weird how many fash countries were on the anti-fascist side.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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GenZedong
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Now see, I know that you are referring to the liberal régimes like Imperial America, but eleven months ago I had a strange dream about confirmed Fascists who fought for the Allies, and it turned out that there were indeed some.
In the same vein, some Fascists refused to go to war against the RSI, while others joined the Royal Army, considering this the honorable (and Fascist) thing to do. In perhaps the greatest irony imaginable, eager draftees in May 1944 shouted “Hail Mussolini! Duce! Duce!” when in fact the army they were joining was at war with Mussolini.⁷⁵
(Source.)
How the hell do you even reconcile that view while fighting Mussolini's army?
The best explanation that I can propose is that they simply had not yet heard the news that Benito Mussolini was the official head of the Salò régime.
That is certainly easy to understand from the perspectives of the Soviet Union, the Mongolian People’s Republic, and all of the socialist paramilitaries (including the CPC). Unfortunately, the Western Allies did not fight the Axis in order to defeat Fascism, hence why nobody invaded Iberia’s parafascist empires.
I used to think that World War I was boring because I could not sympathize with any of the sides. However, after I watched videos of The Entente Gold, and more importantly, after I learnt about the Meds Yeghern, I finally started taking WWI seriously. WWI was not just another silly game of empires competing for resources: it involved ordinary people, like us, struggling against their oppressors. That being said, calling this the ‘World Anti-Imperialist War’ would be too misleading, much like referring to its sequel as the ‘World Anti-Fascist War’ is, even though I could understand how somebody else would arrive at those conclusions.
World Anti-Fascist War > Great Patriotic War > World War 2.
"Great Patriotic War" only refers to Soviet War of Resistance Against German Aggression, so it would be kinda stupid to use that.
It’s a bit clunky in English but I do agree with the framing.
I know there will be endless arguing over not including the US, UK, and France as fascist countries but in reality they were not fascist. Of course those countries sucked - all three were maintaining brutal colonial empires at the time - but to call them fascist is to basically strip fascism as meaning anything. You can still be evil and not fascist. Japan, Germany, and Italy all possessed unique qualities as states (fascism) and they were on the same side. I think it’s a reasonable description.
Disagree on the US specifically. If anything the USA was the original fascist state.
People say this, but I dont really get it. Maybe I'm missing something.
Fascism is, to my understanding, a harsh reactionary reorganization of society for two purposes that can exist independently and simultaneously.
A.In order to stop leftist, proletarian movements from taking power
B.Reorganize the state to recooperate Bourgeois losses and the decline in the rate of profit in multiple ways.
For instance, Germany's fascist reorganization occurred due to many socialist rebellions that had been occurring over the past couple decades, the lack of imperial possessions squeezing the Bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy, and the social democratic reforms being ineffective at stopping revolt in economic crisis.
Personally I also define fascism as being reactionary and intent on defending, building, or being subservient to empire. This would make Pinochet's Chile fascist, but would leave Sun Yat-Sen's Kuomintang non-fascist, despite being a Bourgeois, authoritarian reorganization of China.
But America wasn't this. It kinda categorically couldn't have been, given that it was a burgeoning Bourgeois society. Was there slavery and settled colonialism and genocide? Yes. Does America not being fascist lesson these crimes? No. But fascism is a property of imperialist monopoly capitalism. It would be like attempting to declare William the Conquerer's England "absolutist." Absolutism could only occur at a certain stage of Feudal development. Yet William the Conquered still massacred thousands and still stole land in the Harrying of the North. But these bad things did not mean he ran an absolutist regime. In the same vain, a country doing and being incepted upon horrible crimes does not automatically make it fascist.
America was all those things, though.
It was already an established bourgeois society with a liberal democratic model of governance. The growth of this society, however, was being constrained by the British Parliament - who had established the Thirteen Colonies for the purposes of extraction to the benefit of Britain. This put the British aristocracy at odds with the American settlers and created a class conflict of interests; with Americans settlers wanting to expand their profits by pushing deeper into the territory of indigenous peoples' and rival empires while the British aristocracy wanted to safeguard their resource farms in America to fuel what was really important to them: their estates in the British Isles.
While the labor movement may have been nonexistent at this point in this time there was still a growing abolitionist movement to consider. Chattel slavery was used throughout the colonies and played an integral role in the colonial modes of production. This was a direct threat to bourgeois interests and it's why despite having many champions slavery wasn't abolished when the USA was established. The Founding Fathers even admitted that they couldn't oppose slavery, despite disagreeing with it on moral grounds, because it benefited them directly.
As for imperialism, what did America do right after gaining independence? What was doing while fighting for independence? What was it doing even while it was part of the British Empire as a colony? Expanding violently & rapidly to take as much land and resources as possible, projecting power wherever it could, pushing rival empires out of its sphere of influence, enslaving those countries it either couldn't conquer or didn't want to conquer.
The American project of empire-building was 100% the original incarnation of fascism and it's why Herzl, Mussolini, and Hitler copied our homework.
Hitler and other fascists definitely took inspiration from the colonial apparatus of America, but that's not all fascism is and was. That's not to say its not an important part, but it's not the only part.
Before we go further I want to reiterate that this is not a defense of American colonialism. It's just that it's undialectical to describe it as fascist.
It did do all of those things. Slavery, genocide, etc. But I think there are a few key distinctions
1.Existentialism
The United States engaged in its conquests "peacemeal" per se. Of course there were issues with the technology at the time, but Hitler attempted to conquer the whole of Europe in about half a decade, Japan attempted to conquer China in 8 years. Why did these fascist nations do this? Because there was an existential crisis of capitalism. If they did not engage in rapid Conquest then their economies would've collapsed. It is also why we see the reemergence of fascism today, because of the decline in the rate of profit and that, finally after 400 years, the west has ran out of places to plunder. However, America again existed in early stage capitalism. It's expansion was not predicated on an existential crisis to preserve the system, but simply to out compete other empires and colonies. It took another 70 years from independence for the US to reach it's mainland extent.
It's similar to why I wouldn't call Napoleonic France fascist. I certainly don't like it, and he engaged in colonialism, slavery, and conquests, but he represented a different historical phenomenon that shared his name.
You might argue the abolition movement could constitute as this, but even without the US being a constituent nation of the empire, Britain still took until 1833 to abolish it. It certainly was one of the fears of the colonists, but it was, again, a driving force of inter-imperial competition rather than an existential threat (although of course the slave owners probably saw it as such).
2.Reorganization of society
This is, in my opinion, the biggest indication of fascism. Looking at all the fascist coups and "counter revolutions"* of the 20th and 21st century, fascism necessitates a mass reorganization of society in some form or another. Most notably the mass removal of social democratic labor laws and restrictions of Bourgeois political freedoms. This is a key part of fascism entirely because of the existentialism mentioned in the last part.
However, as noted previously, the USA did not engage in a mass societal change. There were certainly political changes and societal upheaval, sure, but for the most part the point of the war for independence was
-
The laboring class's wish for more political freedoms away from the British crown, and a cessation of exploitative tarrifs and taxation
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The ruling class's wish and will for independence from the British crown and parliament in order to further expand their own imperial possessions and engage in further accumulation outside of the trade restrictions of the Empire.
The key thing is that this is a continuation of the status quo, and not a reactionary revolt to a new state of society. Perhaps you could consider it reactionary, but really the independence war has much more in common with bonapartism (the seizing of power by a ruling class with some reforms in order to stave off revolutionary reorganization) than fascism.
*Counter revolution is the wrong word here, but I really don't have a good term to describe it. I am taking from one of Hitler's speeches at his putsh trial as he says "I am a revolutionary against the revolution." And I feel that encapsulates fascism to a tee, but "counter revolution" is already a term, and even describing fascist takeovers as revolutions doesn't feel accurate either
Just like La Dame D'Azur wrote, the USA IS the original fascist state and one could consider it a successful one to the point that it was an inspiration for the Nazis. To delve into this, you can read the following book:
For the part of the inspiration of the Nazis, there is a russian historian called Yegor Yákovlev that delves into this. CubaDebate has a video from this historian
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I think it shows that western propaganda has infected China. Both wars were war between imperialist capitalists vs capitalists who were striving for empire.
Pre-ww2 usa was every bit as fascist as germany. They just had victims who couldn't effectively resist.
europe didn't fight germany and italy to stop fascism. They did it to protect themselves and their colonial holdings.
The Chinese Communists made a truce with Chinese fascists to fight the japanese fascists. The Chinese didn't defeat the kmt until 4 years after ww2 was over.
The next world war will be the world anti-fascist war.
I don't agree at all. Remember that China was fighting against fascist/monarchist Japan.
China knows that the leaders of World War 2 were the USSR and arguable Maoist China. It knows that capitalist countries mostly provided assistance to socialism, because Hitler had gone too far for the colonialist's tastes.
China fought the imperialist Japanese not the fascism. Once japan was off the main land China stopped fighting them. The Chinese civil war against the fascist KMT ended after ww2. So for China ww2 wasn't against fascism it was against imperialism.
For Russia it was war against fascists but it was a defensive war. They were not actively seeking to crush fascism. They were defending themselves against an invasion and the invaders refused to surrender until after they took the enemy's capital and hitler shot himself in the head.
Fighting fascists is not the same as anti-fascism.
Once japan was off the main land China stopped fighting them
I don’t think China had any ability to continue fighting Japan once they were off the mainland.
The Chinese civil war which started before ww2 and was delayed when the Japanese attacked raged on for another 4 years. So they did keep fighting just not the Japanese.
I think they referred to the non-existent Chinese navy at the time, not their general ability to wage war. Either China would have been unable to invade the Japanese isles.
Still seems like you're slightly splitting hairs
We are discussing what we think about a name for a historical event. It is literally a semantic discussion. So yeah I am being precise as to why I think it is a bad name.
Totally off base. You need some self crit.
The war was predominantly Third Reich representing European capital vs USSR.
80% of the third Reich defeated by the Soviets.
It was 100% the anti-fascist war
USSR were fighting fascists but they were not seeking to destroy fascism. It was self defense against fascist not a proactive war of extermination of the fascist ideology.
And the third reich was not representing "european capital" it was representing a bulk of European industrial capital but by no means was it all of it.
You could call it the war against communism then, but that wouldn't create a glory story
Regarding capital, you just splitting hairs
It started as a usual imperialist war and then turned into communism vs fascism.
I always think of both World Wars as capitalist on capitalist violence, since fascism is just capitalism with a dose of ultra-nationalism.