If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
― Winston Churchill (Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)”
I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between Communism and Nazi-ism, I would choose Communism.
― Winston Churchill
I have never in my life seen these quotes before. Holy shit they're bad.
Churchill wasn't a fascist but more so an abjectly naked proponent for the British empire, the British people, the British monarchy and it's preservation over all else.
If it was in the best interest to align with the British Union of Fascists under Mosley to preserve the crown, Churchill would do so. If preserving the crown meant making concessions to the British trade unions and the CBGB, then you bet your ass Churchill would be fucking salty over it but he'd do it.
If it was in the interest of preserving the crown to intentionally starve the Bengals and Indians by extorting all their food supplies so the British Isles would have a food surplus to make a profit off of in the post war climate? Guess what fucker, Churchill did that.
That fat fuck was a dogshit inbred arch-imperialist to his core, and may he rot in hell for it. But lets not mistake his evil for the fascistic menace.
I mean. He literally just fucking tells Italians "I'd be a member of Mussolini's party if I were Italian" which I translate to "I am a fascist" so I have no qualms with calling him a fascist.
But fascism has some characteristics - populism, mass rallies, leader worship, conspiracy thinking - that are very different from the British imperialism Churchill represented.
That doesn't only hold true for British Imperialism. Churchill is closer to German nationalists like the DNVP, who fully aided Hitler's rise to power for revanchist and restaurative reasons, but looked down on the nazis because they saw them as uncouth, irrational plebs that they wrongly thought they could control.
What Churchill represents is the proto-fascist old order of European monarchism. It is a possible prerequisite for fascism, a superstructural groundwork that enables it to resonate with the masses driven to the edge by their dehumanizing material conditions, in much the same way that US jingoism has been the superstructural groundwork for the alt-right. But as connected as the two are, they aren't identical. One is rather the predecessor of the other, and that's why the racist pig Churchill, that imperialist mass murderer, felt so closely related to fascist butchers like Hitler and Mussolini - after all, his was the world that produced these two.