Inside the Mind of a Fascist
Fascists seek to live in a country that offers them a purpose, which they claim would allow them be a part of something greater than themselves.
The vast majority of them are attracted to the modernist-Monarchist appearance and theatrics of the Fascist rally. This is visualised and romanticised as not only a display of brute collectivist force, but also the discipline, unity, and organisation of powerful individuals.
In many ways, the Fascist is unaware what drives his or her appreciation for the movement. Many of the social tenets upheld by Fascist are caused by being misinformed about the extent to which biology and environment influences human behavior, while some of their economic tenets come from a trust in the goodness of a noble leader, almost always ignorant to the role played by scarce resources, and the violence and class antagonisms that come from it.
After the Romantic euphoria of the Fascist rally is no longer a source of awe, those interested continue their journey into the actual theory of the ideologies united under the Fascist banner, and, like most people looking into ideologies, they call themselves by the ideology’s name first, and afterward research the tenets — a staple of how confirmation bias functions.
Those who don’t favor Racialist ideas will openly declare their distance from Fascism’s mutation National Socialism; many of those who do, not only declare themselves “NatSoc”, but also suggest that Fascists can only be Fascists if they are Racialists.
Most Fascists take a reactionary stance, but a significant minority holds progressive values and may simply be Social Democrats with a disdain for the identity politics that dominate the many factions of the Left.
Like those on the Left who believe that identity politics will transform society, and not courtesy of economic and material restructuring (either through aggressive reforms or revolution), Fascists believe it is Social Policy that fronts change, including Direct Action, driven by whatever is the National Myth — the idea is to unify the nation under romantic narratives that tie together a common reason for unity.
Often, you’ll find Fascists with no concern for economics, so long as the Social Policy is in favor of Palingenetic Ultranationalism, a term coined by British political theorist Roger Griffin, which means the drive to “return to a more prosperous era”, and when you do find economically literate Fascists, some of them will advocate a style of Corporatism that isn’t exactly the prosperity-inducing shock treatment that made Scandinavia, South Korea, and post-war Germany the kind of economies they are today. The Corporatism of Fascism is the same advocated by Confucius, which on paper meant that Class Collaboration would pacify Class War and sustain a meritocratic system of governance and representation of the citizen — others will instead advocate the Corporatism found in Social Democracy, as it is objectively the more feasible model.
In Fascist Corporatism, everyone is to be honest about his or her abilities and operate as a part of an organic body. What organic body means is, according to them, the application of a person’s ability to positions vacant for operations. For example, if a person is exceptional in their skills, they are to be promoted to where they “fit”: fast-thought processing speed is to be rewarded with jobs where that skill is necessary, and so on, and so-forth. The process there is apparently faster and more efficient than what is offered by other systems, notably because Fascism contains in “cults of efficiency and speed”, as well as cults of beauty (sexual attractiveness) and strength (an individual’s access to violence). It isn’t Corporatocracy, where external corporations command a weak government enterprise.
One of the biggest flaws of orthodox Fascist theory is the idea of Autarky. If you want to see it in action, look no further than North Korea. It is the tenet that claims a country is to be self-sufficient, in order to avoid participation in internationalist capitalism. To criticize it is to suggest that the reader is unaware of the benefits of international trade, the scarcity and/or abundance of the resources available within state borders, and the law of supply and demand that exists as long as we have an imagination (denying demand builds black markets — human wants are not limited like human needs).
Romanticism, the act of looking at something in rose-tinted glasses, is another one of Fascism’s biggest flaws, since it is the practice of politics based on a false narrative, a lie, and many of Fascism’s tenets are influenced by it, making it a leading nuance that separates it from Social Democracy.
This is where ideas such as Russia’s “Third Rome” come from. The American reader will especially be familiar with the nostalgia of the “prosperity during the 1950’s”. Of course, Fascist Italy played on this concept successfully by tugging on the emotions of an economically depressed population, claiming to rebuild Rome itself.
The origin of Romanticism itself was the Monarchist upper echelons trying to sustain the allure and mystery of their gilded oligarchies by looking for ways to reject science and the values of the European Enlightenment, which includes Egalitarianism, and is something many Romantics reject today. To demonstrate examples of this narrative creation to awe stupefied peasants and dazed descendants of old money, compare the Romantic painting “Napoleon Crossing The Alps” by Jacques-Louis David with that of the Realist “Bonaparte Crossing the Alps” by Paul Delaroche. The Realist painting demystifies and dethrones the conqueror primate on his horse, highlighting his fallibility.
Despite this, and its scattered Monarchist origins, Fascism is not Monarchism. It contains in it strong elements of democracy in the form of worker interests being represented in nationalized guilds and collective wage bargaining, and it does not believe in hereditary power, but instead prides itself in the idealistic vision of a “Philosopher King” elected on merit, a concept proposed in Plato’s The Republic.
The orthodox Fascist doctrine does, however, stay firmly behind Totalitarianism, calling it a positive instrument that unifies the mind of the citizenry for uniform goals, eliminating what it assumes are elements that impede and hinder its path to “glory”, the definition of which isn’t always clear.
The borders of the state are held in high reverence, with the state itself replacing all religions — this core idea is what contradicts and discredits the branch Clerical Fascism as “true to the original”. In this State Religion concept one will find rituals and traditions that are used to make the culture strong and sustainable. In practice, this would imply economic nationalism, which is a type of nationalism that celebrates local production and manufacturing, but in practice would objectively often be a disaster, full of unnecessary protectionism in trade.
These last two core factors can be mutated and adopted for Left ideas, however, as a testament to their undesired socioeconomic side effects in their original forms, people identifying as modern Fascists reject them, suggesting a more moderate approach.
The Racialist Fascist, the National Socialist, however, is a nastier creature.
Blaming the Jews, or whoever’s convenient or different, on ills found within international capitalism and resource scarcity, the Nazi ideology functions on uneducated irrationalism, adopting the already misguided ideas found in non-Racialist Fascism and furthering them to achieve a paradoxically nihilistic goal of sacrificing the scapegoat to appease the god of who knows what.
The Nazi, or NatSoc as the modern Nazi prefers to be called, believes in hygiene on a scale that involves ethnic cleansing and maximum physical health. It takes what is naturally desired by human beings, the desires to be absolutely healthy and reproduce with healthy partners of desirable traits, and striving to achieve them through barbaric, anti-scientific, irrational means. The Nazi doesn’t understand that despite ethnic mixing, the so-called recessive genes aren’t erased and don’t disappear forever. If the world does mix itself, Aryan features will always show up, and if evolutionarily desired, they will never go away. Note that Nazis exist in every ethnicity, as Racialism is ethnic supremacy, and no ethnicity is exempt from producing uneducated conclusions.
Simply put, a Fascist is a poorly educated Social Democrat with a penchant for Rammstein theatrics and an idealised view of glory and valour, and a Nazi is a Fascist who doesn’t understand genetics and sociology on an even grander scale. Address and disprove the flaws in the logical chain of a Fascist or a Nazi, and you may eventually find yourself in the company of a newly converted Social Democrat, after which further evidence can be provided to persuade a transition into becoming a full Communist — results not guaranteed.
