Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.

Thus fascism is misrepresented as a mutant form of socialism. In fact, if fascism means anything, it means all-out government support for business and severe repression of antibusiness, prolabor forces.

The real sin of revolutionaries, communist or not, was that they championed the laboring classes against the wealthy few.