Richard Pipes summed up fascism’s affinity with socialism by arguing that both ‘Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism.’ Sense of communit… - L.K. Samuels

International socialists found it advantageous to hide both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s socialist, labor unionist, Marxist, and atheist pasts. One reason was that Hitler and Mussolini were independent of Moscow’s direct control, and they had the audacity to oppose the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. To pay for their insolence, the Soviets and their minions felt compelled to whitewash the collectivist-socialist ideology and history behind nationalistic socialism, determined to bury Hitler and Mussolini under a falsely inscribed tombstone. That is, they threw both comrades Mussolini and Hitler under the socialist bus in a campaign to relabel their Marxist-leaning collaborators as reactionary, monarchy-loving, and religious extremists who were claimed to be duty-bound to the capitalist and land-owning class. Never was there a more beautifully executed con job designed to erase and alter history in the Soviets’ favor. But then again, Stalin accused the Social Democrats, who originally arose out of Marxist ranks, as ‘social fascists,’ comparing Hitler’s Nazis as ‘twin’ brothers to the Social Democrats.

In the case of libertarianism, because it opposes fraud and the initiation of force, when pursuing its hereditary linkage to original liberalism it should be classified as standing on the left side of the political divide. Some might respond that legions of capitalists have taken leading roles in authoritarian productions. True, but these so-called capitalists mostly hobnob with politicians and statists, promote rent-seeking, endogenous policies to obtain state-sanctioned monopolies. As the cronies of statists, they are barely a cut above socialism, and have little interest in letting capital and goods move freely and unrestricted between buyer and seller, for whom, in turn, they have little sympathy. They are fastened to government coffers and machinations, and they downplay the value of the dynamics of competition.

The old parable about trapping wild pigs in the forest is prophetic. To capture and control the wild and free, one needs only to lay out a spread of free food while secretly constructing a sturdy fence around the perimeter. Every day, as the animals munch on freebies, the fence’s length expands until it has surrounded the oblivious victims. Once the trap is sprung, it is the trapper who feasts on the foolish. This anecdote illustrates how coercive socialism works to enslave a populace through perennial promises of ‘free stuff.’