Compliance with an authority is ingrained in the human condition. Statists of all stripes use this psychological technique to garner support for political conquests, domestic and foreign. These conquests mimic the historical policies of Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Russian Sovietism, which few scholars want to expose, especially when their own ideology stands in sharp accord with Fascist-Marxist mindset. Yet many political scientists go out of their way to misidentify or ignore the roots of Mussolini’s syndicalist, socialist, and Marxist ideology, perhaps because of their own closely held political beliefs. Whatever the reason, scholars have gone to great lengths to obscure Mussolini’s true Marxian intentions.

Various sociopolitical movements are oriented to the nostrums of ‘social justice,’ favoring entitlements for all those with economic disparity. They struggle for what is scientifically impossible: equality of outcome. They want everyone to end up with the same amount of wealth—billions of people all possessing the same numerical affluence.

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A number of die-hard Marxists have confirmed the mirroring of social totalitarian ideologies. Otto Rühle, a German Left communist and one of the founders of Second International, asserted that Bolshevism is a model for Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. In his 1939 article ‘The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism,’ Rühle wrote that ‘Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism,’ and that it was a ‘political and administrative terror system.’

In 2017 a movement emerged to demand the removal of all Confederate statues and monuments across the South, which many contend symbolize the evils of slavery, racism and white supremacy. Good enough, but something was forgotten. Ironically, where was the outcry to sweep away the Confederate perpetrators who established, financed and fought to preserve those iron shackles of slavery? Where was the demand to depose the political party that has been synonymous with such racist, antiquated views for so long—the Democratic Party? Why aren’t the Democrats included in this noble campaign to consign race-based subjugation to the dustbin of history? This is the real atrocity: toppling the statues of racists, but not those who built them.

He may be among the most notorious fascists, but Mussolini was not the first to introduce economic and political fascism to the world. After Lenin’s ‘War Communism' produced massive famine, street riots, and economic collapse, Marxist leaders searched for an alternative ‘Third Way’ between socialism and capitalism. In response, Lenin rolled out his New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which introduced a form of ‘market socialism’ or what he approvingly dubbed, ‘state capitalism.’ In fact, Lenin described this change as the ‘development of capitalism under the control and regulation of the proletarian state (in other words, ‘state’ capitalism of this peculiar kind) is advantageous and necessary…’ which was adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International. This means that fascism was not the ‘last stage of capitalism’ as Marxist historians have maintained, but the first stage of a pullback from the economic and political failures of Marxism–Leninism. Lenin’s reactionary policies to mitigate the defects of absolute nationalization and communism not only spawned the NEP but also ushered in the world’s first modern fascist regime.

Despite the absence of physical equality in nature, political systems engage in grand endeavors to dictate perfection and equality in a universe devoid of both. In their egalitarian and quixotic quest to redistribute wealth, they rob Peter to pay Paul, which only creates a state of dependency, not of equality. Any attempt to impose equality can only bring about more inequality. Rev. William J. H. Boetcker expressed this same insight in 1916, writing, 'You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.'

To affix the poisonous label of ‘ fascism’ to Communism, depicting them under the same collective brotherhood, would have irrevocably damaged the status of socialism… To acknowledge a strong ideological and political link to Mussolini and Hitler would forever expose socialists and Marxists to their historical collaboration with fascist atrocities, racism, and genocide. Not only would socialists be seen as accomplices to some of the most horrific crimes in history, but also communists would also face similar scrutiny over their own atrocities, that racked up over 148 million citizens murdered in the 20th century.

Marxism had a lot to offer Hitler. Largely saddled with an unmovable, single-mindedness, hardcore Marxism allowed proponents to see themselves as noble crusaders saving humankind. Here too, Hitler could identify with such closed-mindedness, political messianism, and authoritarian tactics that licensed him to see himself as the savior of the world. A lover of the power of politics, Hitler’s hidebound views pushed him into the unshaded world of white and black antipodes, a battleground where you were either with him or undoubtedly against him, leaving no luxury of neutrality. Such exacting standards of political absolutism likely blinded him to other alternatives, or at least to the possibility of subjective objectivity that would allow the people to freely display their own diversity of opinions.

By almost all measures, the Hitler’s German Labor Front carried out most of their pro-labor promises while Lenin and Stalin ran roughshod over their proletariat subjects. Conditions for workers and peasants alike plunged after Lenin nationalized independent labor unions and the economy. Violent labor strikes paralyzed Russian cities while, in the countryside, over one hundred peasant revolts erupted during early 1921 alone. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, thousands of striking Russian workers were shot, imprisoned, or executed, particularly during the blood-soaked saga of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.

In 1934 Engelbert Dollfuss, the ‘Austro-fascist’ chancellor of Austria and strong admirer of Mussolini, feared Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. He established a one-party dictatorship, banning both the Austrian National Socialist Party and the Communist Party. His concentration camps were packed with Nazis, Communists, and Social-Democrats. Imagine, communists and Nazis jailed together by a so-called fascist regime. This makes a complete mockery of the argument that fascism and communism were polar opposites.