Fascism and Socialism: Still Not Opposites

The Eurasian movement of Putin and his allies draws from both Nazism and Stalinism.

Dear Reader (Including the trenchcoat-wearing FCC minister with breath like he’s been sucking a urinal cake looking over my shoulder, tapping his BIC pen on his glass eye, and sighing every time I write something he doesn’t like),

I’ve got to bang out this “news”letter pretty quickly. I’m sitting in a too-small fake wicker chair at the coffee shop at the Broadmoor (one of my favorite hotels, btw). The time difference here puts me two hours behind at six in the morning. Plus, I don’t want the housekeeping staff to find the body in my room. If I didn’t need coffee so badly I would have taken care of that already. But one must prioritize. I think the high altitude here is making my brain itch.

Timothy Snyder has written the best piece I’ve seen on what’s going on in Kiev. It’s worth reading just as a primer. But it’s also interesting in other ways. I had not read a lot about the “Eurasian Union,” a proposed counterweight to the European Union, in much the same way the Legion of Doom is a counterweight to the Justice League. Putin and a band of avowed “National Bolshevik” intellectuals are in effect trying to put the band back together. Snyder writers:

The Eurasian Union is the enemy of the European Union, not just in strategy but in ideology. The European Union is based on a historical lesson: that the wars of the twentieth century were based on false and dangerous ideas, National Socialism and Stalinism, which must be rejected and indeed overcome in a system guaranteeing free markets, free movement of people, and the welfare state. Eurasianism, by contrast, is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy.

The Eurasian ideology draws an entirely different lesson from the twentieth century. Founded around 2001 by the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, it proposes the realization of National Bolshevism. Rather than rejecting totalitarian ideologies, Eurasianism calls upon politicians of the twenty-first century to draw what is useful from both fascism and Stalinism. Dugin’s major work, The Foundations of Geopolitics, published in 1997, follows closely the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi political theorist. Eurasianism is not only the ideological source of the Eurasian Union, it is also the creed of a number of people in the Putin administration, and the moving force of a rather active far-right Russian youth movement. For years Dugin has openly supported the division and colonization of Ukraine.

The point man for Eurasian and Ukrainian policy in the Kremlin is Sergei Glazyev, an economist who like Dugin tends to combine radical nationalism with nostalgia for Bolshevism. He was a member of the Communist Party and a Communist deputy in the Russian parliament before cofounding a far-right party called Rodina, or Motherland. In 2005 some of its deputies signed a petition to the Russian prosecutor general asking that all Jewish organizations be banned from Russia.

Some of this was news to me. I was familiar with the National Bolshevism of the early Nazi years. Thinkers like the Ukrainian Bolshevik Karl Radek and the Nazi Otto Strasser dabbled with the idea of merging Bolshevik and Nazi ideology. After all, if you’re already a National Socialist it’s not that long a trip to being a National Bolshevik, now is it? Some left-wing members of the Nazi military described themselves as National Bolsheviks as well. But ultimately, National Bolshevism as an intellectual movement died in the crib. Or so I thought.

What I did not know is that National Bolshevism is making such a comeback. And while, it’s evil and a national-security threat and all that, I can’t help but smile.

National Bolshevism must strike some on the left as quite perplexing. After all, Bolshevism and Nazism — like fascism and socialism — are opposites, right?

If you read my book, you’d know I consider this the greatest myth and/or lie of the 20th century (coming in a distant second: the idea that there is a difference between good flan and bad flan).

Funny enough, the Eurasianists are counting on this myth for their propaganda campaign. They insist that the protesters in Kiev are trying to stage a “brown revolution” or fascist coup. In other words the de facto fascists are calling the anti-fascists “fascists.” And apparently lots of folks are falling for it. Snyder again:

Why exactly do people with such views think they can call other people fascists? And why does anyone on the Western left take them seriously? One line of reasoning seems to run like this: the Russians won World War II, and therefore can be trusted to spot Nazis. Much is wrong with this. . . .

The other source of purported Eurasian moral legitimacy seems to be this: since the representatives of the Putin regime only very selectively distanced themselves from Stalinism, they are therefore reliable inheritors of Soviet history, and should be seen as the automatic opposite of Nazis, and therefore to be trusted to oppose the far right.

Snyder’s rebuttals are good (I’ve trimmed them mostly for space). But they don’t cut to the heart of it.

First, let’s clear some underbrush. The idea that Communism and Nazism are opposites is more of a utilitarian idea than a core conviction for the Left. It is a rationalization that allows the Left to cut around the historical tumor of Nazism and fascism and say, That has nothing to do with us.

But the simple fact is that the hard Left has always endorsed or at least sympathized with national-socialist countries. What do you think Cuba is? It’s nationalistic and it’s socialistic. Venezuela under Chávez and now Maduro is nationalist and socialist. Nicaragua in the 1980s, etc., etc. Read a speech by any socialist dictator and swap out the word “socialize” for “nationalize”: The meaning of the sentences doesn’t change one iota. Nationalized health care is socialized medicine. Even Obama’s weak-tea socialistic rhetoric is usually dolled up in the rhetoric of nationalism, even militaristic nationalism. Let’s all be like SEAL Team Six! Let’s make this a “Sputnik Moment.”

Most of the Left in the U.S. didn’t really hate the German national-socialists until Stalin told them to. That the useful idiots thought Stalin’s command to turn on his one-time Nazi ally was rooted in deep ideological conviction just proves the depths of their idiocy.

After all, it’s not like the Left suddenly turned on Stalin when he embraced nationalism wholeheartedly and talked of fighting the Nazis as part of the “Great Patriotic War for Mother Russia.” But, hey, maybe I’m missing the deep Marxist themes in the phrase “Great Patriotic War for Mother Russia.”

If you think this is all semantic faculty-lounge argy-bargy, consider the fact that North Korea is in many ways as “Nazi” as the Nazis were. It’s a nationalist country that subscribes to eugenic theories that it uses to justify the industrial torture and slaughter of its own citizens. In fact, North Korea’s eugenics is crazier than Nazi Germany’s was. I’m not trying to minimize the evil of the Holocaust, but “Jew” is a real category of human being and eugenics generally weren’t discredited in the 1930s. Eighty years later, North Korea believes that the political views of people are genetically heritable for generations. So you can get sent to a death camp if your great uncle said something nice about America or if your second cousin lives in South Korea.

But because of the emotional and political investment in the idea that Nazism has nothing to do with Communism, North Korea is put in a category of lesser evil. If the Kims just described themselves as Nazis — but kept all of the same policies — it would be vastly easier to rally public opinion against their decades of murder. But when you talk about the evil of Communist regimes, a lot of people idiotically roll their eyes. Everyone is a brave anti-Nazi now that they’re all gone, but many are afraid to devote a fraction of that passion when it comes to the heirs, imitators, and competitors of Nazism.

Richard Pipes had the best pithy summation of the difference between Nazism and Bolshevism. They aren’t opposites, he argued, they’re both “heresies of socialism.”

I agree with this entirely, but step back from that a bit. Socialism itself is a heresy — a heresy of tribalism. Socialism is simply an attempt to gussy up ancient tribal tendencies in modern garb. Nazism was tribalism of one race. Communism is tribalism of one class. Italian fascism was tribalism of one nation.

There are of course, better and worse forms of tribalism. And, I would argue that a little tribalism, like a little nationalism, is a healthy thing, insofar as communities aren’t held together by reason alone. They’re held together by a complex set of sentiments, and a politics that doesn’t take account of that will necessarily fail. As Edmund Burke writes, “politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.”

But here is the important point. Looking back on the long history of humanity, tribalism — simple or complex — was the norm for 99 percent of our time on Earth. It wasn’t until 200-300 years ago that a different path emerged. (Yes, Christianity was a big leap forward in advancing a universal conception of humanity, in principle. But in practice it was often coopted by tribalism in one form or another. We can talk about that more another time.) The different path emerged largely in England and spread from there. This different path recognized the sovereignty of the individual, the necessity of the rule of law, democratic legitimacy, and private property, and the inherent dignity of bourgeois labor.

As I’ve written before, what makes America special is that we took England’s culture of liberty and broadened it out into a virtual tribe of liberty. I say virtual because we took the ethnic and racial components out of it (and, no, we didn’t do it overnight). You can be a progressive or a liberal or a social democrat and still believe in all of the things that define the tribe of liberty. You can also be a nationalist, a patriot, or a traditionalist and believe in all of these things. But go too far in either direction and you can fall off the path. Perhaps path is the wrong word. Bridge might make more sense. After all there’s a left side and a right side of the road. But if you fall off a bridge, all you do is fall down.

Seen from this perspective the differences between Bolshevism, Nazism, Maoism, Italian Fascism, North Korean Juche, et al may be interesting or meaningful (the differences between football and rugby are interesting and meaningful, but at the end of the day they’re both just games). But seen from the broadest perspective, they’re simply different ways to fall off the bridge and back into the wilderness below.

My apologies if this “news”letter was lacking in verve and panache this week. Maybe it’s the fact the Couch couldn’t make it out West this week.

Also, if you want to unsubscribe from this “news”letter, by all means do so. But in the spirit of William F. Buckley, let me ask you that you cancel your own damn subscription. I have asked the suits to put in or restore the unsubscribe button (I could’ve sworn there used to be one).

Quick Zoë update. As I’ve said before, we’re pretty sure that Zoë is a Carolina dog, and not a German Shepherd mix. She may be a mix of all sorts of stuff, of course. Though readers who think she’s a Shiba Inu are probably giving a bit too much credit to the stock of stray dogs in rural South Carolina. Anyway, healthwise she seems to be thriving. But behaviorally she is a major handful. Obsessed with tracking down “treats” in the dirt and the snow, she’s not much interested in listening to her humans. The other day, Zoë found a rabbit’s head under the snow and ran off with it. She wouldn’t drop it for anything, much to my wife’s dismay. She’s also turning into a dirt eater, which is bad enough outside. But inside is a real problem, which is why we’re going to put cayenne pepper in our potted plants. On the upside, she remains improbably cute and her commitment to squirrel chasing is total.

“The Nazis could hardly be called Marxist since unlike the Communists in Russia they didn’t abolish private property, didn’t abolish the Church, in fact they invented their own church...”

Marxism is not about abolishing private property. That’s communism. Marxism is about controlling private property. With communism, you abolish private property to control it. With fascism, you control private property via the bureaucracy. Both communism and fascism attain the same goal - giving government control of private property, whether through government control or abolishment.

It’s nuanced, for sure. But either way - through communism or fascism - individuals have no property rights.

Take care, jmacusa.

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
-- Benito Mussolini

It sounds sort of left-wing to me.

To an American it sounds "left wing." The European left was at one point very anti-state and anarchistic.

There are left and right wing statists, left and right wing anarchists.

Fascism is a leftist ideology, period.

You really need to go beyond Jonah Goldberg's sound bites and learn some history.

The very definitions of "Left" and "Right" go back to the French Revolution, when the radical anti-monarchists with their mantra of liberte, egalite, fraternite sat on the Left aisles of the National Assembly while the conservative monarchists sat in the Right aisles. From then on, "Left" and "Right" were not defined in terms of the size of government, but by whether the political movements worked to overthrow the traditional hierarchy of the aristocracy, the Church, and the landowner classes vs. upholding them in some form. By this and any reasonable historical definition, fascists were reactionary right-wing movements while Communists and Socialists were radical left-wing movements.

The first thing Bolsheviks and other Communists did when they came to power is line up aristocrats, military officers, and clergymen in front of firing squads. In contrast, fascists presented themselves as defenders of the aristocracy, the Churches, the military officers, as well as the bankers and industrialists.

If, as you and Goldberg argue, Communism and Fascism are "the same," perhaps you could explain why it is that when Fascists came to power, the first thing they did was crack down on labor unions and restore property to landowners and noblemen, while the first thing Communists did was to seize the property of aristocrats and landowners and give them to "worker's communes."

Now, as to the counterargument that Fascism and Communism are both anti-individualistic and authoritarian, the response is that this has nothing to do with Left or Right-wing ideology. The military in general and the Marine Corps in particular are profoundly anti-individualistic. Does that make the USMC a "Left Wing" institution? Theocratic governments and absolute monarchies from the 17th and 18th centuries were authoritarian, but I've yet to hear Louis XIV or Frederick the Great called "left-wing radicals." I doubt they'd have much in common with Karl Marx.

To an American it sounds "left wing." The European left was at one point very anti-state and anarchistic.

There are left and right wing statists, left and right wing anarchists.

That's right. Anarchism was historically considered a Left Wing movement, because it sought to overthrow the aristocracy, the clergy, and the landowners/industrialists. Nobody of sound mind considered Mikhail Bakunin a reactionary or a conservative because he was anti-government, because he and other radicals saw the government of their times as tools of the hated upper classes. Come to think of it, didn't Marx and Engels write that the state would "wither away" once independent worker's communes were established? Does this make them "conservatives"?

I suppose it's considered ancient history, but the terms Left and Right originally come from the French Revolution and the seating arrangements in the Estates General.

The Left opposed the king and they opposed the clergy.

I look at the Left today and my primary observation is that the Left opposes Christianity. All else that the Left supports, flows from this primary fact. Therefore, I say that the Left of 2014 is largely the same as the Left of 1789.

One can claim that Fascists of the WWII era voiced support for the Church, but their actions generally did not follow their words. Much of the anti-Nazi movement in Germany was based in Christian opposition. The Pope did not support either Mussolini or Hitler, though people who oppose the Church like to disparage the Pius and claim he did.

The Left is all about secularization and the growth of State Power over individual power. I have a hard time seeing Fascism as anything other than this.

There is a faint connection and there is a profound disconnection.

The faint connection rests on the medieval idea of the estates and their relation to one another.

Under the medieval ideal, the peasants, merchants, nobles, and clergy (like the corporatist bodies under syndicalism/fascism) all occupy different but complimentary roles in society. The noble's job is to defend the land the peasant and the monk work and the towns and roads the merchant uses from invasion and bigandage. In exchange for agreeing to pledge his life and honor, he earns the income of the lands and the right to collect taxes from peasants and merchants. Each class depends on the others, each class has responsibilities toward the others, society is an organic whole.

However, this ideal is based on the notion of subsidiarity. There is no absolute ruler or state - power is a web of personal allegiances, treaties, inheritances, contracts, etc. There is no "nation" and there is no "leader" and there is no notion of unitary power or what we would call sovereign government in the modern sense.

The medieval Church was radically libertarian in many ways, and highly authoritarian in others - but the emblem of medieval government was the Emperor: an almost powerless figure whom everyone in theory swore allegiance to.

Now, as to the counterargument that Fascism and Communism are both anti-individualistic and authoritarian, the response is that this has nothing to do with Left or Right-wing ideology.

I heartily agree with your posts 49 and 50 (and I would have pinged you to my own posts if I could have remembered your name from last time we conversed). American conservatives simply refuse to wrap their heads around the fact that the American right is different from the right in Europe because the traditional social structures America and Europe are different.

The Birchite "totalitarian to anarchist" spectrum is incorrect and dishonest and does our side no credit. The original Right (in France) was certainly not individualistic or classical liberal (in fact, American right wing hero Frederic Bastiat sat on the Left side of the Assembly while he was a member). The terms "right" and "left" were confined to France until the early twentieth century, so the French Right is the Original Right. I'd be very careful about re-defining what "right wing" means apart from that authority.

It was French rightist Maurice Barres who said "the individual is nothing; society is everything." Furthermore it was the original French Right that advocated a sort of Spartan society of "warriors and monks." I've attempted to locate this last quote but have been unsuccessful.

Anyway, thanks again ek, for keeping us honest.

Fascism and Socialism are brother and sister - GeronL

More like cousins. - jmacusa

National Socialism and International Socialism are just two different denominations in the same “church” - alloy steel

Al Capone vs Bugs Moran - Ditto

Reading The Road to Serfdom about how similar the two are, and how brutally they fought in WWII, I was struck with the comparison to a costume drama I saw at the movies, but cannot now recall enough about to be able to Google it up:
Two counselors to the sultan are in the palace talking, and two youths - both princes - are fighting. One of the counselors says to the other, “They fight as only half-brothers can."

The Left is all about secularization and the growth of State Power over individual power. I have a hard time seeing Fascism as anything other than this.

Your observations are those of an American conservative. But the "right" began in Europe and the European right is at once statist (even totalitarian) and anti-Communist. In fact, European rightists see American-style individualism and classical liberalism as leading to Communism. The fact that this makes no sense in the American political spectrum doesn't mean that it makes no sense elsewhere.

You'll never understand this until you learn to step outside your own head.

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