Why is it that fascists have identified themselves as socialists so much in the past?

left-reminders:

Because fascism arises most prominently in times of capitalist crisis; crisis screws over the working class, filling them with a deep political anger at the status quo. Socialism was a prominent movement throughout the western world in the early 1900s, and it represented a real outlet of change for many people. Fascists latched onto this rhetoric in order to absorb the disenfranchised into an ideology that appeared, on the surface, to support the working class. This is why fascism is often difficult for laypeople to pin down politically – fascists alter their rhetoric depending on who they’re trying to absorb, and it all conceals a deep desire to reinforce the capitalist class structure when the economy is in crisis and there’s widespread social unrest. In practice, fascism is a capitalist ideology – disempowering unions, crushing strikes, cultivating racism and sexism and nationalism to divide the working class, elevating a “natural set of elites”, abandoning even the pretense of democracy, etc. – the ruling class adapting to different conditions and using more overt rhetoric to defend the system of capital accumulation.
-Daividh