Concept
Red fascism
Overview
Red fascism is a concept equating Stalinism and other variants of Marxism–Leninism or communism in general with fascism. As a term, it dates back to the 1920s and was originally used by left-wing individuals who were critics of Bolshevism; by the 1940s and the Cold War era, particularly in the United States, it was adapted as an anti-communist slogan within the framework of totalitarianism. Since the 1990s, the concept of red fascism began to overlap with that of red–brownism. Others associated it with red–green–brown alliances, "left-wing fascism" and the regressive left, and Islamofascism.
In the early 20th century, the original Italian fascists initially claimed to be "neither left-wing nor right-wing"; by 1921, they began to identify themselves as the "extreme right", and their founder Benito Mussolini explicitly affirmed that fascism is opposed to socialism and other left-wing ideologies. Accusations that the leaders of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era acted as "red fascists" have come from left-wing figures who identified as anarchists, left communists, left-wing nationalists, social democrats, and other democratic socialists, as well as liberals and among right-wing circles both closer to and further from the political centre. The comparison of Nazism and Stalinism is controversial in academia.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The materialistic conception of history, as it is called, is due to Marx, and underlies the whole Communist philosophy. I do not mean, of course, that a man could not be a Communist without accepting it, but that in fact it is accepted by the Communist Party, and that it profoundly influences their views as to politics and tactics.
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
States what Red fascism is.
I must call attention to the fact, by the way, that the views here set out were, for by far the most part, developed and established by Marx, and only to a very slight degree by myself, so that it is understood that I have not represented them without his knowledge. I read the entire manuscript to him before sending it to press and the tenth chapter of the section on Political Economy was written by Marx and…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
States what Red fascism is.
Absolutism, parliamentary monarchy, democracy--in the presence of imperialism (and, consequently, in the presence of the revolution rising to take its place), all the state forms of bourgeois supremacy, from Russian Tsarism to North American quasi-democratic federalism, have been given equal rights, bound up in such combinations as to supplement one another in an indivisible whole. Imperialism succeeded by means of…
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
Close in meaning to Red fascism; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Red fascism
Related ideas
- Fascism
- Anarchism
- Joseph Stalin
- Bolshevism
- Left-wing politics
- Marxism
- Liberalism
- New Deal
- Wilhelm Reich
- Marxism–Leninism
- Nazi Germany
- Communist state
- President of the United States
- Russian Revolution
- Soviet Union
- Stalinism
- State capitalism
- Totalitarianism
- The New York Times
- Nazism
- Cold War
- Social Democratic Party of Germany
- Communism
- Bernard-Henri Lévy
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Fascism.