# Explain fascism please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 17, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065 "2010-07-17T22:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**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:** [July 20, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/101 "2010-07-20T22:18:33Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck, even Ayn Rand thought fascism and communism were functionally identical. I don’t think that Krupp, Volkswagenwerk, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Röchling, Büssing and other companies that continued to thrive after giving all that material and support to the fascists in Germany during the war would agree with that. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/102 "2010-07-20T23:55:42Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I don’t think that Krupp, Volkswagenwerk, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Röchling, Büssing and other companies that continued to thrive after giving all that material and support to the fascists in Germany during the war would agree with that. Sure, but someone who died in a gulag and someone who died in a concentration camp would probably find some common experiences to talk about. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2010, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/103 "2010-07-21T00:24:57Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Sure, but someone who died in a gulag and someone who died in a concentration camp would probably find some common experiences to talk about. And if you had paid attention you would had seen that I already granted that. Once again, my main point is that what the American Right is trying to do now with their definition of fascism is bananas. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/104 "2010-07-21T00:33:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well . . . As with most simplistic statements about fascism, this one has some truth in it but oversimplifies. [John J. Reilly writes:](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) I’m still not seeing how fascism (in practice) was not a poisonous form of right wing populism. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/105 "2010-07-21T00:34:13Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And if you had paid attention you would had seen that I already granted that. What, read the whole thread when my initial “meh” post in response to the first few posts summarized my feelings on the topic perfectly? > [@](#): > > Once again, my main point is that what the American Right is trying to do now with their definition of fascism is bananas. The obvious rarely needs stating, let alone repeating. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2010, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/106 "2010-07-21T00:38:52Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The obvious rarely needs stating, let alone repeating. Unfortunately we are in the era of infotainment news. What you see as obvious is clearly missed by many here, and it is not just for them or you that I post to point that out. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/107 "2010-07-21T00:45:01Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m still not seeing how fascism (in practice) was not a poisonous form of right wing populism. It was, it was; but that was only one side of it. It was also, like Communism, rule by a particular kind of intellectual or pseudo-intellectual – or perhaps “artist” would be a better term – with an all-encompassing world-view much more complex and grandiose than the Stormtrooper’s instinctive snarling at the loathsome Other. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/108 "2010-07-21T01:22:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck, even Ayn Rand thought fascism and communism were functionally identical. Sure, but the important thing is that fascism, communism and _liberalism_ are identical. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/109 "2010-07-21T02:23:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well . . . As with most simplistic statements about fascism, this one has some truth in it but oversimplifies. [John J. Reilly writes:](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) > > Fascism would not have been possible without Friedrich Nietzsche. There has been no lack of anti-theistic philosophers both before and after Nietzsche, but he is almost alone in honestly facing the consequences of living in a world in which everything is permitted. Most thinkers have sought to preserve some fragment of the intellectual structure that depended from the hypothesis of the Christian God, and so they appeal to reason or history or science. Nietzsche would have none of it. If the skies are really empty, then there are no imperatives. There is, however, life, which in the case of human beings expresses itself not just as biology but as the will. Now Nietzsche, unlike Schopenhauer and unlike many of his own followers, recognized the will is itself a composite entity. It is not a primary physical force, and it is not a god. It does, however, actually exist, and its exercise is all the meaning that life can ever have. > > The proposition that the meaning of life is the exercise of the will leads to two kinds of conclusions. The most obvious, and the most popular, is the cult of cruelty. Naturally, the street-fighters who normally figure in the public activities of successful fascist parties are rarely well-read in the literature of philosophical nihilism. Nevertheless, even the nihilist violence of the German SA and the Italian “squadristi” chimes with high theory. Fascism promotes ruthlessness for the same reason that it promotes conspiracy theories: for a fascist, nothing is going to happen unless some will makes it happen. One suspects this consideration is also a factor in the usual fascist suspicion of free markets. > > The other conclusion to which an ontology of the will leads is the transformation of politics into art. Whole societies become instruments for the expression of the will of elites, or often of a single great individual. In fascist theory, this is all that politics ever was, no matter what purportedly disinterested purposes the ruling elites of the past believed they served. The difference that Nietzsche made was that this reality could become conscious. > > Fascism is not quite coincident with the great man theory of history. Since human beings are social animals, the will is to some extent a social phenomenon. Thus, reality is an intersubjective construct, a fable that people make up amongst themselves. The construct is not entirely arbitrary. Most fascists have also posited a strong racial or biological element conditioning the way that leaders and their peoples behave. Still, even in highly racialized forms of fascism, the leader stands to the people as the will stands to the individual. Politics, then, is not an arbitrary art, but an art whereby the leader makes the unconscious will of the people explicit. Which makes the phrase “Triumph of the WIll” a lot more meaningful than a snappy slogan. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/110 "2010-07-21T02:33:47Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > Sure, but the important thing is that fascism, communism and _liberalism_ are identical. :rolleyes: Not quite. Liberals are commiefascists without the balls. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/111 "2010-07-21T02:37:35Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Trotsky’s book _Fascism, Stalinism, and the United Front_ has an essay entitled “What is National Socialism?” that IMO provides a good analysis of where fascism comes from. Essentially, it comes from what Marxists often called the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ but what most here might call the ‘lower middle class’ - people with some education and a skilled job, but who are definitely not on the way up and are more likely hanging on by the skin of their teeth in times of crisis. When the shit hits the fan, they resent the representatives of big business and big government that seem to be eroding their way of life, but at the same time they’re dead convinced that the socialists and communists are an even worse threat. They look to a glorified history of their country as an ideal, but only insofar as that country provides a safeguard of personal property (including salaries). > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > … > It was neither created by business interests nor capitalists, and scholarship has shown that neither group particularly supported Fascism any more than Communism, until it became obvious they had to do so. And indeed, they did save their own bacon by jumping on the bandwagon. German, British, and Italian Fascists worked to gain power by appealing to the common man, not investors. So why did American conservative politicians support the Nazis? And why did American corporations do business with the Nazi regime? > [@](#): > > But Fascism and Communism came out of the ideology of Rousseau, and both paid homage to Marx, though Fascism less so because it acepted much of his indictments of Classical Liberalism but not his internationalist zeal. Every modern ideology was somehow influenced by Rousseau: liberalism, conservatism, communism, socialism, fascism. > [@](#): > > **First** , Fascism is a national, not international, movement. Despite what some said, it is not neccessarily racist, though it offers no particular defense against it. But it always opposed to an international movement. **Second** , it demanded national unity through action and myth-making over ideology. This was precisely why Fascism roaringly overtook the tepid Communist movement, and why it has ended to self-destruct. Agreed. But note that this does not at all contradict Trotsky’s characterization (quoted by \*\*Olentzero \*\*above). > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > On Hitler’s political support: > > While Hitler did get a little early support from charming aristcratic ladies in Munich, their support was so minimal the party was barely solvent. Hitler’s support as almost entirely from the lower classes, and he appealed to them as a Socialist. Moreover, while he certainly was out to destroy the Democratic Socialist and Communist Left, it was as rivals, not as outright _economic_ enemies. The conservative middle and aristocratic classes substantially favored the centrist Dem-Soc and Center parties until very late in Hitler’s ascendance. Hitler could never have risen to sufficient national prominence \*to get the workers’ vote \*without the aristocratic junkers. And they helped him in the beginning because of their fear of communism. I think the only sensible way to conceptualize fascism is as a reaction to communism. Both are 20th century phenomena and both opposed capitalist liberalism. But communism saw itself as the solution to capitalism and voice of the exploited/workers. Fascism was the defense of the oligarchs against communism, because only a passionate appeal to a mythical history of Western civilization / nationalism could garner the emotional devotion necessary for the poor to oppose a movement that would help them. Though some aristocrats would later lose their wealth (some would experience a net gain), the initial motive to was to hide class divisions with the cloak of nationalism. Meanwhile, the state would aid the corporations with their daily operations, though the products/benefits could be distributed arbitrarily, as there was no overall philosophy other than irrational worship of the state and nationalist mythos. Thus, fascism is merely a tool used to perpetuate capitalism by creating the feeling of social belonging (and combating feelings of anomie) without creating the civil society of communism. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/112 "2010-07-21T02:48:54Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > **First** , Fascism is a national, not international, movement. Despite what some said, it is not neccessarily racist, though it offers no particular defense against it. But it always opposed to an international movement. [Reilly again:](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) > [@](#): > > A sentiment that seems to find increasing currency is what might be called “Euro-fascism.” While fascist parties between the wars built their followings on nationalistic platforms, still from the very beginning fascism has always had a universalizing streak. Nietzsche pronounced himself a “good European.” In these days when political theorists speak in terms of the clash of civilizations, New Right theory seems to be moving in the direction, not of renewed hypernationalism, but of an integrating theory for the European Union. Eatwell notes that the EU as it stands is a disedifying entity, run by bland bureaucrats who are most concerned with setting standards for bottled jam. Current plans for future integration will go no further toward turning Europe into a true political community (that word again). Eatwell asks whether anyone is ever going to be willing to die for the Bundesbank. Maybe what Europe needs is a Sorelian myth to hold it together. Work is in progress. > > So, are we really just back where we started at the beginning of the 20th century, waiting for some crisis that will delegitimize the existing establishments and start the ball rolling again? One way to look at the 20th century is as one long recoil from the process of globalization. It was only in the 1990s, for instance, that international capital flows again reached the levels relative to the economies of the major countries that they had reached before the First World War. Similarly, it is only recently that international trade in general became as important as it was around 1900. What happened thereafter was that the governments of the leading nations sought to gain unprecedented control of their countries’ destinies. Partly this was accomplished by war, partly it was accomplished through the creation of command economies. Stalinism was simply Lloyd George’s “War Socialism” made permanent, something that happened in greater or lesser degree throughout the West. In every case, the goal was to replace the power of capital with the power of the will, whether the will was that of an electorate or of a would-be Nietzschean superman. When, starting in the 1980s, the military and economic systems of command began to be relaxed, the world economic system began to look again something like the way it had looked before these measures were implemented. The process of globalization began again. So did the attempts to stop it. > > It would be wrong to say that all attempts to stop globalization of economics and communications and culture are fascist. Most resistance to universalism comes from a positive desire to preserve local identities and traditions. Such things may or may not be worth preserving. The balance between the local and the universal is not something that can be dictated categorically. Fascist nationalism, in contrast, was perhaps just an improvisation, made necessary by the fact that nations states were the largest units that fascist elites could hope to control. At a deeper level of fascism is the ideal of the universal empire, of the whole world subject to a single will. The goal is repeatedly deferred only because it is obviously so much harder to achieve. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/113 "2010-07-21T03:19:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Reilly again:](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) I suppose you can analyze the question from an abstract, philosophical point of view, as well as a concrete, political perspective, and obtain different conclusions. Just because some Nietzsche’s ideas were adapted by fascists doesn’t mean his own political motivations and affiliations were significant. Nietzsche was no fascist, and the political consequences of accepting his philosophy can only called pro-individualist–but not supportive of any particular economic or political system. Fascist alliances are matters of convenience and advantage; I don’t see any inherent guiding principle there. Fascism makes the most sense as an emotional support for capitalism (and against communism), than a self-propelling movement. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/114 "2010-07-21T03:54:36Z")
> [@sleeping](#): > > Just because some Nietzsche’s ideas were adapted by fascists doesn’t mean his own political motivations and affiliations were significant. Nietzsche was no fascist, and the political consequences of accepting his philosophy can only called pro-individualist–but not supportive of any particular economic or political system. I don’t suppose Rousseau had fascism in mind either, but it would have been impossible, or at least highly unlikely, without him; and Reilly’s point is that it would have been impossible without Nietzsche, and he is probably right. He does not say that makes Nietzsche a fascist. Philosophers long have debated, and we have sometimes debated in GD, just what Nietzsche meant by “the Will to Power” – maybe it was power over others, or the collective power of a nation, which certainly is what the Nazis meant by it; or maybe “power” was a mistranslation of a concept better expressed in English as “freedom,” of the individual liberated from tradition. There are passages in his writings to support **both** interpretations. > [@sleeping](#): > > Fascist alliances are matters of convenience and advantage; I don’t see any inherent guiding principle there. > > Fascism makes the most sense as an emotional support for capitalism (and against communism), than a self-propelling movement. Hitler, at least, was a true believer with a genuine world-view. He hated Communism, but he had no love at all for capitalism. And Mussolini’s [corporatism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism) was definitely meant as an alternative to capitalism. N.B.: The word does not mean “rule by business corporations” – that would be [corporatocracy,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy) which describes **no** fascist state yet established. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/115 "2010-07-21T05:31:03Z")
> [@sleeping](#): > > So why did American conservative politicians support the Nazis? And why did American corporations do business with the Nazi regime? I think you pretty much answered your own question with this excellent bit of writing further on down your post: > [@](#): > > _I think the only sensible way to conceptualize fascism is as a reaction to communism. Both are 20th century phenomena and both opposed capitalist liberalism. But communism saw itself as the solution to capitalism and voice of the exploited/workers. Fascism was the defense of the oligarchs against communism, because only a passionate appeal to a mythical history of Western civilization / nationalism could garner the emotional devotion necessary for the poor to oppose a movement that would help them._ The only thing I’d add is that in Germany, the ruling capitalist class felt itself paralyzed, unable to make any serious moves to reestablish its dominance because of the strength of the working-class movement in Germany. They’d learned several very hard lessons during the 1920s and were pretty well aware that if they tried anything funny they’d probably have another revolutionary situation on their hands. Moreover, the working class on the march would have taken chunks of the lower middle class with it, so when the Nazis came around and said “We can organize the middle class in order to smash the workers” the bosses started throwing cash. (Note: I would disagree with your classification of communism as a 20th-century phenomenon, though - the _Manifesto_ was written in 1848, and the lessons Marx drew about the working class smashing the state were taken from the Paris Commune in 1871. Otherwise, spot-on analysis, IMO.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/116 "2010-07-21T06:50:54Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > The only thing I’d add is that in Germany, the ruling capitalist class felt itself paralyzed, unable to make any serious moves to reestablish its dominance because of the strength of the working-class movement in Germany. They’d learned several very hard lessons during the 1920s and were pretty well aware that if they tried anything funny they’d probably have another revolutionary situation on their hands. Moreover, the working class on the march would have taken chunks of the lower middle class with it, so when the Nazis came around and said “We can organize the middle class in order to smash the workers” the bosses started throwing cash. N.B.: All that ruling-class support gave the Nazis the boost they needed to win – but it did **not** call them into existence. And when Hitler took power, the capitalists soon learned that he, not they, was master. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/117 "2010-07-21T09:25:54Z")
Never argued that it did. I believe I’ve pretty clearly shown where the social base of support for Nazism came from, and that it was never a workers’ party (which is another aim of socialists). ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/118 "2010-07-21T14:36:10Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > The only thing I’d add is that in Germany, the ruling capitalist class felt itself paralyzed, unable to make any serious moves to reestablish its dominance because of the strength of the working-class movement in Germany. They’d learned several very hard lessons during the 1920s and were pretty well aware that if they tried anything funny they’d probably have another revolutionary situation on their hands. Moreover, the working class on the march would have taken chunks of the lower middle class with it, so when the Nazis came around and said “We can organize the middle class in order to smash the workers” the bosses started throwing cash. Not just Germany either. What our “friends” on the right ignore as they try desperately to distance themselves from their swastika-clad relatives is the depth of the crisis in which capitalism found itself at the time. Capitalists were faced with the genuine likelihood of revolution. It had happened in many countries in Europe including Germany after the Great War, and even the UK, the poster child for gradualism and coopting the working class had seen a police strike in 1919 (I believe) and the General Strike. It really had the potential of being the End Times. So capitalists were faced with a choice. They needed to deal with unemployment, as unemployment led to working class unreast, and potentially revolution. But, they also needed unemployment, because it undercut the power of organized labor and allowed wages to be suppressed and profits to increase. What came along, and seemed perfect to them, was fascism. Reduce unemployment through, in particular, a rearmament based boom, but at the same time eviscerate working class organizations such as unions, and thus allow wages to be kept pressed down. Throughout the Nazi period, the gains of the alleged economic miracle went to capitalists, and to the middle classes, and not to the working class. But what was overlooked was how this was to be paid for. Naziism was a ponzi scheme. The only way that the massive debts incurred could be paid was by outright theft. There wasn’t enough left to steal from the domestic working class, so there was no choice but to invade other countries. On top of that, if you buy the military (especially the German military of the time) shiny pretty new toys, it is going to want to use them at some point. Fascism, and Naziism in particular, was capitalism’s response to the crisis it saw itself in during the early 20th century. That it took liberal democracies who faced off the same crisis through welfarism to save capitalism in continental Europe is more than a little ironic to me. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/119 "2010-07-21T14:46:22Z")
The irony is that you guys are yourselves looking at the situation through an economic and class-based analysis. The fascists did not, and that is exactly the difference between them and the communists. In fact, the lens through which the fascists approached matters really has little in common with the traditional political left or right, and is barely comprehensible by people who are not fascists (i.e. almost everyone). Left or right, people these days tend to make appeals to reason, particularly in matters economic and social. Both are operating with a set of assumptions and theories about how society and money ‘really’ works. They are not compatible assumptions and theories, but they are alike in having strong opinions on these matters. The fascist theorizers simply did not care for such things, as they did not care for rationality itself. Emotion and will counted for more. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/120 "2010-07-21T14:49:44Z")
Well fascism saw itself as a response to class based politics - replacing class unity with national unity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=7)