Fascism was an aggressive offensive, not a desperate defensive move
Evidence
It would be utterly mistaken to portray fascism as a desperate last resort of a threatened ruling class. On the contrary, it was only after the defeat of the working class in 1920 that the big industrialists (and Giolitti) decided that the moment had come to replace the velvet glove by the iron fist, and gave financial support and tacit approval respectively to the fascist squads. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 86
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Connects forward to Islamophobia readings: the image of a powerful, confident ruling class choosing repression as an instrument of control, not a cornered class lashing out — echoes analyses of state power as proactive rather than reactive.
- SEED: Angle: re-examining repressive turns (fascism, authoritarian crackdowns) as expressions of strength and confidence rather than weakness — a corrective to the ‘desperation’ theory of state violence.
- ADDENDUM: Speaks directly to the mechanics of elite alliance and class strategy in ‘On Sacrifice’ — how a ruling stratum consolidates through selective sponsorship of violent elements.
Related
- Volunteer squads could not defeat fascism because the state backed it. (similarity 0.80)
- Fascism represented big capital directly seizing the state apparatus. (similarity 0.79)
- Fascism originated in the petite and rural bourgeoisie then served capitalist class interests (similarity 0.79)
- The early PCI leadership treated fascism as secondary to the social-democratic threat (similarity 0.79)
- Gramsci analyzed fascism as comparable to Bonapartism and New Deal interventionism (similarity 0.78)