quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

The claim that ""the modern fascist movement emerged from left wing movements." is true only in Italy. However, from the very start, the split was marked by violence and antagonism on both sides and by 1919, 5 years after the initial split, Mussolini was proclaiming "war on socialism". At this time, Italian fascism was a tiny obscure regional movement. Fascism developed into a mass movement in Italy during the period after 1920 by allying itself with anti-worker/Socialist/Union forces.

German fascism – the Nazis – grew out of the German Worker’s Party, which was inspired by the ultra-nationalist Pan-Germanic League. Spanish fascism, the Falangist movement, was founded in 1933 by Primo de Riviera, the son of a former Prime Minister and owes its rise to Franco’s co-option of the movement. Both Nazis and Falangists were fiercely anti-Bolshevik (Communist) and anti-Socialist from their formations.

The fate of fascism is not tied to Hitler or even German fascism (Nazism). Hitler was the pre-eminent fascist, but his death in 1945 did not mark the end of fascist rule in Europe. Fascism, primarily an ultra-nationalist cause, took various forms in the different European countries where it attained power. Fascist Spain remained neutral during World War II, while clearly sympathising with the Axis Powers. Spanish fascism remained in power through Franco until 1975. A notable feature was the 1937 merger of the conservative Carlist party and the Falangists/fascists.

The fascist route to power in Spain Germany and Italy in the 20s and 30s was marked in each case by constant fierce violent struggles with the forces of the left - the unions, workers, socialist and communists. The most well-known of these is the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. Even in countries where fascism failed to attain power, such as the UK, there were violent confrontations. Moseley's Fascists fought running street battles with Leftist and anti-Fascist forces.

When Fascists succeeded in attaining power, the left was always among the very first targets. This is true even in Hitler's Germany, where the destruction of the left was completed long before the 'Final Solution', the systematic genocide of the Jews, was implemented. The Nazi’s Twenty Five points are populist rather than socialist – the Nazi’s had physically obliterated any socialist presence in German politics. Another feature of fascist rule was the alliance between economic elites and fascism. Whilst fascism was theoretically corporatist in nature, it managed to co-exist quite happily with the reigning capitalist regimes when it attained power. Krupps, Siemens anybody?

Fierce violent antagonism - often a fight to the death - between fascism and the Left has been has been a constant feature wherever fascism has reared its ugly head in the West. It is happening today in Western Europe where the recent revival of ultra-right and fascist groups is a source of constant friction.

This history of intense violence and uncompromising opposition between the Left and fascism is constant from within a year or two of fascism's emergence on the political landscape. This violent antagonism is such a constant that it is easily argued that it's an outstanding, defining feature of the relationship between fascism and the Left historically. Any imputed similarity between the two would be vehemently rejected by both.

Lenin died in 1924. 1925 signalled a shift from the immediate activity of world revolution towards a defence of the Soviet state. In that year, Joseph Stalin upheld the thesis of "socialism in one country", detailed by Nikolai Bukharin in his brochure Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat? (April 1925). The position was finalized as the state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article On the Issues of Leninism. The perspective of a world revolution was dismissed after the failures of the Spartacist uprising in Germany and of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the reflux of all revolutionary movements in Europe, such as in Italy, where the fascist squadristi broke the strikes and quickly assumed power ...
...

Geoff Eley summed up the change in attitude at this time as follows:

   By the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924... the collapse of Communist support in Europe tightened the pressure for conformity. A new policy of "Bolshevization" was adopted, which dragooned the CPs toward stricter bureaucratic centralism. This flattened out the earlier diversity of radicalisms, welding them into a single approved model of Communist organization. Only then did the new parties retreat from broader Left arenas into their own belligerent world, even if many local cultures of broader cooperation persisted. Respect for Bolshevik achievements and defense of the Russian Revolution now transmuted into dependency on Moscow and belief in Soviet infallibility. Depressing cycles of "internal rectification" began, disgracing and expelling successive leaderships, so that by the later 1920s many founding Communists had gone.

In 1928, the 9th Plenum of the Executive Committee began the so-called "Third Period", which was to last until 1935.[26] The Comintern proclaimed that the capitalist system was entering the period of final collapse, and that as such, the correct stance for all Communist parties was that of a highly aggressive, militant, ultra-left line. In particular, the Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "social fascists", and urged the Communists devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. With the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany after 1930, this stance became somewhat controversial with many such as the Polish Communist historian Isaac Deutscher criticizing the tactics of the Communist Party of Germany of treating the Social Democratic Party of Germany as the principal enemy.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Laymedown60

never mind

quote:

ORIGINAL: Owner59

I just thank the Brits for staying in the fight and saving the world really,from the nazis.....and from the Japanese.

quote:

Perhaps, the issue was that an "international" movement became too focused on a "national movement" (the USSR) and socialist movements which wished to maintain a more local (dare I say Nationalistic?) flavor were seen as heretics. From this developed an animosity that better explains the violence between Nazis and other "Socialists".

Less about ideology, really, and more about power politics and Nationalism.

Could be. A reasonable hypothesis, I believe.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Whilst fascism was theoretically corporatist in nature, it managed to co-exist quite happily with the reigning capitalist regimes when it attained power. Krupps, Siemens anybody?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aswad

Hitler did seem awfully upset that Stalin wasn't going to be his best buddy.

You may find interesting supplementary information by reading about the corresponding parties in Norway at that time, as the Communist Party (NKP) was allegiant to Moscow, while the National Convergence/Unity Party (NS) was taken with National Socialism. They played different roles after the occupation commenced, as secured by the Labor Party, with their supposed neutrality and very strong ties to the UK. Through these, it is possible to gain an indirect view into the state and status of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and how those states evolved in their interactions by way of what they instructed their allies and subordinates (the occupation was more akin to a union, politically, than anything else).

I have sometimes wondered if it was the nuclear bomb that prevented an alliance.

Essentially, without the east front resource drain, Germany would get our deuterated water supplies and likely succeed in making the nuclear bomb. With W. von Braun on the rocketry side, there is a plausible delivery system, and they had one pilot who had already successfully flown rocket airplanes, so deliveries could be made to France and the UK prior to completing a rocket vessel for delivery. Norway gives an entrypoint into Sweden, Finland and the northern USSR, and has locations with the ability to launch a delivery system. The east front obviously also had some capacities, but was more closely monitored.

The move by Stalin to throw a million men at Finland to secure a buffer zone might be taken as evidence of such thoughts having crossed his mind.

With a nuclear bomb in hand, no west front, and a successful demonstration against the UK and France, it is quite plausible that Germany would leave Stalin in a position where Germany was the effective power in the region. And while the USSR might not have been subjugated (it would likely seem a too costly affair), it would certainly lay the groundwork for the negotiation of a union in which the USSR would be at a severe disadvantage. Stalin and Mussolini might find themselves playing second fiddle in the subsequent bid to assemble a West European and East European state that would have little political and financial choice but to merge eventually into one European union. Then, augmenting Japan with support from German nuclear weapons would eventually leave the whole Eurasian continent with a union containing West Europe, East Europe, Arabia and Greater Japan.

The USA would have developed nuclear weapons as well, of course, as would the USSR, but both parties would be sufficiently delayed that the political gains to be had from power parity would be gone, and both sides would be unable to use the weapons to reverse the status quo on the basis of mutually assured destruction. The USA might be left alone, but the enhanced productivity and resource availability of the Eurasian union would eventually make it a plausible scenario for a world government to appear, no later than the onset of colonization of the solar system (which one might assume would have started by now if history played out that way). Africa, as usual, would be largely irrelevant as anything but a food source, and essentially up for grabs, except the Islamic territories that would likely become a part of Arabia in the process of forming the four constituents of Eurasia.

Of course, this is just a sketchy idle speculation and should not be seen as a serious analysis.

quote:

The point you seem to be attempting to make is that "Fascism" and "Communism" must be different things, because they fought each other.

I'd suggest that it is easier to hate that which we feel has betrayed us, rather than that which is the anti-thesis of us.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Great plot outline, Aswad!

quote:

Although I think that the US would have used their nukes in the Orion program, and expanded quickly into space, colonizing first the Moon, and then moved on to colonizing the other planets, rather than suffer becoming a second-class country in comparison to the newly merged Socialist/Fascist world government.

quote:

We need to get South America into the mix, too.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marc2b
I think something that people are forgetting is that the whole reason behind being a splinter group is that you are dissatisfied (at the least) with the parent group's goals and/or methods.