Two Peas In A Pod

Too many people subscribe to the erroneous idea that fascism and socialism exist at opposite ends of a long political spectrum.  How this false idea gained widespread currency is a question explored by Stéphane Courtois in his essay introducing "The Black Book of Communism," a must read (book and essay), if you want to understand anything about the 20th century.

In short, the idea that fascism and socialism are far apart ideologically, therefore politically inimical, was a central element of a decades long and highly vigorous propaganda campaign waged by Cold War era Moscow.

As a matter of fact, the founders of fascism, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, were dyed-in-the-wool communists who broke with the communist movements in their respective countries over one narrow element of ideology (nationalism vs internationalism), and over tactics.  They remained faithful socialists to their dying days.

Are you surprised?  You should not be.  As with people so with ideologies, blood feuds are the bitterest the closer they are and the better they know each other.

Consider the blood feud between Sunni and Shia Islam.  The ideological differences between them are so trivial as to be essentially imperceptible to an outsider.  And yet, exactly this meaningless difference between them is a central element in the horror we are now watching (in this year of the Common Era, 2016) in the internecine and genocidal war in Syria, Iraq, and The Yemen.

Not to let Christianity off the hook, as a Jewish man I see the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648) in exactly the same way.  Until WW I, the Thirty Years War was the single greatest Man-made catastrophe on the European continent.  While it may have evolved somewhat over its three decades, that terrible war began as a religious war between Protestants and Catholics.  There is no explanation you can give me, about the doctrinal differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, that would make me conclude, "Oh, now I understand why they were butchering each other's children."

Therefore, you should not conclude, from the insensate violence perpetrated by fascism and communism on each other, that they are very different ideologies.  Quite to the contrary.

Stéphane Courtois explains this from a socialist point of view.  From a fascist point of view, now let Adolph Hitler tell you, himself.  I have started reading "Hitler's Second Book," edited by Gerhard L. Weinberg, the same German-Jewish historian who wrote the masterful, "A World At Arms."

In the opening paragraph ("Hitler's Second Book") of Chapter V, page 46, Hitler writes,

"I am a German nationalist.  That means I am openly committed to my Volkstum [ethnic community].  All of my thoughts and actions belong to it.  I am a socialist.  I see before me no class or rank, but rather a community of people who are connected by blood, united by language, and subject to the same collective fate.  I love the people and hate the current majorities only because I do not see them representing either the greatness or the happiness of my people."

If Hitler had stopped with, "I see before me no class or rank, but rather a community of people," he would have been indistinguishable from garden variety marxists.  Only the nationalist element of "National Socialism" (aka, Nazism) sets him apart.  Other than that,

Socialism is Fascism and Fascism is Socialism.