Prophet Battlestone’s Amysterium
Those who put any effort into studying historical fascism will know that it was associated with syndicalism (worker self-management of industries) and corporatism (as in medieval or Roman society, where the different orders have representation on government and self regulation of affairs).
It just so happens that syndicalism originates as anarchist doctrine in France, from Georges Sorel primarily (though Proudhon also influenced its ideas) as an alternative to communism. Economist Ludwig von Mises styled syndicalism and the related medievalist idea, guild socialism, as ‘pseudo-socialism’ due to the fact that they retained private ownership of the means of production and a market in capital goods. Although critical of syndicalist ideas it is always a compliment, from Mises, to be something other than a socialist.
Syndicalism was picked up by the post-Boulangists and nationalized. French national syndicalism and Sorel were both influential on Benito Mussolini, who eventually nationalized himself.
Mussolini started as a leader of Squadristi in Northern Italy, essentially fighting communist unions and bandits with mercenaries – paid by local merchants. Mussolini, before he was a fascist, appears to have been an agorist PDA.
Corporatism and syndicalism both were influenced by medieval guild and corporate society, where each individual had multiple identities and corporate bodies representing and governing this aspect of life had various local and regional autonomies. These structures – burgher councils, craft guilds, various levels of church hierarchy – were part of the reason medieval society remained so decentralized and polylateral through its ages. Libertarians have often admired medieval sociery and its corporate institutions, including landed aristocracy.
Corporatist movements sought to bring these features back to the modern state, by giving the different interests a ‘seat at the table’ where different ‘stakeholders’ got to govern themselves and make decisions involving their shared and competing interests.
That is what is meant by Mussolini when he speaks of ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘nothing outside the state’ – not a system go bureaucratic regimentation of all society, but a state which excludes no Italian on the basis of his profession or economic status, and takes into consideration all of its members. In practice, Italian corporatism didn’t get very far (before the Second World War war Italy had a classically liberal economy of the sort common to most European states in the 19th century).
If we look beyond the fact that fascism is nominally statist (I will put aside the rather meaningless term ‘authoritarian’, as any hierarchical or structured system could be called authoritarian) we will discover anarchist and libertarian movements have much in common with fascism and, possibly, that fascism was not nearly so bad as American democracy in practice.
Most libertarians and anarchists will instantly deny this because 1) they are completely ignorant of intellectual history and have a tiny mental box from which they shoddily construct all their bigoted opinions; 2) they have Rightophobia or have otherwise been brainwashed by Victor’s History into believing that Fascists are Nazis and anyone decent must reflexively hate them. Thankfully, not being a populist, I don’t care what most libertarians (or anyone else) thinks, and continue to prefer Benito Mussolini to the Libertarian Party. When’s the last time those faggots stopped a commie?
The Anarcho-Fascist Manifesto (from the Revolutionary Conservative)
On the Anarchist and Fascist Overlap at Futurism Forever
On the Relationship Between Libertarianism and Fascism
Anarcho-fascism: An Overview of Right Wing Anarchist Thought
