to centrally plan industry for national prestige and autarky. Fascism embodied the exact opposite of the Smithian ideal, retaining nothing of Capitalism except wage labor and surplus labor extraction.

Rather than a decayed form of Capitalism, Fascism operated as a modern, radicalized revival of the very mercantilism Adam Smith sought to destroy. This historical reality perfectly fulfills the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin’s famous critique of the Marxist transition state.

Bakunin warned that if you take the most ardent revolutionary and seat him on the throne of all the Russias, he would soon become worse than the Tsar himself because authority corrupts. He argued that the proletariat is no happier when the instrument of their oppression is labeled the "People's Stick." Whether a worker was being exploited for the rearmament goals of a fascist corporate board or a Soviet central committee, they were being beaten by the exact same state-directed machine. This reality utterly dismantles the binary logic of the "Capitalism in decay" theory.

To conclude, the relationship between Leninism, Fascism, and Capitalism is best understood through the lens of developmentalism. Both Leninism and Fascism took a pragmatic, developmentalist approach, utilizing core tenets of Capitalism to rebuild their shattered nations whether through Lenin's NEP or Mussolini’s early economic privatizations. Mussolini was initially hindered by a reactionary Italian establishment, which made radical ideological changes, like abolishing the monarchy, a political impossibility. Lenin, conversely, was cornered by economic reality and the immediate, catastrophic failure of attempting to sprint directly toward a utopian Marxist economy.

Fascism is only “Capitalism in decay” under a hyper specific definition that disregards prior definitions of Capitalism and Capitalism’s tenets such as the free market and little state intervention in the economy. The Marxian definition of Capitalism relies on its dialectics to sustain itself, so when a unique ideology that isn’t Marxist or Capitalist emerges, if it has a feature of Capitalism but nullifies or negates the rest of conventional Liberal Capitalism's features, Marxists will just hyper fixate on that one specific point, effectively turning Capitalism into a large amorphous blob that is made up of dozens of ideologies that all contradict each other. The philosophy of Marxism relies entirely on its own religious like doctrine of how to define words in order to sustain itself rather than being analytical and understanding Marx himself did not coin the term Capitalism and so framing Fascism as Capitalism in decay is dishonest since Marxists only believe their definition of Capitalism is true, ignoring evidence that makes Fascism intrinsically unique from Capitalism.

“Fascism is Socialism”

Fascism is fundamentally a Corporatist ideology. Whilst the short lived Italian Social Republic took a sharp turn in policy moving more to the left wing, the Social Republic never formally declared that it wanted to abolish private property. Point 12 of the Social Republic’s “Verona Manifesto” recognised the following:

“12. In every business (industrial, private, parastate, state) representatives of technics and workers cooperate intimately (through a direct knowledge of management) to just division of gains, among the reserve fund, the stock financial capital and the workers' participation to gains. In some business this can happen due to an extension of the prerogatives of actual factory commissions. In others, through the substitution of administration councils with management councillors, composed by technics and workers, with a State representative; in still others, as a parasyndical cooperative.”

It specifically recognised private business, state business and parastatal business all of which represent different ways of organising a business within a state. Private obviously meaning no state intervention or incredibly minimal, state referring to nationalisation and state control of a business such as Italy’s control over steel and parastatal, which was similar to nationalisation but came with unique perks, such as allowing for private investment and having mixed ownership rather than direct state ownership of a business. By acknowledging private business it does not meet up to the most basic definition of Socialism as some private entities exist within the economy. That isn’t to downplay what the economy set out to do because it is unique from Capitalism, however this point alone and the existence of private business and mixed enterprise makes Fascism distinct from Socialism.

D’Annunzio’s Italian Regency of Carnaro formally adopted Corporatism in practice as well through its labour charter coauthored by De Ambris, a syndicalist and Sorellian associate of D’Annunzio who would turn on Fascism and Mussolini, however his framework would layout the ideal model Mussolini sought to replicate in Italy. The Charter of Carnaro recognised private property but did not recognise it as a right. It acknowledged its existence and utility but did not treat it as a demonstrable good as seen in the Capitalist view of economics.

“The State does not recognize the ownership of property as an absolute and personal right, but regards it as one of the most useful and responsible of social functions. 

No property can be reserved to anyone in unrestricted ownership; nor can it be permitted that an indolent owner should leave his property unused or should dispose of it badly, to the exclusion of anyone else.”

-Point IX of the Charter of Carnaro

The idea that Mussolini abandoned Corporatism in the “Social Republic” is incorrect. It is more accurate to say that Mussolini abandoned the half baked Corporatism that was implemented in the Kingdom of Italy due to having to share power with the elite and the monarchy which were not fond of Mussolini’s more radical ideas such as abolishing the monarchy but were willing to cooperate to squash the more economically left wing Socialists and Communists.

This demonstrates that Fascism is not a pure Socialism in the ideological sense, but has many striking similarities to it in its Fascist form. It does not want to abolish private property by aiming to establish a state that mediates between employer and employee, seeing property as a utility rather than a sacred economic absolute that must be protected at all times. Whilst the 1927 Labour Charter stated “State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management” the Verona manifesto drastically moved past this. The manifesto mentioned the old Charter and honoured it, but in theory the Verona Manifesto hoped to pivot towards the more skeptical view of private property held by D’Annunzio and Mussolini himself.

It should be restated however Fascism’s lack of a care for the question of wage labour and surplus labour value extraction does not make it Capitalist as established prior, as Louis Blanc’s definition did not define Capitalism by wage labour and instead did so by defining it as the expropriation of capital for some but not others. Blanc did not view capital as exploitative but believed it was a vital part of the Capitalist system, but also acknowledged that capital would also exist under his proposed Socialist system.

Whilst some Neo Fascists embrace their label as being called Socialists by those on the right to feel more dissident, this talking point is mostly made by those on the Conservative or Libertarian Right who view economics as a scale between lack of control and complete control. Libertarians make the fundamental mistake of conflating Socialism and government intervention in the economy. Whilst they have similarities Libertarians also largely ignore purpose. A Fascist does not want to abolish private property however the general classical Socialist base does, especially of the Marxian kind. Fascist Corporatism is treated as Socialism as it is intervention, which is something they oppose and thus group all intervention based ideologies under the wing of "Socialism" on the economic scale. The fallacy of this reasoning of course is that whilst Capitalism does fall on an economic scale, Socialism cannot because it has a fully developed philosophy behind it that happens to have interventionist policies. Socialism did not invent intervention in the economy, with mercantilism and some late Feudal states having similar features of non Fascist corporatism. Because of the idea of a Socialist vs Capitalist dichotomy, Corporatism leans towards Socialism in their eyes and is therefore a form of Socialism, even though both ideologies do it to different degrees and to different ends. It is more accurate to say there is a Mercantilist vs Capitalist divide rather than a Socialist vs Capitalist one.

Mercantilism wants to build national wealth, but how that wealth is spent varies. Socialism wants to redistribute the capital created through their policies, but not all Mercantalistic economic policies have the same goals. For example not all Mercantilist states had highly funded or any welfare at all. Welfare is an important feature of Socialism as it helps to eradicate inequality by redistributing wealth to help create a safe working proletariat in theory. Some Mercantilist states may prioritise the military over social spending. Libertarianism like the Marxism of the 1920’s makes the same mistake of taking a complex economic model like Socialism or Capitalism and narrowing it down to a few or one point into order to label ideologies that are unique as being part of one tree as different branches, whilst theirs is unique and independent.

Whilst there is a social aspect to Fascism, Fascism at foremost is Corporatist and not Socialist.

“Fascism is reactionary/conservative”

This one is false because what counts as reactionary or conservative varies from ideology to ideology. To begin, Fascism was not based on conservatism, it was a progressive ideology, however it wasn’t rooted in the progressive liberalism that shaped the French Revolution and subsequently the more progressive stances of later Socialists like Marx and Engels in comparison to the more conservatively minded likes of Pierre Joseph Proudhon for example. Fascism is based on the ideology of Futurism, but not identically which is a key distinction.

Whilst the progressivism of post enlightenment ideologies like Liberalism and Socialism were rooted in equality, equity or moralism, Fascism took progressivism in a more literal sense, that being looking to the future, rather than living in the past or flawed modernity. Fascism is collectivist which already puts it at odds with the older more individualist progressivism of the enlightenment, with it also rejecting democracy. Socialist progressivism is also collectivist and pushes for egalitarian economic policies something Fascism has in common in regards to creating social insurance in the case of Fascist Italy and refining the welfare state such as in the case of maternity or workers benefits. Despite this though Fascist progressivism is unique insofar that it is more economically based. It acknowledges hierarchies existence as well as class and opts for collaboration rather than abolition. Furthermore Fascist Futurists like Martinetti were influenced by the Futurist art movement in Italy which romanticised speed and technology.

What Fascism sought to build was not a repeat of the past, but rather renewal to create something new. It didn’t want to conserve the old conservative political order but sought to create a new order in theory but was held back by realpolitik due to the political circumstances of time and support for the monarchy. One of the major points against Fascism’s so-called conservatism is the original Fascist manifesto of 1919 which was influenced by Marinetti, the founder of the Italian Futurist Party which merged with Mussolini’s movement. If we are defining conservative as in defending tradition and the status quo economic mode of production, here is a brief list of bullet points of the policies that conservatives of the time would object to in the 1919 manifesto:

• Universal suffrage by regional list voting, with proportional representation, voting and eligibility for women as well as further suffer age by lowering the voting age to 18 to vote on national affairs (the party system was abolished by voting still existed however)

• The prompt enactment of a state law enshrining the legal eight-hour workday for all jobs.

• Minimum wages.

• The participation of workers' representatives in the technical operation of industry.

• The entrusting to the proletarian organizations themselves (who are morally and technically worthy) of the management of public industries or services.

• The speedy and complete settlement of the railroad workers and all transportation industries.

• A necessary amendment of the Disability and Old Age Insurance Bill by lowering the age limit, currently proposed at 65, to 55.

• The nationalization of all arms and explosives factories

• A strong extraordinary tax on capital of a progressive nature, having the form of true PARTIAL EXPROPRIATION of all wealth

• The seizure of all property of religious congregations and the abolition of all diocesan benefices, which constitute a huge liability for the nation and a privilege of the few.

It should be stated once again that Mussolini failing to implement a lot of these policies can be explained by the fact that both the Italian political base could be heavily isolated over some of Mussolini’s more progressive policies and the Second World War getting in the way of being able to actualise many of these policies due to war time economic policies meaning state capital would have to be directed at the war effort above all. Religion is also an important factor since even with the freedom granted to Mussolini in the Italian Social Republic to implement more of what he wished to implement, the vast majority of Italy was still Catholic and so introducing more secularist or atheist policies could have divided his support and weakened the war effort.

Fascism having a range of social policy debunks the pure conservative/reactionary perspective as it demonstrates Fascism wasn’t uniform in regards to cultural and social attitudes, and was extremely nuanced economically. Whilst Fascist Italy penalised homosexuality, D’Annunzio’s Italian Carnaro had a more progressive outlook and was tolerant towards sane sex relationships for example.

“Fascism is rule by Corpotocracy”/“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

This one can be debunked incredibly easily just based on definitions alone. Corporatism is not Corpotocracy. A Corpotocracy is where a select few or one private corporation puppets the government and controls the country using its influence generated through capital. For example lobbying can be seen as a symptom of Corpotocracy; lobbying can exist in a multitude of systems, however it is especially prevalent in Corpotocracy as it is a way the private sector or foreign lobbies use money to influence and puppet a government.

The quote itself “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” is completely bogus and has never been documented in any of Benito Mussolini’s personal writings. The insinuation of the quote is Corpotocracy and not Corporatism as it refers to Corporations as being merged with the state. This isn’t true. Whilst conventional corporations existed in Fascist Italy, “Corporations” also referred to Syndicalist state run unions meant to represent employer and employee interests in Italy. By referring to corporations as something that existed prior it is not referring to Corporatism as otherwise Mussolini would have used the words union or syndicate. A “corporation” is state run and controlled which is different to a regular business corporation which exists as a way to generate capital in a specific sector such as infrastructure.

Because the origins of this fake quote are unknown, no one can be certain whether or not the fake quote is referring to big business power or union power, however I lean towards the former as corporations were something Mussolini created when he took power and did not formally exist before Mussolini. Unions that were similar to corporations existed however they had a completely different purpose. Fascist unions/corporations aim to promote class collaboration whilst excluding Fascism unions as a means of collective bargaining that favour workers in disputes against perceived grievances in the workplace. In Fascism labour courts handled disputes rather than independent trade unions striking or trying to sue companies for bad conditions. Individual workers filed complaints about their conditions to the corporation which would then be sent off to the labour court to be decided on, rather than the union acting as a lawyer or leading a strike.

Corporatism is completely different. Corporatism is derived from the Latin word “Corpus” meaning body and promotes class collaboration rather than class chauvinism and advocates for a harmonious society that runs like a human body with different organs. If one of these organs fails the whole body fails and so Corporatism aims to maintain each of these body parts through collaboration rather than favouring one over the other. Corporatism in theory and practice wants to organise society along organic lines into sectors and institutions, such as the military, state and education. Other than Fascism, Corporatism has historically existed through ideas like the Catholic Social Teaching as a response to the perceived materialism of Capitalism and Socialism, picking an alternative approach. 

Other examples of Corporatism outside Fascism would include Corporate solidarism which was developed by Émile Durkheim as a part of his broader Sociological view of society within his Functionalist framework. Durkheim argued that institutions were like organs in a body and that the role of the government was to mediate between these organs to make sure the body doesn’t fail. Durkheim like other Corporatists criticised Capitalism for causing “juridical and moral anomie” meaning that Capitalism inherently failed at producing resolutions to conflicts between employers and employees.

A final example would be Plato's view on the economy as illustrated in “The Republic”. In The Republic the character of Socrates would state “our purpose in founding our state was not to promote the happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community”. This inherently isn’t Socialist as it acknowledges perceived inequality but rather than advocating for a proletariat orientated system, Plato’s system instead argued for happiness for all classes as opposed to a single class in a more chauvinist system. 

Furthermore Plato’s system changed over time, but even in its original form did not abolish all property. The Guardian and Auxiliary classes were forbidden from owning private property however private property for the producing class was actually regulated but not harmed. The Platonian model argued for a Communism of sorts for the elite to eliminate corruption amongst the military and rulers, whilst everyone who helped produce capital could gain private property. However it can be argued Plato also had both a practical and ideal view based on his later work in “The Laws” which argued that Guardians should actually own private property instead, contradicting his earlier views.

For example, the producing class isn’t the same as the proletarian class. The proletariat do not own the means of production because of the Capitalist mode of production giving it to the bourgeois class. The producing class on the other hand was made up of both employed and self employed individuals, consisting of business owners and the employees who worked for those businesses. Whilst there was a cap on how rich or poor an individual could be in a Platonic society, a clear caste existed in the producing class unlike the Socialist proletariat which was made up of individuals who generated capital by selling their labour for a higher class.

This point overall is this. Corporatism has many variants to itself just like Capitalism and Socialism and has existed whilst not as a distinct way of organising society for centuries as early as Plato. Whilst there are differences in how these Corporatist ideologies organised their economies, the fundamental feature they all shared was class collaborationism, the same way social ownership and private ownership are unique defining qualities of Socialism and Capitalism. 

Corporatism is a unique economic position and not when Corporations control the government. It is very easy to define when you actually take time to research it. This misconception relies entirely on a falsified quote from Benito Mussolini and mixing up the words Corpotocracy and Corporatism because they sound similar despite having different meanings. Corpotocracy is based on the word corporation and refers to big business controlling the state, the “corpo” in Corporatism refers to the human body and refers to the organs of the state working together in class collaboration rather than being chauvinist towards big business. Calling Fascism a Corpotocracy because Corporatism sounds similar is historically inaccurate and misattributes a completely different phenomena to the economics Fascism preached.

“Fascism is a form of Jacobinism”

This one is a more obscure point but I have seen the position adopted by many of the oddball Neo “Fascists” on Xitter who effectively just want to make Fascism look like National Bolshevism or a patriotic Socialism, albeit even though the Jacobins themselves weren’t Socialists. This one point is objectively flawed because it ignores a good portion of what the Jacobins did in order to draw superficial similarities between Fascism and Jacobinism.

For example Fascist Imperialism and Jacobin Imperialism are completely different. Mussolini was driven by similar ideas to Adolf Hitler on the ideas regarding living space for the Italian people and wanted to create a Neo Roman Empire. The Jacobins on the other hand fiercely opposed colonialism and acquiring living space. The Jacobins wanted to use imperialism as a means of spreading the ideology of Jacobinism across the world rather than wanting to grant living space for the French. Furthermore the Robbespierrean Jacobins did not advocate for greater imperialism unlike the Girondins. The Girondins wanted to use France's power to help topple the empires and kingdoms of Europe in order to spread the Jacobin ideology. The Jacobins wanted to keep their colonies in the Caribbean because they wanted to republicanise them and spread revolutionary ideals.

The Jacobins also supported the signing of the “Declaration of Peace to the World” 1790 which effectively meant France could no longer declare wars of conquest. There is nuance to this however as the Jacobins as the Jacobins believed they were under direct threat from their neighbours. However the system pushed by the Jacobins in 1792 is not the same as Imperialism in theory. A combination of international pressure and realpolitik pushed the Jacobins into this position when it became clear the powers of the time obviously found their experiment in France to be repugnant. As a result the Jacobins championed wars of liberation in order to “liberate” the peoples of Europe from oppression and to spread revolutionary values through the creation of “sister republics” in territories they conquered. Whilst these were functionally puppet governments the idea was these wars were not of conquest but rather protecting the revolution and spreading the revolution, similarly to how Trotsky rejected Stalin’s approach of Socialism in one country.

Robespierre argued that “War is always the first object of a powerful government which wishes to increase its power... It is in time of war that the executive power displays the most redoubtable energy and that it wields a sort of dictatorship most ominous to a nascent liberty”. Robbespierre’s ideals of liberty whilst effectively ruling as a dictator would clash with Mussolini’s more centralised views that viewed war and expansion as a positive and the expansion of control as a benefit as well.

Fascism and Jacobinism wanting to spread their values is inherently different. Fascism wanted colonial projects to help spread Fascism as well as spreading the ideology to its other European neighbours like Britain, Romania and Austria. Jacobinism wanted to end colonialism, and realpolitik forced it to change its direction to move towards spreading the revolutionary values of the revolution across Europe when it became clear the Jacobins could not coexist with the rest of Europe. Spreading ideas through expansionism is a very simplistic comparison as it can apply to the Bolsheviks of whom also accused Capitalists of delving into imperialism, so the idea of Fascism being Neo Jacobinism because of this detail would mean that both Bolshevism and Capitalism are forms of Neo Jacobinism because of this one similarity. 

The Jacobins did not want to build an empire ideally and advocated against wars of conquest whilst the Italian Fascists did and advocated for violence in accordance with promoting Sorellianism. Georges Sorel despised the Jacobins for being reactionary and seeing their way of organising the state as pathing the path to bourgeois statism. Sorel was also an irrationalist who promoted myth over reason as the driver of human history, whilst the Jacobins were enlightenment rationalists.

Whilst Fascist Italy and Jacobin France abolished slavery in their colonies, they way in which they ruled was still different since Mussolini introduced concentration camps to occupied African territories and broke several international laws including but limited too: using gas despite signing a treaty that would make gas warfare illegal (funnily enough Nazi Germany didn’t even break and Hitler did not want to use chemical warfare), attacking the red cross and committing reprisal attacks in Libya after an attempted assassination on Graziani’s life which resulted in around 19,000 Ethiopians being killed. Whilst Italian Fascism was far more moderate on the race question than Nazi Germany, the idea that they were wholesome raceblind moralists who went to Ethiopia to kindly abolish slavery is laughably incorrect and is completely different to what the Jacobins wanted to do to their Caribbean colonies.

Whilst I am unsure of the origin of this idea other than the idea of the nation state and Mussolini’s admiration for it as a result of what ten Jacobins did, I don’t believe it stems from some of the positives Mussolini saw in the French Revolution, but rather the ideology of Marcel Déat during the Vichy period during WW2.

Marcel Déat was a Neo-Jacobin and former Socialist who turned to collaborating with the Axis and the Vichy government under his new party, the National Popular Rally. Marcel Déat created the ideology of Neosocialism and actively competed in occupied France for political influence, representing the more progressive wing of collaborationism.

Conclusion

I am writing this as someone who has seen many sides of the debate around Fascism. I reject the idea that National Socialism was Fascism imported into Germany and reject attempts by them to claim Fascism. I also reject the idea being pushed by the typical “Tik Tok third positionist” types who are just crypto Socialists and Communists trying to do the same thing as the Natsocs. Both of them are fundamentally incorrect about Fascism because they keep misattributing labels to Fascism which poisons the well of discourse and makes discourse impossible.

In recent history, the online world has been plagued with various eras of politics that have gradually shifted like a pendulum. In the early 2000’s the New Atheists who grew as a mythic response to Islamic Fundamentalism post the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as broader secularisation that was taking place across the west. 

Their core myth was the triumph of rationality over the proposed irrationality of religion, pushed by thinkers like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al taking on theism and religious practise by the main Abrahamic faiths with evidence, mockery and Enlightenment styled confidence. The emotional energy was so powerful that in a way New Atheism still persists despite its perceived death through modern Atheist talking points mostly being based on New Atheist talking points, rather than traditional critiques of theism or specific religions like Christianity or Islam.

Subsequent to that came the Skeptic/Liberal/#Gamergate movement, which I lump together as different life stages of a broader right-wing evolution that caused New Atheism's death due to schism. The real rupture started with Elevatorgate in 2011. Rebecca Watson, a prominent New Atheist at the time, complained about feeling uncomfortable when a man asked her out for coffee in a hotel elevator at a skeptic conference in Dublin. Richard Dawkins fired back with his famous “Dear Muslima” letter, pointing out that Western feminists were obsessing over minor awkwardness while women suffered horribly under Islamic theocracies. This exploded into massive online fighting and basically split the skeptic community. It showed the emerging divide between those who wanted to add feminism and social justice to atheism (Atheism+) and those who saw it as injecting the same hypersensitive dogma they had just spent years mocking in religion.

This set the stage for Gamergate in 2014. It started particularly with the fight for better ethics in games journalism and the backlash against establishment coverage of gaming the infamous “Gamers are Dead” articles that attacked the gamer identity while pushing “media literacy” critiques. A big part of it was the feminist videos by Anita Sarkeesian attacking video games. The broader Zoe Quinn controversy is irrelevant to this story. The point is poor ethics in establishment journalism and left-wing cultural critique created a rupture in the skeptics. Neither side was explicitly religious even after Gamergate died down. The major figures weren’t Christians or even religious for the most part (Ben Shapiro being a clear exception, and I wouldn’t really call him a core skeptic anyway).

People like Sargon of Akkad, Count Dankula and many others weren’t typical Christian right-wingers. Whilst I do not have specific proof of this, my thesis is that the mockery of religion from New Atheism caused a deep rupture. It split those who wanted to criticise things more passively from the more offensive, radical ones, basically softer thinkers versus extreme ones. The more moderate New Atheists drifted toward Social Justice Warrior positions. They kept the dislike of religion that came with progressive politics, but their atheism was mostly anti-Christian sentiment without any real backbone to criticise faiths like Hinduism, Judaism and especially Islam. The more radical atheists noticed this hypocrisy and saw the growing progressive movement adopting an overly sensitive motto that made them just as mockable as the stereotype of the “hillbilly hick Bible Basher”.

This was when the great split became apparent. The more progressive skeptics became the Breadtubers and “SJWs” the Anti SJWs hated, of whom were the more anti progressive wing of the skeptics. The New Atheist movement being a large umbrella movement led to its undoing since the divide in progressive vs rational critique meant that the movement would eventually break down into dogmatic left vs right politics.

Gender became the primary flashpoint. Progressives embraced ideas from thinkers like Judith Butler, who argued gender was purely a social construct, as well as other gender based critiques of media such as the male gaze in games etc. This naturally upset the more radical skeptics, who felt New Atheism had been completely co-opted and turned into the very thing it originally wanted to criticise. In exchange for cracking down on perceived ignorance from the religious right, we got progressive hypersensitive dogma instead. The universal skepticism was replaced by new protected categories you weren’t allowed to question.

Even Richard Dawkins himself, one of the biggest names in New Atheism, has shown a kind of pseudo-turn against the left in recent years. He has spoken positively about “cultural Christianity,” saying he prefers the cultural heritage of Christianity in the West over other alternatives, and he has been strongly anti-transgender and anti-woke, criticising the extremes of gender ideology and cancelling culture. This shows how deep the contradictions went. Some of the original New Atheists ended up sounding more aligned with the right on cultural issues than with the progressive movement that grew out of their circles. This demonstrates at least to me New Atheism isn’t purely embodied by the stereotype of the “Soy Redditor” in the modern period since there was genuine diversity that led to a split in the movement rather than a homogenous gangs of anti religious progressives like the hippies of the 60’s counterculture.

These movements can be analysed through a Spengler and Sorel style lens. Each one acted like a digital civilisation involving millions of people across YouTube, forums, Twitter and Reddit built around powerful rallying myths that provided emotional energy. They rose with vital creative force, reached peaks of influence, then suffered rot and decay leading to decline, just like Spengler described with historical cultures.

New Atheism had its spring and summer with bold attacks on faith, but decayed into selective outrage and internal purity fights. Gamergate and the skeptic phase represented a new mythic surge: authentic outsiders defending merit, free speech, hobbies and empirical reality against cultural commissars. This evolved into the 2016-2018 “Liberal” right phase, where Sargon and others rebranded as classical liberals or “Liberalists,” positioning themselves as defenders of Enlightenment values against regressive left authoritarianism. It was another life stage in the right surge, still carrying the anti-SJW energy while trying to stay distinct from harder edges.

On the other side, Breadtube (figures like Shaun, ContraPoints, Hbomb etc.) rose around 2017-2019 as a deliberate counter-movement with higher production values. 

Breadtube found it got a greater foothold due to the Skeptics/liberals losing steam, and as a result, left wing commentators like Harry Brewis (Hbomberguy) reaped the reward of the conflict in the right, especially with the Sargon of Akkad, MisterMetokur split which deeply impacted the image of the skeptics, by making them look like complete hypocrites and narcissists.

Their myth was liberation through awareness dismantling systemic power through critique, sensitivity and identity politics. They gained serious cultural traction for a while but showed the same pattern of rot: dogmatism, cancellation culture, purity spirals, and a failure to apply skepticism to their own sacred cows around gender, race and Islam. Despite the Breadtube collective being named after Peter Kropotkin’s “The Conquest of Bread”, ironically it suffered from being a broad church just like the New Atheists. Besides Harry Brewis, most of the notable Breadtubers were not anarchists let alone anarcho communists like Kropotkin. Figures like Vaush were criticised for being marginally more liberal yet still rose to extreme prominence, unlike more radical figures who gradually dumbed down their politics and moved away from it. Hbomberguy today doesn’t even upload that much and what he does upload does not seem explicitly political whilst retaining the edge of his political critique.

We’ve now seen another right resurgence in the Biden era, driven by anti-woke backlash, institutional distrust and cultural overreach. The pendulum keeps swinging because each wave eventually loses its original vital myth. Success brings professionalisation, audience capture, grift accusations and new rigidities. The internet simply accelerates these organic cycles dramatically.

In the end, these online eras are not just random political shifts or simple left-right fights. They are mythic digital civilisations rising and falling in a post-religious world. New Atheism’s mockery of traditional faith exposed the vacuum, and progressivism tried to fill it with new dogmas around gender and identity that were just as open to ridicule. The radical skeptics who noticed this inconsistency kicked off the backlash, and the pattern of myth, energy, rot and replacement continues even pulling some original New Atheists like Dawkins toward cultural pushback. Understanding it this way shows deeper civilisational dynamics playing out in our feeds rather than simple linear progress.

The point today is simple. We have witnessed the Spenglarian rise and fall of cultural empires in the online world that have all suffered from a major problem. That problem being the myth being lost and the movement becoming a multi-faceted movement instead of a gatekept homogenous movement rallied behind a collective goal. It was those divisions within Breadtube and the New Atheists that caused their decline. Whilst the right is seemingly more diverse and didn’t fight as much back then, the fights they did have impacted their image, namely with the Matt Jarbo controversy and Sargon’s utterly embarrassing UKIP arc that sank an entire political party.

Whilst these movements did pique and went on to gradually grow, as time went on and these movements were unwilling to gatekeep and defend their myth and dream string enough, they declined, folded and weakened. A weak myth means the movement is fragile, and if a movement becomes fragile, the pique of that movement like a civilisation, only goes downwards from that point, unless there is a rejuvenation of the movement.

As Spengler theorised, these movements like the civilisations he wrote about piqued during their cultural height of “springtime and summertime” but by the time of autumn and winter, decline came whether it be slow or rapid. The death of the creative spirit by winter would mean that these movements would grow stagnant and only decline. As Georges Sorel argued, myths have to be powerful in order to survive, or else they will be outshined by a competing myth that would replace it.

A simple example would be the story of Julian the Apostate, the last Pagan emperor of Rome. Julian tried to undo the years of Christianity’s growth in Rome, but his Pagan myth wasn’t mobilising enough to have a long-standing foothold with Christianity’s compassionate strength. When Julian passed on, so did his legacy and myth and so Christianity easily folded Julian’s work, gradually phasing Paganism more and more from Rome until Paganism would cease to be a dominant religion at all in all of Europe.

This applies to the online world as well. These movements have varying degrees of what I’d dub the Apostate scale. A movement can be measured by how long it shifted change in the long term rather than in the short term. New Atheism’s talking points persist today, whilst Breadtube is in a constant decline with the growing hegemony of the global nationalist and libertarian right growing against the favour and strength the movement had when the Skeptics declined, which in turn only proved that the Skeptics are a rare case where a movement went into hibernation and came back even stronger and more radical than expected, transcending the “right liberalism” of the 2010’s and finally embracing nationalism.

Whilst the liberal spirit of the Skeptics is dead, the right wing backlash to the post 1st Trump term under Joe Biden gave the left an inhospitable environment when their dogma began to resemble the irrationalism seen in the religious establishment by the New Atheists. Christianity was traded for progressive identity politics and so the right had the perfect ammunition, and the left’s constant war to keep fighting this unwinnable battle has turned them into nothing more than a cultural ideology, losing the economic basis of what the left was meant to be.

Instead of clashing on capital and private property, the left is locked in an unwinnable cultural battle forced to defend positions traditional leftists would have considered ridiculous and distractions against the revolution against the bourgeois world. Breadtube was less about economics and even less so by it’s decline and so became an opposing side of the culture war rather than a cultural movement pushing for a revolution of sorts like the 60’s counterculture.

Their myth weakened, and so their winter was met early with cold greeting hands. But this isn’t to say the future is guaranteed to be a century or even a decade of right wing dominance. What I believe this analysis has proven, is digital cultural civilisations like the ones mentioned are cyclical and swing like a pendulum. 

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It is quite literally true. Everything Reform is accused of by Restore can simply be fact checked by looking at what Restore policy actually is. To grant an example, there is the famous Nigel Farage quote wherein he states that mass deportations would be a “political impossibility”. For the record this was poorly worded on Farages’s part and worthy of criticism, but in practice Reform has quite clearly demonstrated this is not what Farage meant based on policies, such as the deportation centre and British ICE policies Farage and Zia Yusaf have helped create for the party. Meanwhile this is what Rupert Lowe had to say about Nigel Farage’s immigration policy when he was a part of Reform prior to his expulsion during a segment on TalkTV.

https://x.com/Haryan_Glaeddyv/status/2032555185118261492?s=20

Lowe openly argues that Farage is going too hard on integrated tax paying citizens, which is a more civic nationalist position. The myth of Lowe being further to the right than Farage immediately falls apart here since Lowe is openly criticising Farage on his own volition for being too hard on legal immigrants as well. This completely contradicts the Andrew Gold interview that Rupert Lowe supporters will constantly throw around as a vain attempt to undermine Farage and Rupert has publicly said things that make Farage seem more extreme to him rather than the other way round.

Furthermore, there is a direct contrast between “Rupert Lowe” the character in X, and Rupert Lowe the politician. X “Rupert Lowe” isn’t Lowe, he is a guy called Alistair Harrison who Lowe pays to manage his X account.

https://spectator.com/article/can-reform-see-off-the-threat-from-restore/

It is unknown how much of what Lowe posts and does in X is actually done completely in alignment with his views, however the fact that he does not use the account himself that much demonstrates a divide between what Lowe says online and what he wants to achieve as a politician. 

Another example would be Lowe’s tirade against Zia Yusaf and Islam as a whole in order to get the leg over Reform, ignoring the fact his son Angus Lowe married a Libyan of a Muslim background.

https://www.newarab.com/news/son-far-right-mp-lowe-marries-libyan-woman-halal-wedding

Whilst you could argue this an unfair point as Rupert’s now daughter in law has no say in Restore policy, however Lowe’s idea of banning Halal and Kosher gets a massive roadblock on the basis that his heritage will be continued through with a family with ties to Islam and Muslim heritage. Whilst Lowe hasn’t backtracked on this position yet, the fact of the matter is when push comes to shove, would Rupert really implement a policy that breaks up his relationship with his son?

Whilst Rupert is using Muslims as a way to attack Reform, his own daughter in law is possibly a Muslim as well as being a Libyan immigrant and is  to have a Muslim styled wedding. This of course creates a conflict of self interest and political image. Will Lowe ignore this or will he try to defend it or backtrack on his positions regarding Islam? The point is this creates a conflict of interest which may be far deeper than expected since how would Lowe reconcile his politics with his own family and now extended Libyan family by proxy?

If Muslims associating with Reform is enough to use guilty by association tactics to try and make Reform seem moderate, Lowe is equally guilty by being related to Muslims through his son which he has not clarified much on. The hard right if Restore such as the Steve Laws types would oppose this, but naturally they are all shutting up because they know that Lowe is the best chance they have of getting a leader who “represents” them (he doesn’t) into power despite Lowe being a civic nationalist who is completely ok with his son race mixing with a possibly Muslim Libyan woman.

Laws himself personally argued that mixed race individuals should be deported, so the question remains on whether Lowe would tolerate someone like Laws saying this to his face or in briefings where he is present?

Next up is the Tory accusations which are straight up laughable when you look up Rupert Lowe’s track record. Lowe has attacked Reform over appointing Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick over how they handled the Afghan migrant crisis. This is undermined by the fact that his opposition to Jenrick and Suella is purely for show. Lowe has previously praised and supported both Jenrick and Braverman in the past. To just give a few examples:

https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1944110956071604658?s=20

https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1906772406469034314?s=20

https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1582757544615112707?s= 20

Whilst these do predate revelations that both were involved in the Afghan migrant scandal, it should be noted Lowe was strongly in favour of both Braverman and Jenrick before their departures to Reform UK. Rupert’s dislike at least in my opinion comes off as more performative than ever as it demonstrates that at the flip of a dime Rupert turned on two MPs he had previously given high praise for. This attack on Jenrick and Braverman would be more complicated if they weren’t implicated as we don’t exactly know what Lowe’s point would be against either MP if they weren’t implicated.

This may seem like an unfair criticism due to the Afghan crisis being revealed long after Lowe had shared his opinions, but also consider this. Lowe brands himself as a massive anti-establishment Tory (at least on X) yet has contradicted this. 

https://x.com/Haryan_Glaeddyv/status/2055693169858117692?s=20

Despite attacking Reform over accepting Tories, Restore has accepted Scott Benton, a homosexual former Tory and Israel loving conservative with literal Hebrew tattoos.

https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/05/makerfield-organisers-hebrew-tattoos-enrage-restores-fascist-faction/

https://x.com/TheEngineerXC/status/2059205491994038536?s=20

So despite Lowe’s promises, Tories are in fact allowed to defect to Restore and unlike Reform which has a formal mechanism in place that was implemented after May 7th to stop high profile defections, Restore has no such policy and Benton is evidence of that. Benton would honestly fit in more with establishment Labour far more than Restore with bipolar takes in immigration combined with positive views of the LGBT and Israel. Naturally again, this would upset the Steve Laws types for very fucking obvious reasons, of which it probably did, however Steve proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it. Lowe is also an open supporter of Israel.

https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1841183886195208672?s=20

This once again demonstrates the Online Right have absolutely zero standards and are a bunch of low IQ mongrels who worship defeat. The same attitude the hard right is taking regarding Lowe falls apart since the divide between Farage and Lowe based on everything I have provided so far is minimal.

Restore commonly uses smear tactics to lie about Reform. Restore activist Young Bob used a van with the phrase “Muslims for Reform” on it to disparage Reform. The Bob deleted the tweet. This stunt was done in public out of context which could lead to the implication that it wasn't a stunt at all. BBC styled smear merchant tactics in my opinion. Lowe himself commented on the incident.

https://x.com/JackHadders/status/2067561562689212476?s=20

https://x.com/NigelForrester9/status/2067559457735725367?s=20

https://x.com/harrycabbag3/status/2067598237402337418?s=20

Adding on, Restore has openly changed their policy many times and hasn’t nearly received enough scrutiny for it. Meanwhile Restorers criticise Nigel for backtracking on immigration, as if Nigel hasn’t rapidly changed his rhetoric, and moreover has been campaigning in immigration for years longer than Rupert. Restore also fields ethnic candidates like Reform, but again this is ignored by a very particular set of people.

Everything I’ve said here can best be culminated in a little video below that I believe summarised this insanity the best. I’ll admit most of the evidence can be found here in relation to everything that has been stated here.

https://x.com/Haryan_Glaeddyv/status/2058553919555408277?s=20

To summarise, Restore is guilty of everything they accuse Reform of being. It is clear that Restore is nothing more than a containment unit of moderate and radical cranks who want to keep Reform out, and Rupert Lowe himself is barely educated on how his own party acts online and is setting the party in a direction that most of the radicals would despite if it were Farage, but are backing Rupert purely out of petty spite for their past failures.

I feel like I could go on for ages as there are other things of note to mention, however I’m posting this today specifically for the Makerfield by-election which Restore and Reform are clashing over.

DISCLAIMER!: A lot of this article has content from my previous article on National Socialism and its history. This article exists more as a comparison between traditional Fascism and Nazism rather than an in-depth dive into the history of the Nazi ideology. This will mostly be an economic comparison as well as the debate between Fascism and its relation to race has been done to depth.

“Mussolini 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 is not an ordinary socialist. You will perhaps see him one day as a leader of a consecrated battalion, saluting the flags of Italy with his sword. He is an Italian of the fifteenth century, a condottiere. He is the only man with the strength to correct the weakness of the government”

-Georges Sorel

Fascism can trace its intellectual roots to revisionist Marxism, specifically Sorelian Syndicalism. Georges Sorel a man once a conservative turned to Marxism later in his life and was active in French socialist circles. This is namely true by the fact Georges Valois, one of Sorel’s pupils, became one of the earliest Fascist scholars in the world, second to Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini himself, with very disputed claims that Mussolini stole Fascism from Valois and that it was not his or Gentile’s innovation.

Giovanni Gentile was noticeably clear in the ideological foundations and basis of his and Mussolini’s ideology in “The Origins and Doctrines of Fascism”. He reaffirmed and supported Sorel’s revisionist view of Marxism. Once again, the simple lie that “Fascism is Capitalism in decay” is once again proven wrong as nothing more than a dumb slogan espoused by people who have no actual understanding of the intellectual forefathers of the movement, which ironically includes Marx and Marxism by technicality. Fascism’s foundation itself can be seen as Hegelian as a combination two different thesis (Revisionist Marxism and Revolutionary Nationalism) against the antithesis of bourgeoise liberal capitalism. Fascism is the Hegelian synthesis of Georges Sorel’s Revisionist Marxism and the rise of revolutionary nationalism in both France and Italy. It is Hegelian on the basis that once the two positions of Sorelianism and Nationalism merged, they later synthesised with the existing issue of capitalism, producing a unique state wherein state control was absolute and coordinated with minor private firms and organisations. Fascist Italy had the second most state-controlled economy in Europe after the Soviet Union, and Mussolini himself also signed a pact of friendship with the USSR.

“The Fascist, on the other hand, conceives philosophy as a philosophy of practice (”praxis”). That concept was the product of certain Marxist and Sorellian inspirations (many Fascists and the Duce, himself, received their first intellectual education in the school of Marx and Sorel)—as well as the influence of contemporary Italian idealistic doctrines from which Fascist mentality drew substance and achieved maturity.”

-Giovanni Gentile

“ It is well known that Sorellian syndicalism, out of which the thought and the political method of Fascism emerged—conceived itself the genuine interpretation of Marxist communism. The dynamic conception of history, in which force as violence functions as an essential, is of unquestioned Marxist origin. Those notions flowed into other currents of contemporary thought, that have themselves, via alternative routes, arrived at a vindication of the form of State—implacable, but absolutely rational—that finds historic necessity in the very spiritual dynamism through which it realizes itself.”

-Giovanni Gentile

“Fascism as a consequence of its Marxian and Sorelian patrimony . . . conjoined with the influence of contemporary Italian Idealism, through which Fascist thought attained maturity, conceives philosophy as praxis.”

-Giovanni Gentile

To dismiss the social origins of Fascism and its implementation across various European states and states that contained Fascist movements would be dishonest and a disregard of the history of the movement, a factor neglected in many mainstream views of the ideology. It is apparent at least to me without the economics and intellectual foundations of Marxism, you do not get classical Fascism.

The syndical aspect of Fascism should not be ignored either. Whilst both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had nationalised trade unions, the functions were different. In Fascist Italy, independent trade unions were dismantled and replaced by a single, state-controlled system known as the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates. By 1935, this system was restructured into roughly 22 corporate, sector-based organizations, often referred to as "corporations" or "syndicates".  These 22 corporate sector-based organisations whilst no independent trade unions were branches of the main trade union that represented specific aspects of labour and industry. In Nazi Germany however, the German Labour Front served as the universal union across all of Germany representing labour as a homogenous organisation with branches existing not to represent individual sections of labour but rather for worker conditions and benefits, such as Strength Through Joy and the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation. Whilst the NSBO represented factory workers it had no specific appeal to a certain section of labour but rather represented factory labour as a homogenous organisation later controlled by the DAF.

In Fascist Italy these consisted of:

Cereals (Cereali), Horto-Floreal-Fruitculture (Orto-floro-frutticoltura), Viticulture and Oil production, (Viti-vinicola e olearia), Zootechnics and Fishing (Zootecnia e pesca), Wood (Legno), Textile (Tessile), Clothing (Abbigliamento), Metallurgy (Siderurgia e metallurgia), Mechanics/Engineering (Meccanica) Chemistry (Chimica), Fuels (Combustibili liquidi e carburanti), Paper and The Press (Carta e stampa), Construction (Costruzioni edili), Water, gas and electricity (Acqua, gas ed elettricità), Extractive industries (Industrie estrattive), Glass and Ceramics (Vetro e ceramica), Internal comunications (Comunicazioni interne), Sea and Air (Mare e aria), Enterntainment (Spettacolo), Hospitality (Ospitalità), Professions and Arts (Professioni e arti) and Security and Credit (Previdenza e credito).

By comparison, Fascist Italy had a far more organised syndicalist system than Nazi Germany which never professed itself to be Fascist, Sorelian or syndicalist in the first place, as National Socialism whilst related has different roots from Fascism, not stemming from Sorel or Revisionist Marxism but rather Pan German worker’s associations in Austria Hungary, namely the German Worker’s Party founded by Ferdinand Burschofsky with it’s two most important members being Hans Knirsch and Rudolf Jung.

This is also seen in Austria under the Fatherland Front dictatorship lead by Engelbert Dolfuss who organised trade unions into the “General Federation of Trade Unions” which had the purpose of working as the national union divided to suit the purpose of having acknowledging each industry like in Fascist Italy rather than acting a monolithic force that had little to no division in Nazi Germany which was far less divided whilst nationalised all the same. Whilst Nazi occupied Austria retained many of the state policies of pre-Anschluss of Austria, this wasn’t out of support of Fascist economics but rather pragmatism as Nazi Germany never adopted the more syndical approach after the Anschluss.

This clearly demonstrates a divide in the ideologies. Nazism never started as a trade movement and whilst the NSBO and later DAF existed they were not syndical unions the same way they were organised in Austria and Italy. An example of an exception however would be Romania’s Iron Guard under Corneliu Codreanu and later Horia Sima. A key problem with Fascism is that subsequent movements never had ties to the intellectual origins of the ideology and rather were copies of Mussolini’s model in terms of basic corporatism but not through unionisation. The Iron Guard is an example of this as whilst the movement did in fact have a trade union, it functioned more like a paramilitary wing to the party much like the Black Shirts did for Mussolini or the Irish Blue shirts did for Eoin O'Duffy of Fine Gael. Whilst Mussolini claimed each nation would have their own Fascism, the question comes from how far these differences go before an ideology is no longer Fascist despite the Duce’s logic. The Iron Guard may have had a union movement that did in fact help with worker’s rights during the early years of Ion Antonescu’s reign in Romania, however the Iron Guard itself was not in power as Antonescu’s ideology was closer to German National Socialism with Romanian characteristics. Antonescu wasn’t a member of the Iron Guard either.

The Iron Guard functioned more as a vessel organisation that even turned on Antonescu later. Whilst during the years of King Carol, Codreanu made calls to the proletariat to join his movement and emphasised class, Codreanu never made a full on plan for the role of the Iron Guard’s union should they have been able to coup King Carol as no policies by Codreanu exist that demonstrate how the economy would’ve been mirrored to Italy’s and Codreanu never got the chance to do so as he was assassinated by King Carol’s forces.

A common theme can be seen with these movements. Most Fascist movements foreign to Italy and France had almost no syndical influence bar from the ones that were commonly observable in Fascist Italy with no regard for organising the economy along syndical lines and in effect replicating the economics of Italian Fascism. Whilst again it should be noted Mussolini claimed each nation would have it’s own Fascism, that doesn’t mean Fascist economics should be all over the place as the foreign movements under understood the importance of the origins of Fascism and often used their respective movements as Anti Communist or even plain reactionary parties rejecting futurism just because the Fascist aesthetic could work as a counter to communisms appeal. The only truly Fascist movement that had the roots of Italian was Le Faisceau, lead by Georges Valois, a pupil of Georges Sorel and an admirer of Mussolini though spiteful that his role in developing Fascism as an ideology wasn’t recognised as Mussolini was a distant pupil of Sorel’s syndicalism, whilst Valois was a direct pupil of Georges Sorel and had followed a national syndicalist ideology throughout most of his career, namely through his involvement with Cercle Proudhon.

Whilst there are other exceptions I have not listed, the point remains that a large number of “Fascist” movements have little to no knowledge of Fascism as an ideology beyond basic corporatism and an admiration for Benito Mussolini and sometimes Hitler despite the clear differences between the two movements that I listed. If anything despite being equally as illiterate of the Nazi parties origins, most “Fascist” movements in Europe at the time and across the globe today have more in common with Rudolf Jung, Adolf Hitler, Hans Knirsch or Goebbels’ ideologies of national socialism through a promotion of socialisation of the economy without a large state controlled labour movement or a labour movement that served labour broadly rather that being functionally fitted for industries like in Austria or Italy.

No greater example of this lack of understanding comes from many pre, wartime and postwar Fascist organisations in Great Britain. The best example would be Rotha Lintorn Orman’s “British Fascisti” which functioned more as a hardline reactionary party to combat socialist and communist movements with little to no doctrine outside of anti-communism. Orman herself was a former Tory and unlike Sir Oswald Mosley had little to no ties to the British working class. Mosley’s corporatism was marginally closer to traditional Fascism than Orman’s movement, which was the first documented and notable Fascist party in Great Britain. Whilst towards the end of the party’s lifetime it embraced corporatism, for most of its existence it functioned as a petty reactionary anti socialist party that often-used Fascist aesthetics to bolster its short time infamy and to appeal to more radical voters. Famously the movement worked with the Scottish “Billy Boys” razor gangs to break up strikes.

Oswald Mosley’s economic policy is best illustrated by Alexander Raven Thomson’s “The Coming Corporate State” which promised to organise the British economy into 18 Corporations much like Fascist Italy and Fascist Austria. Alexander Raven was Director of Policy for the British Union of Fascists and created “The Coming Corporate State” to illustrate the BUF’s policies which Mosley had already came up with, demonstrating Mosley had enough of an understanding if Italian Fascist corporatism to warrant the label of Fascist, unlike the prior British Fascisti.

Another example would be the IFL (Imperial Fascist League) which despite having the name “Fascist” was a blatant copycat Nazi party that often-mixed Fascism and Nazism up and often hated other Fascist movements such as the BUF. Arnold Leese, the leader of the party even described Mosley’s BUF as a “Kosher nationalist party” and “The British Jewnion of Fascists” showing the party was more obsessed with Nazi styled antisemitism rather than Fascist or even National Socialist economic reform.

In truth Fascism foreign to Italy, Britain, Austria and France has almost no relationship with Syndicalism and thus only generally has the characteristics of authoritarian reactionary corporatism, which in my eyes is not enough to warrant the ideological title of Fascist. The term was Co-opted in the post war era by both Neo Nazis and the allied nations to either represent themselves or to condemn an ideology in the case of the allied nations. Neo Fascism has no real existing movements that have any ideological basis beyond knowing what the Fasces is and that Mussolini was Fascist.

When studying Fascism the ironic thing about the economic debate about Fascisms status, is that even Communists at the time used the term ”Social-Fascist” to mock Social Democrats, when in truth Fascism is the authoritarian wing of Social Democracy and like Social Democracy is a revisionist wing of Marxism that instead of emphasizing collaboration and reform like Social Democracy, it emphasizes violence and militarism though maintains the class collaborationist aspects of Social Democracy but with a far more economically centralised approach to socialism as opposed to welfare socialism seen in states such as the Weimar Republic. Despite being a Social-Democratic state, Weimar Germany had less state control over the economy than Fascist Italy.  The economy of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was not heavily nationalised and remained primarily capitalist, despite significant state intervention, worker rights reforms, and social welfare expansion. Despite the nationalisation of some aspects of the economy such as coal or banking in Weimar, Fascist Italy retained more state ownership though had little welfare implemented under Fascist rule, with most welfare laws having existed under the leadership of Francesco Crispi.

Furthermore, the argument can be made that Nazi Germany exerted more economic control over the state than Weimar Germany did, despite the so called “Privatisation” that occurred during the Nazi years in power.

National Socialism presented itself as a “Third Way,” rejecting both Marxism and liberal capitalism while claiming to offer a revolutionary alternative rooted in racial unity, however their practises can best be explained as social views that by their standards would be a mix of both reactionary and progressive (varied freedom of religion and state cooperation with the working class through welfare), as well as an economic system that challenged the capitalist normality of the time in a way similar to but different from Bolshevism. Despite the “Third way” positioning, functionally speaking it was the economic in between of Fascism and Social Democracy. An oversimplification would be like saying Hitler was to Stalin what Bukharin was to Stalin. Less radical part of the broader movement with a different end goal. The movement defined itself through opposition to Marxism, Individualism, Capitalism and reactionary religion though opposition was less clear for the last due to Hitler’s pragmatism and needing to win over the Christian vote.

Despite their later political conflicts, Hitler, Strasser, and Goebbels shared some common economic worldviews in the early and later years. All three believed in subordinating the economy to the state, rejecting liberal capitalism, and mobilising workers through nationalist rather than Marxist appeals though functionally like Sorelian myth despite none of the members of Hitler’s inner circle being knowledgeable of Georges Sorel. Their differences were matters of degree rather than principle. Strasser favoured direct nationalisation, Goebbels embraced radical anti‑capitalist rhetoric, and Hitler preferred a more flexible system of state influence. Yet all three agreed that the economy existed to serve the nation, not private profit. Nothing outside the state shall harm the state nor shall nothing inside the state harm the state. The state should serve the nation and the nation the state with the state doing everything it politically can through economic intervention to bolster the people whether that be through less radical measures like welfare or highly radical ones like lebensraum as the Nazi high command believed it would benefit the Aryan race. The Nazi economic system was a hybrid of state control, social corporatist organisation, and racial policy. While private ownership in theory remained, the state exercised extensive authority over production, labour, agriculture, and welfare so in practise it wasn’t truly speaking private or free. An example would be Reichsnährstand.

Agriculture became one of the most state‑directed sectors of the Nazi economy. The Reichsnährstand imposed strict price controls, production quotas, and hereditary land laws that prevented farms from being sold or divided. Markets were suppressed, and farmers were required to sell their produce at fixed prices. This system aimed to stabilise rural society, prevent urban migration, and ensure food security for a future war economy. Outside of Reichsnährstand itself the Nazis also maintained Soviet collective farms in Ukraine; however, these policies would have likely been altered post war should they have won. Regardless this demonstrates an intense intervention in the agricultural sector to benefit national (collective across all of class and race) goals. Another example would be the DAF, as replaced all independent trade unions after their abolition in 1933. It controlled wages, workplace rules, and labour relations. Workers could no longer strike or bargain collectively. The DAF presented itself as a unifying institution that transcended class conflict, but in practice it functioned as a mechanism of state control over labour. Whilst Marxists try to frame this as employers ruling over the proletariat, it should be noted an identical structure to this system existed in almost every single historic communist or socialist state through the nationalisation of trade unions and the neutering of collective bargaining. Lenin did the same by banning strikes under the revolutionary vanguard party. Whilst Marxists frame this as exploitation it should be noted the state did everything in its power through welfare to compensate by creating the most effective and clean work environments for German workers which is something that will be elaborated on momentarily.

Marxism was condemned for promoting class conflict and internationalism against the interests of the national community, while liberal capitalism was attacked for fostering individualism, materialism, and what the Nazis saw as the decay of national solidarity. National Socialism positioned itself as a system that transcended class divisions by uniting all “racially valuable” Germans into a single political community. At the heart of this worldview was the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft, a racially defined national community that served as the organising principle of society. In this model, social status, class identity, and individual interests were subordinated to the collective will of the nation. The Volksgemeinschaft was not merely a social ideal, but a political tool used to justify the exclusion, persecution, and eventual destruction of those deemed “racially alien.” It provided the ideological foundation for the regime’s policies, from economic planning to welfare programs and cultural regulation.

Economically, National Socialism rejected laissez‑faire capitalism and embraced a system of state direction and social autarky for the benefit of the Volksgemeinschaft. The regime sought economic self‑sufficiency, believing that dependence on foreign markets or resources made Germany vulnerable and that it would also make them a place ripe for Jewish trickery and deception through lobbying and international finance. While private property formally remained intact in theory, the state exercised extensive control over production, investment, labour, and prices. The goal was not efficiency or profit but national strength and preparation for war. This system blended elements of corporatism, state planning, and coercive control, creating an economy that was neither capitalist nor socialist in the conventional sense. This has some in common with the Italian Fascist mode of production though the National Socialists differ in methods slightly. The Italian Fascists supported a mass nationalisation with some private property that was subordinated to the state, the Nazis were more careful and used mass subordination/synchronisation instead though did nationalise a few industries namely roads and also used mass subsidisation to aid the economy and Volksgemeinschaft through welfare, leisure programmes, family/demographic programmes (lebensborn) and transport through not only the nationalised roads but also through the state creation of the Volkswagen (The people’s car). National Socialist rhetoric was deeply anti‑bourgeois and hostile to finance capitalism.

All collaboration with these industries during the rise of the Nazis was effectively worth nothing in the end since top industrialists were always at risk of having their assets seized should they not align with state interest. An example would be Fritz Thyssen who had his assets seized after fleeing Germany in opposition to the war despite being a professed nationalist and anti-Marxist. The Nazis found out about his defection through Hermann Göring as he had sent a letter to Göring explaining his absence and in response the Nazis seized all his assets and made them state owned. The movement portrayed bankers, stockbrokers, and “speculators” as parasitic forces undermining the nation. This language overlapped with both left‑wing anti‑capitalist sentiment and long‑standing völkisch conspiratorial thinking. The Nazis used this rhetoric to appeal to workers. However, it should be of not that Hitler supported a form of productive industrialism as well hence why he didn’t nationalise all industries and subordinated them instead but still exerted string state control over them as he believed the Aryans were a naturally creative people.

The National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) and the Winterhilfswerk absorbed private charities and created a vast welfare network. Assistance was distributed based on racial criteria, reinforcing the Volksgemeinschaft by rewarding those considered “racially valuable.” Welfare became a tool of social engineering, binding the population to the regime through material support and ideological messaging. It was used as a means of creating class and race harmony through eliminating class difference through welfare and helping boost productivity of the population by artificially increasing the incomes of lower-class Germans particularly through the winter. The Strength Through Joy program became the world’s largest tourism operator, organising holidays, cruises, and cultural events for millions of Germans.

The Beauty of Labour campaign regulated workplace conditions and promoted “beautification” projects. These programs aimed to integrate workers into the national community and reduce class tensions by offering state‑managed leisure and workplace improvements. These also helped eliminate class difference more through improving work conditions and rewarding German workers to end conflict between superiors and subordinates. Ironically this can be seen as more rewarding than the Soviet trade union membership. The National Socialist Factory Cell Organization initially promoted radical worker activism, including strikes and anti‑employer agitation.

Its rhetoric overlapped with National Bolshevism and appealed to disillusioned workers. However, once the Nazis consolidated power, the NSBO was absorbed into the DAF and stripped of its radicalism. This shift reflected the regime’s broader pattern of co‑opting and neutralising internal factions. Several pieces of evidence challenge simplistic narratives about Hitler’s early ideology. Claims that he was always anti‑communist are contradicted by his behaviour in 1918 and 1919. His elected role under Kurt Eisner’s government shows that he was not politically neutral or instinctively anti‑left. His neutrality during the Bavarian Soviet Republic further undermines the idea that he was a committed counter‑revolutionary from the start.

Aside from economic differences as pointed out here through national socialist emphasis on welfare over economic control in Fascist Italy, the genealogical lineage of both ideologies is different.

As for National Socialism, as a coherent doctrine it can be traced to 1909 and 1919 respectively based on two major movements. These were the Pan‑German Workers’ Party in Czechoslovakia partially founded by Ferdinand Burschofsky though the party functioned more so as a federation with equal representation between members, with Rudolf Jung and Hans Knirsch being the most important members of the party in retrospect. Hans Knirsch would later become the leader of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party of Czechoslovakia in 1919, and the party would later be merged into the Sudeten German Party, though not under his leadership. A fact about Hans Knirsch is that he talked Hitler out of committing suicide after the Beer Hall Putsch. Regardless, Hans Knirsch’s efforts helped build the foundations of National Socialism based on his efforts as both a member of the DAP (Czechoslovakia) and later as leader of the Nazi Party of Czechoslovakia before its merging with the Sudeten German Party.

Jung, on the other hand, was also important. He was a member of Hans Knirsch’s party and wrote up the ideological foundations of their movement through Der nationale Sozialismus: Seine Grundlagen, Sein Werdegang, und Seine Ziele (National Socialism: Its Foundations, Its Development, and Its Goals). Many have dubbed Jung as the “Karl Marx of Nazism”. However, it is more appropriate to say he was the Engels of Nazism, since his book was an explanation of the wants and goals of the party which was not his own creation but Hans Knirsch’s. This means that without Hans Knirsch there would be no documented ideological foundations for Anton Drexler of the German DAP (NSDAP later on, both due not only to Hitler’s takeover but Jung’s influence). Hans Knirsch, whilst very important to the early stages of this story, would lose relevance as time went on. Jung would carry on his political legacy through becoming a regional leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

As for Anton Drexler, the first leader of the first documented National Socialist party in Germany, his ideology was blatantly overlaid with Hans Knirsch’s, though had more relevance due to being a leader of a Pan‑German party in Germany as opposed to being leader of said movement in a non‑German country. Drexler’s most important stances came from his stance on the Slavic question. Whilst not mentioned on the Wikipedia page, Hans Knirsch’s party was inherently the successor of the prior party and carried over elements of anti‑Semitism, anti‑Slavism, anti‑capitalism, and anti‑Marxism. These carried into his later party, with Rudolf Jung functioning as a means of transcribing his ideology on paper to document the wants and goals of the party. Anton Drexler did carry over the anti‑Semitism and anti‑Slavism of Hans Knirsch. However, his anti‑Slavism wasn’t as prevalent due to Adolf Hitler being the true developer of National Socialism’s anti‑Slavism based on his want for Lebensraum, something Drexler was not documented to be as interested in as Hitler.

Collectively speaking, these parties all had a very common interest. Pan‑Germanism, anti‑capitalism, anti‑Communism and anti‑Marxism, and a strong support for autarky and nationalistic socialism, though in practice it resembled social corporatism more. “Der alte Sehnsuchstraum der deutschen Demokraten” was what Knirsch said in reference to his goals of wanting German reunification through supporting a Pan‑Germanic ideology that sought unity amongst all Germans or Germanic peoples like Austrians, Sudeten Germans, and perhaps alluding to smaller German populations such as the Volga Germans.

It should also be noted the DAP was also founded through a merger of another National Socialist Party called “Political Workers’ Circle” which was lead by Karl Harrer. Whilst Harrer did not use the term “National Socialist” he shared many of the same goals as Drexler and Knirsch and happily merged his movement with Drexler’s due to near universal political agreement. Karl’s movement was also founded in 1918 so Knirsch still predates him. Having spoken of the origins for long enough, it is now time to talk about the indirect influences of National Socialism. Whilst we have discussed the National Socialists who came prior to Hitler, it is also important to mention philosophers and thinkers who were not National Socialists but had an influence on it. For the sake of simplicity and keeping this essay a bit less meaty at the start, one of the main influences early on in National Socialism’s development was Oswald Spengler, namely through his idea of Prussian Socialism.

It should be noted the works done by Knirsch and Jung were far more inspirational to Hitler than any of the efforts of Anton Drexler or Karl Harrer. Nazism in Germany after Drexler was not modelled on his work but rather modelled on the techniques, views and aesthetics of Bohemian or Austrian Nazism as opposed to Drexler’s ideology, to the point that Hitler had even modelled NSDAP imagery off of the symbols used in the Bohemian and Austrian movements, such as the Swastika, the

In his works, Spengler argued there was a distinction between “English Socialism” (Marx and Engels), mostly developed in England by groups like the Fabians, and “Prussian Socialism”, which was unique. Spengler responded to the claim that socialism’s rise in Germany had not begun with the German Revolutions of 1918 and 1919, but rather in 1914 when Germany waged war, uniting the German nation in a national struggle that he claimed was based on socialistic Prussian characteristics, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self‑sacrifice. To add on, whilst not covered in Spengler’s notes, socialism does have a unique relationship with German nationalism, namely based on the State Socialist reforms that took place under Otto von Bismarck. Spengler claimed that these socialistic Prussian qualities were present across Germany and stated that the merger of German nationalism with this form of socialism while resisting Marxist and internationalist socialism would be in the interests of Germany, namely through the promotion of the welfare state.

Whilst Spengler was always against National Socialism, it should be of importance that Hitler, whilst severing ties with his works later, read them and agreed with parts of them. This shows the concept of Prussian Socialism wasn’t alien to Hitler. The idea of taking philosophy from theorists who would be neutral or against Nazism wasn’t alien to the Nazis.

In truth both ideologies are completely different in their genealogical background. Nazism was born out of pan German worker based ideology as a result of Hans Knirsch and Rudolf Jung’s efforts in the pre and post WW1 chaos, whilst Fascism in actuality was born later on and was born from revisionist Marxism through Georges Sorel. Nazism is more welfare orientated and whilst excepting stage control over the economy emphasised general welfare for solidarity alongside racial policy, whilst Fascist Italy was less ethnocentric and instead of welfare was more centred on economic control through nationalisations embracing less worker orientated welfare and instead opting for solving the labour dispute question through corporatism much like Nazi Germany, the difference being Italy divided labour into sections and managed each part of the economy respectively whilst National Socialism wasn’t nearly as intricate as Fascism was as dividing the economy and instead running labour as a large homogenous organisation for the most part with the DAF representing all of labour with little to no division.

In truth the best way of explaining the two ideologies without falling into the semantics of discussing race and whatnot is actually surprisingly simple. Fascism represents the more economic side of socialism/syndicalism as it was focussed on socialisation of the economy far more than general welfare, not that welfare programmes weren’t present. Nazi Germany on the other hand is more representative of the welfare side of socialism and has more in common with the populist welfare movements around the world advocating for better living conditions such as proposals in states like America to nationalise or subsidise healthcare more. They represent two halves of an ideology with different emphasises when looking at the economy and social policy. Fascism was far more economic whilst National Socialism despite exerting lots of state control over the economy was more orientated towards social policy.

The Nazi regime is often credited with achieving a grand economic recovery after 1933, changing a former empire devastated by the Great Depression and post war hyperinflation into what appeared to be a revitalized industrial powerhouse recovering from the decay of the Weimar era.

However, beyond the mythos and deception spread by pseudo historians and ideologues, the truth of the recovery of the Nazi economy, namely through Hitler and Herman Goring’s economic policies were in the long term and short term an economic nightmare that would have devastated the Third Reich had they won the war, and even did so before the war prior. The policies that lowered unemployment and expanded industry did so through coercion, manipulation, and unsustainable financial practices that increased debt.

Rather than building a stable economy, the regime founded a fragile system that relied on mass expansionism and theft. Even if Nazi Germany had won the war, its post-war ambitions and structural policies would have lead to its eventual collapse under its own contradictions and inefficiency. The most visible success of the Nazi recovery was the significant drop in unemployment. Official figures fell from roughly six million unemployed in 1933 to under one million by 1936. But this “miracle” was mostly statistical fiction. Women, Jews, and political opponents were forced out of the workforce and removed from unemployment rolls. Young men were absorbed into compulsory labour service and military conscription.

Part-time workers were counted as fully employed for example and the true number of part time employed workers in Nazi Germany is hard to discern due to the Nazis lying about part time employed workers having full time employment. The outcome was not genuine job creation but the removal of millions from the statistics. Furthermore the Reichsarbeitsdienst was a service made up of 350,000 workers in October 1939 (supposedly the time of the lowest level of unemployment before the war) through mandatory conscription that only required 6 months of service before completion. Furthermore the construction of autobahns by the Nazi regime made up of 40,000 or so workers in 1939 were classified as not unemployed by Nazi Germany despite their temporary status as a worker and them mostly being coerced into the position. That would mean that in total 390,000 German workers had their unemployment classification removed from official statistics through including temporary work as a form of full time employment to make unemployment statistics seem artificially lower despite the reality that almost every single one of these workers were temporary.

That would mean by 1939 (prior to the war obviously) 390,000 German workers should have been classified as having unstable jobs that would lead to unemployment as these positions were obtained through mandatory non voluntary labour that would inevitably result in these workers losing their jobs due to their temporary status despite Nazi Germany classifying these workers falsely as being fully employed.

Furthermore unemployment based on manipulated statistics alone in Nazi Germany was somewhere around 300-400,000 unemployed people by 1939. If you count temporary workers and not full time employed workers who will eventually lose their jobs, that would mean the actual number of unemployed Germans would be between 690-790,000 German workers either unemployed or on the brink of becoming completely unemployed due to the temporary status of Reichsarbeitsdienst and autobahn workers.

The supposed Nazi feat of supposedly neutering unemployment isn’t an exclusive feat as Soviet Russia drastically reduced unemployment from the Tsarist era as well using similar means to Nazi Germany through mandatory low paid labour that was also often temporary which often resulted in a society made up of working individuals with low job security. Nazi Germany used these exact tactics through exchanging mass unemployment for mass temporary employment with poor pay.

Furthermore when the Nazi Party introduced conscription policy in 1935 that extended into 1939, over a 1.3 million men were taken out of the labour force and put into the military during the rearmament period peaking at over 1.3 million soldiers whom prior would have been considered unemployed yet were coerced into the Nazi military through mandatory labour schemes. These 1.3 million workers were classified as employed despite operating in a position expanded by the state in order to plug up unemployment and cook the books regarding the total number of employed workers in Germany, as conscription. This isn’t to downplay the number of willing volunteers in the army which peaked at around 2 million voluntary workers, however it should be accounted for that if the feat of the decrease of unemployment is considered, it should be accounted for that in total 2,090,000 workers in Germany were in fact on the brink of unemployment and in many cases were unemployed with statistical manipulations creating a larger surplus of employed workers than in truth.

For those who stayed in the workforce, conditions worsened. Average working hours increased from about 43 hours per week in 1933 to 47–49 hours by the late 1930s, with maximum legal hours raised from 60 to 72 per week. Real wages stalled: by 1938, earnings were still below 1928 levels. In 1935, the average monthly income was around 142 RM, with industrial workers earning about 28 RM per week and agricultural workers as little as 16 RM. Hourly wages averaged just 0.80 RM, and mandatory deductions, including contributions to the German Labour Front and the Winter Relief Fund, further cut take-home pay.

The cost-of-living index in 1935 was 95 (with 1913/14 = 100), indicating that purchasing power had not recovered from the Depression. At the same time, production of consumer goods collapsed as resources were redirected to rearmament: clothing output fell 25%, shoe production dropped 20%, and household goods decreased by 30% between 1936 and 1939. Food consumption also fell, with meat intake dropping 17% and butter 24%. Factory accidents rose sharply as exhausted workers toiled longer hours in increasingly unsafe settings. Moreover, one of the clear examples of the regime’s internal contradictions was its treatment of women in the workforce. Early Nazi policy aggressively pushed women out of jobs: Marriage loans of up to 1,000 RM were offered on the condition that wives left their jobs. Women were dismissed from civil service and medicine, and by 1936 were banned from becoming judges or lawyers.

University admissions for women were limited to 10%. Despite this ideological campaign, female employment did not plummet it actually increased. By 1937, women made up 5.7 million workers, and that number continued to climb through 1939. The reason was simple: the Nazi economy needed cheap labour. Skilled women earned only 66% of men’s wages, and unskilled women about 70%, making them appealing to employers eager to fill labour shortages caused by conscription and rearmament. Women were also left out of unemployment statistics, allowing the regime to claim “full employment” while quietly relying on millions of female workers to keep the economy functioning. This hypocrisy reveals a fundamental flaw in the Nazi system: ideology dictated policy, but economic reality forced the regime to contradict its principles.

The Nazi recovery was financed through a hidden, unsustainable system of deficit spending. Rearmament was funded with MEFO bills promissory notes issued to companies instead of cash. Between 1934 and 1938, approximately 12 billion RM of rearmament debt accumulated off the books. By 1939, 7 billion RM of these bills were due, while Germany’s gold and foreign currency reserves were under 100 million RM. National debt had quadrupled from about 10 billion RM in 1933 to over 40 billion RM by 1939. The state was on the verge of default. At the same time, Germany faced ongoing shortages of essential raw materials. Domestic oil production was only about 1.5 million tons, well short of the 7–8 million tons required an 80–90% reliance on imports.

“Since the spring of 1938, the Reich’s finances had been spiralling towards disaster. For months the Finance Ministry had been living ‘from hand to mouth’ and the Reichsbank had been forced into an ‘inflationary creation of money’.”
“As of March 1938, there was to be no more issuing of the Mefo bonds. … Rather than contracting … military spending surged. … Between April and October 1938, the German army alone spent no less than 4.9 billion Reichsmarks…”

-Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze

“Between 1934 and 1938, Mefo bills worth a total of 12 billion Reichsmark were issued to pay for rearmament. To put that into context, Germany's national debt in 1932, the year before Hitler took power, was only 10 billion Reichsmark. By 1938 the official admitted national debt was 19 billion Reichsmark – but the Reichsmark 12 billion in Mefo bills has to be added on top of that. In other words, Hitler and the German Minister for Economics, Hjalmar Schacht, tripled Germany's national debt in just six years, but more than half of the increase was off the books.”

-Wikipedia article on MEFO

In 1938, synthetic Buna rubber output was just 5,000 tons, compared to a national need of 120,000 tons. Half of Germany’s iron ore had to be imported, mostly from Sweden. Steel availability dropped from 19.5 million tons in 1937 to 14.5 million tons in 1939 a 25% decline that crippled industry. Food shortages reached about four million tons per year, leading to rationing plans even before the war began. Skilled labour shortages hit one million workers by 1938. The Four-Year Plan, aimed at achieving self-sufficiency, failed completely. Germany remained dependent on global markets it could not access. By 1939, the economy was unsustainable. War was not a strategic choice; it became an economic necessity. Even if Nazi Germany had won the war, its long-term policies would have caused the state to eventually implode. The empire envisioned by Hitler was economically unfeasible, demographically impossible, and administratively unmanageable. Generalplan Ost required the removal, starvation, or displacement of tens of millions of people in Eastern Europe. This would have led to a permanent insurgency, necessitating millions of troops to maintain control.

The Lebensraum policy depended on seizing 400,000–500,000 km² of farmland, but Germany already lacked agricultural manpower; even if victorious, food shortages would have persisted. The Nazi racial hierarchy excluded over 200 million Europeans from skilled labour, education, and administrative roles. This would have hampered the empire’s ability to function. Forced labour represented 20–25% of the wartime workforce; once terror diminished, productivity would decline. The regime’s hostility toward women in the workforce eliminated half the population from skilled labour, ensuring long-term stagnation. Self-sufficiency would have still failed after victory. Germany produced only 10–15% of the oil it needed, and synthetic fuel production consumed 8–10 times more energy than it produced. The destruction of Jewish intellectual and scientific communities removed over 10% of Germany’s pre-1933 scientific elite, undermining future innovation.

The Nazi state was also structurally dysfunctional. The SS consumed about one-third of the budgets of occupied territories. The empire’s transport network was overstretched; even in 1942, rail lines in the East operated at only 50–60% of needed capacity. The Nazi tax system relied on plunder by 1943, around 30% of state revenue came from occupied territories. Once expansion ceased, the system would collapse. The planned Germanization of Eastern Europe required relocating 8–10 million Germans, a demographic impossibility given decreasing birth rates after 1936. The empire’s agricultural model relied on slave labour; without coercion, food production would collapse. The Nazi legal system removed property rights for “non-Aryans,” destroying incentives for productivity across conquered populations.

In summary, the Nazi post-war order was a plan for economic and administrative failure.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany [Overall Nazi economic recovery, unemployment drop from ~30% (1933) to under 1% (1939), longer working hours with limited real wage gains, deficit financing, rearmament priority, debt growth, consumer goods constraints, and resource dependence]

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEFO [MEFO bills as off-budget financing tool: ~12 billion RM issued 1934–1938, hidden debt, cash shortages by 1938–39, role in concealing rearmament]

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bill [Detailed mechanics of Mefo promissory notes, maturity extensions, and contribution to national debt]

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Labour_Service [RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst): compulsory 6-month service from 1935, strength of ~200,000 (1935) rising to ~350,000 (October 1939), role in reducing registered unemployment and paramilitary training]

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Year_Plan [1936 Four-Year Plan under Göring: autarky goals, synthetic production push, rearmament preparation, failure to fully eliminate resource shortages]

• https://ia800401.us.archive.org/24/items/ToozeAdamTheWagesOfDestructionTheMakingAndBreakingOfTheNaziEconomy/Tooze%2C%20Adam%20-%20The%20Wages%20of%20Destruction%20The%20Making%20and%20Breaking%20of%20the%20Nazi%20Economy.pdf [MEFO was unsustainable and by 1938 was “spiralling” out of control”

I’m making this out of frustration and anger with certain individuals I have on the right, namely social media users and essay writers who have sung praises for what can be best described as anti western slop with some reactionary tendencies that make movements appear to be “based” for the uninformed and unwise. This was namely triggered by the fact that some retarded Groypers or non Groyper dissidents are backing Nicolas Maduro after Trump’s operation in Ukraine. This problem isn’t just exclusive to Venezuela and the right however. The problem is a lack of consistent condemnation of the Third World and the anti interventionist stances on both the left and right that have essentially devolved into “Only a Third World country or Third Worldist aligned country can back interventionism, but it’s bad when the west does it”. I’m talking specifically about individuals like Tucker Carlson or George Galloway. On the Youtube side of things I’m referring to Arthur Greenwood, someone of whom I respect but fundamentally disagree with him on a lot.

The 21st century sees the West, once sure of itself, now hesitant and guilt-ridden. Meanwhile, nations shaped by past colonial issues have become bolder. This isn't about a decline in power, but a loss of clear beliefs that once guided the West. A core reason is the rise of Third-Worldism, not just as a place, but as a mindset based on anger, anti-Western views, and idealizing resistance.

Third-Worldism is a worldview that see politics as a battle between oppressors and the oppressed. It paints Western countries as constant aggressors and former colonies as justified victims. This story sticks, even when leaders in those countries have long held power and failures can't be blamed on outside rule. Third-Worldism gives these leaders a useful excuse: disagreement is treason, economic problems are sabotage, and authoritarian control is resistance. It's a political system of constant complaint, not growth.

Third Worldism often has ties to Postcolonialism from revolutions in the third world, such as Zimbabwe and Iran. Third Worldism is not purely a left-wing idea. It's harmful because it's spreading to the right, like defending dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi despite them being as anti western as literal communists.

Some people on the right use liberal or Marxist points to defend anti-Western Third Worldists. An example is defending Muammar Gaddafi as the only thing keeping Libya together.

Muammar Gaddafi's Libya shows how Third-Worldism works. Libya portrayed itself as a leader of the post-colonial world, fighting against Western powers. But this mostly led to violence abroad, supporting armed groups in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This shows how Third-Worldist talk can be used to justify actions that destabilize countries far from the post-colonial world.

Libya supported the Provisional IRA (PIRA) for a long time, providing weapons, training, and money from the 1970s to the 1990s. This included Semtex explosive, used in attacks that killed civilians in the United Kingdom. Gaddafi said this support was showing unity with an oppressed people fighting Western rule. But this meant directly sending violence into a European country. Naturally the IRA accepted all of this and adopted Libya alongside the pantheon of Third World countries Irish Nationalists associate themselves with both up north and down south. Like a cold spreading from one to another, this resulted in the IRA training Colombian communists (FARC) to terrorise the government of Colombia.

Libya was involved in international terrorism in other ways. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people. A Libyan intelligence was convinced for the attack officer, and Libya accepted responsibility and paid families. In 1986, the West Berlin nightclub bombing killed three people, including two American soldiers. The United States blamed Libyan operatives. In 1989, the bombing of French UTA Flight 772 killed 170 people; six Libyans were convicted in France for the attack.

Gaddafi's Libya supported many militant groups, such as the Red Brigades in Italy, ETA in Spain, and rebel groups in Africa. The actions were the same: Libya used anti-imperialism to justify giving weapons, training, and funds to groups using violence. This was using the language of anti-imperial solidarity to justify the provision of weapons, training, and funding to groups engaged in violent struggle. This was an reason to use violence against perceived Western control.

Libya shows how Third-Worldism can turn into militant internationalism. Countries use the language of anti-colonialism to justify actions that hurt other nations. It also shows how governments might use anger to gain influence. Libya's actions mirror what we see in other countries that use Third-Worldist language. Libya also shows how Third-Worldist ideas can be used to justify harmful behaviour on the world stage. It highlights the dangers of viewing narratives of anger as good. We need to see Third-Worldism as a political tool that can change global relationships and hurt international stability. To oppose Third Worldism to it’s core through all means necessary is as pro western as you can get, to be ambivalent to it or supportive of it makes you anti western.

Despite Gaddafi backing Third Worldist anti-western and socialist groups, some people defend him (including on the right). They claim he was a man who kept the Libyan state together. Instead, he was a Third Worldist who used the same methods as the USSR to hurt the west. Naturally this spirals into mental gymnastics about why opposing 2nd world Marxism is good but 3rd Worldist internationalist socialism is bad, which is honestly pathetic because I’d prefer to be consistent and have both wiped from the earth by any moral means possible. The revolution in Libya should’ve been a western revolution, not a liberal sponsored Libyan revolt trading Third Worldism for chaos that fosters terrorism.

People like Gaddafi were evils that hated much of our existence and funded movements against our state. The issue with Gaddafi wasn't that he was removed, but rather western intervention was needed beyond funding literal terrorists to get rid of Gaddafi. The west’s strategy of funding untrustworthy rebel groups will always be a mistake worth critiquing. Gaddafi should’ve been removed on the basis of being a funder and supporter of anti western terrorism and being a Third Worldist asset to states like Russia.

The same goes for Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Instead of removing Saddam after the first Gulf war and sending a message to the Third World, the West left things as they were. The west then only intervened for oil the second time and did little of significance to counter other threats in the Middle East afterwards. Another example would be the failure of the west to crush the Islamic revolution in Iran in it’s early stages.

In all due honesty, the second Iraq war was completely pointless but the fact that it was done on a false pretence that didn’t help Iraq develop much after the fact shows to me it was pointless. A deposing of Saddam Hussein could have only been done successfully after the first Iraq/Gulf war. Whilst I am pro interventionist, I am so within reason should those states exist against the interests of western interests and exist to spread Third Worldist hegemony. Should a Third World state exist and not harm our interests, it should be the wests goal to capture that state hegemonically and expand the west’s influence to perhaps level these states not through pure money but actually industrialising these states and providing work to our working class abroad and give the opportunities to build trading and military relationships around the world.

The West’s post-Cold War interventions failed because they misunderstood the views of these regions. They assumed authoritarian or post-colonial regimes were just waiting to become democracies. But many of these countries had already rejected the Western ideal. Their cultures revolved around anti-Western struggle, trauma from colonialism, and mobilization of political views. Western democracy wasn't just missing, it clashed with the identity these regimes had created. The West removed governments without understanding the views that supported them. This created openings that Third Worldist quickly filled.

The shift away from involvement after Iraq and Afghanistan has made this problem worse. Western countries have become cautious. This has happened as Russia, China, and Iran have become more powerful. They reject Western standards and see themselves as leaders of the post-colonial world. The result is that the West has given up ground to regimes that define themselves by opposing it. Refraining from involvement, instead of creating stability, has allowed Third-Worldist narratives to grow unchallenged.

Ireland, in a small way, shows how Third-Worldist thinking can take root even in the West. Ireland is wealthy, democratic, and connected to Europe. But it still sees itself through historical wrongs such as famine, colonialism, and resistance. Instead of causing protection of their culture and their values, this trauma-based nationalism has been absorbed into a humanitarian worldview associated with Third Worldist movements. Ireland acts like a Western country, but thinks like a post-colonial one. It feels emotionally aligned with narratives of victims while backing policies, such as immigration and EU integration, that go against the preservationist nature of trauma nationalism. The lack of a strong political right has allowed this split identity to continue. Ireland is a Western country that has adopted the language of the post-colonial world.

In 2025, Irish polls show a fragmented political scene with increasing pressure at home and a strong lean toward being pro-EU and caring about humanitarian issues.

The main parties, Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael, are close in numbers, usually polling between the high teens and mid-twenties. Sinn Féin often leads at 22–27%, with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael trailing at 17–22%. Independent candidates tend to get about 10–15% of the vote. Smaller parties like the Social Democrats, Labour, the Greens, Aontú, and People Before Profit, get around 20% of the total vote. Because no single party is close to having a majority and the voting system spreads support across different views and local interests, Ireland ends up with a hung parliament. This divide comes from a split in beliefs. Ireland's centre ground in politics has become less powerful, but no clear new direction has taken its place.

Despite the separation, most Irish people still feel good about immigration and international groups. A July poll by Ireland Thinks for the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland found that 64% of those asked think Ireland should welcome immigrants looking for a better life, while only 18% disagreed. There’s even more support when immigration is tied to job needs: 82% say Irish companies should keep hiring workers from outside the EU to fill shortages, with just 11% against it. People also seem to want better immigration policies. 65% think non-EU workers should be able to bring their families, 66% agree they should have full job options after two years, and 88% think a residence permit fee of less than €100 is fair, compared to the current €300 each year. Also, 69% believe that undocumented people who have lived and worked in Ireland for a long time should have a chance to become legal, while 25% would rather they be removed. This suggests that Irish people generally support migrant rights and policies that help immigrants fit in, even though worries about immigration have grown in other surveys.

Eurobarometer results back up this idea of stress without major change. Housing is the biggest issue for people at 65%, higher than anywhere else in the EU, where the average is 13%. Concerns about immigration have gone up to 26%, which is eight points higher than in early 2025. It’s also above the EU average of 15%, yet Ireland is still one of the most welcoming countries to immigrants in Europe. 78% think the country should help refugees, and 73% agree that immigrants help the country, which is much higher than the EU average of 57%. Trust in the EU is still high at 59%, and 63% of those asked have a good view of the Union, putting Ireland among the most pro-EU countries. Even views on the EU getting bigger are fairly good at 59%, though that’s down five points from early 2025. How happy people are with the way democracy works in Ireland is at 71%, which is eight points lower than early 2025, but still better than the EU average of 54%. The difference between how good people feel personally—96% are happy with their lives—and less faith in the government suggests that people are more annoyed with things at home, like national groups and resources, than with the EU or immigrants.

These views help explain why Ireland hasn't seen a big populist-right movement, even though it faces similar problems that have caused such movements in other parts of Europe. If we narrowly define this as being culturally old-fashioned, against immigration, against the elite, and doubtful of the EU, then Ireland’s hard-right vote is only about 5–8% of the voters. Aontú gets about 3–6% in polls, right-leaning independents add 2–4%, and very small parties with clearly hard-right ideas usually get less than 1% in polls. Several things cause this weakness: the Catholic Church isn't as powerful as it used to be, which removes a base for a traditional cultural right; large-scale immigration is fairly new; the voting system spreads protest votes across local independents; and Sinn Féin takes up much of the anti-government feeling that might instead go to a hard-right party. This all creates a situation where there's tension at home, but the reaction is more focused on being caring, supporting Europe, and trusting groups rather than a populist revolt.

Whilst I myself oppose Irish Nationalism, any person on the developed right would agree that perhaps Aontú or another smaller party deserves the right to govern Ireland the most, however the current political climate in Ireland generally favours milk-toast liberalism or left nationalist groups, both in the north and south. Ireland should serve as a reminder as to what aligning with the Third World and internationalist struggle based causes can do to a nation. Whilst I have been deeply critical of Ireland, it should be noted there are worse contenders that have submitted to this brainrot. Ireland at least has an excuse due to their postcolonial history and independence from the UK, however post imperial states like Spain, Portugal, Sweden and France demonstrate that Ireland shouldn’t be singled out despite my harshness. Furthermore states like Spain and France are the result of post imperial guilt as opposed to aligning with Third Worldist struggles like in the case of Ireland. Their masses flocked leftwards out of guilt and a hatred of western civilisation that grew subsequent the enlightenment, meanwhile Ireland was born out of an enlightened revolution so naturally a revolutionary history like Ireland’s would lead to it having a postcolonial mindset in politics later down the line. Meanwhile these great states have had hundreds of years of history in the way they are now and have sacrificed their glory for guilt, self loathing and a suicidal hatred of their own countries. Spain however has more of a link to Ireland than France in this regard due to Basque and Catalonian nationalism (which Franco crushed legendarily so much so that left anarchists are still coping about it today, as if splitting from the republican army was a good idea to face off against a Nationalist force backed by Italy and Germany).

Overall, the polling data and Eurobarometer results show a society that is struggling with problems at home but still has strong trust in international groups and good feelings toward immigration. Irish political culture still tends to see national problems as something to be solved with openness, humanitarian work, and working with Europe. The divided party system, the weak hard-right, and the pro-EU feelings show a way of thinking shaped more by the country's past and open-minded views than by the nationalistic reactions seen in other Western countries.

This shows the issue: The West no longer sees itself as a historical actor. It treats its rivals as democracies that are just misunderstood, not as movements shaped by anger and resistance. It sees its own past confidence as shameful instead of strong. And it sees involvement as a risk rather than a tool. The result is that Third-Worldist regimes become bolder, Western countries more hesitant, and the ideological balance shifts away from Western progress. Interventionism was once a source for progress and ending threats, now countries are too weak to challenge their literal ontological enemies abroad out of fear of retarded Vietnam era subversive anti war protestors (of whom I shall rant about another time).

A good attack of Third-Worldism doesn't require disliking any people or culture. It requires understanding that politics based on anger, whether in the developing world or the West, can't create stable government or world order. We need to admit that past interventions failed due to a lack of imagination not inevitability. The focus then shifts toward creating true political development, that is not confined by the norms of the West. Instead it can be a contest of narratives, identities, and institutions. Sitting down and going on about Iraq and Libya whilst ignoring thousands of years of empire building and alliance forging is ignorant to say the least. The global crusade against the Axis was justified yet now we are at the point where suggesting a global crusade against Marxism or the Third World are condemned. In Marxism’s case it was creating a palatable image for itself out of the reaction the USA had to communism, namely through McCarthyism ignoring the fact McCarthy for the most part was not only vindicated then but has only continued to be vindicated subsequently.

The reason I’m posting this is due to my reaction to the deposition of Maduro. Clearly people have gotten fed up with the lame “interventionism is when country plunges into chaos forever” narrative. Interventionism fails due to a lack of hegemonic alliance building and trying to impose liberalism on sovereign states that don’t need it. The test of time will come with the removal of Maduro. Will Trump actually be able to rebuild Venezuela or fail and impose liberalism and abandon Venezuela.

This aside, in summary Third Worldist politics are literal cancer to both the left and right, and interventionism is only condemned because of “muh Iraq” as if forcing liberalism on a foreign population is the fault of interventionism specifically. Iraq didn’t need it’s oil to be stolen or for a liberal democracy to be imposed on it. I needed to be rid of it’s Third Worldist leader and be adopted in a global network of states that should be anti Third Worldist. Even today the hypocrisy of the left and some post Bush right wingers is rampant. They claim that intervention in Iraq is bad whilst supporting Third World states intervening in other states politics such as the Russia Ukraine war notably. Only the west in their eyes can be bad at intervention, and only the Third World or the alliance of states aligned with the Third World are allowed to intervene. No more sitting back. The west must be active to it’s internal and external enemies. An antithetical Sorelian like myth is needed to beat the Third Worldists and their allies who have managed to capture portions of the right and swarths of the left.

Al-Andalus wasn’t just some peaceful utopia; it was an empire, plain and simple. Despite the narrative spread by progs and historians, it was only “progressive” 200 years of it’s several century long existence. When the Umayyads charged in back in 711, they weren’t on some mission to save the world. They wanted to take over, and a small group of Muslims ended up running things over a big group of Christians for years. The way they organized things was like any old empire: a clear hierarchy, taking resources, and being practical in how they ruled. People later got all romantic about how tolerant it was, but that wasn’t really the point. It was more like a deal that worked as long as it kept the place stable and brought in cash.

Those early, calmer years happened because it made sense for the rulers. Christians and Jews were allowed to stick around as dhimmis. This is because they were important to the economy. They paid more taxes, like the jizya and kharaj, but they also didn’t have the same rights as Muslims. While the government was strong and needed their help, this setup ran without too many problems. People call this time convivencia, but it always depended on keeping non-Muslims in a lower position.

Things fell apart after the Caliphate went down in 1031. The little taifa kingdoms that popped up started raising taxes, getting stricter, and listening to more extreme ideas. Then came the Almoravids and Almohads, who were much tougher. They made people convert, kicked them out, and generally made life hard for anyone not following their rules. By the 1100s, the idea of a Golden Age was gone. It was replaced by chaos and force.

Being a dhimmi meant being legally second-class. Non-Muslims had to pay a special tax to show they were lower in status, but Muslims paid zakat as part of their religion. Dhimmis couldn’t build new churches or synagogues, show off their religion too much, wear certain clothes, or do certain jobs. They didn’t really have guaranteed rights. These rights could be taken away on a whim by whoever was in charge, so they were never really safe.

Even the gorgeous buildings and in al-Andalus tell the tale. Big mosques, palaces, libraries, and bathhouses were paid for by the government. This included taxes from non-Muslims, but these things were mostly for the Muslim rulers and to show off Islamic power. Sure, dhimmis got to use the roads and water systems like everyone else, but they didn’t get the same prestige or cultural benefits from these fancy projects and had to suffer to build those things through being treated as second class citizens in their own homeland.

Violence and hard times weren’t just rare events. They kept happening. In 1066, a bunch of Jews was killed in Granada, which ended their Golden Age there. Back in the 800s, the Martyrs of Córdoba got the ax for standing up to those who wanted them to blend in. In 1099, churches got torn down and Christians were mistreated in Granada. The Almoravids kicked out a bunch of Mozarabs to North Africa in 1126, and the Almohads forced many to convert and wiped out religious groups left and right.

The idea that al-Andalus was super tolerant mostly lives on because people like to use it in political arguments today, not because that’s how it really was back then. People bring it up as a symbol of when different groups got along, as a way to contrast it with Europe’s own history of not being so accepting, or to say something about what happened later in Christian Spain. But these stories hide how things worked, why they were tolerant in the first place, how things got worse after the 1000s, and how much minorities suffered under both Muslim and Christian rule.

The truth is, al-Andalus was a happening place with lots of cash and culture, but it was also built on a system where some people were better than others, resources were taken, and things were never really stable. People got along, but there were always conditions that are obviously only there out of pragmatism, not genuine love and compassion. There was real persecution time and again. The famous Golden Age didn’t last very long and came to a stop when the Almoravids and Almohads showed up, showing how shaky the whole system was, even with all its fancy culture.

The reason why the debate around al-Andalus is important to me is because my father (bless his heart) still believes in the age of tolrance myth pedalled by liberal woke media that will happily tear down the sovereignty of European states when the 3rd world attempts to take over, but celebrates liberal bolshevised revolutions to the likes of Russia, France, The United States and Ireland all forming around the idea of oppression against imperialism and the loving of the liberal or socialistic lifestyle. If it was Hamilton whom they celebrated for the United States and not Washington or Jefferson, I’d have a more favourable view of the revolution, but alas they don’t.

My point is European excellency and power is condemned whilst the power of the 3rd world and the pseudo intellectual ideobabble of enlightenment thought are pedalled to be weaponised against the races that comprise Europe and the Americas. I’m sick of this myth being pedalled around to degrade Spaniards and other alike by having them submit to the barbaric horde of mongrels not only flooding the streets of Madrid, but Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and many more. The point is my goal has always been to debunk what I deem as the enlightenment consensus. Many dissidents are silly to believe that there is a “post war consensus”. The “post war consensus” has existed centuries prior through ideological subversion and erosion and attempting progress through a rejection of the past rather than building on it.

Enlightenment ideologues whether they be liberals or communists will always support the past should that aspect of the past be aligned with them in helping to undermine the parts of the past that undermined civilisation. Al-Andalus is just one example.

To begin, let’s start in numerical order. For starters, National Socialism is not Fascism because National Socialism in actuality came before Italian Fascism and its subsequent variants. Whilst Italian Fascism has roots in the Fasces of Revolutionary Action that existed during the First World War, it was not inherently a coherent form of Fascism nor did it exhibit the things that would later make Fascism unique. The movement primarily existed to propose support for Italian interventionism from a left‑wing perspective in Mussolini’s mind; however, it was not as developed, and Fascism as a true ideological movement didn’t take off until the 1920s, namely through the March on Rome, and wasn’t fully put together until 1932 when Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini released The Doctrine of Fascism. This is a very clear indication that the ideologies are similar but not related, as some historians like to conflate.

For starters, Fascism was born from revisionist Marxism, whereas National Socialism has a pantheon of influences. Fascism was born from the revolutionary works of French National Syndicalist Georges Sorel. This is namely true by the fact Georges Valois, one of Sorel’s pupils, became one of the earliest Fascist scholars in the world, second to Mussolini himself, with very disputed claims that Mussolini stole Fascism from Valois and that it was not his or Gentile’s innovation.

Regardless, Fascism is Sorelian because it advocates a system of National Syndicalism, Corporatism, and regulated private property, as Sorel and Valois were not property abolitionists, something early National Socialists like Anton Drexler and Rudolf Jung have in common with the early Fascists, despite no documented proof of them studying their work. Overall, though, National Socialism’s origins are objectively unique from Fascism and predate Fascism, and this is objective based on the development of the ideologies. Proto‑Fascism, as named through the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, whilst syndicalist and nationalist, didn’t have documented long‑term political goals beyond intervention and was still inherently more Marxist than Mussolini’s subsequent endeavours. Mussolini’s entry into the war was still a Marxian effort rather than a unique one, as Mussolini proposed it under the Socialist Party before his expulsion in 1914. The Fasces of Revolutionary Action was short‑lived and primarily existed to promote war.

As for National Socialism, as a coherent doctrine it can be traced to 1909 and 1919 respectively based on two major movements. These were the Pan‑German Workers’ Party in Czechoslovakia led by Ferdinand Burschofsky, with Rudolf Jung and Hans Knirsch being the most important members of the party in retrospect. Hans Knirsch would later become the leader of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party of Czechoslovakia in 1919, and the party would later be merged into the Sudeten German Party, though not under his leadership. A fact about Hans Knirsch is that he actually talked Hitler out of committing suicide after the Beer Hall Putsch. Regardless, Hans Knirsch’s efforts helped build the foundations of National Socialism based on his efforts as both a member of the DAP (Czechoslovakia) and later as leader of the Nazi Party of Czechoslovakia before its merging with the Sudeten German Party.

Jung, on the other hand, was also important. He was a member of Hans Knirsch’s party and wrote up the ideological foundations of their movement through Der nationale Sozialismus: Seine Grundlagen, Sein Werdegang, und Seine Ziele (National Socialism: Its Foundations, Its Development, and Its Goals). Many have dubbed Jung as the “Karl Marx of Nazism”. However, it is more appropriate to say he was the Engels of Nazism, since his book was an explanation of the wants and goals of the party which was not his own creation but Hans Knirsch’s. This means that without Hans Knirsch there would be no documented ideological foundations for Anton Drexler of the German DAP (NSDAP later on, both due not only to Hitler’s takeover but Jung’s influence). Hans Knirsch, whilst very important to the early stages of this story, would lose relevance as time went on. Jung would carry on his political legacy through becoming a regional leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

As for Anton Drexler, the first leader of the first documented National Socialist party in Germany, his ideology was blatantly overlaid with Hans Knirsch’s, though had more relevance due to being a leader of a Pan‑German party in Germany as opposed to being leader of said movement in a non‑German country. Drexler’s most important stances came from his stance on the Slavic question. Whilst not mentioned on the Wikipedia page, Hans Knirsch’s party was inherently the successor of the prior party and carried over elements of anti‑Semitism, anti‑Slavism, anti‑capitalism, and anti‑Marxism. These carried into his later party, with Rudolf Jung functioning as a means of transcribing his ideology on paper to document the wants and goals of the party. Anton Drexler did carry over the anti‑Semitism and anti‑Slavism of Hans Knirsch. However, his anti‑Slavism wasn’t as prevalent due to Adolf Hitler being the true developer of National Socialism’s anti‑Slavism based on his want for Lebensraum, something Drexler was not documented to be as interested in as Hitler.

Collectively speaking, these parties all had a very common interest. Pan‑Germanism, anti‑capitalism, anti‑Communism and anti‑Marxism, and a strong support for autarky and nationalistic socialism, though in practice it resembled social corporatism more. “Der alte Sehnsuchstraum der deutschen Demokraten” was what Knirsch said in reference to his goals of wanting German reunification through supporting a Pan‑Germanic ideology that sought unity amongst all Germans or Germanic peoples like Austrians, Sudeten Germans, and perhaps alluding to smaller German populations such as the Volga Germans.

It should also be noted the DAP was also founded through a merger of another National Socialist Party called “Political Workers’ Circle” which was lead by Karl Harrer. Whilst Harrer did not use the term “National Socialist” he shared many of the same goals as Drexler and Knirsch and happily merged his movement with Drexler’s due to near universal political agreement. Karl’s movement was also founded in 1918 so Knirsch still predates him.

Having spoken of the origins for long enough, it is now time to talk about the indirect influences of National Socialism. Whilst we have discussed the National Socialists who came prior to Hitler, it is also important to mention philosophers and thinkers who were not National Socialists but had an influence on it. For the sake of simplicity and keeping this essay a bit less meaty at the start, one of the main influences early on in National Socialism’s development was Oswald Spengler, namely through his idea of Prussian Socialism.

In his works, Spengler argued there was a distinction between “English Socialism” (Marx and Engels), mostly developed in England by groups like the Fabians, and “Prussian Socialism”, which was unique. Spengler responded to the claim that socialism’s rise in Germany had not begun with the German Revolutions of 1918 and 1919, but rather in 1914 when Germany waged war, uniting the German nation in a national struggle that he claimed was based on socialistic Prussian characteristics, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self‑sacrifice. To add on, whilst not covered in Spengler’s notes, socialism does have a unique relationship with German nationalism, namely based on the State Socialist reforms that took place under Otto von Bismarck. Spengler claimed that these socialistic Prussian qualities were present across Germany and stated that the merger of German nationalism with this form of socialism while resisting Marxist and internationalist socialism would be in the interests of Germany, namely through the promotion of the welfare state.

Whilst Spengler was always against National Socialism, it should be of importance that Hitler, whilst severing ties with his works later on, read them and agreed with parts of them. This shows the concept of Prussian Socialism wasn’t alien to Hitler. The idea of taking philosophy from theorists who would be neutral or against Nazism wasn’t alien to the Nazis in general.

Hitler and the German Revolutions

During the German Revolutions of 1918 and 1919, Hitler’s actions were way more intricate than the story he told later on. He wasn’t automatically against the revolution like he said in Mein Kampf. The truth is, Hitler stayed put in Munich the whole time rather than being disgusted with the government under Kurt Eisner. You wouldn’t expect that from someone who supposedly hated the new government from day one. He didn’t try to defend the monarchy, and he didn’t join any groups fighting the new setup. Instead, he just accepted that the old system was gone and kept doing his job as a soldier without complaining, as far as anyone knows. This matters because it proves Hitler wasn’t yet the guy he pretended to be. Back then, his political views were still forming and influenced by what was happening around him.

And it’s not like Hitler was doing nothing during all this. Under the Eisner government, he was an elected representative in his regiment. So, he was actually part of the political system, not outside it. He did things like relay information, write political reports, and handle propaganda. This goes against his later claim that he was disgusted by the councils and ran away from Munich to Traunstein briefly. Plus, he even went to Eisner’s funeral, which newsreels show. This shows that he wasn’t instantly against the revolution like he later pretended. Julius Schreck, who became one of Hitler’s first followers, was also in Munich at the time. This means that some future Nazis were created by the same environment and weren’t fully formed ideologically yet.

Hitler’s presence in the area shouldn’t be downplayed in discussions either. Whilst his role in the subsequent Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic is heavily contested due to him ratting on his comrades to the Reichswehr during a trial, it should be noted there was no indication Hitler was opposed to the prior government however by September of 1919 showed that Hitler had by the expressed his anti Semitism and opposition to “Judeo” and “Asiatic” Bolshevism. As for his time under Eisner it is clear he was an elected member of a soldiers council and did little to oppose Eisner if at all as no documents or testimony shows the Fuhrer’s opposition to Eisner, other than Mein Kampf which isn’t a reliable source due to Hitler ommitting details like these about his time in Munich Bavaria post war. Hitler’s antisemitism developing in Vienna is also questionable due to his alignment with Eisner.

During the fall of the BSSR, it should be noted a common myth used by Neo Nazis and Marxists regarding Hitler’s political history was that he was always a rat for the Reichswehr and the Freikorp and that his betrayal of the BSSR is an indication that he was never involved for ideological reasons. This is contestable. Firstly Adolf Hitler didn’t flee Munich Bavaria after Eisner’s death and the creation of the Soviet Republic. In fact Hitler remained behind and attended Eisner’s funeral. His cooperation with Mayr also falls flat regarding the Gemlich letter when considered Hitler almost immediately betrayed Mayr by joining the DAP and becoming it’s leader later on. Furthermore, Mayr was later killed by Hitler in 1945 with the help of the Gestapo and Hitler seizing power over the DAP showed that their relationship was pragmatic, the same way Hitler relationships with Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher were pragmatic.

Politics back then were a mess. Men like Strasser and Röhm were in the Freikorps, fighting against the Soviet Republic. But Hitler stayed with his regiment and didn’t join the counter-revolutionaries ignoring the fact there was a window of opportunity for him to leave Bavaria after Eisner’s death but didn’t. His regiment stayed neutral, and Hitler stayed in Munich the whole time. This neutrality is key because it proves Hitler wasn’t devoted to being anti-Marxist and anti-Communist from the start, like he claimed later. Instead, he was politically flexible and guided by what was happening, not by strong beliefs. After the Soviet Republic fell, he worked with the authorities because he wanted to save his own skin, not because he believed in any political cause. Furthermore his condemnation of the Freikorp during the Night of Long Knives shows that Hitler being a rat for the Freikorp is dubious and his loyalty to the Reichswehr was extremely doubtful

Hitler’s story in Mein Kampf is a complete redo of this time. He leaves out that he was a representative, leaves out his propaganda work, leaves out that he went to Eisner’s funeral, and leaves out that he stayed in Munich during the revolution. Instead, he makes up a story where he was always a dedicated nationalist and anti-Marxist. He wanted everyone to think he hated the revolution from the start and saw it as something destructive. This lie was important for his later political career because it allowed him to act like his beliefs never changed. But the facts show that Hitler’s early political views developed because of the revolutionary environment in Munich, and he created this other story to hide that truth because it was bad for his image.

The omission of this period in Mein Kampf to me at least shows that Hitler’s ideology was not clear and cut as early as 1918. To me that omission indicates there was something shameful to hide about that period with it not helping that Kurt Eisner was an ethnic Jew, and Hitler willingly participated in the system he created with no confirmed ulterior motives at least for the time.

Early Ideological Tendencies and Party Development

The Kaiserreich’s fall and the mess that followed really shaped Hitler’s start in politics. Back in 1918 and 1919, he didn’t act like he cared about the monarchy at all, even though he later said he respected it. During the revolution, he stayed put in Munich, got himself elected as a soldiers’ rep, and just went along with the new government without making a fuss. He wasn’t against the monarchy for any deep reasons, it was just practical. The old system hadn’t done anything for him, and its downfall gave him a chance to get into the political game later on. When Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party in 1919, it wasn’t to bring back the past. He wanted to start a brand new, radical movement that dumped both the old upper class and the Weimar Republic. Furthermore Hitler himself had no plans to revive the monarchy and used the late Kaiser Wilhelm II’s funeral to shill National Socialism namely by adorning the area with emblems of the NSDAP and the Third Reich, something that went against the late Kaiser’s wishes.

When the DAP became the NSDAP, it showed exactly what Hitler wanted for his movement. He changed the party to completely reject the political system, not just disagree with some policies. The early NSDAP mixed extreme nationalism with anti-capitalist talk, public demonstrations, and a paramilitary presence in the streets. The Stormtroopers became a clear sign of this change, especially in Berlin, where things were so out of control that the national government moved to Weimar. Because of this unstable situation, the NSDAP didn’t seem like a typical conservative party. Instead, it presented itself as a completely different option to the Weimar government, competing with both Marxist parties and the traditional right wing. Many Germans liked the party because it promised a united country and a clean break from the political mess that had been Germany since 1918.

This extreme nature was made stronger by Hitler’s first inner circle, which had people from the party’s more socialist side, like Gregor Strasser, Ernst Röhm, and a young Joseph Goebbels. Strasser’s ideas are especially worth noting. Among the early National Socialists, he was the one whose ideas were most like traditional Italian Fascism. Strasser wanted the government to take over all major industries without compromise, believing that the state should own and run the economy for the good of the nation. Hitler, on the other hand, was more practical. Instead of just taking over everything, he wanted a system where the government would have some stake in all industries and have a big say in how they were run. This way, the market was still controlled by the state, but through influence and force rather than the government owning everything.

The party’s change was also influenced by outsiders. Rudolf Jung especially urged Hitler to pick a name that would appeal to workers and set the party apart from traditional right-wing groups. His pressure helped Hitler decide to rename the DAP as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The new name was meant to cause a stir, combining nationalist and socialist language to attract unhappy workers who might otherwise join the SPD or KPD. This name choice was more pragmatic since he initially wanted to call the party something along the lines of the “Social Revolutionary Party” showing that Jung still had lots of influence by being able to convince Hitler to pick a name for the party, but it did help define the party early on as a revolutionary force against the system.

Goebbels’ early thinking fits right into this situation. In the mid-1920s, he was part of the northern group led by Strasser, which supported extreme economic ideas and even thought about working with Soviet Russia. Goebbels called himself a revolutionary socialist, saw socialism as the idea of the future, and used his newspaper Der Angriff to criticize capitalism with slogans like For the oppressed, against the exploiters. His diaries from this time show that he once liked Bolshevism over capitalism, because he thought that a national, collectivist revolution was needed to rebuild Germany. These ideas weren’t Marxist, but they did share some things with National Bolshevik ideas that tried to combine nationalism with a type of anti-capitalist social revolution.

This flirting with these ideas came to a head at the Bamberg Conference in 1926. Hitler strongly rejected the northern group’s plan, insisted that private property would not be taken away, and dismissed their version of socialism as a Jewish creation. Goebbels was very upset at first and wrote that he no longer fully believed in Hitler. But Hitler saw Goebbels’ talent and personally tried to win him over, offering him power and responsibility. Goebbels soon gave up his earlier views and became one of Hitler’s most loyal followers. From then on, he supported the party’s new National Socialism, which rejected Marxist class struggle and internationalism in favour of a national community defined by race struggle against “subhumans”with class being subordinate to race struggle.

The socialism that Hitler and Goebbels promoted after Bamberg was very different from Marxist socialism though National Socialism itself had always been different despite Hitler’s origins as National Socialism itself did not come from Hitler entirely. It put more importance on putting the nation’s interests ahead of individual ones, uniting all Germans of good race, and ending class conflict through national unity. It was a means of promoting class solidarity and anti bourgeoise rhetoric whilst not conforming to Marxian Socialism(Communism) because it was never the goal.

Hitler’s relationships with his early friends followed a similar pattern of changing his beliefs for his own gain. Karl Mayr, Ernst Röhm, Gregor Strasser, and various Freikorps networks were all very important at different times in the movement’s rise, but each was gotten rid of once they threatened Hitler’s power or message. Mayr started Hitler’s political career but was later persecuted. Röhm and the SA were essential in the early years, but once their revolutionary goals clashed with Hitler’s need for support from the elite, they were killed during the Night of the Long Knives. Strasser’s collectivist vision challenged Hitler’s control over the party’s direction, leading to his removal and eventual murder. Even the Freikorps people who helped the NSDAP rise were later condemned when their independence became inconvenient. These betrayals were not exceptions. They were the logical result of Hitler’s power-driven approach to politics.

The NSBO (National Socialist Factory Cell Organization) also experimented with ideas. They worked inside workplaces and trade unions, using tactics that sounded a lot like what left-wing activists did. Their leaders pushed for strikes, bashed employers, and played on people’s anger about class differences. Some even seemed into National Bolshevik ideas, saying the only way to win over workers was through revolution. Hitler let it go on for a while because it helped the party mess with the Social Democrats and Communists. The NSBO’s activism that was worker-focused shows how National Socialism early on got its energy from a bunch of radical ideas and hadn’t turned into the strict right-wing thing it became later.

Goebbels’ change of heart shows how quickly these early idea experiments could fall apart. After he decided to stick with Hitler in late 1926, he ditched his earlier views almost overnight. Hitler paid him back by making him Gauleiter of Berlin, and from then on, Goebbels became one of the regime’s biggest mouthpieces against what he started calling “Jewish Bolshevism.” He started saying the Nazi fight was for a German socialism based on race that was against Marxism, and as the head of propaganda, he helped make Bolshevism seem like a racial enemy instead of just an economic idea.

Hitler treated other early allies the same way. Karl Mayr, Ernst Röhm, Gregor Strasser, and different Freikorps groups were all super important at different times when the movement was growing, but each one got tossed aside when they threatened Hitler’s power or his story. Mayr got Hitler’s political career going but got messed with later. Röhm and the SA were key in the early years, but once their radical goals clashed with Hitler wanting support from the upper class, they got taken out during the Night of the Long Knives. Strasser’s socialist ideas challenged Hitler’s control over where the party was going, so he got kicked out and eventually killed.

Core Ideological Features of National Socialism

National Socialism presented itself as a “Third Way,” rejecting both Marxism and liberal capitalism while claiming to offer a revolutionary alternative rooted in racial unity, however their practises can best be explained as social views that by their standards would be a mix of both reactionary and progressive (varied freedom of religion and state cooperation with the working class through welfare), as well as an economic system that challenged the capitalist normality of the time in a way similar to but different from Bolshevism. Despite the “Third way” positioning, functionally speaking it was the economic in between of Fascism and Social Democracy. An over simplification would be like saying Hitler was to Stalin what Bukharim was to Stalin. Less radical part of the broader movement with a different end goal. The movement defined itself through opposition to Marxism, Individualism, Capitalism and reactionary religion though opposition was less clear for the last due to Hitler’s pragmatism and needing to win over the Christian vote. Marxism was condemned for promoting class conflict and internationalism against the interests of the national community, while liberal capitalism was attacked for fostering individualism, materialism, and what the Nazis saw as the decay of national solidarity. National Socialism positioned itself as a system that transcended class divisions by uniting all “racially valuable” Germans into a single political community.

At the heart of this worldview was the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft, a racially defined national community that served as the organising principle of society. In this model, social status, class identity, and individual interests were subordinated to the collective will of the nation. The Volksgemeinschaft was not merely a social ideal but a political tool used to justify the exclusion, persecution, and eventual destruction of those deemed “racially alien.” It provided the ideological foundation for the regime’s policies, from economic planning to welfare programs and cultural regulation.

Economically, National Socialism rejected laissez‑faire capitalism and embraced a system of state direction and social autarky for the benefit of the Volksgemeinschaft. The regime sought economic self‑sufficiency, believing that dependence on foreign markets or resources made Germany vulnerable and that it would also make them a place ripe for Jewish trickery and deception through lobbying and international finance. While private property formally remained intact in theory, the state exercised extensive control over production, investment, labour, and prices. The goal was not efficiency or profit but national strength and preparation for war. This system blended elements of corporatism, state planning, and coercive control, creating an economy that was neither capitalist nor socialist in the conventional sense.

This has some in common with the Italian Fascist mode of production though the National Socialists differ in methods slightly. The Italian Fascists supported a mass nationalisation with some private property that was subordinated to the state, the Nazis were more careful and used mass subordination/synchronisation instead though did nationalise a few industries namely roads and also used mass subsidisation to aid the economy and Volksgemeinschaft through welfare, leisure programmes, family/demographic programmes (lebensborn) and transport through not only the nationalised roads but also through the state creation of the Volkswagen (The people’s car).

National Socialist rhetoric was deeply anti‑bourgeois and hostile to finance capitalism. Any and all collaboration with these industries during the rise of the Nazis was effectively worth nothing in the end since top industrialists were always at risk of having their assets seized should they not align with state interest. An example would be Fritz Thyssen who had his assets seized after fleeing Germany in opposition to the war despite being a professed nationalist and anti Marxist. The Nazis found out about his defection through Hermann Göring as he had sent a letter to Göring explaining his absence and in response the Nazis seized all of his assets and made them state owned. The movement portrayed bankers, stockbrokers, and “speculators” as parasitic forces undermining the nation. This language overlapped with both left‑wing anti‑capitalist sentiment and long‑standing völkisch conspiratorial thinking. The Nazis used this rhetoric to appeal to workers. However it should be of not that Hitler supported a form of productive industrialism as well hence why he didn’t nationalise all industries and subordinated them instead but still exerted string state control over them as he believed the Aryans were a naturally creative people.

Despite their later political conflicts, Hitler, Strasser, and Goebbels shared some common economic worldviews in the early and later years. All three believed in subordinating the economy to the state, rejecting liberal capitalism, and mobilising workers through nationalist rather than Marxist appeals though functionally like Sorelian myth despite non of the members of Hitler’s inner circle being knowledgeable of Georges Sorel. Their differences were matters of degree rather than principle. Strasser favoured direct nationalisation, Goebbels embraced radical anti‑capitalist rhetoric, and Hitler preferred a more flexible system of state influence. Yet all three agreed that the economy existed to serve the nation, not private profit. Nothing outside the state shall harm the state nor shall nothing inside the state harm the state. The state should serve the nation and the nation the state with the state doing everything it politically can through economic intervention to bolster the people whether that be through less radical measures like welfare or highly radical ones like lebensraum as the Nazi high command believed it would benefit the Aryan race.

National Socialist Economic System

The Nazi economic system was a hybrid of state control, social corporatist organisation, and racial policy. While private ownership in theory remained, the state exercised extensive authority over production, labour, agriculture, and welfare so in practise it wasn’t truly speaking private or free.

An example would be Reichsnährstand. Agriculture became one of the most state‑directed sectors of the Nazi economy. The Reichsnährstand imposed strict price controls, production quotas, and hereditary land laws that prevented farms from being sold or divided. Markets were suppressed, and farmers were required to sell their produce at fixed prices. This system aimed to stabilise rural society, prevent urban migration, and ensure food security for a future war economy. Outside of Reichsnährstand itself the Nazis also maintained Soviet collective farms in Ukraine, however these policies would have likely been altered post war should they have won. Regardless this demonstrates an intense intervention in the agricultural sector in order to benefit national (collective across all of class and race) goals.

Another example would be the DAF, as it replaced all independent trade unions after their abolition in 1933. It controlled wages, workplace rules, and labour relations. Workers could no longer strike or bargain collectively. The DAF presented itself as a unifying institution that transcended class conflict, but in practice it functioned as a mechanism of state control over labour. Whilst Marxists try to frame this as employers ruling over the proletariat, it should be noted an identical structure to this system existed in almost every single historic communist or socialist state through the nationalisation of trade unions and the neutering of collective bargaining. Lenin did the same by banning strikes under the revolutionary vanguard party. Whilst Marxists frame this as exploitation it should be noted the state did everything in its power through welfare to compensate by creating the most effective and clean work environments for German workers which is something that will be elaborated on momentarily.

The National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) and the Winterhilfswerk absorbed private charities and created a vast welfare network. Assistance was distributed based on racial criteria, reinforcing the Volksgemeinschaft by rewarding those considered “racially valuable.” Welfare became a tool of social engineering, binding the population to the regime through material support and ideological messaging. It was used as a means of creating class and race harmony through eliminating class difference through welfare and helping boost productivity of the population by artificially increasing the incomes of lower class Germans particularly through the winter.

The Strength Through Joy program became the world’s largest tourism operator, organising holidays, cruises, and cultural events for millions of Germans. The Beauty of Labour campaign regulated workplace conditions and promoted “beautification” projects. These programs aimed to integrate workers into the national community and reduce class tensions by offering state‑managed leisure and workplace improvements. These also helped eliminate class difference more through improving work conditions and rewarding German workers to end conflict between superiors and subordinates. Ironically this can be seen as more rewarding than the Soviet trade union membership.

The National Socialist Factory Cell Organization initially promoted radical worker activism, including strikes and anti‑employer agitation. Its rhetoric overlapped with National Bolshevism and appealed to disillusioned workers. However, once the Nazis consolidated power, the NSBO was absorbed into the DAF and stripped of its radicalism. This shift reflected the regime’s broader pattern of co‑opting and neutralising internal factions.

Counter‑Arguments to the Historical Consensus

Several pieces of evidence challenge simplistic narratives about Hitler’s early ideology. Claims that he was always anti‑communist are contradicted by his behaviour in 1918 and 1919. His elected role under Kurt Eisner’s government shows that he was not politically neutral or instinctively anti‑left. His neutrality during the Bavarian Soviet Republic further undermines the idea that he was a committed counter‑revolutionary from the start.

Economically, Nazi policy was collectivist, not capitalist. Their economy resembled social corporatism rather than plain corporatism as seen in the feudal period or pure capitalism or socialism as those on the Marxist left and libertarian right argue. The regime subordinated private enterprise and the market to state goals, imposed extensive controls, and promoted a racial welfare state that aimed to eliminate class and create a culturally homogenous Germany for the benefit of the Aryan race. This contradicts interpretations that portray National Socialism as a form of right‑wing capitalism or bland reactionary movement that copied Italian Fascism. The ideological origins of National Socialism lie in German revolutionary collectivism, völkisch thought, and the political chaos of postwar Bavaria, not in Italian Fascism or traditional conservatism.

Whist National Socialism has a long and tumultuous history, I hope I have explained it well. Thank you and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

To get to the heart of society, you have to drop the ideological illusions and face the basic realities of human nature. For too long, pointless dissection of the natural order to push agendas has damaged the human spirit. Morality, religion, and what’s considered normal aren’t just abstract ideas or random cultural inventions. They come from our biology, our shared human instincts, and the traditions that unite people. They’re mostly based on fact, but not dictated by some divine power.

Morality is natural. It comes from our ability to feel for others, our natural dislike of cruelty, and our need to collectively reward or punish actions. Take theft, for example. Most societies, primitive or advanced, frown upon it because it harms both the individual and the group. If someone steals food from a mother, they hurt her and her family. The thief might feel guilty, and the family will feel angry and deprived. Every society has rules enforced through traditions and shared judgment. Right and wrong aren’t abstract ideas, but reflections of human nature made sense of through stories. Morality is spiritual because it’s ritualistic, shared, and binding. It’s something we find in human behavior, not something we create. Morality is also the default religion because it’s what most people are born into. Even when distorted by individuals or circumstances, these feelings are almost always natural. The seven deadly sins are generally condemned across societies, spirituality aside. Crimes like incest are shunned in almost every society, even those outside of Christian influence, because it’s seen as morally wrong. Even if elites commit such acts in secret, the collective almost always recognizes that they’re wrong, regardless of social conditioning, because different societies show how these actions are almost uniformly frowned upon.

Religion is how we make sense of morality, which I see as morality with extra spiritually derived morality. That is actions that are specifically shunned in the faith and mostly exclusive to the faith, like apostasy or blasphemy. Gods and doctrines are how societies explain, express, and enforce what already exists. Religion doesn’t invent morality; it organizes it, like laws in a constitution. The divine is a way of embedding natural morality into customs, laws, and myths. Christianity, Islam, and paganism try to turn our shared instincts of praise, shame, empathy, and dislike into a consistent way of seeing the world. Religion isn’t against human nature; it comes from it. Religion began because early societies saw the unnatural as divine. When explanations came for those things those who were rational accepted the truth whilst others refused to let go. A good example is why pork is forbidden in Judaism and Islam. Christians claim that Jesus fulfilled the old laws of the Old Testament and thus made all food clean in the Old Testament but the truth isn’t rooted in ideobabble. The answer is simpler. Anthropologists like Marvin Harris have talked about how these cultural differences came from practical concerns about the environment and economy in the ancient Near East. Pork was considered unsafe not based on any real basis other than the conditions of the Middle East made pork expire quicker and thus made pork generally unsafe to eat unless prepared properly. Despite Jesus’ change in doctrine, conditions like that of the Middle East make storing meats like pork nigh impossible and thus the socially constructed idea of it being cursed emerged with Judaism.

Even if the danger of pork is socially constructed, that doesn’t mean all religious doctrine is and most cases it is an attempt to rationalise what is there. For every verse about meats like pork or beef being sacred or cursed, there are commonalities between the faiths like a shunning of theft and violent crime because humans are naturally social beings and can problem solve and recognize effective and ineffective means of problem solving.

Normality has biological roots, such as gender. Masculinity and femininity aren’t just social constructs, but are tied to biology, showing up in our preferences, puberty, and who we’re attracted to. Beauty standards might differ, but the basic instincts are the same. Ten random people going through puberty will usually be attracted to the opposite sex because biology tells them so. Normality isn’t random; it’s the basic human state, explained through culture but based in biology. Gender theory as studied by people like John Money and sociologists like Judith Butler are bogus because of the fact it is an artificial separation of personality. Our biological makeup sets us up for different roles and experiences. What we experience is sex which is biological and personality is based on our biological makeup combined with our environment. Human differences aren’t just made up but are real, shaped by our biology, hormones, and cultural traditions.

Hormones start working before birth, with exposure to testosterone and oestrogen shaping the brain and influencing behaviour. For instance, girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia who were exposed to more androgens before birth tend to prefer toys and activities that are usually preferred by boys. One study of 43 girls and 38 boys aged 4–11, girls with CAH showed higher rates of male‑typical toy and playmate choices compared to controls (Spencer et al., Prenatal androgen exposure and children’s gender-typed behaviour and toy and playmate preferences, Hormones and Behaviour, 2021). A review of multiple studies confirmed this, concluding that prenatal androgen exposure “masculinizes and defeminizes play behaviour” (Kung et al., Prenatal androgen exposure and sex-typical play behaviour: a meta-analysis of classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia studies, Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology, 2024).

The brain itself shows differences between sexes, influenced by genetics and hormones. Men often do better at spatial reasoning and mental rotation, while women tend to be better at verbal skills and recognizing emotions. A study of 242 studies found that males scored higher in mental rotation abilities, while females scored higher in verbal-episodic memory (Hirnstein et al., Sex/Gender Differences in Verbal Fluency and Verbal-Episodic Memory: A Meta-Analysis, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2023). These aren’t just stereotypes but natural tendencies linked to how our brains are structured (Gurvich & Jamadar, Are There Sex Differences in Cognition and Does It Matter?, Psychiatric Times, 2025).

Genetics plays a role too, with twin and family studies showing that personality and some sex-based differences are inherited. However, personality is complex and influenced by various genes. A review of 17,804 traits from 14.5 million twin pairs found that heritability averaged 49%, with personality traits clustering strongly within functional domains (Polderman et al., Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies, Nature Genetics, 2015). This shows that our genes affect our personality, though our environment also has an impact.

Evolution also played a part, with males developing traits related to competition and risk-taking, and females developing traits related to care and social relationships. Research shows that sex roles in caregiving and competition have been consistent over time, with males focused on mating competition and females on nurturing (Henshaw et al., Sex roles and the evolution of parental care specialization, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2019). Another analysis found that paternal behavior is tied to risk-taking and competition, while maternal behavior is more tied to care and bonding (Möller et al., The Evolutionary Basis of Sex Differences in Parenting and Its Relationship with Child Anxiety in Western Societies, Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2013).

But biology isn’t the whole story. Our environment and how we’re raised also influence us, with cultural norms, parents, friends, and the media either amplifying or suppressing our natural tendencies. Studies show that personality differences between genders are bigger in societies that are more equal, challenging the idea that equality erases differences (Schmitt et al., Personality and gender differences in global perspective, International Journal of Psychology, 2017). This shows that culture can either exaggerate or minimize biological tendencies, depending on the situation.

Our brains also adapt throughout life, further complicating things. Practicing certain skills, like playing video games, can reduce the gender gap in spatial skills. One experiment found that women improved their spatial attention and mental rotation scores after playing action video games (Feng, Spence & Pratt, Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition, Psychological Science, 2007).

So, morality, normality, and religion aren’t just abstract ideas but are rooted in our biology and made sense of through our culture. Religion explains and organizes human nature, turning shared instincts into doctrines and customs. Normality is biological, evident in sex differences, attraction, and beauty standards. Morality is natural, coming from empathy and the shared enforcement of rules. Culture can shape these tendencies, but it can’t erase them. Despite some flaws, it proves there is a natural default as to what women and men can and will be if left unprompted, with certain physical, mental and genetic factors impacting their likes, dislikes and many more things in society which proves that there are real differences between us.

Religion, morality, and normality aren’t against reason. They’re the basic foundations of society, made sense of through stories and customs. To reject them is to cut ourselves off from our nature. To embrace them is to build a society that’s not abstract but real, not perfect but able to survive. The person who is against the status quo must do more than criticize; they must explain, make sense of, and influence others. They must create a story that unites, a morality that inspires, and a normality that restores. Only then can society last.

To simplify, religion, gender roles and more are how we naturalise organic morality and feelings and outliers don’t prove social construction of morality but rather there is a default in most people rather than us all being blank slates from birth

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