Why do some fascists identify as socialists?

antifainternational:

That’s a great question.  This goes back to the beginnings of fascism, when fascists were actively competing with socialists and communists to win recruits to their cause.  In his book The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard J. Evans describes how Hitler and co. would deliberately make socialist pronouncements in the hopes of luring working-class Germans away from socialist groups and into nazism.  It was no accident that they were called “national socialists.”  Hitler publicly proclaimed that the nazis = socialists. 

But that strategy didn’t really work out for the fascists.  The nazis never enjoyed significant working-class support, despite their con job.  But it did enrage legitimate socialists in Germany and sew confusion among the more gullible.

This pattern was repeated elsewhere.  Alexander Reid Ross notes in Against The Fascist Creep that “Fascism…draws left-wing notions of solidarity and liberation into ultranationalist, right-wing ideology; and, at least in its early stages, fascists often utilize “broad front” strategies, proposing a mass-based, nationalist platform to gain access to mainstream political audiences and key administration positions. 

In any event, the socialist charade never lasts long.  Shortly after gaining power in Germany, the nazis forgot all their socialist positions and promises, murdered thousands of socialists, and laid out their Lebensraum policy, which was absent of any socialism but full of racist colonialism.

In our times, we see fascist groups continuing to adopt socialist or even anarchist trappings in the same attempt to fool people and undermine their strongest opponents.  Fascists have tried to infiltrate the animal rights, anti-globalization, and environmental movements; fascists have adopted black bloc tactics in confrontations with anti-fascists; fascists have attempted to stake space in the anarchist milieu as “national anarchists.”  But it’s always the same tired old con and it will only lead to genocide and misery if we fall for it or fail to stop them.