Ep 10: What IS Fascism?

Hello, I'm TripLoy and I would like to give you something to think about here on the TripLoy podcast. So the word fascist is thrown around so much now that I feel like it's lost all of its meaning and it's also lost a lot of its importance and it is particularly important at this point in history. And I think that this is intentional from the actual fascists that are on the rise and the reason they are trying to make us say that everything is fascist is to make the word just not powerful. It's to immunize us to that word so we get so used to it. The word itself becomes powerless and people stop fearing it which they should. And I understand why fascism is on the rise in America. I mean America is founded on genocide and slavery and it's pretty much been downhill from that. America is always been a fascist state, you can ask any Native American or Black person what America is like and they have known nothing but a fascist country. So fascism is very American, Hitler himself modeled a lot of the Nazis own fascism on how America was treating its indigenous people. And it's also not surprising that fascism would come more overt in America because their school system famously doesn't really teach true history. It teaches the propaganda as version. I mean their schools begin with kids standing up and having to salute the flag and recite their pledge of allegiance. That is not something a free country does anywhere. So they don't know their true history and therefore they don't know the dangers of fascism. When I say they, I mainly mean white America of course as we already stated. The indigenous people in the Americas and Black people have always known fascism but the white people are starting to learn what that actually means. But a more curious thing that's happening right now is fascism is clearly on the rise in Europe again. And that is a little bit surprising because they should really know better right now. I mean the last time fascism was powerful in Europe it led to the Second World War and the deaths of like 30 million people in Europe. So really not a good idea and it's amazing that they've forgotten that since you know there are still people in living memory that know what fascism does and what it did to Europe. The fact that fascism especially in Germany is on the rise again is definitely a bit perplexing. So why is fascism on the rise? And it seems to be on the rise globally at least in the quote unquote Western world. But I think a, I think the best way to actually tackle this question is to ask a much simpler one which is simply what is fascism? Because I think a lot of people don't actually know what fascism is. You have a vague notion of it and you might understand elements of it. But I don't think a lot of people really understand the core concept of fascism. What its intention is and why it does the things it does. So that's what we're going to look at today. I'm going to do a bit of a deep dive but it really simplistic dive because again I want as many people to understand these concepts as possible. So I'm going to keep it as simple to understand this possible. We're not going to like deep dive theory. We're going to talk about the elements that make up fascism and then of course we're going to go and just apply it to all the historical context. We're going to look at a lot of different countries under fascism and look at all the similarities and then from understanding that let's look at what's going on today and see if it makes any more sense. And I've heard like three really great definitions of fascism and they're all true but they focus on kind of different elements. And I think if you put the three together you really do get a full picture of what fascism is. The first one is Mussolini's own definition of course Mussolini is the man probably most responsible for creating fascism as an ideology. It actually predates him a little bit as we're going to see but he's the person most people will go yep it starts here and so you know that's good enough for us. But Mussolini is you know supposed to supposedly said fascism is the merge of the corporations and the state. And whether or not he actually said that that's actually a pretty spot on explanation of what fascism is. The second one is fascism is capitalism in decay. That's also fantastic because you don't see fascism come about when things are going well. Fascism only ever arises when things are going really bad especially economically but not economically for the people economically for the capitalist. When the capitalists start losing money or the capitalists start losing power that's when they turn the fascism. And the third definition is fascism is imperialism turned inwards and I like that that's also known as the imperial boomerang which is the exploitation that capitalist empires do abroad like for example what the British did in India or what America is doing all over Africa and South America. All the things you do to those countries to facilitate that resource extraction through violence eventually all those tactics are going to be used against your own people when they start turning against capitalism. So fascism is imperialism turned inwards I really like that. And all of them share a common theme which is fascism wants to save capitalism. It wants to save it from internal crises and the threat of revolution. And understanding this core concept is fundamental to understanding what fascism truly is. And I'm going to spend most of this episode looking at historical examples of fascism and using them to highlight and understand how and why fascism is rising today and what its intention is that's really important. What is the intention of fascism because when you understand that you can understand the rest of it right. But it is important that we understand a few of the core concepts of fascism before we can apply them to the historical context. So the first thing to understand is fascism is not irrational. It might look like you can see Trump just doing all sorts of erratic nonsense as the president of the United States. And it can look like he's insane and I guarantee you that's exactly what they want you to think. But it's really not Hitler was the same everyone says like Hitler was just crazy. It was a mad man but he absolutely was not none of this is irrational. It's not irrational once you understand where the actual intention is. So while fascism will always go out of its way to employ and promote very irrational ideologies like they're going to promote racism. That's a huge thing. They're going to promote like cringe worthy nationalism that both the Nazis and American now do that very well. America's nationalism is so over the top it's ridiculous. We all make fun of it right. We do outside of America. Sorry here. American friends. If you don't see it that way but we all think it's hilarious. You're the screeching eagle and all of that. But this is a core function of fascism. The reason fascism is projecting all of these irrational ideologies again the racism the over the top nationalism. All of that is about controlling the narrative. That is what you want everyone to be focusing on because while they're focusing on that they're not seeing what the fascists are really doing. And specifically they're not seeing what the capitalists are doing because to understand fascism requires you to understand class conflict. The conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. So bourgeoisie of course is just the capitalist the oligarchs. The people that own all the factories the people that own all the capital and the proletariat which is the workers you we don't own anything we don't own factories we don't own land. The only way we make money is through our labor but the bourgeoisie make all of their money through other people's labor. And that's the class divide. Fascism is obsessed with not only maintaining that class divide but making sure that all of the political power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie the capitalist the oligarchs. Fascism in a nutshell is the corporate response to socialism. So if socialism is on the rise if the workers of the proletariat are sitting there going we want more rights we want to repay the fair wage we want a house to live in we we don't want to have this cost to living crisis we want things to get better and we demand more rights and wealth distribution by socialism. When people start talking like that that's when capitalist turned to fascism to crush it. Another thing to really understand is that fascism is reactionary in nature as in fascism isn't trying to create something. Fascism is trying to stop something it is reactionary it is reacting to an outside event enormous every single instance that socialism socialism is on the rise. The capitalist not wanting to lose their position and not wanting to lose their capital or have to share their capital are going to turn to fascism to crush socialism and maintain the order as it is it is reacting again. against the gains and the threats posed by socialist and progressive movements. It is seeking to reverse them and restore the traditional hierarchies. Fascism is not an independent ideology or movement. It's not something that everyone is flocking to because they believe in it. It is just a reaction to threats against monopoly capitalism. So the big businesses, the corporations, the finance, brews, the industrialists, they all turn to fascism as a weapon to be deployed against the working class when socialism or communism or strong labor movements are starting to arise as they are now. As everything is getting worse and worse and people are demanding more, that's when you start seeing fascism. And you see this in every instance, by the way, this is not just something we're seeing today. This is what you saw in Italy when the fascists came out. This is what you saw in Germany when the Nazis came up. This is what we saw when Pinachet was installed. So that's the intention of fascism. Its function is to systematically and brutally destroy organized labor. So things like unions, leftist political parties, socialist communists, are any other progressive or democratic force that is a challenge to capitalist power. That's its job is to crush those movements and make sure that the workers cannot unify in their power to stop capitalism monopoly. And it does this in two ways. The first is straight up violence against any of these organizations. That's why when fascists come to power, one of the first things you'll always see them do is round up the socialist and the communists and just straight up murder them or put them into concentration camps to get them out of the way because they're the ones that are organized and actually pose a threat to capitalism. So they're going to get rid of them first. That's one thing, straight up violence is one aspect. The other aspect is the massive, massive propaganda that they are going to unleash onto the people. So that's why they promote extreme nationalism, militarism, racism and basically what we today just call the "culture war". They want everyone fighting each other so that we're not unified, you know, fighting the capitalist. They want us fighting a culture war, so we're not fighting a class war. Again, this is something you'll see in every single fascist society. It wants to destroy the organized working class. So it's always going to employ racism, xenophobia, usually anti-semitism, homophobia. That's why they attack the LGBTI community, any kind of form of bigotry. It's not even necessarily that the fascists hate those groups. I think generally they don't care either way. All they need are scapegoats. They need the population focusing on other issues, cultural issues, so they're not seeing what is basically a heist from the capitalist class. Again, and I can never say this phrase enough. The next thing you see is the establishment of a very repressive police state. Its job is to dismantle all of the democratic institutions. Not just democracy itself, but the institutions as a concept. So it gets rid of the parliament, it gets rid of the judiciary, it gets rid of the free press, it destroys civil liberties, and it crushes any dissent that comes against the fascist government through terror and violence. This is the final part of making sure that people cannot organize. It's all leading up to this because once you've established that terror and that police state, it is extremely hard for people to organize resistance, so that's why they're always heading towards it. And this is why it's so important that people are educated about what fascism is and what its intentions are because people fall for the culture war so, so easily. I bet you anyone listening to this has fallen to for at least some aspect of it. But it's important to remember the only people who benefit from fascism are the industrialists and the oligarchs and the capitalists. If you don't own any factories or if you don't have millions of dollars, you are not in the fascism protection list, you were its prey. No matter how much they talk about nationalistic or racial motivations and we're talking about fascism, you must make no mistake, fascism's goal here is to protect capital at all costs. Everything else is a distraction. And if you understand that, everything you see fascists do makes total sense. But fascism also has a really big, weak side to it. It has a fundamental flaw in its system and that comes from the fact that it is always reactionary. It doesn't actually have a plan or a vision for the future. Its job is just to protect capital from threats. So what that also means is that fascism is an inherently unsustainable system. It needs perpetual crisis. It needs a reason to exist. It needs something to react against because it's always reactionary, right? It's why fascism needs to constantly talk about danger and fear. And it doesn't matter if they're real or imagined, but this cultural has to be endless. It must always be a new enemy that the people are supposed to focus on. But that isn't sustainable in the long term because one of two things happens if you keep people in perpetual crisis. The first thing is you actually have to solve the crisis for people to have any faith in your government. But if you actually solve the crisis, then there's no longer any need for fascism and people will start demanding a return to democracy and freedom because the crisis is over, right? We don't need this police state. But the other side of that coin is if you don't solve it, if you keep talking about fear and you never solve anything, the people are going to start turning on fascism anyway because it doesn't work even by its own admission. It's sitting there going, "Where the only ones who can keep you safe against this threat real or imagined." But if you don't actually resolve that, then the people are going to stop supporting you. So fascism has a clock on it. When fascism gets into power, it needs to resolve this dilemma one way or another. It even needs to solve things and then dissolve itself. Or it has to keep the crisis going forever and face eventual revolution even with the repressive police state. Anyway, that's enough of the general theory. Let's start getting into the meat and potatoes of this podcast and look at the history. That's what War all here for, right? And let's have a look at what all of this looks like in practice. And going by the first and in my opinion, the clearest finition of fascism, which is Mussolini's own fascism is the merger of the state and corporations. We can look at the origins of fascism as early as like the 16th century, because that's what colonialism is. It is literally, it's taking overland and using that land for overwhelmingly commercial reasons. So any country that was colonized already saw what fascism looks like. It is brutal violence, repressing people so that it can steal the resources and both the state and the corporations make all the money from that. But if we want to look at a more specific example of what that looks like, I think the first moment in history you can point to clearly and go, yep, that's fascism is the British East India company. Now, I'm not going to spend too much time talking about them because I actually want to hold podcast and the East India company later. But to me, this is the literal merger of the state and corporations like the East India company, which is mainly trading in tea in, you know, British controlled India. It's colonial project to a actual corporation, the East India company. And it's a mutually beneficial relationship for the two because the British Empire can use the East India company to repress this region and in reward the East India company gets to make all the money it could possibly hope for. It is an actual literal merger of state and corporations that manifests in extreme violence for everyone who lives under it. And this is like the fascism experiment stage because when they're doing this, they don't really know how it's going to play out. It seems like a good idea to both of them, but no one knows what the consequences are going to be. So the ideology behind fascism doesn't exist yet, but I think you could argue the success using big air towards the success of the East India company is one of the biggest influences on fascist ideology is one of the things that all of the future fascist dictators will look to and go, yeah, we want that. Like I want to control other parts in the world and have corporations run them to maximize the profits, you know, for myself and for all my friends. So if we're looking at the entire history of fascism, it's as old as capitalism itself that the East India, the British Empire turns to the East India company because they are in crisis like they are struggling to control India, which of course is a much, much bigger continental region than all of Britain. The colony is really struggling at first and they have to turn to fascism to keep it going. And so for all of colonial history, and again, I've made many podcasts by this point talking about the relationship between colonialism and capitalism. So go check them out if you haven't heard them already. But we're going to jump ahead in this story to something we haven't talked about before. And it's a story. It happens in 1871. And it's a story that we aren't taught much nowadays. And I think it'll be pretty clear why they don't teach us this story now because it's a huge bit of socialist here. history and what's very interesting is anyone on the left, you generally you were never taught this story, we're not taught it in school but every single capitalist knows this story because it is so fundamental to capitalism survival to understand what happened in 1871 in March 1871 in the Paris commune. Now the Paris commune is such a massive huge historical event and again it's shocking how few people know about it and the reason for that is because it's the first time you see socialism get implemented and it works and that scares the hell out of the capitalist. So the Paris commune it emerges in March 1871 during the Franco-Prussian Wars and in the Franco-Prussian War which is kind of like proto-World War I it's when basically Germany and France go to war France gets beaten really quickly by the I'm just going to call them German forces the Prussian forces but it's the German forces and they beat France decisively and when that happens you start seeing a lot of French people rise up in resistance because they get occupied by the Germans the Prussians and there's a lot of arm resistance just from the people and one of the groups that rises up is in Paris and when France is defeated very quickly in the Franco-Prussian War all of these armed groups basically just start to become a little bit autonomous and one of them in Paris is like a big arm militia and they decide you know what if we don't just arm what if we take this opportunity to grab us some rights as well and all of these worker-led council start to form and they're all armed heavily armed and they just take over the city and they start implementing all of these socialist ideas that are really hot at this point because this is you know just after Marx and everyone and they start implementing all these radical socialist policies like they're seizing the factories for worker cooperatives they're abolishing the police and they're kicking the army out of Paris and they're suspending rent and they're mandating worker-level wages for like for everyone for like the officials and everyone and these actions directly challenge all of the capitalist property rights and the state power in France at the time and they start proving that workers can just take control of their society take control of their communities and self-govern and it works and it works really well and this terrifies the shit out of all of the European oligarchs and water crats and everyone starts you know the capitalist are seeing this like my god this is the blueprint for the actual proletarian revolution it's actually going to happen and they're terrified and so the French government turns to the Prussian forces the German forces are still in a country and they work with them go help us crush this little revolution because it's gonna spread and it's gonna take over all of Europe and all of us you know oligarchs we have our little differences you know we believe I should own this border and you should own that but this is a bigger threat to all of us and anything else we've ever seen so help us to crush this this little Paris commune right now and they do they join forces and shortly after this in May so this is only gone for a couple of months in May the French and Prussian forces enter Paris and they just start massacring everyone associated with this commune they kill between 10,000 to 30,000 Prisians they're like mass graves they're a mass execution so go for weeks and at the same time there's this huge concerted propaganda effort from the media to vilify all of the socialists and what they call the communards as like savages and evil and you know they're here to just destroy everything that makes us French and they really pull on the nationalism heartstrings like what does this mean for us as a nation? things like that right and unfortunately for everyone involved this repression is successful the violence crushes the Paris commune and all the laws are put into place immediately to make sure nothing like this ever happens again and also historically they do as much as they can to bury this again I'm willing to bet that most of the people listening to this podcast have never even heard of the Paris commune but this is a lesson that the capitalist really took the heart because they showed how to beat socialism you just need mass violence and state repression to destroy all of the organization and you can then maintain the status quo and this is a lesson that all the capitalists will take the heart and it will be fundamental in shaping the political theory of fascism and it also shows just how far capitalists are willing to go to stop the threats to their power they are literally willing to massacre you know 30 or 1000 people and that's just in one city you know what will they do if this was an entire country right? Well we're going to find out soon enough so as far as the capitalists are concerned that's pretty much that they crushed the Paris commune and they don't need to worry about socialism anymore and for a couple of decades that's true but then the first world war happens and the first world war is a massive resurgence in socialist movements not the least of which of course being the emergence of the Soviet Union as an entity it's a first-time and entire country and one of the biggest countries in the world has become fully socialist on its way to communism and if this scares the absolute shit out of course all of the capitalist worldwide the capitalist have a renewed vigor to treat any kind of socialist movements in their countries with extra vigor more than they've had in a long time I think the best example of that is post-first world war Germany because in 1919 you start seeing the paramilitary forces cruising around they're called the fri-core that's the most famous of the groups and they're basically right-wing militias that are hired by the capitalist to just go and crush any of the socialist movements that are that are spreading in Germany and in 1919 there are lots of them there it's long projected at this point and suspected at this point that the socialists are this close to pulling off a revolution of their own in Germany just like the Russians did you know to create the Soviet Union there's a group a particularly powerful group in Berlin called the Spartasists and they're led by one of the coolest and most influential revolutionaries ever a woman named Rosa Luxembourg and her associate Carl Liebning and the fri-core will just go and murder them they'll just start murdering all of the Spartasists industry and the way the media the media protects the fri-core the media starts running cover for them because again that's owned by the capitalist right and they start talking about how like violent leftist thugs are on the streets of Berlin and the fri-core is there to save the people from this chaos and disorder and you know the destruction of German identity and all that but the fri-core of the ones going around murdering everyone um the left aren't the ones actually leaning the attack they're the victims of but the media just spins at the outweigh around that's the same tactic they used today folks if you didn't know there are now biting fascist movements all over western and central europe especially all of the countries that suffered greatly in the first were war they are particularly disgruntled the workers not only had to watch you all of their friends uh basically get killed in the war a lot of them were in the trenches and they disgruntled about the fact that they fought this war for no particular reason and you know the socialist literature is everywhere and everyone starting to point fingers in the correct direction they alone hang on a minute all of this suffering that we have gone through is because of the industrialists and the bankers and the large landowners and all of these capitalists and these class rumblings are starting to get louder and louder so all of those same people in industrialists the bankers to large landowners they are the ones who start sponsoring the fascist movements and they start giving them all the money and i guess the first really big example of just how precarious the position of the capitalist is and how much of a crisis they are now in happens in 1919 in Italy when a bunch of workers councils sees like 500 factories for the workers and they start going on strike and they start demanding better pay better conditions things like that this terrifies all of the capitalist and then a little turn coat socialist a guy who was a socialist but he's so much more of an opportunist than he ever was uh an idealist is a man named Benitoon was a Lenny and he basically goes up to all of these industrialists and he goes hey give me money and i will start you know funding and founding and guiding malicious i'm gonna he calls them the black shirts and i'm gonna make this militia we're gonna go around just be strikebreakers for you so basically mercenaries for the corporations to go and smash all of these workers councils to smash all the strikers and get these factories back working without you having to pay a cent more to any of the workers uh the industrialists love this as an industrial confederation called the confidential and they they love this muslinie gun like yeah no worries he is all of the money and muslinie will expand the black shirts to be like 300 000 people over the next couple of years he comes a very very powerful person because he basically has a private army that answers only to him and he will start doing the same thing. The Freikor are doing in Germany, he's going to be murdering socialist organizers, killing revolutionaries and just being a shit out of strikers everywhere. They also start financing a fascist newspaper, just sprouting fascist nonsense and they're spreading it everywhere. So there's the two sides of this coin already, right? You can already see it forming, you've got the massive violence that is controlled by Mussolini and you've got the massive propaganda and the two forces together are going to propel Mussolini to full-state power in, you know, about a year's time. And that's when Mussolini does his famous march on Rome and the way, and you know, the fascist newspapers report that is like, this is a populist uprising, you know, he's the man come to save Italy from all of this chaos and all this economic despair. And you know, the way it's projected, him and all these followers just walk into Rome and demand that the government puts him in power so he can fix things and the king is so moved that he's like, yes, save Italy. That's how it's portrayed. What really happens is Mussolini goes to all the industrialists and capillars and goes, oh, he put me in power so that I can just protect all of your capital basically and stop all of this socialist nonsense from taking control. And he gets the backing of all of the rich people and they fund the entire thing. So it's not really a popular uprising at all. It's just everyone with actual state power in the country agreeing that they're going to put this violent fascist in charge to break all the necks of the socialist and the unions and make sure that the profits don't slow down. That was capitalism in crisis and they turned a fascism to save it. And when Mussolini takes over, he waste absolutely no time fulfilling his own definition of fascism, the total merger of state and corporations. One of the first things Mussolini will do is create what's called the Industrial Reconstruction Institute. And that's a fancy name. It makes us sound like, you know, we're going to save the economy. But what it really is is getting every single nationalized institution and every single nationalized industry and just selling it to all of the oligarchs and industrialists. And so by 1933, every single thing that used to be owned by the Italian people is now owned completely privately by corporations. That includes all the banks, all of the factories, all of the land, everything is owned by capitalists. The other thing Mussolini would do is create the charter of labor, which completely outlaws strikes and protests and it lowers everyone's wages by like 40%. That is completely fulfilling the wishes of the capitalists. There's nothing to do with with nationalism and all of that. That's the thing you sit in there going like I'm here to save Italy. It's the Roman Empire and Essence and all of this popular stuff. But all he's really doing is just making sure that all of the capitalists can make as much money as possible. Again, you're seeing exactly the same thing happening in America now under Trump. That's just all of the oligarchs. And I love this term. He's all the time. They're just stripping the copper wires out of the walls of America and they're using the cover of massive racism, massive fear, massive xenophobia, the fear of immigration and all of this massive nationalism and patriotism. All of it is horseshit. All of it is just cover. So the oligarchs can just steal everything. It's always been a class war. The culture war is just a cover. Now, another country that suffered economically as a result of the First World War is Imperial Japan. So by 1931, they took up a lot of new land from the First World War. They snapped up all of Germany's colonies in a Pacific and they quite a lot of them. But Japan gets hit hard by the Great Depression in 1929 and socialism starts to come on the rise in Japan, which for the Japanese capitalist class and the imperial class is absolutely unthinkable. Like it is so against everything that they culturally believe in the idea that we shouldn't just all be serving the emperor and serving all these oligarchs at the top is something that is terrifying to them on a whole other level, a more than you will find in Italy or Germany or even America. And so suitably, in an typical Japanese style, they go really hard on the fascism. They do it to a level that not many other countries accomplish. They even come up with an entire concept about merging state and corporate power and all of these corporations and what they call the Zai-Butsu. So all of the big massive corporations in Japan, Mitsui Bank, Mitsubishi, Nissen, all household names still today. Like there were massive, very, very powerful, very influential industries and corporations in Japan. Instead of creating their own like little militias like you see in Italy and Germany. They don't have the black shirts and they don't have the fry core. They just go straight to the military itself and they create what's called the Kodahar faction, where basically all of the corporations are working directly with the standing Japanese Imperial army to crush socialism everywhere it's found. They accomplished that pretty swiftly actually, but what's really funny is next, they now that they basically completely control the military, they're like well we don't even really need to use the government at all to get our wishes and one of the things that all of these capitalists really want what every capitalist wants is imperialism. We want to go and take as many colonies as possible. We want to take as much land internationally as we can so that we can exploit it for basically slave labor and just steal all the resources because that is the best way to maximize profits. If you don't have to pay for labor and you don't have to pay for resources, well there's basically no limit to what your profits can be. And so the Zabatsu's and the Kodahar faction they just start telling the military to just go invade other places and they start invading North and China without the government's permission and the government can't really do much about it because again all the institutions that might have been able to safeguard against these have been well and truly destroyed and the fascism is turned up to 11 in Japan and this is what's directly going to lead Japan into World War Two because they cannot control the corporations or the military that are working together and they just keep taking more Chinese land and more Chinese land and it eventually China's like we've had enough of this. We're declaring war on you and that'll kick off in my opinion the Second World War. And you've got all of the elements of fascism here it is the total merge of the state and the corporations it is the massive overwhelming nationalism that permeates every single part of Japanese society. They also implement all of the other kind of fascist ideas that extremely racist in imperial Japan but the people that they're being racist to are Koreans and Chinese people they do all the same kind of words you hear the same words you basically hear the Nazis saying about the Jews the Japanese are saying that about the Chinese and the same thing you hear in like the American fascist today are basically saying about Latino people same sort of thing and it's a way of focusing people again on some culture war bullshit so they're not looking at the class war. Awesome just gonna go on a very quick tangent here and point out that none of these corporations will ever face any consequences for their actions like in Germany IG Farbe and is one of the big companies doing this so as Siemens, Krupp, Bosch they're all still big corporations today same in Japan Mitsubishi, Nissen in Italy you saw Fiat and Pirelli were really big advocates for fascism and none of these corporations will face any consequences after the Second World War and the reason for that is of course it's still capitalism right like all of the countries that come and take over the Western European countries they're not in that state of capitalist decay in fact the Second World War will be a huge boost to their economies and so all of the corporations worldwide they just go and start shaking hands again and end the war going well I'm glad that that's over capitalism has been saved so we can keep going on the problem is because they don't face any consequences none of the problems have been solved and that's why here we are in 2025 facing the same dangers from fascism we saw a hundred years ago and what's crazy is it's still from the same fucking corporations like they're the same ones they're still around and they're still the ones advocating for fascism now which is why the only true solution to this is actual fully implemented socialism one of the only places you don't see this happen after Second World War is anywhere the Soviet Union took over they completely dismantled these corporations and they only come back in the 90s after the fall of the Soviet Union but for a long time this dynamic was solved and ultimately I think for us today this is also going to be the solution we need to completely dissolve capitalism if we ever want to see the end of fascism because it's just going to keep coming back every single time capitalism goes into decay anyway sorry about the tangent let's get back to our story and we're back to the big one now the main one and it's interesting that this has been going on for like tiny nearly 40 minutes and I haven't even got to Nazi Germany yet so here we go and Nazi Germany especially in the west is definitely a story that is really misrepresented to us it has to because again, a wear capitalist country, so. Our history removes capitalism from this entire story and the way it's generally told is that Hitler is this popular leader who comes out of the First World War and he galvanizes the disgruntled X German soldiers and all of that sentiment from having lost the First World War and he becomes really popular and then he gets elected And then once he's elected he turns to fascism because he's just mad and then he Yeah, then he destroys democracy and oh, it's so bad. We should have seen the warning signs and you know Luckily we all got together and ended the Nazis in World War two. That's the Western story, but that's like one-tenth of what actually happened and the most important thing to know about this story is that Hitler actually wasn't a popular leader. He was an okay speaker and he could get people to applaud him at the rallies. Hitler doesn't take power because he's popular. Hitler takes power because he has the backing of like 39 corporations behind him including crop Bosch and Siemens who I mentioned before IG Farman are backing him Opal is backing him Dresden of Bank is backing him Deutsche Bank is backing him He has all of the money and all of the power to take control of the country and there is no democracy They use the semblance of a democracy to give it a bit of legitimacy, but nothing was gonna stop him and one the most famous things that happens is the president at the time of Germany Paul Von Hindenburg the hero of the First World War he appoints Hitler as chancellor because of You know, he has such support mass support the people wouldn't forgive me if I didn't make him chancellor again That's the official history the reason Hindenburg makes Hitler the chancellor is again all of these corporate relations write him a letter that they all sign saying basically put Hitler in charge or we're gonna end your political career on top of that They start pouring a massive massive money into into the Sturm Abtalan more commonly known as the essay Which is the brown shirts, you know, and Hitler is stealing everything from Mussolini Like Hitler is a huge Mussolini fan and he basically copies his same playbook But just takes it to the next level and the brown shirt the essay they'll later become the SS during the Second World War and They are a palimilitary force and they have been giving like 400,000 rikes marks a month To fund them for everything they need weapons guns trucks whatever they need to basically go and break the strikes To round up the socialist and just murder any political opponent Two fascism and they are all embracing this fascism They embrace it even harder in Germany because they've already seen its exceed in Italy like 10 years earlier And of course the Nazis do take it to the next level because at the same time that they have all of this massive Civil violence to destroy their political opponents they go really hard and this is probably what they're most famous for They go so hard on the propaganda This is where all of the all the Jewish hatred stuff starts to come from It's about scapegoating the Jewish people which are a minority in Germany at the time and blaming every single problem in society on them You know, it's the Jews that lost us the first world war It's the Jews that are the reason you're losing your house the Jews cause the great depression Hitler even goes so far as to say you know Like the Jews are socialist, you know after all Karl Marx was a Jew and he wrote the book that most influenced Socialist thought and so all of these the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik movement the Soviet Union that's all Your Jew politics and he goes so hard with this everywhere and the propaganda minister Joseph Gerbels Well, basically he will write the actual book on how you do propaganda It's like you don't even have to win an argument You just have to be the loudest voice in the room and not let any other voices have a chance if you just drown out every other voice And no one can hear anything but you and that's what the Nazis really start to do and that's why they start going super hard with the nationalism And they start going super hard with the racism and all of this is the culture war This is the culture war to distract people from the class war and the Nazis are doing the same thing That was lenny dude. They're cutting workers wages by like 40% they're destroying unions They're destroying the right to protest the right to strike They're suspending all of the civil liberties. They're destroying free speech All of this is about protecting Capital and of course just like all the other Fascist forces they turn to imperialism imperialism as you know Lenin said imperialism as the highest form of capitalism We were touched on that which Japan like they want to expand their colonies because it's you know free labor and Free resources which is a capitalist dream while Japan is expanding into China It's we're pointing out this is why Italy is attacking Ethiopia about this time as well And they want to expand their colonies in Africa they're eyeing off the British colonies They want to take those because you know profit, right? But the Germans don't have the same opportunities as the other fascist powers. They don't have nearby colonies They can take all they can do is take their neighbors. They're looking at places like Czechoslovakia They're looking at Poland but most of all they're looking at Russia the propaganda frames it as Liebens wrong like living room We need maybe space to spread out and again That's the capitalist that's that's the nationalist propaganda that's put on this But what they really want is just the resources and the free labor. That's what they want to take and the reason Hitler goes down Is like the biggest and most evil example of fascism is and I've heard you know a few people say this and it's absolutely true The reason he's seen as the big bad guys because his victims were white He attacks Europeans and that's a big no no in here in the Western world, right? That's a true crime You're killing other white people how dare you But it is very important to note that fascism has been doing this to you know the global South They're doing it in China that doing it in Africa for at least a century before this point We've already talked extensively about the Congo and Belgian Congo and Fascism has been there for a very long time the reason Hitler has seen us so ill is because he's doing it against European countries And that's why he gets highlighted his crimes are no better or worse than any of the other fascists throughout history He's are just the most documented and so Hitler Hitler enforces the total merger of the state and the corporations This will come especially apparent During the second world war and actually one of the one the funniest parts of this story. It's all funny, right? This is all hilarious But one of the funniest parts about this story is One of the reasons Germany will lose the second world war is because of these capitalist because even at the midst of their highest Crisis point you're like after the the defeat at Stalingrad and the tide is turned and German cities are being bombed and the red army is starting to close on them and things are really really dire But even then they can't let go of capitalist profits This is the only thing that matters and it will absolutely Hognetie Germany from being able to do anything rational to in this war Like you could argue there's a point in like nineteen forty two nineteen forty three that if the Germans if the Nazis had actually gone To the other countries, especially the Soviet Union said hey, how about we start talking ceasefire? How about we start talking a Treaty to end this war. I'm pretty sure most of those countries would be receptive to that They've been already declaring will accept nothing but unconditional surrender But I don't know how true that is I think if they if the Germans had genuinely gone and tried to talk their way out of it I think people would have been receptive there's already tens of millions of people dead Everyone's suffering in this especially the Soviet Union and by that point Germany still owns like still controls a lot of Soviet land I think there's as a pretty good chance Staling would have been willing to talk But they can't do that the capitalist The capitalist won't let Hitler do that because they're making so much money from this war and one of the reasons They are going to lose is Germans will never make efficient production in this whole war because they're always trying to sell some new weapon Like what I mean by that is if you look at the Soviet Union in like 1943 All of their industry is completely streamlined towards the goal of winning the war when the Soviet Union starts the war For example, they've got like 20 different types of tanks that they're producing they've got big tanks little tanks medium tanks all of this But through the experiences of combat and as they go along they start refining all these tanks down to basically just one the t34 tank a very very famous tank It is the overwhelming amount of What is being produced in the Soviet Union in terms of tanks this they just really specialise ago This one tank works really really well. Let's just make a metric fuck ton of them and we can go win the war The Germans can't do this because all of these Corporations are competing for contracts and so they're always sitting on hey, you know this tank we got out there Well, I've got a even better tank that that can that can win the war with a wonder tank It can do better and then you'll have like You know, Porsche, a third-name Porsche. Um, and you'll have Henshul, and you'll have man, and you'll have all of these corporations just talking over each other. No, I've got a new tank. And Hitler's just constantly torn between them going, "Yes, I want this tank. No, I want that tank. Yes, I want this tank." And what that means for the production is they can start ramping up production for one type of tank. And it takes quite a long time to tool up a factory to start producing something and then start getting it to churn out quantity. Basically every time they get to the point where they are now producing its speed, they have to stop that production. Create a whole new tank, reconfigure the whole factory and start producing that one and by the time it starts getting efficient, they stop that and start producing a new tank. And the Germans have like 50 different variants of tanks by the end of the war. And they just don't have enough of any of them. And that's why the Soviet Union is just steam rolling over, you know, former Panzer divisions that used to be the most feared thing in the war, but they don't have enough tanks in the Soviet Union. It's got all the tanks. And yes, the German tanks that are being produced, they generally are by and large better than the Soviet tanks better than the T-34, but there's never enough of them. And that's why the T-34 ends up doing so much damage to the German army. Anyway, you see this across the whole spectrum as well, like Bob Berlin and all the German cities are being bombed by the Americans. They can never decide on what fighter plane exactly is the most effective to take down these bombers and they're constantly trying to find the new weapon and all these corporations are just in Hitler's border and gone, "Oh, no, forget that plane. This plane is so much better. Look how much better it is. Look how shiny it is. You want this one." And that's, I just think that's really funny, that the capitalists, even when things are at their most dying, their lives are at stake, or at least they should have been all the corporations will survive, of course, but they don't know that at the time. And the fact that they still prioritizing profits over their own survival, that's a core part of capitalism turns out. It's the same reason today we're looking at climate destruction and no one can think beyond the next profit margin. The next quarter is what matters, not the imminent destruction of all life on Earth. No, no, profits are what matter. And they are just saying, "It's ridiculous, right?" Anyway, sorry for that tangent. But you can see the recurring fascist pattern here, right? It always needs a crisis of capital, like severe systemic capitalist crisis, like a mass revolt from the peasants or people are really starting to unionize in droves or there's popular fronts forming in elections when things like that happen. The capital's always gets scared and they start turning too fascist to save them from it, you saw it in Italy, you saw it in Japan, you saw it in Germany. And those are just the World War II examples. You could expand this to any other fascist government that comes after you see the same thing in Chile under Pinachet, we're seeing it in America today. That is the recurring pattern of fascism. You'll have that systemic crisis, you'll then get all of the billionaires funding and empowering a militia and a propaganda campaign to destroy those movements. You'll then see those militias merge into a more political entity that then goes to war against democracy to destroy any avenue that might overturn all of this. You'll then see them rounding up and destroying the socialist killing communists, rounding people up in concentration camps. And then the final stage where you start seeing the massive wealth transfer from the people into the oligarchs. They all start cutting wages, they all start cutting rights, they start privatizing everything, they destroy any nationalized industry and everything just becomes about profit. This is true of Italy, it's true of Japan, it's true of Nazi Germany, it's true of today, it's the reason everything is now becoming privatized. Old care is completely privatized, now help this privatized, education is privatized. These are not mistakes, this is the intention of fascism. All of this is just about making money and everything else about it is just a distraction. And where we are now in history, so this right now 2025, this is the worst we have ever seen capitalism in crisis, it's never been this bad. We have the top 1% of the population now own 63% of the global wealth that is completely unsustainable. And the only reason, the only way they can keep doing that is to just keep cutting all of the services, that's why everything is getting more and more shit, it's why all the safety standards and airlines are gone, it's why everything is a subscription, it's why if you want to watch a show on Prime, you have to get not one but two subscriptions, you need the one subscription to actually watch the shows. And a second subscription to get rid of the ads, this is capitalism in crisis, they are running out of ways to generate profit growth. So what are the oligarchs doing today? They are turning to fascism of course, and that's why we are now seeing the massive rollout of a police state, the surveillance state, it's why Palantir is taking control of all of the military contracts. We live in a world now the worst wealth inequality we have ever seen, we are facing climate collapse because the corporations won't stop expanding fossil fuel, the cost of living is becoming unlivable, we have corporations like Blackstone just buying up all of the houses and then skyrocketing the rents just to maximize the profits. It's why in America you have a whole medical debt industry, something like 40% or something of US adults have medical debt, that's insane. It's a reason democracy can't do anything, our democracy is so flooded with lobbyists and the corporations and their spokesmen and the corporate money controls every single politician in every single neoliberal government. There is no democracy, it's completely paralyzed, it is paralyzed by the fact that there is so much corruption, the so much lobby money there's so much bribery going on, all of our media is owned by the same corporations and all they do is push the culture war bullshit and there is no avenue now to reform any of this, the cancer is in so deep in every single one of our systems that the only way to keep any of this going is to turn to full blown fascism. After all of the historical tactics being reloaded as well, we got all the scapegoating, that's what have you heard of the great replacement theory that's all over America and they're going to replace white people, that's fascism, that's the culture war they're trying to distract you, you're seeing the same thing happening in Europe like they want to blame immigrants and refugees for everything going on but it's just capitalism in decay. It's also like Andrew Tate and the Mano's fear and all that patriarchy bullshit, that is also just the manufactured culture war but that also serves a second purpose which is if you get all these angry disenfranchised basically white young men, make them violent, make them hateful and then they are great recruits for militias. If you want to start building something like the brown shirts again or the black shirts again, these are the guys you're going to recruit for them. So it's all intentional, it's all the culture war and it's all capitalism in decay. But again, you can see these tactics are coming back, they're destroying unions everywhere, that's one of the main reasons they are trying to set up this surveillance state everywhere and replace all the workers of AI to basically destroy unions and destroy people wanting a livable wage or their rights to work and all of that, that's why all these corporations are investing so heavily in AI, they want to not pay any wages, they want access to all the work without having to pay for it. That's fascism, AI is fascism to me. You're also seeing the suspension of civil liberties, you see protest groups like pro-Palestinian groups are declared terrorists now and in America they're starting to charge protestors under re-co-laws, like organized crime laws. They're also cutting all of the things in education that teach you the reality of this, that's one of the reasons they go on and on about DEI and they want to get rid of critical race theory because all of these things teach you the reality, the political reality of places like America, especially America, and getting rid of all of the colonial history, which explains how we got to where we are now. And we're also seeing the total and complete merger of the corporation and the state. There is no difference anymore, there's no difference between Tesla and the US government, there is no difference between the mining industries here in Australia and our government. And it's easy to look at the situation wherein now and think, my god it's hopeless, it is so bleak like this is the worst fascism has probably ever been and I think that it genuinely is. But I'm not hopeless, I'm actually quite invigorated by what's happening and that can seem like a paradox. But what I'm looking at as someone who has been studying this for a while is I'm seeing all of these capitalist panicking. But unlike in the past where the capillaries were panicking over things like a recession or the Great Depression, which was never really the end of capitalism, it was just you know, our profits are going to go down for a while and we need to turn to violent fascism to just get the profit quo. as we're back up for this quarter. That's all that was about. But what we are looking at today is an entirely different situation. What we are looking at now is end-stage capitalism. Because there's nowhere else for this to go. We have destroyed the planet. We have cut all of the costs as far as they can possibly go. The working class has nothing left to give. We don't have homes. We can't afford rent. There is a cost of living that is unpayable. We can't afford health care. Every single front is in massive red alert crisis. And pumping a bit of right wing propaganda and putting some malicious on the street isn't going to cut it this time. They are going to get extremely violent trying to stop the labor movements which in my opinion are about to explode in popularity and support. Because the working class, especially the younger generation like Gen Z and whatnot, they have nothing to lose. There is nothing in the system that has ever served them. There is nothing in the system that looks like it's ever going to serve them in the future. There is nothing in this system that Gen Z should want to save. Because they grew up after things started to really decline, which is the early 2000s. Things were already in pretty steep decline. The 90s were the last of the golden years and it's been shit ever since to be a worker. We just see endless financial crisis. We see it's just endless war, it's endless genocide, it's endless repression. It's this police state, it's surveillance. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why the fuck do we want to save any of this? There's nothing here worth saving. And that is a fundamental difference to what we're living through today compared to what all these other fascist countries were going through. And the most important point is fascism can't solve these crises. It never has the will to solve them or the ability. And these crises are far more important than anything fascism is trying to save. Capitalism is dead. There is no way it comes back from this. It can't. There's nowhere for it to go. If capitalism is all just exploitation and oligarchy and autocracy and the concentration of power and the ability to project fear in the hands of just a handful of people, well then the exact opposite of that and what we need for liberation is democracy. Actual democracy. We don't have democracy in this world today. We have the illusion of a democracy because all the power is still in the hands of a handful of capillars. Every just every single decision in our society is made by a handful of capillars. So the opposite of this is democracy, real democracy. And what that actually means practically is socialism, real socialism. Socialism is the full democratization, not just of our politics but of our workplaces, the democratization of our economies, the democratization. I'm struggling to say that of all of our life. It's about giving our free time back. It's about sharing the work. It's about community. It's about cooperation rather than competition. And it is the only way forward for humanity. So no matter how bad it gets folks and I do genuinely believe it's going to get a lot worse, I do overwhelmingly believe things are going to get better. It might take a while, five, ten, maybe twenty years. But this is the death throws of capitalism. This is a system that is not just in panic, but in terminal decline. And the better world will eventually come through this. But one of the first things we need to do to ensure that is just start getting organized ourselves. We need to start building our communities. We need to start building our mutual aid groups. And we need to start educating each other, building each other up and building that power, that community power. In every place we find it, that is a way of life. It's not just an idea we do. We form a community and accomplish things. Even if it's just simple things, join a union, build a garden, whatever, just start building that community because that is the opposite of capitalism. And anything that opposes capitalism is going to oppose fascism. And so as capitalism collapses in on its own corruption and its own extravagance and its own just collapses under the weight of its own hubo or saying corruption, nothing is going to save capitalism. Even if we don't actively fight it, it'll collapse anyway. The question is what should we be doing? I think we need to be getting ready for the world after. And as I've said many times, I will continue to say that is rooted in community. And it starts not by getting involved in politics. It doesn't start with sending a letter to your local member or minister or whoever. They're being paid anyway by the capitalist. So there's no point. If you want to make a change in this world, it starts by going and knocking on your neighbor's door and start building community with them. Even if it just starts with the two of you. Because that is the basis of our future. That is the basis of sustainability. Community is what saves us. And once you see through all of the horrors in this world and see the root cause, that all of it is coming from capitalism, all of it is coming from this class war. Then you'll never fall for that culture warship ever again. And you won't care what color your neighbor is or anything like that. You're just going to want to build community because that's the only thing that's going to save us. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this latest episode of the TripLoy podcast. I kind of lifted a bit of a cliffhanger here. And I'm going to do a podcast soon talking more about the specifics and practicality and practical ways of actually building community because I do think that's the way forward. But what does that actually mean? How does that work in practice? So I'll do a podcast on that shortly. Talk about that. But that is, I hope that's the takeaway you have from this. It's about building community. And you can start that whenever you want. Just go start talking to your neighbors, start working on projects to give us, start sharing resources, just start cooperating. That's really important. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. If you're enjoying this podcast and enjoying the videos and you would like to support me and help me grow this even therva, please consider supporting me on patreon patreon.com/triploy. Even just becoming a free member is really helpful to me. And just share this podcast. Give this podcast to someone who you think would appreciate it or someone who needs to hear it. And that's how you can help me build my little community. So yeah, anyway, stay safe out there and I'll be back soon. And hopefully this has given you something to think about.