Mussolini, the founder of Fascism, used to be a good communist and head editor of the most popular Italian communist newspaper. He was expelled from the party for his pro-WWI stance, but promised that he would continue pursuing socialism no matter what.
He obviously betrayed all of his ideals in the process of becoming a fascist, but right-wingers believe that he indeed never stopped being socialist, and that fascism was just the non-Marxist pursuit of socialism outside of the normal left-wing Italian parties.
Communism and Fascism both present as ways of solving the class conflict, as well.
But while communism wants to solve it by getting rid of classes, Fascism wants to keep classes, but there would be no class conflict, because a common national consciousness would inspire the different economic and social classes to live together harmoniously and work for the nation (with the “nation” being defined largely by race/ethnicity, even pre-racial-supremacism Mussolini defined it with the Aryan-Italians). It’s corporatism, where everyone is working for overall group benefit, rather than for their own class interest.
Mussolini, the founder of Fascism, used to be a good communist and head editor of the most popular Italian communist newspaper. He was expelled from the party for his pro-WWI stance, but promised that he would continue pursuing socialism no matter what.
He obviously betrayed all of his ideals in the process of becoming a fascist, but right-wingers believe that he indeed never stopped being socialist, and that fascism was just the non-Marxist pursuit of socialism outside of the normal left-wing Italian parties.
Communism and Fascism both present as ways of solving the class conflict, as well.
But while communism wants to solve it by getting rid of classes, Fascism wants to keep classes, but there would be no class conflict, because a common national consciousness would inspire the different economic and social classes to live together harmoniously and work for the nation (with the “nation” being defined largely by race/ethnicity, even pre-racial-supremacism Mussolini defined it with the Aryan-Italians). It’s corporatism, where everyone is working for overall group benefit, rather than for their own class interest.