Originally Posted by White Fox

What is fascism exactly? Ask the average leftist and you'll get responses like "right wing, racist, militaristic, reactionary, capitalist, nationalist, and other such things." However, the only thing that really defines fascism is, as Mussolini himself put it, "Everything in the state, nothing outside of the state, nothing against the state." Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism argues that fascism is:

A religion of the state. It assumes he organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.

People who argue that is anti-semitic should look at Mussolini's Italy, the first fascist nation and at Franco's Spain, which were pro-Jewish if anything (They were overrepresented in the Italian government and Franco repealed the edict which evicted the Jews from Spain back under Isabella and Ferdinand)

People who argue that it is right wing should know that it was a revolutionary movement. Hitler thought that the revolution should be permanent. They were radical in their nature. They were socialist.

People who argue that it was capitalist should know that it was corporatist. Capitalists love competition and the free market. Corporatists want the government to control the means of production in state controlled monopolies that prevent competition.

Everyone should note that the ONLY difference between Communism, the definition of the extreme left, and Fascism is that Mussolini and Hitler disagreed with Marx's statement that "working men have no country." Furthermore, one could argue, this distinction vanished with the rise of Stalin who rejected Trotsky's belief in a permanent world revolution and believed in "socialism in one country first"

The belief that fascism is right wing comes from its denunciation by these Communists on the unorthodox Marxism that they employed. They quickly denounced the fascists as "reactionaries," and it has been picked up by other people on the left today.