Is the US fascist? Are all bourgeois states fascistic? If not then why are some fascist and others not? Is post-Stalin USSR fascist? Was FDR fascist? Is Putin fascist?
fascism is a post-hoc category for the state ideologies of Italy and Germany in the 1940s and similar, specifically constructed to explain how liberal democracy can autocannibalize so spectacularly. From this perspective, it seems like liberalism always contains fascist elements, which only become identifiable as such when they come to threaten the democratic elements. This fits with another common definition, that fascism is the violence of the capitalist frontier turned inward.
that said, all states are fascism in repose :3c
if discussions of fascism only used the definitions of self-identified fascists, they'd be very short discussions indeed.
very true, but Mussolini-coined, Mussolini-identified, and Mussolini-defined fascism isn't sufficient to correctly materially identify and make predictions of all the fascism that proceeded it
Mussolini-coined
Read this as "Mussolini-coded," which is how I'm gonna refer to Italians from now on.
Any definition of Fascism that doesn't fit the US is absolutely worthless. Nazi Germany was explicitly modeled on the US in nearly every way imaginable.
I think people get hung up on the US not having the exact same race madness and violent dispossession as the Third Reich, but that's a very shallow view. You can absolutely see the exact same race madness as Germany but directed at the US' undercastes if you talk to literally 99% of white people in rural areas or probably 75% of white people in suburban areas. Moreover, violent dispossession still occurs in the US, but in a more subtle and lassez-faire way. But the Nazi-style Primitive Accumulation that people seem to think is missing was the entirety of American history until basically the 1970s.
As Aimé Césaire says, Fascism is colonialism turned inward. The US is ~400 years into settler colonialism, and every single city is occupied territory.
Ok let me make one last comparison. You know the Years of Lead that everyone who's just starting to move past their RadLib stage loves to talk about? <500 deaths in three decades. Adjusted for population, that's about three weeks of gun deaths in the US. Obviously that's not a direct comparison, but the conditions for this violence weren't handed down by God. I haven't done in depth study on gun violence in the US, but the only materialist hypothesis that makes any sense to me is that the US needed white vigilantes to wipe out the natives, keep the undercastes in line, and discipline labor where state power was lacking (and you can see these vigilantes being integrated into the state at a moment's notice in thousands and thousands of instances), and our current conditions are a direct result of the way those needs were met. And do we really all think that the invisible ruling class that is the intersection of finance and intelligence have nothing to do with fostering these conditions? Allen Dulles was literally named by Allen Dulles Jr as a spy for the Third Reich!
Ok I guess I can't stop with one last comparison since this is the topic I think about probably more than everything else combined. JFK was killed by elements of what we now call the National Security State and since then literally every single President has had nearly identical foreign policy, only varying in its intensity and targets. The US has the world's most extensive and powerful network of secret police (but they're not called that due to the need to keep a facade of liberal democracy).
Ok this next claim is not 100% accurate and is an attempt to make people think: the Mode of Production in the US is, like Nazi Germany and the Roman Empire before it, conquest. The US doesn't make its money through production, it makes it by dominating other nations, taking their resources and enslaving their people. This is all just carried out much more subtly (though when the rubber really meets the road, you can see the Roman Empire in all its crucifying brutality shine through).
From its very inception, it was consciously and explicitly modeled on the Roman Republic (which was not much less guilty of conquest than the Empire, and obviously needed to set the stage for the Empire) and every stage of development has been a modern version of Rome. The word colony comes from Latin and British colonies were, once again, explicitly made to emulate the Roman model. The continental US was unambiguously conquered (they make a desert and call it peace, anyone?). Slavery--the defining feature of the Roman economy--was the bedrock of the US, and even when the Feudal model was disposed of, things neatly transitioned into a more lassez-faire version of slavery. The Dollop's episode on convict leasing is a good little peak into one of the many many ways that slavery evolved. When Reconstruction was sabotaged, you could see the reemergence from the plantation class of an explicit aristocracy in the South, and a slightly less explicit industrial aristocracy in the North. Angola Prison is operated by the family that owned it as a plantation pre-war, by the way. There are hundreds of families that have maintained their wealth and influence through methods very similar to the Roman nobility (Michael Parenti would namedrop the Morgans, the Mellons, and the Rockefellers at the drop of a hat, and I fear that Communists today shy away from critiques and analysis of these people for fear of appearing to be "conspiracy theorists."). There are open agents of the state (sorry, I mean "former spies") populating literally every national news agency, and every major broadcaster has explicitly entrenched interests with the state and the military-industrial complex. The undercastes of the US are made up of the descendants of explicit chattel slaves and of modern peoples from conquered nations, though largely moved by the market instead of men in armor with spears. As with Rome, "American interests" can be conjured up at a moment's notice, and nearly every casus belli is an explicit lie made to manipulate the non-noble population. Both the US and Rome have the mythology of ending monarchy as ideological bedrock, yet both went on to create regimes just as--if not more--brutal, because the real objection was not to unjust rule but the domination of a foreigner over the nobility.
What are the three states that most explicitly evoked Rome? Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the United States of America. The Fasces is the symbol of the authority of the Roman state!
I apologize for being so discursive and rambly, I'm just kind of throwing out every comparison I can think of.
I'd recommend "the economy and class structure of german fascism"
Basically, fascism is class warfare by the petite bourgeoisie in response to being threatened with proletariatization that unprofitable or less profitable elements of the haut bourgeoisie latch onto.
The petite bourgeoisie is where fascism starts because they are more vulnerable to the falling rate of profit; they can not secure as many favors from the government, often rely on the haut bourgeoisie for their supply chains, and do not have the same economy of scale.
A collapse of imperialism like the US is experiencing can result in fascism and is the most common way to get fascism, but I bet you could get it from the comprador class of a non-imperialist colonized nation.
Fascist economics involves "taking away decision making powers from capitalists for the sake of capitalists"- a bizarre semi-command style economy where the goal is to maintain the power of the capitalist class. More profitable industries are leached from or semi-cannibalized to prop up failing industries
It involves swapping the surplus army of labor for more overt threats of violence, and profit increases switch from being primarily accumulated through abstract surplus value to concrete surplus value.
It is rhetorically class collaborationist. Basically everyone has their place in society and if everyone fulfills that everyone will prosper
It relies on scapegoating to explain problems because class analysis is forbidden
Id argue that the US isn't actually fascist because the capitalists are still running the show, the government isn't telling Intel to increase cpu chip production by x percent and to sell them to Microsoft at 75 dollars a pop.
The biggest indicators o us liberal democracy giving way to fascism are the expansion of forced labor, child labor, and switching from underclass to exterminationist policies.
I am not sure that the US will actually have to transfer to a dictatorship for it to be a fascist state, I dont see anything within fascism that requires a dictatorship.
The attempt to prolong the life of a capitalist economy by opening up a new, internal frontier against a segment of one's own population, whichever segment can be most easily blamed and liquidated.
No, no, read theory, no, no, and no.
The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War by Georgi Dimitrov.
Read it.
Has finance capital, through a favored political party conduit not represented by the tired old bourgeoisie parties of today, battered aside parliamentarism and bourgeoise democracy in favor of adopting an openly terroristic home policy in order to continue administrating the heartlands?
Has the party conduit of finance capital abandoned the intrigues of financial imperialism to cajole forth its plunder in favor of the most beastial and and jingoistic aggression against other nations and like medieval barbarians marched forth to conquer and annex new lands to exsanguinate for their material wealth?
Are communist parties banned, hunted, and driven underground and the trade unions hijacked by the state to rob the organized working class of their most advanced advocates in order to solidify finance capital's chokehold on all aspects of life?
We are still in an imperialist bourgeoisie democracy. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now if it wasn't.
Has finance capital, through a favored political party conduit not represented by the tired old bourgeoisie parties of today, battered aside parliamentarism and bourgeoise democracy in favor of adopting an openly terroristic home policy in order to continue administrating the heartlands?
I mean pretty much, what do you think our police state is all about? Not to mention our bourgeoise democracy was already so shit, even among other bourgeoise democracies, that we don't even need to make serious changes to it to pursue fascism.
Has the party conduit of finance capital abandoned the intrigues of financial imperialism to cajole forth its plunder in favor of the most beastial and and jingoistic aggression against other nations and like medieval barbarians marched forth to conquer and annex new lands to exsanguinate for their material wealth?
Ukraine? Latin America? The midddle east? Much of southeast Asia and the pacific islands? These are all military intervention in the last 75 years. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop-Grumman are evidence.
Are communist parties banned, hunted, and driven underground and the trade unions hijacked by the state to rob the organized working class of their most advanced advocates in order to solidify finance capital’s chokehold on all aspects of life?
yes? And even conceding that it's not the same kind of violent repression that Mussolini conducted, the historical repression and amplified propaganda is so great that the battle is basically already won in the US and the state doesn't even need to invest that much energy into it any more because communism here is already stomped into the dirt.
I mean pretty much, what do you think our police state is all about?
Police states are rather ubiquitous around the world now, so unless you want to point between your feet and call the globe a fascist - I'm doing that right now because it's funny - that's rather a moot point
Not to mention our bourgeoise democracy was already so shit, even among other bourgeoise democracies, that we don’t even need to make serious changes to it to pursue fascism.
I'd say let's see how the French do with their election before saying we're the vanguard of having shit bourgeoisie democracies.
Ukraine? Latin America? The midddle east? Much of southeast Asia and the pacific islands? These are all military intervention in the last 75 years. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop-Grumman are evidence.
Refer to the bit talking about Korea, Vietnam, and Vichy France and let me know if that addresses this point or not
yes? And even conceding that it’s not the same kind of violent repression that Mussolini conducted, the historical repression and amplified propaganda is so great that the battle is basically already won in the US and the state doesn’t even need to invest that much energy into it any more because communism here is already stomped into the dirt.
I'm going to echo Stalin's condemnation of Jay Lovestone's heresy of American exceptionalism, and say that the greatest theatrics performed by propagandists and the greatest repressions exersized by the most autocratic states can only be swept aside by the material conditions the people find themselves in. The Great Depression shattered Lovestone's theory that capitalism in America is so exceptionally entrenched that nothing could shake the foundation it's built upon, and if it wasn't for FDR and the War, it's entirely possible we'd be in a different America. After all, there are decades where nothing happens, and in those decades the communist movement must build and rebuild and continue building so that when there are weeks where decades happen we won't be caught with our pants down and can leap into action as needed.
Has finance capital, through a favored political party conduit not represented by the tired old bourgeoisie parties of today, battered aside parliamentarism and bourgeoise democracy in favor of adopting an openly terroristic home policy in order to continue administrating the heartlands?
Not entirely, but to argue that the US state doesn't engage in terrorism against segments of the American population is laughable.
Has the party conduit of finance capital abandoned the intrigues of financial imperialism to cajole forth its plunder in favor of the most beastial and and jingoistic aggression against other nations and like medieval barbarians marched forth to conquer and annex new lands to exsanguinate for their material wealth?
Yes? I'm kind of astonished you'd argue this is untrue. Is it because the US doesn't annex its conquests directly? Vietnam and Korea especially were open genocides. And in both cases puppet states were erected, as with Vichy France.
Are communist parties banned, hunted, and driven underground and the trade unions hijacked by the state to rob the organized working class of their most advanced advocates in order to solidify finance capital’s chokehold on all aspects of life?
Yes! All of this has and still does occur! You cannot become an American citizen if you're a Communist!
I should preface this that it took me six hours over my shift to write this it may be a bit inconsistent.
Not entirely, but to argue that the US state doesn’t engage in terrorism against segments of the American population is laughable.
So the answer is that no, finance capital, through a favored political party conduit not represented by the tired old bourgeoisie parties of today, has not battered aside parliamentarism and bourgeoise democracy in favor of adopting an openly terroristic home policy in order to continue administrating the heartlands.
Political repression against sections of a nation's population is as old as the agricultural revolution.
Yes? I’m kind of astonished you’d argue this is untrue. Is it because the US doesn’t annex its conquests directly? Vietnam and Korea especially were open genocides. And in both cases puppet states were erected, as with Vichy France.
Although communists understand that it was initiated as a liberation war by Korean communists that intended to free their homeland from the Korean bourgeoisie compradores, the war evolved into a war between spheres of influences of the great powers - that is to say a war to open new markets for finance capital to expand into on the doorstep of the powers that wished to keep them out
A similar story emerges from Vietnam, where Vietnamese communists fought a decolonization war against their victorious allied coalition member French republican colonizers immediately after ww2 and nominally achieved this goal by 54 with the creation of the South Vietnamese bougeoise comporador state. And much like the Korean War, the Vietnam War was fought initially as a war of Liberation by Vietnamese communists intent on freeing their homeland from the compradores in the south and in order to maintain their toehold market that they wished to expand into economically and martially, the war evolved into a war between spheres of power.
Were the wars so absolutely blood-drenched that they are rightfully concidered genocidal, most definitely.
Is genocide the preeminent domain of fascism? Most definitely not.
Moving onto puppet states; in regards to Vichy France, the French puppet state was created for the purpose of utilizing the colonial holdings and Mediterranean navy of France in order to have a solid shield against the allied coalitions own colonial states. This is to say the Vichy puppet state existed primarily not as a sort of puppet government to manage the Annexed French heartlands as demonstrated by the fact that Germany governed northern and western France but as a meat shield against western coalition encroachment. And when the Vichy French armed forces lost control across north-west Africa due to Operation Torch, the Vichy puppet state lost its purpose and was shortly thereafter invaded and annexed by Germany.
In examination of the three nations you chose to name, its historically evident that South Korea was created with the emplacement of initially self-elected bourgeoise compradores who were then 'legitimately elected' by a national assembly composed of elements of the aristocratic, landholder, and bourgeoise groups that relied on their military to maintain their power. Quite obviously not a popular election but elected nonetheless, which is why they are a comporador state.
South Vietnam on the other hand was more directly a French puppet state as the Provisional Government was the King of Vietnam chosen by foreign powers as the legitimate leader of the country. A puppet-king who was thrown out in a sham democratic election to empower the bourgeoisie compradores, who failed to solidify their power due to their religious despotism, were in turn thrown out by their own military in a CIA funded coup to establish a junta for the purpose of getting South Vietnam's act together in combating the North - something the junta still failed to do until LBJ decided to directly intervene with american ground forces. Very fun to read how much of a shitshow the south Vietnam government was between its first republic, junta, junta 2, junta 3 united, and second republic, and how all of that occured over like 12-13 years.
In summary, south Vietnam would be less described as a puppet state but more as a proxy conflict state akin to contemporary Ukraine, but with the caveat that it's state would change masks to suit the circumstances it found itself in over the course of existence.
Finally, Vichy France is the result of the French government pursuing an Armistice with Germany where the prime minister chose to resign in protest instead of supporting the motion to sue for peace lead to the appointment of the crusty old French bastard Philippe Pétain who signed France out of the war, lead it to being a "neutral" state, and became Dictator after the majority of the remnants of the French parliament voted to give him total power and control over the unoccupied part of the country where he proceeded to wipe his ass with the old constitution and make his own new constitution unilaterally. Like I mentioned above, Vichy France's entire existence was predicated on using it as a meatshield against the allied coalition initially through international legalism and later on martially through the Armistice Army maintaining the Mediterranean colonial holdings.
Vichy France, due to the events that lead to Pétain being appointed prime Minister by the flailing French government in order to seek an Armistice, in addition to the fact that their cooperation with Germany was secured through the use of hostages and wide-spread occupation of the French lands, it isn't quite accurate to call them a puppet state but a collaborationist regime.
You'd have an easier time calling the first Slovak Republic a puppet state.
Yes! All of this has and still does occur!
:citations-needed:
You cannot become an American citizen if you’re a Communist!
Hate to say this, but does it make logical sense for a State to allow the immigration and naturalization of foreign subversives who's goal is to pursue the overthrowing of the State they are entering? Capitalist America letting communists immigrate into America makes about as much sense as it would be for Socialist China letting CIA agents immigrate into the country. This point is entirely moot and is moving the goalpost.goalposts.
If you had argued that - the US tries to suppress the Communist and labor movement through actions of their secret police in the shadows and in the sunlight the American state legally stops the labor movement from flexing its muscles and still wields the legal sword of damocles over the head of the Communist movement in the form of the Communist Control Act of 1954 stating that even though it isn't enforced it's still registered as the law of the land. - I'd say you actually had a probable case to argue that the United States is indeed fascist, but you didn't argue any of that as that's all from me and in the most narcissistic form possible I shall argue against myself by getting mad at myself over points I made to try and sink my own point of view.
Keeping it simple, on the secret police disappearing people bit; such a thing isn't the eminent domain of fascism, the concept and execution of the secret police also isn’t remotely new as we can simply point at the life of Marx and how he was dogged by German, French, and English secret police.
In relation to the legal side with the State commonly arbitrating in favor of corporations over unions I also point to how even during Marx's lifetime, before fascism emerged into the world, the State as the arbitrator in settling contradictions between the working class and the owning class would more often than not side with the owning class as the class composition of the State skews heavily in their favor.
Now if you, God forbid, one day bring in news that the entire teamsters union leadership was arrested for subversion against the state for bringing the motion to strike as a collective bargaining unit to a vote, or the Amazon unionization leadership are, God forbid, publicly hung for threatening the general welfare of the American people, then I'd say there's a pretty clear-cut case for the u.s.a finally reaching the bottom of the fascism waterside.
Finally in regards to the Communist Control Act, this one's a bit more tricky as it's a legal gray zone. It exists but it'd not enforced. I've heard some people say it acts as a legal threat to dissuade anyone from getting serious about becoming a communist, and I've also heard that it is unenforceable as it would get probably get shredded in a serious legal battle as it contains such poor writing that making a ruling on it would be too difficult.
Fascism, in general, seeks to create the recipe for success of the U.S. faster and with more outright brutality (which is difficult to imagine, but true) which is, cheap land, labor and every citizen a lord (btw citizen is limited to those who we consider citizens), in order to combat the falling rate of profit found in capitalism.
The U.S. is not 'fascist' though it is the number one supporter of international fascism, which it uses to maintain its financial empire. Most bourgeoisie states are not fascist as most simply seek financial domination for capital and do not give a shit about if a citizen is a lord, and would rather have everyone toiling for capital itself.
Post-Stalin USSR was not fascist. FDR was a liberal leaning social democrat. Putin, though absolutely a conservative revanchist and oligarchic pos, is not a fascist.
I just don't understand how you can square "Fascism is Europe trying to match the US" and "The US isn't Fascist." If being more brutal than the US is a requirement, then literally only the Third Reich has ever been Fascist, and by that metric, not even Italy was Fascist.
The 'invalidation of former citizenry' is a large aspect of that 'more brutal' part of the equation. I suppose one could argue that the creation of the largest class of felonious non-voters per capita does satisfy that particular niche. Hmm. I guess it is pretty fascist then. I just haven't seen the general revolution, reorganization and mass privitization that usually precedes a fascist society. Like, if the Jan 6 thing had worked, and they then proceeded to sell all government land to local corporate entities, that would be a huge 'oh that is textbook fascism'.
Edit: I might be thinking too recent. Perhaps the American revolution itself was a fascist revolution.
The Italian fascists were absolutely as brutal to minorities, gays, and communists within their borders, as well as towards the Greeks. The only thing preventing them from being 'more brutal' at scale was the lack of a true expansionist industrial economy.
Here's a serious materialist analysis of the question by Prolekult, drawing on writings of Marx, Clara Zetkin, Jairus Banaji and others. https://youtu.be/QO-7cymgtqo
This is definitely interesting, and clearly makes the strongest case that Fascism is distinct from the American mode of production. But it doesn't say a word about Fascist Italy, and I'll admit that I don't know much about Fascist Italy myself. But I'd like to see if the things that they argue make Nazi Germany distinct from the US hold true for Fascist Italy. If not, then people arguing in favor of this distinction should really be using the word Nazism.
The doco uses Nazi Germany as an in-depth case-study and doesn't survey other examples of fascism. But I asked the creators a similar question in a Q&A after the premiere and they said that yes, the same definition works for fascist Italy, but that there examples often called fascist for which it might not exactly fit, such as Franco's Spain, a much less industrialised country.
However, this analysis provides a clear materialist understanding of how fascism is formed out of the decay of capitalism, the particular material nature of fascism, and allows us to draw clear relationships and distinctions with liberalism, bourgeois democracy, other forms of dictatorship. And if there are some things we've thought of as fascist that don't fit the definition exactly, then this definition allows us to study those differences and particularities, and to study the transfer of ideological features from the original classical fascism to other political formations.
American bourgeois democracy definitely looks and operates differently from Italian and German Fascism, but also distinctly from, AFAIK, every other bourgeois democracy. The various factions of the bourgeoisie do battle over their competing interests in Congress, but the degree to which covert and overt committees of intelligence and business people decide the actual critical components of domestic and foreign policy can't be overstated and, in my opinion, puts it at least adjacent to the dictatorship of Fascism (though much more effective due to the ability to maintain the facade of liberal democracy).
I haven't watched that video in a while, but what I didn't like about their definition of fascism is that it automatically excludes neocolonies from being fascist since their principle criterion is domination of financial capitalism with the understanding that the domination is through the country's own financial capitalists, not foreign capitalists. So, South Korea under Syngman Rhee wasn't fascist because South Korea is a US proxy state ultimately controlled by US financial capitalists.
In general, I don't get the purpose of their video. They're hyper-specific about what is and isn't fascist and are scornful of people with looser definitions, but it goes back to my question, what's the point? At the end of the day, it's just capitalist barbarism. Capitalism under decay descents into barbarism. To me, their entire video is just them going over a particular form of capitalist barbarism and being mad that people are using the word "fascism" as a synonym of the word "barbarism." "No, the US isn't fascist, it's settler-colonialist, another form of capitalist barbarism that's nevertheless distinct from fascism." I could counter this with, "Yep, the US isn't fascist, it's just a police state where the police are all fascist" and we're back at square 1. I think the video would be much more beneficial if it just catalogued multiple capitalist barbarisms, so a section on fascism, a section on settler-colonialism, a section on neocolonialism, and so on, with their historical and material roots, their particular ideological manifestations, and the means of combating these particular forms of reaction.
And finally, there's a particular form of racial tone-deafness, which I suppose is understandable because they're white Anglos. There's a reason why the Black Panthers and most Black and Indigenous radicals including George Jackson, someone who they referenced in the video, consider the US fascist. "Uh acktually, the US is settler-colonialist, not fascist" means absolutely nothing to people who are Black or Indigenous. From the perspective of someone who's Indigenous, what's the material difference between a settler-colonial US and a fascist US? Settler-colonial US already steals land, commits acts of genocides, and shoves them into camps. What would a fascist US possibly do to them that a settler-colonial US hasn't already done? Ditto for Black people. Settler-colonial US already enslaved them and continues to enslave them through penal labor. What would a fascist US do? Re-enslave them? Re-enact Jim Crow? Re-enforce miscegenation laws? Re-enact segregation? Re-establish inner city ghettos to concentrate the Black population? Unless they're envisioning a fascist US just straight up dropping tactical nukes on Black majority regions of the country (as we know, settler-colonial US has already dropped conventional bombs on Black communities), they're absolutely nothing a fascist US could do that a settler-colonial US hasn't already done.
I think we should not lose sight on the bigger picture, and instead of being overly academic we should, as George Jackson said:
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
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Not yet, but it is fashy and was great inspiration to the Nazis. It has so many core elements of fascism (as all capitalist states do), but is not yet in such a great capitalist reactionary upheaval that it would make sense to simply call it fascist.
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As above, they contain many elements of fascism, with ingredients to become fascist in short order, but aren't all exactly fascist. One good way to think if it is that capitalist states and fascist states are just two variations on the same thing, and most bourgeois states aren't in fascist mode (yet).
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The primary forms of fascism we talk about were Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany, which emerged as a reaction to the contradictions of capitalism and, in particular, the reactionary mobilization against anarchists, socialists, communists (the left) funded and supported by the bourgeoisie, or, more specifically, a subset of the bourgeoisie most beset by worker organization. Of course, we also see superficial similarity in all capitalist nations, such as the factory owner scapegoating brown immigrants for "taking your [white] jobs". It's not coincidence that the material driving force there are bourgeois compared to the group being mobilized. FNC and associated think tanks vs. Chuds. So why is it fascist in Italy and Nazi Germany but not modern Spain? Well, it still kind of is, because this is a shared trait. What is different is the extent to which it is a rapid reaction to a capitalist crisis in which capitalism itself is threatened by the left. Fascism is uniquely a response to capitalist crisis that, rather than resolving (even in fits and starts) in a socialist detection with the associated groundswelling of left organization, resolves through brutal cannibalization of domestic lives, industries, and state programs - and, of course, the purging of the left. 1-2-3: Capitalism in crisis, a left "threat" to capital, and bourgeois-backed reaction to the left that resolves the crisis through blood and deprivation. People point to the logic that it is the capitalist frontier turned inwards, as the frontier was a release valve for capitalist contradictions and many aspects specific to fascism appeared before this in (settler) colonialism. Also, fascism is better understood as both having a direct material basis (contradictions of capitalism and anti-worker mobilizations) and psychological, the two are intertwined. The forces of reaction require a foothold, one they gain by creating and exploiting things like race, religious conflict, gender roles, etc.
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No.
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Very good question. FDR, a liberal socdem, also faced a serious crisis of capitalism, an insurgent left, and bourgeois elements mobilizing against them. However, his socdem approach was different from outright fascism, as it acted more to coopt and defang the left and to invest in industry and welfare rather than exterminating the left and stripping social programs for parts (not that the US didn't run serious anticommunist campaigns and kill their leaders). But if you ask various folks, then you might say social democracy is the left wing of fascism, as they often (1) enable fascists and (2) are essentially fighting the same anticommunist battle to preserve capitalism.
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He's a nationalist, a capitalist, and an anticommunist that scapegoats using reactionary thinking to address (comparatively lesser) crises of capitalism, so he will have a lot in common with fascists (just variations on the same thing). Under changing conditions he could be one. But under these conditions, he isn't, and by "he" I really mean the state of the Russian Federation, as it is actually doing the opposite of what fascists did, economically. Rather than strip the country bare to rescue capitalism with blood, it's premised on building up production and economic planning. Keep in mind, of course, that capitalist governments routinrly fund and support fascist militants, particularly against communists, and this includes Russia.
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Fascism differs under different conditions. It is the mode of society that the bourgeoisie turn to when they need to employ ultra-violence to shut down an active anti-capitalist threat from the left. In short it is an anti-communist reaction.
The reason you're struggling with material definitions of it is because its presentation differs under different national conditions. Fascism with German characteristics differed to fascism with Italian characteristics or Spanish characteristics or Chilean characteristics or Japanese characteristics and so on and so forth.
When you understand this, you understand that the materialist analysis must examine fascism not by how it presents itself but by what its goal and purpose is - to kill the left. It exist as a white-bloodcell reaction to a socialist threat within the body of capitalism. When that threat is over, it does not become something unique, it morphs back into liberalism as it did in Chile and Spain where fascism was not defeated. Because liberalism is a more efficient method of extracting profit when there is no more threat.
As Rosa Luxemburg said, it's socialism or barbarism. We should never lose sight of this picture. Arguments over what is and isn't fascism boils down to people who use "fascism" as a synonym for capitalist barbarism and people who use "fascism" as a specific form of capitalist barbarism.
I think fascism is a product of reactionary anti-communism that occurs in a society with regular fighting on the streets. One of the things it demands are class collaborationism to propell the race forward through war.
No major political party in the west is fascist.
Ukraine however actually does bear most of the warning signs albeit mitigated by the fact they are already losing a large war and do not have Germany's industrial capacity and so don't pose as much of a threat as the Nazis. While they are fascists they are fascists presently being handled. In the short term a sort of fascist internationalle similar to when Irish Catholics went to fight for Franco has arrisen to support Ukraine and suffered heavy losses which has been bad for local fascist groups around the world. Brazilian anti-communist militias dying in Ukraine can't have hurt Lula
At the end of the day though there may well end up with leftover networks of fascists armed to the teeth with weapons from the war accros eastern europe which will be especially dangerous if NATO protects them in the NATO countries
Most importantly:
Is it possible to have fascism without fascists?
Fascism is an ideology guided by a myth of dominance for a certain group of people, which is used as a means to remove material from designated enemies. Public services are also privatized and everyone worker is put into more and more work. Basically, colonialism turns inward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism is pretty good as a starting point, lists different people's definitions
If you want to cut out the BS, the best materialist definition is by Dimitrov, and the best summary of the ideological superstructure built on that foundation is Eco's Ur-Fascism, but a bunch of the others are worth reading just for a good laugh.
FDR's definition is actually quite elegantly concise, even if it is too vague and broad to really be discerning.
