# Differences between fascism and socialism/communism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 6, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457 "2013-08-06T00:55:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/21 "2013-08-09T16:32:42Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > [Ludwig von Mises’](http://mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap3b.asp), comparing Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union: I would not give much support to Von Mises. > **[Ludwig von Mises](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises)** > > Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) is the patron saint of the Austrian school of economics, although not the actual founder of the school (that would be Carl Menger). He is revered as one of the chief gods of libertarianism for developing the Austrian... > **[Ludwig von Mises Institute](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute)** > > The Ludwig von Mises Institute is an American think tank (tax-exempt!) specializing in Austrian school economics and political philosophy. It was established in 1982 with the approval of Margit von Mises, the widow of the Austrian school economist... One basic problem I see is that his “analysis” forgets that the business powers in Germany helped prop up Hitler. The “rotten” deal in opposition to the “New deal” in the USA was in practice the removal of any union power and protection of the corporations at any cost. The most depressing point IMHO is that many of those German corporations were correct, they maintained possession of their businesses in the end. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/22 "2013-08-09T16:45:05Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > However, I do know that many Catholics and even priests and nuns did attend nazi rallies and used the nazi salute. > > [Nazi photos showing Christian influence](http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm) Well sure, we’re talking about millions of individual people, after all. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > The examples I have seen pushed around as examples of defiance were not the majority but they do deserve praise, unfortunately like in places like in El Salvador the bad elements were numerous enough for the evil powers to claim that they had their support. If all the Catholics had been like the Jesuits in Germany I would agree with what you are saying here. > > [http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/10/002-catholics-against-hitler-24](http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/10/002-catholics-against-hitler-24) To be clear about what I am saying: the German right-wing did not uniformly embrace Hitler or National Socialism. The answer to “what happened to all the far right people during the rise of fascism” is, in Germany, “Some of them supported the Nazis and some of them (Catholics, junkers, the officer class) did not.” More on the Catholics: [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206) > [@](#): > > Catholic leaders were initially more suspicious of National Socialism than their Protestant counterparts. Nationalism was not as deeply embedded in the German Catholic Church, and the rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in Germany and at the Vatican. In addition, the Catholic Centre Party had been a key coalition governmental partner in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and was aligned with both the Social Democrats and leftist German Democratic Party, pitting it politically against right-wing parties like the Nazis. > > Before 1933, in fact, some bishops prohibited Catholics in their dioceses from joining the Nazi Party. This ban was dropped after Hitler’s March 23, 1933, speech to the Reichstag in which he described Christianity as the “foundation” for German values. The Centre Party was dissolved as part of the signing of a 1933 Concordat between the Vatican and Nazi governmental representatives, and several of its leaders were murdered in the Röhm Purge in July 1934. > [@](#): > > In both German churches there were members, including clergy and leading theologians, who openly supported the Nazi regime. With time, anti-Nazi sentiment grew in both Protestant and Catholic church circles, as the Nazi regime exerted greater pressure on them. In turn, the Nazi regime saw a potential for dissent in church criticism of state measures. When a protest statement was read from the pulpits of Confessing churches in March 1935, for example, Nazi authorities reacted forcefully by briefly arresting over 700 pastors. After the 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“With burning concern”) was read from Catholic pulpits, the Gestapo confiscated copies from diocesan offices throughout the country. > > The general tactic by the leadership of both Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany was caution with respect to protest and compromise with the Nazi state leadership where possible. There was criticism within both churches of Nazi racialized ideology and notions of “Aryanism,” and movements emerged in both churches to defend church members who were considered “non-Aryan” under Nazi racial laws (e.g., Jews who had converted). Yet throughout this period there was virtually no public opposition to antisemitism or any readiness by church leaders to publicly oppose the regime on the issues of antisemitism and state-sanctioned violence against the Jews. There were individual Catholics and Protestants who spoke out on behalf of Jews, and small groups within both churches that became involved in rescue and resistance activities (for example, the White Rose and Herman Maas). See also: [Mit brennender Sorge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/23 "2013-08-09T16:56:43Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > To be clear about what I am saying: the German right-wing did not uniformly embrace Hitler or National Socialism. The answer to “what happened to all the far right people during the rise of fascism” is, in Germany, “Some of them supported the Nazis and some of them (Catholics, junkers, the officer class) did not.” As your quote shows, there were **a few** bishops that opposed evil, the point stands, if it had been the majority it would had been evident, as it was, there were a good number (not the majority in any case) that deserve eternal praise for opposing evil, but as I point out, some lessons are never learned and after seeing a semi biographical movie from Germany called “The Nasty Girl” it is uncanny how the attempts at white washing the real levels of support that the Catholics gave to evil in Europe are made also nowadays by the extreme right wingers in El Salvador that committed many atrocities (They were catholic also BTW). ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/24 "2013-08-09T16:57:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I would not give much support to Von Mises. > > [Ludwig von Mises - RationalWiki](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises) > > [Ludwig von Mises Institute - RationalWiki](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute) That’s your decision, but note that RationalWiki only addresses two of his works, and the thing they criticize him for (praxeology) is unrelated to the work I quote, _Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War_, which is a straightforward historical analysis of the rise of Nazism and the total state. It isn’t a work of economics or praxeology. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > One basic problem I see is that his “analysis” forgets that the business powers in Germany helped prop up Hitler. The “rotten” deal in opposition to the “New deal” in the USA was in practice the removal of any union power and protection of the corporations at any cost. The most depressing point IMHO is that many of those German corporations were correct, they maintained possession of their businesses in the end. That section isn’t the sum of his analysis, just a handy passage. He didn’t forget the role business played. Elsewhere in the book, you’ll find: > [@](#): > > Hitler got subsidies from big business in the first period of his career. He extorted much greater sums from it in the second period of his struggle for supremacy. Thyssen and the rest paid him but they did not bribe him. Hitler took their money as a king takes the tribute of his subjects. If they had refused to give him what he asked, he would have sabotaged their plants or even murdered them. Such drastic measures were needless. The entrepreneurs preferred to be reduced by Nazism to the status of shop managers than to be liquidated by communism in the Russian way. As conditions were in Germany, there was no third course open to them. > > Both force and money are impotent against ideas. The Nazis did not owe their conquest of Germany either to their getting a few million Reichsmarks from big business or to their being ruthless fighters. The great majority of the German nation had been both socialist and nationalist for many years. The Social Democratic trade‑union members sympathized as much with nationalist radicalism as did the peasants, the Catholics, and the shopkeepers. The communists owed their votes in great part to the idea that communism was the best means to establish German hegemony in Europe and defeat Western capitalism. The German entrepreneurs and businessmen contributed their share to the triumph of Nazism, but so did all other strata of the nation. Even the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were no exception. > > Great ideological changes are scarcely explained by saying that somebody’s money was spent in their behalf. The popularity of communism in present‑day America, whatever else it may be, is not the result either of the lavish subventions of the Russian Government or of the fact that some millionaires subsidize the newspapers and periodicals of the Left. And though it is true that some Jewish bankers, frightened by Nazi anti‑Semitism, contributed to socialist party funds, and that far the richest endowment ever made for the study of the social sciences in Germany was that of a Jewish grain dealer for the foundation of a Marxian institute at the University of Frankfort, German Marxism nevertheless was not, as the Nazis contend, the product of Jewish jobbers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/25 "2013-08-09T17:00:19Z")
> [@For You](#): > > Lenin used that term, but it seems kind of paradoxical, at least in the English language. We equate “dictatorship” with despotism, but “dictatorship of the working class” sounds a lot like a sort of preferential democracy, where the workers’ franchise would be weighted, by numbers, over the managerial/bourgeois class. Why would their votes need to be weighted? Proletarians always **outnumber** the bourgeoisie. > [@For You](#): > > In the end, “democracy” always fails, because some form of hierarchical structure develops that ends up subverting it (e.g., Athens, Rome, USA, France, etc, etc). What structure would that be in the U.S.’ case, and why does that mean our democracy has “failed”? The Athenian democracy never “failed,” BTW. It was supplanted temporarily by a Sparta-friendly collegial tyranny of aristocrats (the Thirty) as a result of losing the Peloponnesian War, but was soon restored, and survived for centuries more even under Roman rule. Just because a state gets defeated/conquered does not mean its system of government has “failed.” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/26 "2013-08-09T17:02:16Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > That’s your decision, but note that RationalWiki only addresses two of his works, and the thing they criticize him for (praxeology) is unrelated to the work I quote, _Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War_, which is a straightforward historical analysis of the rise of Nazism and the total state. It isn’t a work of economics or praxeology. > > That section isn’t the sum of his analysis, just a handy passage. He didn’t forget the role business played. Elsewhere in the book, you’ll find: But that still ignores the point, German capitalists benefited in the end with the unholy deal with Hitler. The recognition of that injustice is the reason why those corporations pay reparations and support to the survivors of the Holocaust and the war. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/27 "2013-08-09T17:11:40Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > As your quote shows, there were **a few** bishops that opposed evil, the point stands, if it had been the majority it would had been evident, as it was, there were a good number (not the majority in any case) that deserve eternal praise for opposing evil, but as I point out, some lessons are never learned and after seeing a semi biographical movie from Germany called “The Nasty Girl” it is uncanny how the attempts at white washing the real levels of support that the Catholics gave to evil in Europe are made also nowadays by the extreme right wingers in El Salvador that committed many atrocities (They were catholic also BTW). Hitler was concerned enough about them to murder some of their leaders, close Catholic schools, eradicate Catholic influence on politics, and prosecute priests and nuns in show trials. **Relative to other German groups** , the Catholics were assuredly not solid allies of Hitler. Nor were other right-wing groups. Others were. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/28 "2013-08-09T17:14:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > But that still ignores the point, German capitalists benefited in the end with the unholy deal with Hitler. The recognition of that injustice is the reason why those corporations pay reparations and support to the survivors of the Holocaust and the war. Ignores…? > [@](#): > > The entrepreneurs preferred to be reduced by Nazism to the status of shop managers than to be liquidated by communism in the Russian way. As conditions were in Germany, there was no third course open to them. Yes, they took the best deal they had available to them. Ones that toed the Nazi line and produced what they were told to produce came out alright. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/29 "2013-08-09T17:15:47Z")
I recall seeing a documentary on the SS saying that Himmler planned eventually to destroy the Catholic Church utterly, substituting Nordic neopaganism. Don’t know if Hitler would have been on board with that. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/30 "2013-08-09T18:03:35Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I recall seeing a documentary on the SS saying that Himmler planned eventually to destroy the Catholic Church utterly, substituting Nordic neopaganism. Don’t know if Hitler would have been on board with that. According to [Britannica](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202210/fascism/219389/Identification-with-Christianity), he’d have been fully on board: > [@](#): > > Although fascists in Germany and Italy also posed as protectors of the church, their ideologies contained many elements that conflicted with traditional Christian beliefs, and their policies were sometimes opposed by church leaders. The Nazis criticized the Christian ideals of meekness and guilt on the grounds that they repressed the violent instincts necessary to prevent inferior races from dominating Aryans. Martin Bormann, the second most powerful official in the Nazi Party after 1941, argued that Nazi and Christian beliefs were “incompatible,” primarily because the essential elements of Christianity were “taken over from Judaism.” **Bormann’s views were shared by Hitler, who ultimately wished to replace Christianity with a racist form of warrior paganism.** Although Hitler was cautious about dangerously alienating Christians during World War II, he sometimes permitted Nazi officials to put pressure on Protestant and Catholic parents to remove their children from religious classes and to register them for ideological instruction instead. In the Nazi schools charged with training Germany’s future elite, Christian prayers were replaced with Teutonic rituals and sun-worship ceremonies. Bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![AdamF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/adamf/32/6246_2.png) [@AdamF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AdamF)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/31 "2013-08-09T18:23:29Z")
Does fascism even have an ideology? It always seemed to me as an opportunistic dictator gaining power for the sake of power and by any means that work. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/32 "2013-08-09T18:38:50Z")
> [@AdamF](#): > > Does fascism even have an ideology? It always seemed to me as an opportunistic dictator gaining power for the sake of power and by any means that work. It does; see post #10. What you’re describing could apply to any dictatorship or authoritarian regime. All fascists are authoritarians, but not all authoritarians are fascists. Franco was not really a fascist, though he had fascist (falangist) supporters, he was simply a reactionary with his mind stuck in the 18th Century and trying to drag Spain there; I’ve heard him described as “a cop, not an artist.” Fascists, for all their atavisms, are more modern-minded and forward-looking. From George Orwell’s [“Wells, Hitler, and the World State”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part15) (1941): > [@](#): > > Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class. The thunder of guns, the jingle of spurs, the catch in the throat when the old flag goes by, leave him manifestly cold. He has an invincible hatred of the fighting, hunting, swashbuckling side of life, symbolised in all his early books by a violent propaganda against horses. The principal villain of his OUTLINE OF HISTORY is the military adventurer, Napoleon. If one looks through nearly any book that he has written in the last forty years one finds the same idea constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past. In novels, Utopias, essays, films, pamphlets, the antithesis crops up, always more or less the same. On the one side science, order, progress, internationalism, aeroplanes, steel, concrete, hygiene: on the other side war, nationalism, religion, monarchy, peasants, Greek professors, poets, horses. History as he sees it is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man. Now, he is probably right in assuming that a “reasonable”, planned form of society, with scientists rather than witch-doctors in control, will prevail sooner or later, but that is a different matter from assuming that it is just round the corner. There survives somewhere or other an interesting controversy which took place between Wells and Churchill at the time of the Russian Revolution. Wells accuses Churchill of not really believing his own propaganda about the Bolsheviks being monsters dripping with blood etc, but of merely fearing that they were going to introduce an era of common sense and scientific control, in which flag-wavers like Churchill himself would have no place. Churchill’s estimate of the Bolsheviks, however, was nearer the mark than Wells’s. The early Bolsheviks may have been angels or demons, according as one chooses to regard them, but at any rate they were not sensible men. They were not introducing a Wellsian Utopia but a Rule of the Saints, which, like the English Rule of the Saints, was a military despotism enlivened by witchcraft trials. The same misconception reappears in an inverted form in Wells’s attitude to the Nazis. Hitler is all the war-lords and witch doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age. Science is fighting on the side of superstition. But obviously it is impossible for Wells to accept this. It would contradict the world-view on which his own works are based. The war-lords and the witch-doctors MUST fail, the common-sense World State, as seen by a nineteenth-century liberal whose heart does not leap at the sound of bugles, MUST triumph. Treachery and defeatism apart, Hitler CANNOT be a danger. That he should finally win would be an impossible reversal of history, like a Jacobite restoration. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/33 "2013-08-09T19:48:52Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Ignores…? > > Yes, they took the best deal they had available to them. Ones that toed the Nazi line and produced what they were told to produce came out alright. And that was the point I was making, the issue I have is that just mentioning it in passing is done to ignore it in the overall view. Many industrialists were Nazis too. And regarding the Catholics, again, no all suffered under Hitler, many were willful collaborators, and again, a few dissenting leaders being murdered does not demonstrate the levels of support to the Nazis the affected group had, I do recognize the few that did oppose Hitler, the point remains that it was not the majority of Catholics. > **[Anna Rosmus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Rosmus)** > > Anna Rosmus, also known as Anja Rosmus-Wenninger, is a German author and researcher born in 1960 in Passau, Bavaria. > As a 16-year-old, Rosmus started developing an interest in contemporary history, especially that of the Third Reich, a subject that was barely mentioned at school. Encouraged by her father, a principal, she participated in a national essay contest that addressed the history of her city during the pre-war years. Some prominent residents claimed that the community remained untouched... > [@](#): > > As a 16-year old she started developing an interest in contemporary history, especially that of the Third Reich. The subject was barely mentioned at school. Challenged by her father, a principal, she participated in a nation-wide essay contest that addressed the history of her city during the prewar years. Whereas some prominent residents claimed that the community remained untouched by the war, and others were praising themselves for their alleged political resistance against the dictatorship, Rosmus’ efforts were not welcomed by many inhabitants. Nevertheless, at age 20, she started digging into the past. Upon further questioning of some of Passau’s elders, Rosmus came across a widespread silence and refusal to provide specific information. > > After three years of perseverance and litigation, she was finally granted access to the city administration’s archives. What she found was baffling. Fabled local leaders had not only been compliant, but were active members of the Nazi Party long before the war. Several concentration -, forced labor- and prisoner-of-war concentration camps had been built in and around the city. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/34 "2013-08-09T20:05:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And that was the point I was making, the issue I have is that just mentioning it in passing is done to ignore it in the overall view. Many industrialists were Nazis too. Mises ignores it by specifically addressing it? That’s an odd definition of “ignore”. And he’s right, the alternative for the industrialists was a Communist government. What should they have done? > [@GIGObuster](#): > > And regarding the Catholics, again, no all suffered under Hitler, many were willful collaborators, and again, a few dissenting leaders being murdered does not demonstrate the levels of support to the Nazis the affected group had, I do recognize the few that did oppose Hitler, the point remains that it was not the majority of Catholics. > > [Anna Rosmus - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Rosmus) If I may revisit your first post on this matter: > [@GIGObuster](#): > > One big flaw in the assumption a few make that fascism was not “far to the right” is that those few never explain properly what happened to all the far right people during the rise of fascism, IMO only by magical thinking is that one could find good explanations on how the far right knew nothing or avoided being part of the Reich in Germany or Italy. I’ve pointed out what several groups of far-right people were doing: opposing Hitler, but not directly enough to get themselves killed (though some did). Neither the Catholics, nor the junkers, nor the officer class _as groups_ were part of Hitler’s political base. That doesn’t mean they were fighting the SA in the streets, but they were assuredly not “part of the Reich”. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/35 "2013-08-09T20:20:32Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Mises ignores it by specifically addressing it? That’s an odd definition of “ignore”. And he’s right, the alternative for the industrialists was a Communist government. What should they have done? Again, the only thing I say is that we should not ignore that many were also supporters of the Nazis. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > I’ve pointed out what several groups of far-right people were doing: opposing Hitler, but not directly enough to get themselves killed (though some did). Neither the Catholics, nor the junkers, nor the officer class _as groups_ were part of Hitler’s political base. That doesn’t mean they were fighting the SA in the streets, but they were assuredly not “part of the Reich”. That is nice, it does not remove what historians in Germany also found. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/36 "2013-08-09T20:26:17Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Again, the only thing I say is that we should not ignore that many were also supporters of the Nazis. I don’t think we should ignore any aspect of the Third Reich either. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > That is nice, it does not remove what historians in Germany also found. I’ve lost track of your point, then. Is it that the entire far-right in Germany did, indeed, support the Nazis, or…what? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/37 "2013-08-09T20:34:54Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I don’t think we should ignore any aspect of the Third Reich either. > > I’ve lost track of your point, then. Is it that the entire far-right in Germany did, indeed, support the Nazis, or…what? Once again, it is not accurate to claim that only a few supported the Nazis, the majority did. It is good for the hope of humanity that several did oppose evil, but let us not whitewash the past, because when that is done we can see a repeat of it, like in Latin America and the many priests and bishops that aided and supported dictators. Regarding modern history, I do have to report that people that did oppose evil like Monsignor Romero are put now as examples to follow, but we should not forget that people like him were accused of being communist. The extreme right still has to learn a lesson, and no, not even being Catholic is a warranty that they will do the right thing in the future when the past is whitewashed. Also: Being Catholic does not prevent one from being an extreme right winger, and that takes us once again to the original point, it is really silly to make the right wing as \*\*not \*\*being a huge part of the Fascist movements in Germany and other places. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/38 "2013-08-12T11:53:52Z")
> [@Melab](#): > > I’ve read that fascism is right-wing. I’ve read that fascism is left-wing. … > > Fascism seems to me like an ideology that transcends the left-right spectrum. I might even be inclined to call it state capitalism. One of my favorite ever authors is Lincoln Steffens. His autobiography [http://www.unz.org/Pub/SteffensLincoln-1931](http://www.unz.org/Pub/SteffensLincoln-1931) includes a beautiful account of his boyhood, which was included in my fathers college reader. Lincoln made a career investigating and reporting on political corruption and explotation. He became an American communist: he accepted the label, even though I don’t think he was ever a member of any particular organisation. At the end of his life, as recorded in his biography, he became reconciled to big business, because he recognised that communism was trying to achieve the same thing. George Orwell recognised the same thing later, but with much less tolerance: > [@](#): > > “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” [http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79a/](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79a/) I always think of the “left-right” spectrum as whatever is left after you take out things like conservatism vs radicalism, and wet vs dry, which are evident in all parties. In AUS, the main unlabled divergence between the left and the right wing of politics is that the left, because of their trade-union roots, holds to the view that you can make the world better for every individual by making it better for every group, and the right, in opposition to the left, holds the view that you can make the world better for every group by making it better for every individual. Given this definition of ‘right’ and ‘left’, the left is both more fascist and more communist than the right. Other definitions give other results. ---
**Author:** ![ruben4ruben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@ruben4ruben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruben4ruben)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/39 "2013-08-13T03:32:46Z")
Fascism = Communism = Fascism = Communism… Stop tripping over the words and their manifestos. Every tree has fruits, **judge the tree by it’s fruits**. They bore the same fruits. The state became god, the state became mother and father, the state replaced the family. ( **literally** in Nazi and Soviet regime) Check Youtube for documentaries on how Fascism and Socialism sprang from the same roots. These people copied each others text books! The state took everything, controlled everything, decided everything and oppressed everything. How happy the people were!! _Meet the new boss, same as the old boss_. - The Who - ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457/40 "2013-08-13T14:50:59Z")
> [@ruben4ruben](#): > > Fascism = Communism = Fascism = Communism… > > Stop tripping over the words and their manifestos. Every tree has fruits, **judge the tree by it’s fruits**. I draw a distinction between defining and judging. I can agree with you that we can judge them similarly, in terms of their effects. That doesn’t make them identical, unless the past is irrelevant for all purposes. The government in Orwell’s 1984 would agree with you, though: to them, the past is irrelevant: it doesn’t exist, and we can say anything we want about it without being counterfactual. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/differences-between-fascism-and-socialism-communism/665457.md?page=3)