https://www.resetera.com/threads/what-is-the-most-accurate-depiction-of-the-rise-of-fascism-in-fiction-spoilers.1003425/#post-129879783
Every single one of those "five stages" and Eco's list* would apply to the Bolsheviks. The complaint that fascism only comes to power through an existing state or a coup would also apply to the Bolsheviks, the CCP and many other socialist states.
The Soviet Union provides another problem in that what Lenin fell back on in the NEP was almost literally what the fascists came up with, both are a "reaction" to a socialism that failed. Mussolini considered socialism failed because it wouldn't seize power nor stay flexible to events, Lenin considered it failed because the Soviets tried it and it literally failed. The result was a state that controls the "commanding heights" through a totalitarian dictatorship while ignoring the finer details at the local level. This wasn't ideological, it's a practical result of if you doubt central planning can work and still want an advancing totalitarian state.
None of this means Animal Farm is about "fascism" since it's literally the history of the Soviet Union, but all these distinctions are just "leftists" trying to deny the totalitarian roots of their ideology and insisting there must be some meaningful difference between the totalitarian state they want and their "greatest" enemies. Even though this ignores the obvious, that two totalitarian groups have to be the greatest enemies of each other with any difference because their ideological framework doesn't allow for an opposition to exist. A social democracy party and a liberal party and a conservative party can all exist together without violence because the mediating democracy can shift and adjust to their relative powers. Communists and fascist parties had to go to violence against each other (and the existing state, and the aforementioned parties) because the other winning any power means the abolition of any opposition. The Soviets and Nazis just played this out at an international stage after they peacefully carved up Eastern Europe together.
*except for six, which itself has widely been disputed because it wasn't who supported the Nazis in their elections but in any case cuts against the rests of Nola's thesis as "differences" because almost all successful socialist revolutionaries were middle class or above, not from the working class. The Bolsheviks especially. Nor were any successful socialists not from the "dominant social and ethnic population" in their countries.
Nola wrote:Thats the sort of conflation the right loves to make to remove any culpability for right wing extremism. It's where you get extremism in the name of liberty is no vice nonsense.
Fascism is almost always distinct in that while it is always unique in the cultural and political cleavages it manifests around, it is almost always in large part a reactionary movement anchored around anti-leftism
As for the OP, Animal Farm is great when it comes to totalitarianism, but for fascism specifically(which is often take the form of totalitarianism), I am actually struggling to name one that I think does it justice, but that probably speaks more about me than there not being one.
EDIT: The problem I have with people saying Animal Farm is that fascism almost always comes to power two ways: Through the existing political system or a military coup. Animal Farm is explicitly a story about revolutionary totalitarianism and I think that is something that even today, even in this thread, people do not respect enough and that is IMO one reason why the threat of today's fascist parties and leaders seems to be too focused on external revolutionary acts and not focused enough on internal political rises that erode institutions and systems of checks and balances. Its the one thing the focus on Project 2025 has gotten right about what we should be focused on with fascism. Which is not Jan 6th, but a weak right wing party rallying behind a autocratic leader that comes to power through the process and then shuts the door behind them.
Nola wrote:Quote:I don't consider it conflation. Totalitarianism can have different flavors. At its root, it's a form of fascism. It just isn't directly hostile and military backed in the same way. It's a difference without distinction to the people living under either boot at the end of the day.No its not
You have the relationship inverted
You are placing fascism at the root and calling things like communist totalitarianism, or totalitarianism itself a branch of the tree of fascism. Thats simply not a healthy way of framing it, nor is it really accurate. Fascism often ends up totalitarian, but not every totalitarian government is fascist. In fact most arent.
And yes the distinction matters cause what you are doing is why people like Trump will casually and without pushback claim they are fighting the forces of communism and fascism and much of America, especielly on the right, dont blink an eye or find the conflation preposterous, which it is. Why you get people conflating Bernie Sanders' populism as being in the same wheelhouse as Trumpism. Why you have a tortured cottage industry of right-wing historians trying to frame Nazism and post WWI fascism as a left-wing movement when fascism is explicitly organized around extreme anti-leftism and is a conservative ideology amongst those in the dominant social and ethnic populations of a country.
Nola wrote:Quote:I think what some people are stating is that a lot of these governments whether they be fascists, communists or even something like religion based tend to all turn out rather similar in the end. Its one of those conversations people need to discuss whether they're talking about the forest or the tree's as otherwise everyone starts talking past each other.Sure, but failing to understand the distinctions and very real differences leads to the sort of broken immune system to the current rise of fascism we see in places like America and parts of Europe.
Where Americans are completely braindead about authoritarian or illiberal governance is in every facet unless it takes the form of the Star Wars Empire end state that everyone can agree is bad. Often done in the sort of Alex Garland way where context and reality-rooted causation is deliberately excised from the project and the result is a half of America that doesn't bat an eye at interpreting "The Antifa Massacre" as an act of aggression by ANTIFA and sees no issue with that sort of deliberate obfuscation device to focus on the thing we all know is already bad.
I mean wouldn't it be great if we could avoid such a faith as the end result we all agree is bad? Yes it would, thats why we need to understand why fascism and communism are not interchangeable and why Bernie Sanders and Trump are not cut from the same populist cloth. Why it's silly to look at Stalinism and scream fascism or see people speak of economic revolution and evoke Hitler. Why it's absurd that right wingers call the expansion of LGBTQ rights or prosecuting Trump as reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Why when people say Trump and Project 2025 is a threat to democracy they are often flat footed or struggle to envision a version of fascism that looks more like Hungary or Louisiana under a Huey Long for rich white people than the Empire from Star Wars....and why neither of them feels very real to a vast majority of people, even ones not allied with Trump. Where "Never Again" is just an empty slogan without any real actionable meaning to most people, as we see as so many of those lessons are blatantly ignored in places like Gaza.
We can all agree we don't want an America thats depicted in the film Civl War, but hard to avoid that when no one cares to develop the accurate language and immune system to recognize it correctly and reject it before we get to that end state.
Nola wrote:A lot of it is the motive, means, methods, origins, characteristics, and process that distinguishes fascism from other forms of totalitarianism or illiberal governance, yes. And they can often share things in common.Except this is all wrong because the fascists considered themselves revolutionaries and their target was the same as the left: liberalism. Fascists were not a "reaction" against "the left" unless "the left" is liberalism, they had no problem with socialism conceptually only who wanted socialism.
I'll spoiler out of respect, but some structured outlines to start with:
Robert O-Paxton's definition and his 5 Stages of fascism is a decent starting point IMO
Another more descriptive framework for fascism I think is good to look at is from Umberto Eco's 1995 essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt on the characteristics of fascism. First read it in a college poli-sci class on the politics of the interwar period in Europe longer ago than I wish. Can't seem to find a free version of the original anymore but there is a wiki page on it and other scholarly definitions:
One important point Umberto makes is to not see fascism as a checklist, but as a framework and toolkit for understanding the language of it's next manifestation. Cause if you wait for fascism's latest iteration to put on a Brownshirt and demand we reopen Auschwitz to kill all the Jews and Gypsies, that is where you are essentially missing the forest for the trees.
Every single one of those "five stages" and Eco's list* would apply to the Bolsheviks. The complaint that fascism only comes to power through an existing state or a coup would also apply to the Bolsheviks, the CCP and many other socialist states.
The Soviet Union provides another problem in that what Lenin fell back on in the NEP was almost literally what the fascists came up with, both are a "reaction" to a socialism that failed. Mussolini considered socialism failed because it wouldn't seize power nor stay flexible to events, Lenin considered it failed because the Soviets tried it and it literally failed. The result was a state that controls the "commanding heights" through a totalitarian dictatorship while ignoring the finer details at the local level. This wasn't ideological, it's a practical result of if you doubt central planning can work and still want an advancing totalitarian state.
None of this means Animal Farm is about "fascism" since it's literally the history of the Soviet Union, but all these distinctions are just "leftists" trying to deny the totalitarian roots of their ideology and insisting there must be some meaningful difference between the totalitarian state they want and their "greatest" enemies. Even though this ignores the obvious, that two totalitarian groups have to be the greatest enemies of each other with any difference because their ideological framework doesn't allow for an opposition to exist. A social democracy party and a liberal party and a conservative party can all exist together without violence because the mediating democracy can shift and adjust to their relative powers. Communists and fascist parties had to go to violence against each other (and the existing state, and the aforementioned parties) because the other winning any power means the abolition of any opposition. The Soviets and Nazis just played this out at an international stage after they peacefully carved up Eastern Europe together.
*except for six, which itself has widely been disputed because it wasn't who supported the Nazis in their elections but in any case cuts against the rests of Nola's thesis as "differences" because almost all successful socialist revolutionaries were middle class or above, not from the working class. The Bolsheviks especially. Nor were any successful socialists not from the "dominant social and ethnic population" in their countries.
Omegasquash wrote:In this case I think it's important to distinguish between the two since a right wing talking point literally is "well the nazi's were socialists" and "socialism" is thrown around a term that makes even people on the left bristle. You have the House of Representatives in 2023 passing a resolution on the horrors of socialism that a LOT of Dems voted for. The left gets demonized far more than the right, and lumping in a story of how a leftist revolution goes horribly wrong as a matter of course helps feed the narrative (not intentionally in this thread, I believe) that leftism is horrible, all while the right is trying to legislate folks out of existence.