Fascism, National Socialism, Stalinism and Maoism were all species of a single genus, ‘totalitarianism.’ The resemblances they shared were cognitivel… - A. James Gregor

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Fascism, National Socialism, Stalinism and Maoism were all species of a single genus, ‘totalitarianism.’ The resemblances they shared were cognitively more significant than the features that distinguished them. More significantly, perhaps, the features that originally distinguished one totalitarianism from another gradually abated over time. By the end of the century, Marxist-Leninist systems had begun to take on some of the major species-traits of Mussolini’s Fascism. All of this attests to the futility of attempting to identify Fascism, or fascism, with the political right. Fascism was neither essentially right-wing nor intrinsically ‘anticommunist.' Fascism was neither ‘anti-intellectual’ nor, in principle ‘irrationalist.’