The Rise of Fascism or the Rise of the Word?
19/09/25
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"BURN FASCISM, NOT FOSSIL FUELS" PROTEST PLACARD, IMAGE: MIKE BAUMEISTER
Recently, Britain has succumbed to the polarisation of Reform UK, heightening political tension. This trend is wholly unsurprising. But social media activists have barked back, labelling the UK’s populist right with the word ‘fascist’. As deeply foolish as Reform is, being a British copy-paste of the MAGA movement, to dub the party as once engaging in fascism demonstrates a dearth in understanding of the term. Doing so blurs the already unclear divide of who is and isn’t a fascist, and what the ideology even stands to mean.
The twentieth century saw the emergence of both communism and fascism, two authoritarian powers trailing the world like an intriguing new form of rock with its stars. But since the somewhat victory hailed through the United States after the Cold War, the global world has sincerely become liberal, and what was seen as fascist and communist has not existed for decades. Anything merely more right or left than the period of centrism has been hastily equipped with the branding of fascist or tankie. We are, of course, a generation not used to a world that is inconceivably different to ours. A socialist party? Well, clearly it wants to confiscate all church property! A neoconservative party? When is the next Triumph of the Will? Hyperbolic and hypercritical, these labels are frankly embarrassing. I mean, when I saw an Instagram post labelling a right-wing policy as neoliberal fascism, I laughed, I really did, at this oxymoron, for it made as much sense in labelling a piece of legislation a communist fascist agenda.
As mentioned, the Reform Party are vague. A party supporting a trend; Farage and his band are populists. Their agenda moves on the popular right-wing opinion, and their influence in British politics is shedding light and attacking, rather than offering any real new solutions. But if you had to brand them, they would be neoconservatives. Liberal economics, very far from what fascist economics broadly is, with a weird cultural view that, again, is populist. From being clueless on the stance of legalising marijuana, to their main campaign on immigration, it’s hard to find a definitive pinpoint.
Previously, fascism went hand in hand with communism in terms of the labelling people used, mainly concerning itself with what is ‘authoritarian’. You can see that with Americans finding the notion of repealing their Second Amendment rights to be a purely ‘communist’ idea, and any state intervention in protests and what people deem as ‘free speech’ as a fascist entity encroaching on our population. These conceptions are purely a product of a distanced liberal perspective, normalised in people’s minds.
Fascism is a vague concept, taking forms that at times cannot reasonably be called fascism. Deriving from Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, this organisation arrived on the doorsteps of Piazza San Sepolcro, being solely focused on the representation of veterans, with the idea of a trenchocracy in mind. No straightforward beliefs on abortion, bombing the Middle East, or deportation, present, or even frankly believed in.
MUSSOLINI INSPECTS TROOPS IN ETHIOPIA, IMAGE: PUBLIC DOMAIN via WIKICOMMONS
Funnily enough, the 1919 manifesto shows this group ran with differing ideas expected of fascism today, supporting notions such as the confiscation of church property, universal suffrage with women being able to vote, free speech, and progressive taxation. I mean even Mussolini himself was a member of the Partito Socialista Italiano, but was expelled for advocating a more nationalistic approach to the First World War, despite being one of the most revolutionary leaders of his Socialist Party. The birth of fascism is long distant from its assumed brother, Nazism. Of course, the party became more right-wing. Its 1921 manifesto was a compromise between the elite, but it never thought there was a Jewish question, having around 50,000 members in the Partito Nazionale Fascista, before the 1938 antisemitic policies were enacted to please Hitler and cement the alliance present in the Second World War.
This birth of fascism is alien from what the Nazis made, the only connection was a nationalistic perspective, which you could even brand the Soviet Union with. Even Franco in Spain had a different form of what people deem ‘fascism’, for it was entirely Catholic, parallel to the mystical element found in the Third Reich, and the atheism present within the early Italian fascists, which again they changed to being Catholic to appease and gain Catholic votes in a Catholic country.
Fascism, in some sense, is undefinable. In a broad sense, and I mean this is so broad that so many left-wing aspects can be branded as fascist, fascism is ergo broadly strong in their right-wing views on culture and economically left-wing. But even there, the many examples people use as fascism, such as the regime of Pinochet, which was economically laissez-faire to the max, which would have Mussolini rolling in his grave to think that was the notion he took part in creating, was what came out of fascism in action. In the same way, lots of people present the Soviet Union as being not truly communist, due to the push away from Marxist notions of globalisation.
So before you think you’re clever branding anything mildly right-wing as fascist, just think of its historical presiding. Fascism, like most words, has evolved to mean different things; it has developed through the evolution of political philosophy, as well as the branding of individuals, and isn’t strictly limited to the 1919 set of principles. But simultaneously recognise there is a grey area, for by that logic, David Cameron was the British Il Duce. Reform is not a fascist party, nor is weirdly Corbyn the second coming of Stalin. Words hold grander meaning, and so does the placement of ideology.
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