Fascism and Communism – What is the Difference? By Scipio

The short answer is “not much”, because they are both rooted in Socialism. It’s more of a comparison rather than a contrast.

Viewed in contemporary American politics; Biden, and supporters like Pelosi, Schumer, and Warren are the fascists wing of the Democratic Party.  AOC, Sanders, and The Squad are the communist wing of the Democratic Party. In the Republican Party the Fascist wing is led by Romney, McCain, and Graham.  There are not enough liberty loving Republicans to have a “wing”. I single out these individuals and their ilk so you can study them, be able to identify their beliefs, what they say, and, more importantly, what they do. The overarching agendas of these supposedly antithetical groups have in common is their lust for centralized power, war mongering, and societal control.

Fascism is the most difficult of the two to identify in politics and society because it’s not an all-encompassing ideology compared to Communism.  Fascism is like a parasite that sucks the life out of its host, but realizes is must keep its host alive. Your day-to-day personal life may be marginally unaffected under fascism, but under communism every day-to-day activity is absolutely controlled.  You may even be a fascist and not know it.  I have encountered fascists like this before. Most often they don’t realize what they say or believe has a socialist ideology behind it.  A common phrase fascists and borderline fascists use is, “they should do something about it”. Communist don’t care if they suck the life out of its host and the host dies.  They can’t see beyond that because they think “this time it’s different”. Communists on the other hand know very well they are communists. A common phrase used by communist or borderline communists is, “it’s for the greater good”,

So, what is the difference between the two?  Here is my non-textbook observation.  Fascism wants to control the major apparatus of society, government, media, and industry.  President Eisenhower spoke of this in his “military industrial complex” warning.  Ike was a nice guy, and after defeating fascism in Europe and Asia, he didn’t have the stomach to tell Americans that after all they went through in WW II, fascism was already rooted in their own country and growing. Communism was budding as well, but Eisenhour saw fascism as the most imminent threat. Communism, conversely, wants to control everything.  The two systems are an existential threat to the American democratic process and to the Republic’s very existence. It wasn’t communist who assassinated President Kennedy, and it wasn’t fascist who took over academia.

The history of the second half of America’s twentieth century domestic politics and now in the present twenty first century has been the struggle between these two factions. Traditional bulwarks of a liberal democracy have been dismantled and marginalized by them. They presently have in their cross hairs the elimination of the Electoral College. For all practical purposes you can call fascism “corporatism” and it would be a perfect synonym.  Fascist politicians use the marriage between corporate media and industry to control people and consolidate and expand their power. Communist politicians use, climate change, LBGT issues, basic earned income, the welfare state, feed the children slogans, social programs, diversity, inclusion as highly emotional issues as   cover to undermine America’s social fabric and legal system in order to foster revolution where they hope to take absolute control. Communism wants to control everything that the fascists want to control, but in addition, they also want to control everything; your thoughts, your body, your beliefs.  It totally encompasses everything in life.

Fascism promises efficiency.  For example, during WW II Italians were aware Mussolini’s fascism wasn’t what they thought it would be but Italian’s would conclude, “at least the trains run efficiently” summing up their personal day-to-day benefit that made fascism palatable.  On the other hand, communism promises utopia. Tragically , the opposite of utopia is realized in the real-world application of communist ideology. Behind a wall of censorship of outside news, political correctness, and wokeness, communist weave their web of control.  It’s a strategy straight out of Mao’s “Great Cultural Proletariat Revolution” (The Cultural Revolution) from 1966 – 1976.  It was a period of an ideological reign of terror in China. Today, North Koreans think their harsh conditions are nothing compared to the hardship’s they think capitalists’ countries are going through.  They have been conditioned by constant propaganda and careful control of outside news to really think they are living in a “workers paradise”, not knowing they are actually living in a hell hole.

Fascism and communism have more in common than uncommon.  That is because in the political spectrum they are BOTH on the Far Left.  Popular media, conventional wisdom, schools, and government pronouncements, etc. ALWAYS portray fascists as FAR RIGHT and that is simply NOT TRUE.  They are both socialist, i.e., heavy on government control: fascist want major control, communist want complete control. Hitler himself expressed the difference between the two when just before Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa” (invasion of the USSR) he told his staff that one reason he was invading Russia was because the USSR was giving socialism a bad name. Take the acronym “Nazi” for example. Translated and spelled out it means, “National SOCIALIST German Workers Party”. The symbol of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the hammer and sickle, representing agricultural and industrial workers.   Both had the word “socialist” in their name, how can it be clearer?  Fascist and communist are always involved in organized labor because it’s among worker bees that they spawn their revolutions. Marx even called it “the DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat (workers)”. The intelligentsia however are more drawn toward communism because they are enthralled by the idea of a utopia.

The Paris commune of 1871 was the beginning of communism and the commune’s flag was red. Fascism and Communism are political arms of the doctrine of socialism.  Their roots are the same and the red background on the NAZI flag and the red background on the Soviet flag stood for the same common theme: their enemy’s (capitalist’s) blood. It remains so today. Interestingly after the fall of the Soviet Union the new redesigned Russian flag is red, white, and blue. I wonder what ideology the “New” Russia was trying to identify with? Historically, every socialist government or movement, regardless of its variations, manifestations, and forms within socialism, that ever existed since 1871 ended in streets flowing with blood; first their enemies, and finally with their “friends” blood.

In both of these socialist systems ALL individual freedoms are subservient to the state. We are seeing that happen increasingly in American today as there has been an onslaught against almost every Bill of Right in The Constitution. Court rulings and government agency policies are piling up against individuals in favor of the state. People are disappearing in Federal Prisons without due process. The Patriot Act virtually dismantled The Constitution.  We are surveilled and tracked constantly, and our knowledge of that fact is why the government wants to kill Assuage and Snowden for letting those cats out of the bag. What we see in America currently is an almost full-blown fascist state. The stolen 2020 Presidential election was their “Reichstag fire”, and COVID was their dry run to take over completely. Through the COVID Plan they learned that almost everyone would bow a knee to their new masters. Meanwhile, mandatory vaccinations had two primary objectives: 1) inject citizens with deadly slow acting graphene oxides and genetic altering materials for a disguised (i.e. spread the causation around among many diseases and no one will notice) depopulation purposes; and 2) to smoke out the intelligent resistors to be targeted for elimination in the future before the trap door of Fascism/Communism can be fully closed on the nation. In the old Soviet Union if you had a trial, it was a “show trial” where the verdict was already settled but the trail itself was a media event portrayed as a real adjudicated exercise. Most of the time, you just “disappeared”. In America today you don’t “disappear”, instead you “die suddenly” or hang yourself.  Do you really think Supreme Court Justice Scalia died of “sudden natural causes”? He was staying with a bunch of Republican RINOS when it happened. In the USSR you lost all your freedoms, especially the right to life, if you wound up in one of the Gulags and/or other “re-education camps”, few came out alive.

Another point of commonality between fascism and communism is propagating foreign wars.  The war in Ukraine is America’s logical extension of its fascist domestic policies.  Propaganda has been so effective in the USA, that a recent poll showed 1/3 of Americans would support a nuclear war over Ukraine!  Eight months ago, most Americans had never heard of Ukraine, and now nuclear war is, OK?  Unfortunately for American fascists, China (communist) and Russia (authoritarian) have something to say about that. American fascist foreign policy gave us the quintessential “Benghazi”, Iraq invasion, Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring which saw the Middle East go up in flames with the US supporting terrorists with the euphemisms like, “moderate Muslims” in Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.  ISIS is a creation of the CIA and they are a classic fascist organization wrapped in religious dogma. FWI the second most famous book behind the Koran in the Middle East today is Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.

Syria would have been taken over by now if Russia had not stepped into the fray. Why did Russia step in? She saw the West’s “rules based” world gobbling up countries at her doorstep and Syria is very close geographically to Russia.  Likewise, Russia invaded Ukraine for the same reason it intervened in Syria.  Unfortunately, nobody in the West is listening when Russia draws red lines in the sand. The West thinks Russia’s red lines in the sand are like Obama’s red lines in the sand; just bluffs, bluster and threats. The West has turned a deaf ear to Russia, and they do so at their own risk.  American fascism was spreading throughout central Eurasia and that is why Russia acted.  Similarly, during the Soviet era, communist wars were fomented in Greece, Korea, The Berlin Wall, and Southeast Asia, Vietnam being the most highly visible and the West responded accordingly.  War is a natural biproduct of fascism and communism not an instrument of last resort. It is not the Otto Von Bismarck’s iron fist in the velvet glove of diplomacy.  It is pure iron fisted with not thought of a velvet glove.

In America today, true liberty and conservative movements are being eroded and even thwarted because significant majorities of both political parties are fascist. When the rubber hits the road, they drop their superficial differences and join together to promote their common fascists agendas.  Meanwhile, communists in politics and academia are simultaneously trying to take control but the fascists have the upper hand at the moment. Keep in mind that fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan manifested itself differently but they were fundamentally the same.  Communism also developed differently in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia but they were fundamental in their beliefs. Fascism and communism are fundamentally the same because they are both rooted in socialism.

For those well versed in the doctrines and nuances of Socialism, Fascism and Communism, please bear with my over simplification of the two. My attempt is to give the man in the street an idea of the conceptual differences between the two, the ability to identify them, and knowledge of the disastrous effect they both produce in society and that they are essentially two peas in the same pod.