The Failures of Fascism, Past and Present
What We Can Learn from the Mistakes of Europeans
Mr. Immpresario delivered the following speech at the East Coast Forum in Virginia, on October 25, 2025. The event was hosted by the Bluestone Heritage League and Vetus Dominium Club chapters of the Old Glory Club.
Fascism. Everyone has an opinion of it, but few are able to describe it in clear terms. Beyond the surface-level aesthetics, inflammatory commentary on Twitter, and the endless handwringing of Facebook moms who insist that we are in fact already living in a fascist dystopia — what is it, truly?
The purpose of this presentation is to explore the historical reality of fascism to gain clarity of how it actually functioned and operated and to draw attention to its modern contemporary — a country I left two years ago in order to pursue my birthright and secure a future for myself and my children in the greatest country on Earth, The United States of America.
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
– Politics and the English Language, 1946
The above quote is from Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, a socialist who fought in support of Marxist revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War, agonizing over the abuse of language to score political points to the detriment of public discourse. The phenomenon of denouncing people you don’t like as fascist to exclude them from the public square or to excuse acts of violence against them is not a recent development; it gained popularity after World War II as the Soviet Union found it a very useful tool in advancing their agenda.
When examining the philosophical foundations of fascism, we must first deal with the most contemptible of vermin, a German philosopher.
Georg Hegel’s legacy is chiefly that of a promoter of two ideas that are central to the development of 20th-century political ideologies. The first of these is the concept of historical determinism, an intoxicating mind virus that convinces its victims that if you read enough theory, then you will gain the power to understand how societies will develop in the future by way of deterministic processes.
Whenever you hear people speak of the inevitability of progress or being on the right side of history, it is Hegelian historical determinism that lies at the heart of the nonsense coming out of their mouths. While it would be nice to say that this disgraceful gibberish does not deserve thought or recognition, the mistaken belief that we are on a path of inexorable progress is a widespread malaise that has enthralled many. It is what animated militant revolutionaries across Europe and led to the killing of untold millions, all in the name of a greater good and being on the right side of history.
But history is not shaped through deterministic processes, nor is it the result of random chance. It is individual initiative, the courage of Man, and the sheer bloody-minded will to see things through that shapes societies. Here in America, it was the spirit of European settlers, pioneers, innovators, and entrepreneurs that built the greatest civilization the world has ever seen.
The other concept that defines Hegel’s legacy is the counterintuitive conception of liberty laid out in his work Philosophy of Right — that the freedom of the individual is maximally realized only within a total state. It is thus not a repudiation of personal freedom, something Hegel championed, but the pompous conceit that it is only within the confines of rigidly enforced societal order that the individual is fully able to actualize his liberty.
It is from this cursed seed that Marx’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat was born.
But it was not only in Russia, Germany, France, and England where such ideas gained popularity. In Italy, a journalist who wrote under the name Vero Eretico (“True Heretic”) — an on-the-nose reference to his atheist convictions — was a major promoter of Marxism.
That man was, of course, Benito Mussolini, whose work as the editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti initially advanced the pacifist cause during the early stage of World War I. Embracing the revolutionary moment the war presented, and perhaps aided in this understanding by the monetary support he received from the British foreign intelligence service, Mussolini came to reject pacifism and saw intervention in the war as an opportunity to strike decisively against the reactionary monarchies of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg dynasties.
For his change of opinion on the war, the Partito Socialista Italiano expelled Mussolini, who nonetheless continued to view himself as a socialist and further refined his ideological convictions, heavily influenced by the writings of the French syndicalist Georges Sorel.
What, then, were these convictions, and how did they play out in practice when the fascists presented themselves as the only credible alternative for governing Italy in the chaos following the end of World War I?
If we consult the bastion of unbiased information on all topics of importance to Man, Wikipedia, we shall learn that the following were prioritized in the 1919 Fascist Manifesto as written and published by Benito Mussolini:
Universal suffrage.
Introduction of an eight-hour working day.
Lowering of the pension age.
Dissolution of the Italian Senate (dominated by nobility).
The participation of workers’ representatives in the technical operation of industry.
Put plainly, the Fascist Manifesto is largely indistinguishable from any other socialist manifesto published in the early 20th century. But what of the racism, you might be wondering; where does that come into play?
If we are to consult Mussolini himself, he had this to say: “In the fundamental precepts of fascism all prejudice is rejected.”
Of course, if you ask any large language model about this quote, it will tell you that it is incorrect, despite being issued by the author of fascist doctrine and taken from him verbatim. Why the authors of these models are so adamant that history be rejected and substituted with the hallucinations of machines I do not dare speculate, but I am chiefly interested in the historical reality of fascism, not fiction.
Mussolini is also known to have issued the following statement: “Race? It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.”
Clearly, then, Mussolini was not a big believer in the existence of biological race or that any societal development could be attributed to human biodiversity, but what about his subordinates within the fascist regime of Italy?
Judging by the statements made not only by Mussolini’s close confidants but by administrators and bureaucrats, what emerges is the unmistakable impression that the fascists did not much care for race. Mussolini, for one, had multiple concurrent Jewish lovers. Fascists spoke about race rarely, often treating the topic with derision, tending to view it as a strange Teutonic obsession. They also largely refused to enforce any of the race laws that their German allies pressured Italy into adopting during World War II. In fact, it was only after large portions of Italy came under German occupation that a single Jew was forcefully expelled to any concentration camp.
The core of fascist ideology was neither monarchism nor Christian theocracy nor ethnocracy. You could be an anti-racist and be a member in good standing of the Fascist Party; the same for capitalists or even Marxists. What could not be questioned was the supremacy of the state as enforced by trade unions. To understand the core ideology of fascism, one must understand that instead of abandoning its socialist aspirations — as the National German Socialist Worker’s Party did when it gained power — fascism carried out its policy as laid out in its manifesto, and among the points highlighted above it is the last which is the most significant.
In the theories presented by Georges Sorel, it was only through worker’s collectives by which true revolution could ever be achieved. When the Russian Revolution broke out and widespread killings began, Mussolini expressed disappointment in Lenin for having abandoned the pursuit of justice for workers and only made him all the more convinced to carry out revolution in Italy that would be guided by his syndicalist convictions.
In Bolshevik Russia, all trade unions were disbanded, for what purpose do they serve when the capital is owned by the state, the perfect embodiment of the will of the workers? In Italy, trade unions were not just given greater power in society; they were the very mechanism by which the state exerted control over all aspects of Italy’s industry and economy.
The architect of this system was a man by the name of Edmondo Rossoni, a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. He termed it corporativismo integrale, or integral corporatism, and its goal was to enable the creation of a fascist syndicalist state. He achieved this by convening a conference at the Palazzo Vidoni in Rome in 1925, attended by both representatives of the fascist trade unions (whose primary purpose was acting as the fundraising and recruiting arms of the Fascist Party) and representatives of the General Confederation of Italian Industry, Confindustria.
A deal was presented in which all strikes would be made illegal under one proviso, that Italian industries would be bound to collective bargaining agreements that could only be made with a fascist trade union, and that such collective bargaining agreements would be protected by making all protest against them illegal. After some hemming and hawing as the parties hashed out the details, the Pact of the Vidoni Palace was signed. This effectively made it impossible for any independent trade union to gain any influence in Italy and ensured that the Fascist Party had total control over labor relations and by extension enormous influence over Italy’s economy.
But Italy is not alone among European nations in having pursued this model.
I learned of this from firsthand experience while living in Sweden when my son started attending preschool and I began dropping him off in the morning. Preschool did not start until an hour and a half after the normal start time where I worked at the time. The solution was simple: I worked later in the evening to make up for lost time in the morning. The union, however, caught wind of this, and soon a union representative arrived at my workplace to explain to everyone that working late to make up for lost time was disallowed, since this technically counted as overtime and would be breaking the law as it broke the terms of the collective bargaining agreement that governs all of Swedish industry. We were then additionally told that any protest against this system was illegal.
Not being satisfied with what I heard, I went to investigate further, and sure enough, not only was it illegal to protest against collective bargaining agreements, but collective bargaining agreements could only be reached with Social Democrat trade unions (Lag [1976:580] om medbestämmande i arbetslivet).
The series of events that led to this law being passed in Sweden started with a dockworkers strike in Göteborg. Being alarmed at the influence of independent trade unions in this strike and the possibility of them emerging victorious, representatives of trade unions belonging to LO, TCO, and SACO — trade unions that have from the moment of their inception acted as the fundraising and recruiting arms of the Swedish Social Democratic Party — entered into negotiations with representatives of Svenskt Näringlsliv (the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise), and a deal was presented in which all strikes would be made illegal under one proviso: that Swedish industries would be bound to collective bargaining agreements that could only be made with a Social Democrat trade union and that such collective bargaining agreements would be protected by making all protest against them illegal. After some hemming and hawing as the parties hashed out the details, the pact was signed. This effectively made it impossible for any independent trade union to gain any influence in Sweden and ensured that the Social Democratic Party had total control over labor relations and by extension enormous influence over Sweden’s economy.
In Sweden, this is termed Fredsplikten, which in English translates to “the obligation to preserve the peace.” This absurd linguistic chimera was designed to mask the fact that it makes workers powerless in any conflicts with their employer as they have no legal right to protest against a collective bargaining agreement reached with a Social Democrat trade union. In practical terms, this is on par with removing the legal ability to defend oneself from bodily harm and being told that it is in the name of securing peace — something Swedes are also keen on. Changing workplace or career will have next to no impact on your underlying working conditions, as these bargaining agreements are not just nationwide in their scope but cover every sector of the economy and set the wages for every profession.
The judicial enforcement mechanism for this system is an entity called Medlingsinstitutet (the Arbitration Institute), who have the legal authority to bind conflicting parties in the event of a strike action to a collective bargaining agreement, drafted by them, to which there is no possibility of appeal. What are the principles they apply when resolving such cases? Per Ewaldsson, Chief Judicial Officer of Medlingsinstitutet, describes their mission as such:
There’s a basic consensus that this [the Swedish model of collective bargaining agreements] is good for a small exporting country like Sweden. A guideline for our mediators is that they should not propose solutions to conflicts which would exceed the wage increases agreed in industry. That’s really the top priority.
In other words, the highest legal authority for enforcing the Swedish Model has stated explicitly that the primary purpose of his organization is to suppress wage growth within the country. This is because the system he exists to protect is designed to maximize membership dues for the Social Democratic Party’s trade unions. That this stifles Swedish industry with unproductive scab labor and makes it near impossible for individuals with ambition and skill to thrive within the confines of a normal career are of no concern.
Here’s the kicker, though. While the Pact of the Vidoni Palace was signed in 1925, Fredsplikten only became law in 2019. This happened following a process that saw no debate, no public outcry, no demonstrations, and no protests from political advocacy groups or think tanks. Sweden simply passed into law a word-by-word copy of Fascist Italy’s economic model without a whisper of discontent and without a single person apart from myself recognizing the historical antecedent.
To conclude this presentation, I wish to turn to America and where we find ourselves today.
There are many, especially within our organization, who can see clearly the need for a grander banner under which to unite American conservatives to be able to face the challenges that lie beyond the horizon of our current administration.
While I sympathize with those who value aesthetics, and while I laugh along with the jokes, our organization was not built by men who measure success in terms of how much notoriety we can accrue. We recognize that we achieve victory not by flying banners over freeways, marching in torchlit parades, or wearing our keywords on our armbands, but by being ambitious and capable, by being kind and gregarious, by leading with honor and speaking with sincerity — and by associating with other men who too embody these qualities.
There are those who insist that we should look backwards for inspiration, but the position I hold is that we will gain nothing by declaring ourselves a retrograde force and attaching our names to that of a dead brand. As Americans, we have our own distinct history to be proud of, and what I maintain is that our path is not found among the failures of long-since-dead European regimes; our path lies before us.
To define that path and to speak to it with courage and conviction. That is the charge before us.
Great article. Thanks for posting.