REMINDER: THE IDEA THAT FASCISM IS "RIGHT-WING" AND COMMUNISM "LEFT-WING" IS COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

PBS: Are Communism and Fascism totally different things, completely opposed to one another? 

RICHARD PIPES' ANSWER:  

Well, the notion that Communism and fascism are diametrically opposed is something that was fostered by the Communist party, by the Communist International.  

In the 1920s, basically the International defined fascism as any anti-communist movement. If you were anti-communist, it doesn’t matter what platform, you were automatically fascist.  

So that even the western democracies were called fascist.  

This is a meaningless term.  

I use the term Fascism concretely, to apply only to the Italian fascist party and the Nazi to the Nazi party.  

Later these two movements had a great deal in common.  

They were one-party states which gave the workers considerable input into the running of the state, that used socialist slogans without giving them really socialist rights. I mean, the same thing was true in the Soviet Union. They bannered about socialist slogans but they came nowhere near fulfilling socialist programs.  

And they felt a great deal of empathy for each other, all these fascists and communists, because they had a common enemy. The common enemy was liberal, democratic, capitalist state. They hated it, all of it, equally.  

And they had a great deal of admiration for each other. 

You know, Hitler, at the height of the war which his troops were waging with the Russians in 1942-1943, spoke freely to his associates about how after having triumphed over Stalin he will make Stalin his governor over Russia.  

And Mao Zedong, when he was criticized for killing so many of his associates during the Cultural Revolution is quoted as saying, “Look at Hitler. The more cruelty, the more revolutionist zeal.” They greatly admired each other and hated equally well the Roosevelt’s and the Churchill’s and the other democratic leaders in West.

LIKE STALIN'S "WAR" AGAINST TROTSKY, HITLER'S WAR ON STALIN WAS INTERNECINE.

THE IDEOLOGY DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO COMMUNISM IS ANARCHISM, NOT FASCISM.

FASCISM IS A FORM OF SOCIALISM AS IS COMMUNISM.

IF YOU BELIEVE IN LIMITED GOVERNMENT AND BELIEVE THAT LIBERTY IS A HUMAN RIGHT, THEN YOU ARE NOT A FASCIST.

YOU ARE REALLY NOT EVEN A CONSERVATIVE.

IF YOU SUPPORT OBAMACARE AND DEMOLISHING THE 2ND AMENDMENT, THEN YOU ARE THE FASCIST.