WTF Actually is Fascism?

0:00 steeped in some of the darkest periods of history,

0:03 broadly misunderstood and used as an insult directed at well

0:07 just about anybody who might have a different political opinion.

0:11 Fascism.

0:11 Fascist.

0:12 Fascist.

0:12 Fascist.

0:13 She's a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist.

0:16 You keep using the word.

0:18 I don't think it means what you think it means.

0:21 Fascism is a word as misunderstood as it is misused.

0:25 Now, these hyperbolic politicians could almost

0:27 be forgiven for not really knowing what they are talking about because

0:32 nobody really knows what they're talking about.

0:35 George Orwell once wrote, "The word fascism has no meaning except in so far

0:40 as it signifies something not desirable." He and Kershaw has

0:43 dedicated his life to being one of the world's pre-eminent

0:46 researchers on the social history of Germany in the 20th century.

0:50 And even he said that defining fascism is

0:53 like trying to staple jelly to the wall.

0:55 A hard andf fast definition never existed in the first place.

0:59 And even if it did, it has changed

1:02 over time from an idealistic but ultimately flawed

1:04 movement coming out of a continent going through

1:07 some radical change into what it is today,

1:09 which is just a bad thing that we really shouldn't do again.

1:13 For most people, that may be all they need to know.

1:17 But it does raise some uncomfortable

1:19 questions like has fascism just been rebranded?

1:22 One of the reasons why just recklessly throwing the fascist

1:25 label on anything with even a hint of authority

1:28 is so dangerous is because for every characteristic

1:30 that aligns with something like Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy,

1:34 there will be a characteristic that doesn't.

1:37 Just because something isn't strictly in line with the most prominent

1:41 historical examples of fascism does not mean that it isn't fascism.

1:45 And just because something isn't strictly fascism doesn't mean that it's safe.

1:49 But okay then, what are some signs and symptoms you should ask

1:53 your doctor about if you suspect you

1:55 may have fascism developing in your country?

1:58 And well, if fascism really is so bad,

2:01 why the do Americans have Mussolini's universal symbol

2:05 of fascism hanging up in front of Congress?

2:09 In this day and age, if somebody calls you a fascist,

2:12 that's probably not a good thing.

2:14 But before some incidents in the midentth century,

2:16 it was just a political movement like any other.

2:20 Today, no serious political party

2:22 would voluntarily brand themselves as fascists.

2:24 But across Europe and North America back then, they were quite popular.

2:28 In many ways, it was broadly considered less controversial than

2:32 a lot of other types of politics at the time,

2:35 especially socialist communism, which was also on the rise.

2:39 Fascism was just branding.

2:40 The Democrats align themselves with democracy.

2:43 The Republicans with the Republic.

2:46 Labor parties across the world use their name to signify their alignment

2:50 with workers and communist socialist parties with the ideas of socialism.

2:54 So then what about fascism?

2:56 The ethmology of the word comes from the Latin

2:59 fasces which is simply a bundle of sticks.

3:02 The idea is that a single stick is easy to break

3:06 but a bundle of sticks all aligned with one another is remarkably strong.

3:10 This simple little metaphor goes all the way back to Rome,

3:14 which used a fast case with an axe

3:16 to signify the state's power to punish its subjects.

3:20 These are the exact same symbols that are displayed in front of Congress.

3:24 And if you look closely enough, on the legs of Abraham Lincoln's memorial,

3:28 the bundle of sticks has been a cultural icon throughout history.

3:33 It was everywhere because it was a powerful,

3:35 tangible demonstration of the benefits of unity.

3:38 Obviously, this was something that governments

3:40 throughout history wanted to encourage.

3:42 Bundles of sticks for a long time were surprisingly important.

3:46 They were the primary source of fuel for cooking and heat,

3:49 so modern words stemming from them show up in more places than you might expect.

3:53 Since this video is well and truly going to get demonetized anyway,

3:57 a not so fun bonus fact for you is that the slur directed towards

4:01 gay men also traces its origins back to these bundles of sticks as well.

4:06 He's right.

4:07 Individually, we are weak like a single twig,

4:10 but as a bundle, we form a mighty fat.

4:14 Anyway, the point is that in 1919, when Bonito Mussolini reformed the fasciso,

4:20 which would later go on to become the National Fascist Party of Italy,

4:23 the word itself and its iconography didn't have

4:27 the um uh branding problem that it does today.

4:30 The idea of strength through unity was appealing to a lot of people in Europe,

4:34 which at the time was living through the aftermath of the Great War.

4:39 Long-standing empires had fallen, and in the power vacuum,

4:42 a lot of ideas were being thrown around about the best way

4:47 to reorganize society to bring back some kind of perceived glory days.

4:51 Outside of the title they had given themselves as fascists,

4:55 there still wasn't any hard and fast defining

4:58 characteristics of the movement because one of the most

5:01 important things you need to remember is

5:03 that these guys were figuring it all out as well.

5:06 There wasn't some seminal text on exactly what fascism

5:10 was like the communist manifesto was to well communism.

5:14 Some point to the writings of George S.

5:17 Sorell as the equivalent of a Marxist figure for fascism.

5:20 He wrote a lot about individual service to a collective mission.

5:24 But to be fair, his work also inspired communists and even anarchists,

5:28 so the fascists don't get to claim him exclusively.

5:31 The definition would later emerge from their choices and how they

5:35 handled power rather than the choices being defined by a definitive idea.

5:39 Before Mussolini formed the Fascist Party, he was actually a member of Italy's

5:44 Socialist Party and not a lowly member either.

5:47 His writing skills let him climb the ranks

5:50 and direct the publication of the party newspaper,

5:53 significantly increasing its readership,

5:54 but he didn't always see eye to eye with other leaders.

5:59 Mussolini liked the idea of the masses being

6:01 a revolutionary force to reset the national order,

6:03 but he wasn't such a big fan of the other big ideas that came with socialism,

6:09 mainly egalitarianism.

6:10 Part of the reason why defining political ideologies can get so complicated is

6:15 ironically because we try so hard

6:17 to simplify them into neat little left-right spectrums.

6:20 The socialists and the communists are identified

6:23 as far-left ideologies and the fascists as far right.

6:26 But what does that even mean?

6:28 It just raises more questions than it answers.

6:31 Especially since whether they would like to admit it or not,

6:34 these two groups have a lot in common.

6:36 But politics is complicated and messy at the best of times.

6:40 and the early 19th century was complicated and messy.

6:43 On top of that, politics is the combination of multiple characteristics.

6:46 So, I present to you that a better way to think

6:49 about this is to take inspiration from role- playing games.

6:53 Every political ideology has a unique combination of stats,

6:56 and it's up to you to decide which character you want to pick.

6:59 Back in Italy, Mussolini was going to be presented with an opportunity

7:03 to align his own skill points to build a movement from scratch.

7:06 After the start of the first world war,

7:09 he was expelled from the socialist party because he supported

7:12 the conflict as a catalyst to bring about revolutionary change.

7:16 However, the party officially condemned the war

7:19 as an intervention into another state's self-determination.

7:21 Now, maybe he was just a bit salty about being kicked out of the club,

7:27 but he would take some of the ideas of socialism,

7:30 combine it with some other ideas from his favorite thinkers at the time,

7:33 and use it to create a new type of politics.

7:36 Oh, and uh if you are currently furiously typing in the comments

7:39 section about how wrong the characteristics of socialism are, congratulations.

7:43 You have unlocked a new challenge in this whole game.

7:47 How these political ideologies exist in theory was

7:51 very often different to how they existed in reality.

7:54 Mussolini wasn't alone in figuring this all out.

7:57 Across much of Europe and the rest of the world,

8:00 there were similar people with similar ideas slowly gaining popularity.

8:05 Yes, including a certain failed artist.

8:08 This background is very important because it clearly highlights two things.

8:12 The first is that while the socialist

8:15 and fascists eventually became sworn enemies of one another,

8:18 a lot of their early membership had a lot

8:21 of overlap brought together by the second important thing,

8:23 which is that both of them were defined by the need

8:27 for a new powerful state brought about through revolutionary change.

8:31 Where they differed was what would happen once they had achieved that change.

8:35 So, it's time to learn how history works to find out what

8:39 fascism really was and why it's so widely misused as a generic insult.

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10:17 One of the clearer defining features

10:19 of fascism is how it handles individual equality.

10:23 Liberal democracies like the United States were quite literally

10:26 founded on the idea that all men are created equal.

10:29 Now again, the idealistic notions of the founding

10:33 fathers didn't always line up with reality.

10:35 The abolition of slavery and women's suffrage took a while to get sorted out,

10:39 but you know, they had spirit.

10:41 Even today, liberal democracies are clearly not always perfect.

10:45 But they do at least strive to create

10:47 a system where everybody has an equal opportunity to life,

10:50 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

10:53 Communists in the idealized utopia that they

10:56 were working towards took this a step further.

10:59 They generally acknowledged that people were not actually created equal

11:02 and that different people would have different abilities and different needs.

11:06 Equality was a desirable outcome to be worked towards, not an assumption.

11:11 Fascism went the other way.

11:13 People were not created equal,

11:15 and it was unnatural to assume that they were or should be treated as such.

11:19 People who were perceived as the fittest, best,

11:22 and brightest should be elevated in society

11:25 to where they could do the most good.

11:26 Those who were weak should minimize how much

11:28 of a drag they were on that greater good.

11:31 This clearly has elements of Darwinism

11:33 whereby encouraging the elevation and survival

11:35 of the fittest should make the herd or the state more competitive.

11:40 Fascism identified heavily with competitive sports

11:43 and also in more subtle ways like

11:45 elevating people who excelled in their professional

11:48 discipline into positions of state leadership.

11:51 In retrospect, this does seem to be

11:53 at odds with the whole bundle of sticks metaphor.

11:56 But according to fascism, some sticks are bigger and stronger than others.

12:00 and a big bundle of big sticks was the solution to all of society's problems.

12:05 I really hate to say it, but during the mid 19th century,

12:10 fascists were kind of the original alpha bros.

12:12 Everybody was assigned a rank and value was

12:15 determined on where they sat in that hierarchy.

12:19 How societal rankings were tiered did vary regime by regime.

12:23 In Nazi Germany, it was infamously based on a perceived master race

12:26 at the top and at the bottom were the people holding society back.

12:30 People who were either physically weak or disabled,

12:33 people with subversive political leanings or other

12:36 races that were enemies of the state.

12:39 In Italy, how that rank was determined wasn't as direct as someone's race.

12:43 There was still an emphasis on machismo,

12:45 but Mussolini famously mocked Hitler's ideas about racial purity.

12:49 One common group that was elevated in all of these regimes,

12:53 though, was the youth.

12:55 Young people are generally the most fit and able-bodied,

12:58 which aligns with the vision of a strong,

13:00 healthy state made up of strong, healthy people.

13:03 It also probably didn't hurt that young people are generally more

13:06 impressionable and agreeable with the idea that they are the best

13:10 and that society would be better if everybody else got

13:12 out of the way to let them just do their thing.

13:16 This messaging was especially appealing to young men, in particular,

13:19 those who felt like they had not achieved what they wanted

13:22 in life because certain elements in society were holding them back.

13:27 This youthful trait was not so subtly exploited by groups

13:31 of feeble old men who made up the leadership of these regimes.

13:35 Now, to be fair, life for a lot of young

13:38 people during the interwar period in Europe was not easy.

13:41 Germany in particular was crippled by an unsustainable

13:44 national debt in the form of war reparations,

13:47 high youth unemployment, and inflation resetting savings.

13:50 Achieving life's milestones was almost impossible for young people.

13:54 At the same time, the VHimar Republic

13:56 was quite progressive in the fields of art, science, and social freedoms.

14:00 This extended to things like women's rights and gay rights,

14:03 as well as a very open culture towards

14:06 new ideas that challenged tradition in profound ways.

14:09 groups that had in the past been

14:11 repressed were given opportunities they weren't before,

14:13 occasionally displacing less deserving but more entitled people in the process.

14:17 For a lot of disenfranchised young people,

14:20 it was an easier pill to swallow that these degenerate

14:23 new elements had corrupted society and conspired to work against them.

14:27 So resetting the social order to how it ought to be

14:31 should bring back prosperity to those most deserving of it.

14:34 when the counterargument was a detailed

14:38 analysis of global macroeconomic conditions

14:40 and the acknowledgement that they had just lost the biggest war in history.

14:45 Uh yeah, the first guy's story sounded a lot easier to go along with.

14:49 Naturally, this created a system where inequality

14:51 wasn't just a byproduct of the system, it was the heart of it.

14:56 Having someone to blame for all of the problems in the world

14:59 is part of the reason why many consider fascism to be ultimately unsustainable.

15:02 you eventually run out of people to blame at the bottom.

15:06 So, the masses attention turns to the top.

15:08 Now, it's important to emphasize that even the people at the top

15:12 of this manufactured hierarchy weren't exactly living their best life.

15:16 The philosophy behind elevating these people was not

15:19 necessarily so that they could live a charmed life.

15:21 It was so they could serve the state.

15:24 Another core tenant of fascism is that the needs

15:27 of the individual were always beneath the needs of the state.

15:30 The state was seen as a truly exceptional entity,

15:34 clearly superior to any other state in the world.

15:36 For the people at the top of the hierarchy,

15:39 that meant dedicated service, either militarily or in their profession.

15:42 One of the only ways people could define themselves or flex on their peers,

15:47 was by service and recognition of the state.

15:50 Even within the chosen people, rank was everything.

15:53 For the people at the bottom, putting the needs of the state ahead of their own

15:58 often just meant getting out of the way, or of course much, much worse.

16:03 For women, this duty to the state was arguably even more strict.

16:08 Fascist regimes pushed for traditional gender roles to such

16:10 an extreme that it often came at their own peril.

16:13 The German war effort was at a significant

16:16 disadvantage on the home front because

16:17 they were hesitant to let women work in the factories like the Allied forces.

16:22 For a while, the Germans could make up the difference with forced labor,

16:25 but there were still some roles that could only be done by, well,

16:30 let's just say uh self-motivated workers.

16:33 These ultra traditional roles combined with the idea that the fit, strong,

16:38 chosen people should outreed the less desirable elements

16:41 of society led to an almost obsessive focus on natalism.

16:46 In Nazi Germany, monetary bonuses were given to families for having children.

16:50 Women who had more than four children were awarded

16:53 with the cross of honor of the German mother,

16:56 a militarystyle decoration presented for service to the state.

17:00 The male equivalent of being a good mother was being a good soldier.

17:05 Militarism encompassed everything that fascism strived to be.

17:09 Aggressive, structured, hierarchal, and powerful.

17:12 The military was a tool intertwined with the society

17:15 and it was something that leaders were very proud of.

17:18 Often taking direct control above and beyond the levels of a typical politician.

17:24 Projecting military strength onto other weaker states

17:26 was seen as the natural order of things.

17:29 So of course the military was used liberally within

17:33 the state to keep all the twigs in line.

17:36 This is another place where comparisons to authoritarian

17:39 communist states can become a little bit confusing.

17:42 In theory, Marxist Leninist socialist states were not imperialistic.

17:46 In fact, they were built on the idea that workers should rise up to overthrow

17:51 their oppressors and that it doesn't really work

17:54 if they are the ones doing the oppressing.

17:56 They still acknowledged that a military was a tool for defense,

17:59 but it certainly wasn't meant to be an a grandized feature of the state.

18:04 In practice, authoritarian leaders of all flavors like the military

18:07 because it's a tool for holding on to power.

18:10 Fascist states just have it as a core tenant of their political philosophy,

18:14 whereas this kind of stuff is technically

18:16 out of line in an ideal communist nation.

18:19 Of course, the military couldn't handle every function of the state,

18:22 which brings us to the final piece of the puzzle, the fascist economy.

18:27 Using an extremely basic but ultimately flawed

18:31 left-right political spectrum would suggest that political

18:35 ideologies on the right should be pro-f

18:38 free markets and anti-government intervention in commerce.

18:41 Fascism again shows why trying to simplify these things

18:45 only makes them more confusing because nothing fits neatly.

18:49 Economic freedom in a fascist state is not as limited

18:53 as it is in something like a communist nation.

18:56 people as long as they were the right people could own businesses,

19:00 save money, invest profits, and speculate to become rich and poor.

19:04 As already mentioned,

19:05 welfare was limited because only the strongest and smartest should survive.

19:09 However, all of this was only allowed to happen if

19:13 it did not interfere with the authority of the state.

19:16 Company managers and owners of major

19:18 industries were routinely stripped of their business

19:21 so that control could be given to someone considered more worthy.

19:26 In ideal circumstances, this was done so that something like an engineering firm

19:30 could be managed by an engineer rather than a career businessman.

19:33 In practice, it was often done to take assets

19:37 from underclasses and give it to a well-connected party member.

19:40 Adolf Rosenberger was a prominent financier who was also one

19:44 of the original founders of both the Porsche company and the auto union,

19:48 later known as Audi.

19:50 After Hitler came to power,

19:52 these firms were put under the control of engineers instead of financiers,

19:56 which almost sounds good in theory,

19:58 except that the true motivation was more likely because Rosenberg was a Jew.

20:03 Industrialists who did tow the party line were

20:07 thoroughly integrated into the state and the military,

20:10 often making their business indistinguishable from government organizations.

20:13 Now, in the interest of fairness,

20:16 the most historically significant fascist regimes spent most

20:19 of their existence in a total war economy.

20:21 Back then, even the Americans had a high level of government

20:25 intervention in private industry with factories

20:28 being commandeered for the war effort.

20:29 But despite that, it was pretty clear that people had economic freedoms

20:33 in the sense that they were free to be rewarded by their leaders.

20:37 So if you happen to see the signs and symptoms of crony capitalism,

20:42 reverence of militarism, strongman leadership,

20:45 appeals to a young base that feels disenfranchised because they think

20:48 major problems can only be solved by getting rid of undesirabs,

20:51 reversing freedoms that have gone too far,

20:54 and encouraging a return to traditional family values,

20:56 including having lots of kids, you might want to get that checked out.

21:00 Now, if you were interested in the story of that long-forgotten Porsche founder,

21:04 watch this next video to learn about the troubled

21:07 history of one of the world's most revered automakers.

21:09 And don't forget to like and subscribe to keep on learning how history works.