Part of the reason fascism is hard to define is that it is a syncretic political movement. That is, a political movement combining deliberately contradicting elements. In the case of fascism, it becomes an inverted revolution. Revolutionary means – direct action, paramilitary squads, extraparliamentary activity, the establishment of popular support – for counterrevolutionary purposes. A revolt against both bourgeois (liberal) and proletarian (communist) revolution. A society which has merged the norms and power of a mythological yesteryear with the modern efficiency of today.

As it was often pointed out by Marxists in the early 20th century, fascism at it’s most economic is a petite bourgeois, or middle class, revolt. Why however, does the middle class flock to the pinnacle of reactionary politics? What is it in the middle class that makes them this way?

In his book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich discusses that middle class people are in a terrible, contradictory economic position within and with regards to capitalism. On the one hand, capitalism, with it’s stratification of wealth, is the only system where they could exist in the first place. The feudal society they originally grew up in, and ultimately overthrew, is gone, and under a socialist economy, their entire class would be liquidated.

However, equally speaking the middle class is threatened by capitalism. As we know from it’s history, capitalism is by design an unstable system, partly because in order to maintain the constant flow of commodities, production must constantly revolutionize, and with it comes the breakdown of existing economic relations. The middle class is one bad day away from descending into their worst nightmare, and that is becoming ordinary working people, instead of the bourgeoisie they seek to emulate.

But there is one other factor, and that is that middle class people, thanks to their privileged upbringings and positions, are able to buy into certain national myths. Your country is great, it is strong, it is just, it is stable. They can be fed revisionist history to maintain this narrative, history that contradicts reality. When they are met with the chaos of capitalism, the mythology becomes unstable as well.

“How can this happen here? How can something so tragic befall such a great nation? How can I, a law-abiding citizen who has played the game, and followed all the rules, befall a cruel fate?”. These are not questions the national mythology is prepared to answer, because answering any of them honestly admits imperfection, and it admits internal tensions. It admits that social conflict is not a bug, but instead a feature. Registering this truth is a shock, sometimes one too painful for those on the receiving end.

How does this play out? Fascism forms its belief by doubling down on the national myth. “Of course, the country is just, strong, and great! Nothing internally could have done this. We have been tainted by foreign intrusion – the Jews, immigrants, global finance, subversives influenced by foreign concepts, they have done this and had a direct effect on our nation. It is their fault things are like this.” Economically and politically, this myth manifests in an incestuous merger of state and corporate power. Capitalism is maintained, but subdued to the interests of a unitary state, one which has suspended all civil liberty on the grounds that it created this foreign intrusion. Mussolini & Giovanni Gentile write:

After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. – The Doctrine of Fascism

In Mussolini’s Italy, the executives of large industry were handpicked by the National Fascist Party to have seats in the lower house of government. In Franco’s Spain, every worker and employer had compulsory membership in the Spanish Labour Organization, a “national syndicalist” state union that relegated the economy under the pretense of the nation transcending social conflict on the basis of it being a nation. Ironically enough, though from a middle class background for middle class interests, fascism rejects class struggle as a reality of the world. The architects of fascism continue:

…Fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural outcome of [historical materialism]; above all it denies that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social transformations. – The Doctrine of Fascism

This is rooted in middle class mythology as well. The romantic nostalgia in the minds of fascists can recall a time without social conflict. “You could leave your door unlocked, men were men, everyone had a job”. It’s all a lie of course. Social conflict is inevitable in hierarchical society. The tension between dominator and dominated inevitably breaks through, and some kind of political activity results from it. (Not to mention that various LGBTQ+ identities, which are usually the subject of things like “men were men” have always been a thing, it just hasn’t mean as safe to express it).

What is really meant by this myth is “I was doing better back then, which must have meant the country was doing better back then”. It stems from an isolated and alienated worldview inherent to the capitalist system. Divorced from their real conditions, and atomized by the idea that their success is dependent on the bosses, their own experience in a vacuum is the only metric by which these fascists could use, however wrong it is. It’s no coincidence that the surge of American neo-fascism found it’s breath of life amongst isolated, disillusioned, young, white men desperately seeking meaningful identity. Despair is the way fascist mythology functions. What easier identification than totalitarianism and nationalism?

However, it’s also by the reverse that fascism is undone within the individual. In his TEDTalk, former Neo-Nazi turned anti-racist Christian Picciolini describes his exit from the white supremacist movement as being largely the result of having met Jews and POC, and found that his mythological worldview didn’t hold. Fellow ex-fascist Angela King talked with Huffington Post about her time in prison with Black inmates showing her how her dehumanization of other people was wrong.

TO BE CLEAR: It is not on potential victims of racist & fascist violence to prove their humanity to a potential assailant. That should go without saying, but won’t. However, it shows something much deeper. What these fascists really want, more than anything else, is community. They aren’t imbued with the germ of fascism, they’re genuinely trying to find community, desperately even. And if becoming a violent, hateful, conspiracy-minded shitheel is how they get it, well, as the old saying goes “can’t argue with results”.

It’s at this point that it’s worth taking a detour and mentioning that it’s incorrect to pathologize racism & fascism. While there are certainly mentally unwell racists & fascists, the use of pathology-based language regarding these people allows us to dismiss them and their underlying causes (and in this author’s experience, gives holier-than-thou liberals an “excuse” to be really ableist). Racism & fascism are not seen as deep-rooted social problems, but simply something uncommon and even ignorable, that with a little TLC goes away.

The way to defeat fascist germination, the way to stop the monster before it comes into being, is to show a genuine sense of community & solidarity. Fascism is, at the end of the day, the denial of humanity both to the victim and the fascist. The anarchist Bart de Ligt gave a good overview in 1939:

From the point of view of social psychology, we are up against the policy of despair and a system which takes advantage of the people’s increasing misery to seduce them to a new Messianism: belief in the Strong Man, the Duce, the Fürher. The condition of misery explains the brutality and cruelty of fascism: On both sides, the upper classes and the down-trodden masses alike, are no longer themselves, i.e. no longer human.

– The Conquest of Violence

Fascism can be defeated. We know from history that this is true. But it means nothing if it can spring back up. Establish community. Talk to your neighbor. Organize people. And send these arbitrary relations of domination and hierarchy packing. And if any fascists are reading this: You can walk away. You know this. You can find real, meaningful senses of community, totally independent of dominating another people. You can make up for what you’ve done, or at least try. And if that’s not what you’re looking to do… get on the fucking meat rack.