By the end of the 1960's, Soviet theoreticians were prepared to argue that the 'Chinese leadership' had transformed itself into an ‘anti-Marxist, ant… - A. James Gregor

By 1938, Mussolini could confidently assert that ‘in the face of the total collapse of the system [bequeathed] by Lenin, Stalin has covertly transformed himself into a Fascist.’

Mussolini himself, before he knew who would collect around the standards of the new Fascist Republican Party, committed himself to the realization of the original syndicalist and neo-idealist program of Fascism. His original intention was to call his new republic the Italian Socialist Republic—which nonetheless advertised itself as the vehicle of an Italian socialism, a national socialism.

We are left with a budget of paradoxes. Given the seeming logic of the proposed classification of right-wing polities—with nationalism, hierarchical political structures, and charismatic leadership as defining properties— both fascism and Marxism-Leninism would seem to be political products of right-wing extremism. Should that be the case, the revolutions undertaken by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong were all right-wing endeavors.