Generally, I try to avoid politics on this platform but I do believe that a historical look at the origins of Socialism and Fascism is a worthy endeavor. I will not comment on if one particular side is either “Fascist” or “Socialist,” you can come to your own conclusions. But I will, and have always maintained that fascism and socialism are ‘kissing cousins’ so to speak and there is really no difference. Both are imbued by a totalitarian spirit that subordinates the individual to the collective with the only difference being, which set of elites occupies the power structure. To better explain this I am going to rely heavily on the X account Green Beret Nap Time. If you are not X, you should be, and if you are, you should follow him. Here is the original tweet that got me thinking about this a few days ago:
Fascism was not born from the political right but from two lifelong leftists: Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile.
Mussolini began as a radical Marxist, editing the Italian Socialist Party’s paper Avanti! and calling for revolution. Gentile, the philosopher later hailed as…
— Green Beret Nap Time (@GBNT1952) September 14, 2025
If you can’t read the whole text here it is. (I am not going to include the rest of the following threads because you need to go over and read his work. It is very good and definitely worth your time.)
Fascism was not born from the political right but from two lifelong leftists: Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile. Mussolini began as a radical Marxist, editing the Italian Socialist Party’s paper Avanti! and calling for revolution. Gentile, the philosopher later hailed as the “father of Fascism,” came from Hegelian and progressive traditions that rejected individualism in favor of collectivism and the primacy of the state. Disillusioned with orthodox Marxism after World War I, Mussolini abandoned international class struggle in favor of national struggle, arguing that war and unity could forge a new society. Gentile supplied the intellectual backbone with his “actual idealism,” which held that the state was the highest expression of the people’s will. Together, they fused socialist economics and state control with radical nationalism and authoritarian unity, creating what Mussolini called a “third way” between capitalism and communism. In short, fascism was created by men who carried their leftist collectivist roots into a new form of politics, one that replaced class with nation but kept the same devotion to state power, centralized control, and the subordination of individual liberty. If anyone tries to tell you fascism is a right wing ideology, they are either lying or are wholly ignorant about actual history.
Here is one of his responses to commenters that want to stick with the traditional Right vs. Left argument.
You’re trying to wiggle out of the basic truth by playing word games. Fascism is not “right wing individualism with flags.” It is explicitly collectivist because it subordinates the individual to the will of the state or the nation. Mussolini himself wrote it clearly: “Everything… https://t.co/8WYpm4TGTy
— Green Beret Nap Time (@GBNT1952) September 16, 2025
This is THE reason why I have always maintained that Fascism and Socialism are kissing cousins. It is my belief that the media, academia, and most politicians want you arguing about right and left all the while we are steadily marching to totalitarianism. Once you are in the cell, the only thing that changes is who holds the power.
GBNT then creates an epic thread on fascism:
How Europe’s failed monarchies & revolutions after WWI paved the way for fascism and WWII, a thread 🧵 pic.twitter.com/xcsB9Pi5Y3
— Green Beret Nap Time (@GBNT1952) September 16, 2025
There is so much in this thread and I really want to link to all of it, but I will not. Go read the entire thread.
One of the comments offered some suggested reading:
You might like this book. The late Jordan Maxwell said it was at the top of his reading list, along with Quigley’s Tragedy & Hope. pic.twitter.com/4PvBLnbKKG
— Aarno Excellent (@AARNOEXCELLENT) September 15, 2025
So I ordered it, got it in the mail yesterday, and (I’ve only read the introduction) it has, so far, not disappointed. From the introduction:
“There was a basic schism within the revolutionary faith between those who believed most in fraternity (nation…) those who believed in equality (social class…). Both of these forms of faith differed fundamentally from the more limited, practical, and anti-authoritarian belief in liberty that animated the American War of Independence…. Each subordinated liberty to a new and far more totalistic form of authority than had existed previously.
The book was updated in 1998 not long after the “End of History” and cannot account for the current malady but it does provide a foreshadowing of the arguments of the 2000’s and gives us this warning:
“But the 1990s also brought an exaggerated belief that liberal democracy and market economies will solve most human problems and even bring about “the end of history.” Alas, the overcrowding of the earth and depletion of its resources, the widespread delegitimation of authority, and the recurrent tendency of human beings to fight with each other in the absence of shared external enemies-all suggest that conflicts and dangers may be ahead this will be at least as great as those wrought by the age of revolution.”
I will leave you with a positive note from the author that I too believe. Happy reading!
“I personally believe that the answer to false and illusory beliefs is not an indefinite suspension of all belief, but a providential, Christian belief in responsibility to God and to one’s fellow man.”