Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

The Italian neofascists were learning from the U.S. reactionaries how to achieve fascism’s class goals within the confines of quasidemocratic forms: use an upbeat, Reaganesque optimism; replace the jackbooted militarists with media-hyped crowd pleasers; convince people that government is the enemy—especially its social service sector—while strengthening the repressive capacities of the state; instigate racist hostility and antagonisms between the resident population and immigrants; preach the mythical virtues of the free market; and pursue tax and spending measures that redistribute income upward.

The very concept of “revolutionary violence” is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform.

Peaceful protest and reform are exactly what the people are denied by the ruling oligarchs. The dissidents who continue to fight back, who try to defend themselves from the oligarchs’ repressive fury, are then called “violent revolutionaries” and “terrorists.”

What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

The “brutal totalitarian regime” was actually a giant trough from which many took whatever they could.

There is often not enough interesting and creative work to go around for all who consider themselves interesting and creative people.

In the communist countries, Marxism was doled out like a catechism. Its critique of capitalism had no vibrancy or meaning for those who lived in a noncapitalist society.

To say that “socialism doesn’t work” is to overlook the fact that it did.

Emigrés from Communist states are astonished by the amount of bureaucracy they find in the West. Two Soviet immigrants to Canada complained, independently of each other, that “bureaucracy here was even worse than at home”

A joke circulating in Russia in 1992 went like this: Q. What did capitalism accomplish in one year that communism could not do in seventy years? A. Make communism look good.

Capitalism is not just an economic system but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists.

Oppressive social conditions may cry out for revolution, but that does not mean revolution is forthcoming.

racism involves not just personal attitude but institutional structure and systemic power.

Instead of thinking that racism is an irrational output of a basically rational and benign system, we should see it is a rational output of a basically irrational and unjust system.

Those who have waged merciless war against the Reds have no trouble making war against the Greens.