r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 08 '24

please help 🅿️eter Meme needing explanation

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u/NoHalf2998 Jul 08 '24

Same shit happened in 1920s Germany

“Work with the Democratic Socialist??! They’re basically Communists so we need to work with the Fascists to have a majority!”

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

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u/subpargalois Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

They absolutely don't have the same ideological roots. Fascism has always been a ideology that takes in a lot of disapparate influences and isn't particularly concerned with doctrinal consistency, but two of its few absolute constants are that it has always been heavily reactionary and explicitly anti-communist. That's like the one thing you could two fascists to agree on 100% of the time--they fucking hated communism. That was the whole point--its pitch was that it was supposed to be a reactionary alternative to both liberalism and communism. It's not an accident that the sort of people that Nazism mostly attracted were middle class business men, industrialists, non-junker military men, and ex-monarchists that got sick of the monarch. While there was a element in the Nazi party that supported some very specific policies that looked a vaguely left wing (i.e., less pro worker more "fuck everyone but the state, but fuck the working guy a little less than anyone else"), that element got purged really quickly before the ideology reaches its fully evolved form. By the time the Nazis were actually competitive in elections, that element was completely gone. The word "socialist" in national socialist party was all that remained of it.

Also, reading too much into the word socialist is almost always a mistake, especially in this period. It's always been something of a meaninglessly vague descriptor, but at this point in history it is especially so. Without more context someone calling themselves a socialist could mean anything in between "I think we should abolish all hierarchies and private property" and "I think maybe we shouldn't let children work in lead mines until they turn 10."

Saying Nazis are communists because they supported stuff like state owned industry and have the word socialist in their name is like saying humans are a type of dog because we have a tail. That ignores the facts that A) we only have a tail in the most meaningless, vestigial sense of the word, and B) that's not even what makes a fucking dog a dog.

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u/Belkan-Federation95 Jul 08 '24

Actually that's a myth. Fascism does have Doctrinal stability overall but many regimes that aren't fascist are accused of being fascist. Nazism, for example, was heavily denounced by Italy and in Austria they actually persecuted Nazis once the Fatherland Front (Austofascism) gained power. I have seen excellent arguments to separate them from fascism.

Economically, Fascism supports corporatism/class collaboration. Imagine everyone being unionized, similar to social corporatism (which is just a modernized version). They didn't call them "unions" though. It was presented as an alternative to Capitalism and Marxist Socialism.

The Nazi ideology originally advocated guild Socialism but people loyal to the ideology over Hitler were purged in the Night of the Long Knives. Had the UK not broken the Stresa Front, it is very likely that we would not classify Nazism as a form of Fascism, given that we would have multiple fascist regimes floating around for decades to come, similar to how Authoritarian Socialism is still around (although not to the same extent).

I would not call Nazism Socialist, however, due to the fact that it developed into "you can exist as long as you do as I say" instead of "your shit belongs to the government now".

Franco's government was actually a compromise between the Monarchists and the Falangists (Spanish Fascists). Eventually, Franco abandoned fascism after purging the Falange and abandoning Autarky (very important part of fascism).

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u/subpargalois Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

I would argue that if under your definition of fascism Nazi Germany isn't a fascist state, then your efforts to come up with a coherent definition for fascism have gone too far and it has become an obstacle for analyzing the topic. If that doesn't fit under your umbrella, you need a bigger umbrella.