What is fascism? At its most basic level, fascism is a dictatorship established through and maintained with terror on behalf of big business. It has a social base, which provides the support and the terror squads, but which is badly misled since the fascist dictatorship operates decisively against the interest of its social base. Militarism, extreme nationalism, the creation of enemies and scapegoats, and, perhaps the most critical component, a rabid propaganda that intentionally raises panic and hate while disguising its true nature and intentions under the cover of a phony populism are among the necessary elements.

It is very clear who the “winners” and “losers” were under fascist governments. The similarities among the five historical examples (Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile and Argentina) contained in the pages of this pamphlet are striking despite these nations’ very different cultures, times, historical developments and placements on the world economic pecking order. Who brought fascist regimes to power, and for what purpose, and how and why so many were so badly fooled during the rise to power of fascist regimes, is rarely discussed in popular works. But without this knowledge, it is impossible to understand fascism at all; that lack of knowledge is precisely what those who benefit from fascism would like to continue. This pamphlet concludes with a discussion of the martial-law infrastructure already in place in the United States and an analysis of the potentiality of all-out fascism and/or an intermediate “authoritarian” regime. The potentiality of fascism may be low for now, but it is most certainly not zero.

Despite national differences that result in major differences in the appearance of fascism, the class nature is consistent. Big business is invariably the supporter of fascism, no matter what a fascist movement’s rhetoric contains, and is invariably the beneficiary. Studying both the pre-World War II European varieties and the post-World War II South American varieties illustrate this.

The Winners and Losers of Fascism is available from Eastwaterfront Press.

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The Winners and Losers of Fascism Table of contents:

Introduction………………………………………………………. 3
The bankrollers of Hitler’s rise to power……………….. 4
American capital support of Nazis………………………… 6
The false and true faces of German fascism…………… 7
Profits and death camps in Nazi Germany…………… 10
Trading with the enemy…………………………………….. 12
To the rescue: The creation of fascism in Italy…….. 14
Financing the March on Rome…………………………… 16
Employees and employers under Italian fascism…. 18
Lower wages and higher profits in Italy………………. 19
The foundations of Spanish fascism…………………… 20
The rise to power of Spanish fascism………………….. 21
The reality of fascist rule in Spain……………………… 23
Fascism after World War II………………………………. 25
The prelude to Chilean fascism…………………………. 26
The reality of life in Pinochet’s Chile………………….. 29
The backdrop to fascism’s rise in Argentina……….. 32
Argentina’s administered lesson in economics……. 33
Could it really happen in the United States?……….. 35
Potential forms of fascism in the U.S…………………. 36
The attempted fascist coup of the 1930s…………….. 37
The infrastructure for dictatorship……………………. 38