What is Social Fascism?

Social fascism is a deceptive form of fascism resembling democratic socialism, social democracy, and progressivism. It describes reformist policies that sustain capitalism while appearing socialist, promoted by movements advocating welfare statism, populist rhetoric, and class collaboration, which pacify workers and obstruct revolution. Social democrats like Britain’s Labour party and democratic socialists/progressives like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are social fascists for supporting capitalism through reforms and bourgeois collaboration, betraying the working class. Socialist-sounding slogans and parliamentary democracy mask bourgeois dictatorship, akin to fascism’s authoritarianism with democratic trappings. Nationalist tendencies like Sanders’ border controls, align with fascism’s exclusionary nationalism. This form, seen in Peronism, blends social democratic goals with authoritarian/corporatist structures, prioritizing national unity over proletarian solidarity, misleading workers and enabling fascism while condemning communism. 

Social fascism features class collaboration under state oversight, like progressive taxation, akin to fascist corporatism. It relies on reformism to stabilize, not dismantle, capitalism. Reformism pacifies workers, preventing revolutionary consciousness. It uses democratic/socialist facades like parliamentary democracy or Green New Deal slogans to obscure capitalist agendas, resembling fascism’s authoritarian control with electoral legitimacy. It often depends on imperialist wealth. Populist rhetoric like Ocasio-Cortez’s attracts workers but channels support into nationalist/capitalist frameworks reflecting fascist-aligned populism.

The principles of social fascism include prioritizing and relying on electoral reforms over armed struggle. It views the state as a mediator of class interests. It emphasizes national unity/industrial peace over proletarian internationalism. It opposes radical communist movements, aligning with capitalists to suppress them. By targeting vague entities instead of Marxist class categories, it promotes cross-class unity and uses socialist labels without advocating for violent class struggle or full socialism.

Social democracy is social fascist for stabilizing capitalism and enabling fascism by weakening worker resistance, we've seen this before. Democratic socialism/progressivism also contribute by misleading revolutionary potential with populist rhetoric, sustaining capitalism under a socialist guise. While controversial, it persists in critiques of both groups' failure to fundamentally challenge capitalism. The reason the term has survived since the 1930s is the groups keep displaying the characteristics of fascism and people are catching them. Since 2022, the voters and politicians who carry these ideologies have been called nat socs by the author and others on the left. This article is to revive the term as it is more fitting of the rhetoric and actions of those who carry the ideologies.