Fascism originated in the petite and rural bourgeoisie then served capitalist class interests

Evidence

The theses went on to reaffirm that no revolution was possible in Italy other than a proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism; to characterise the ruling-class bloc of northern industrialists and southern landowners; to analyse the role of the proletariat—which was compared with that of pre-revolutionary Russia, numerically small but advanced and highly concentrated, and whose strength was emphasised in view of the heterogenous and backward nature of the Italian social structure; to describe how fascism, whose original base had been in the urban petite bourgeoisie and the rural bourgeoisie, had become the tool of the capitalist class. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 209

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the class-bloc analysis motif (Florence/Genoa city-states, capitalism’s rise) from earlier chapters of this book; fascism as the capitalist class’s instrument prefigures later readings of fascist movements as elite tools. — connects to: Bourgeois class behavior explains the subjective key to fascism — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1421
• DEFINE: Establishes Gramsci’s characterization of the ruling-class bloc and the class base of fascism — concepts the Islamophobia field will later deploy when analyzing how reactionary movements serve capital.