Is Fascism even possible in the 21st century?

fascism comes from fasci, italian for a bundle of sticks/faggot. Its meant to symbolize unity within a nation (since one stick is easy to snap but a bundle of them is impossible).

Facsism isnt sustainable. Case in point spain and portuagal.

Its capitalism which as we know is doomed, but it also lacks liberalism and market forces, which helps capitalism grow and adapt to changing circumstances.

You need so many different people around the world exploited to make a good and cheap phone, or battery for your car, or most anything these days, that any system other than the one we have will REDUCE the quality of life for a while at the very least.

Mussolini was a monarchist, then an anarchist, then a communist, then a fascist. He was a catholic, then an atheist, then a catholic again. He was pro-war, then anti-war, then pro-war again. The guy changed with the political climate.

Its a very popular story. The turkic people have it like this:

So a bundle of arrows = unity, sticking together, power, etc.
For the romans it was a bundle of sticks (fasci). USA copies it from romans, its also on some coins.

More importantly, there are two conditions that need to be met for Fascism to emerge: 1) a brutalizing, humiliating event affecting society at large like a major military defeat and 2) traditional elites so scared of socialist revolution, they're willing to compromise with fascists. None are met right now, at least not in Europe or the US.
And even if they were, that wouldn't guarantee anything: Many historians expected a resurgence of fascism in the US following the end of the Vietnam War and the activism of the New Left, but it didn't come.

It is true that Fascism is unsustainable for a variety of reasons, but Spain and Portugal were not Fascist countries — they were fairly conventional conservative, reactionary, counter-revolutionary dictatorships. And they in fact lasted much longer than Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, though Portugal also remained economically backwards for quite a long time because of its traditionalist Catholic resistance to modernization.

Yes.

Recent convert from turd position/Nazbol/whatever you'd call it here. What drove me over to "mainstream" leftism (I'm probably still unorthodox to Holla Forums (which itself is unorthodoz to most people who call themselves leftist, however deluded they may be), but I'm at least not a nationalist now) is the realization that I only gave a shit about the nation because I was LARPing and in reality I was absolutely a rootless cosmopolitan and proud of it.

With that said, though, I'm still not entirely sure what exactly is so unsustainable about a self-contained, totalitarian, egalitarian community like fascism claims to aspire to. I know that fascist movements in reality don't actually do these things, but why exactly are these things so bad? People mention how internal sectarianism would flare up once again or that it would actually be capitalist, but why are those things so absolute?

Found your problem. Fascists are notoriously big on claims and poor on results.
The part where they don't do them and go wildly off course in an attempt to maintain power.
It's all feels and no theory, being right wing they're afflicted with forever putting out fires rather than resolving the causes of fires.

They aren't commies just tie any defence of tradition as a defence of capitalism. And from the framework they work on in which all things are the result of an economic abstract it becomes impossible to achieve one set of ideals if capitalism is still the driving force of economic production. So structurally unstable is the usual go to.

They purged all socialists. Seems like the essential characteristic to me.

Welcome. Fascist countries were not self contained or egalitarian. Fascist revolutions happened because the wealthy of elite of society didnt want to lose their position to a socialist revolution, so they back a strong man who eliminates the competition for them. Also consider that minorities are a part of society but are not considered equal under fascism.

And as we saw in ww2, fascist countries that failed to procure resources to improve the lives of their muh privileged classes collapsed. Its really just a giant pyramid scheme.

globalisation is an illusion

Anti-socialism isn't exclusive to fascism. It is indeed the chief characteristic proper fascists share with conventional conservatives and the main reason why the latter may end up enabling the former, however.

Francoist Spain and Salazarist Portugal lacked the aggressive imperialist expansionism, irrationalist cult of violence and death, disregard for the distinction between the private and public spheres, and mass mobilization of the whole population associated with Fascism.

I can proudly say I've never embraced any of the weird racist or sexist variations of fascism; the stuff I was all about was more on the Mussolini side rather than the Hitler side, and Mussolini apparently didn't really dislike minorities. He was eventually forced into buying into Hitler's autism due to material circumstances - those material circumstances are a blemish on fascism's record, I'll readily admit - but before then, he was seemingly about destroying those sectarian differences in hopes that society would cast its efforts on improving the lives of all, rather than a faction of it. Now, he bought into liberal autism on the economy, suppressed dissent violently, invaded Ethiopia, and eventually allowed his country to become Hitler's puppet state but what exactly would have been so catastrophic if he didn't do those things?

I know that the easy answer is "because he was only in power because he colluded with the bourgeois, which meant he was bound to be autistic", but it seems so cheap if our only argument against fascism is that fascists don't actually believe what they're saying. What exactly does that say to an alienated member of their audience who does believe what they're saying? If they took up the flag and stood up for what they believe in, we'd be right back at them calling them liars in turn, meaning we're not credible, meaning those supposed liars that we'd previously condemned might not have been liars after all.

The wealthy elite of such a nation will not maintain such nationalistic loyalties once they witness their profits stagnate.

If you are using the modern defition of fascism: IE 'a mean bully who disagrees with my views' then yes, fascists do exist.

If you mean classical fascism as in 'the unification of top level industry and the state' then yes it exists in places like China. But despite Chinas ecomonic success they arent really a great advertisement for other countries.

1. Fascism is dependent on charismatic figures. It builds national unity around the cult of personality centered on a messianic leader. What happens when he dies? Could the regime really outlive him? Can you name a fascist government whose leader was succeeded by someone else?

2. Fascism is belligerent. It pursues an openly aggressive and sometimes even delusional foreign policy with a huge financial and human cost that also causes international tensions precipitating severe military response and partisan resistance. Brutally invading and subjugating neighboring countries don't exactly make you a lot of friends.

3. Fascism is irrational. Exaltation of duty, sacrifice and death with no regards with feasibility only gets you so far pragmatically speaking. That's why Nazis kept on diverting resources towards the extermination of European Jews even as they were losing the war, to the utter disbelief of the more traditional elements of the Wehrmacht.

4. Fascism is unstable. Sure, they liked projecting an outer image of unwavering order and monolithic unity but the reality of it is that the different sectors the political machine were constantly entering into competition with each other prompting frequent rivalry, feuds, restructuring and purges.

Due to its nature as an outburst of political violence, Fascism is inherently unsustainable — it has a short life cycle. It either goes up in flame in a final bout of destruction (as in Nazi Germany) or progressively slides back into more conventional authoritarian rule (as in Fascist Italy).

Fascism is a movement by the petit-bourgeois, who value not only material wealth but also some personal or collective values and thereby inevitably are pushed out of prosperity by the invisible hand of Capital, against the "rootless cosmopolitans" who pursue only "decadence" found amongst the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie, particularly within the finance sector. If a fascist movement managed to get to power and destroy materialism and decadence (previously, they've been co-opted by other sectors of the bourgeois, so this hasn't happened, but their theory wants it), the very point of capitalism would evaporate and the system would cease to function, causing there not to be a "wealthy elite".

That's not what Fascism is. China isn't a fascist regime. You know as much about the subject as people who use "fascist" exclusively as an epithet.

Neither definition is correct lyl

Fascism isn't even possible with 90%+ literacy rates

While it's true racism was nowhere as central in Italian Fascism as it was in German Nazism, to describe Mussolini as a non-racist civic nationalist would be pushing it. Fascists pursued aggressive Italianization of the Slovene minority through blackshirt intimidation. Mussolini had this to say about Slavs in 1920 when he wasn't even Prime Minister yet, that is before he could possibly have had to "compromise" with Nazi racism: "When dealing with such a race as the Slavs — inferior and barbarian — we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. […] We should not be afraid of new victims. […] I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians."

Needless to say, their treatment of Ethiopians was also particularly brutal and cruel — they used poisonous gas against civilians targets — and the native black population was segregated from white settlers. But in that respect, it wasn't any more racist than European or American society at large. In fact, they even tried to integrate Arab Libyans as Italian citizens on equal footing with whites, a largesse which "democratic" colonial powers like France or the UK certainly never considered for Algerians or Indians at the time.

Subhas Chandra Bose and Juan Peron were anti imperialists though

The way you put it reminded me of Hegel's master/slave dialectics

News flash Brainiac, people of color can't be racist.

Back to reddit.

Neither were fash. They were posers who killed their fascists AND Nazbols.

See above. To paraphrase a certain SocDem song How many Nazis wannabe Nazis?

More possible than socialism, I'm sad to say, since it can just use the existing capitalist economic framework.

Not really otherwise it becomes crap which is why Bombacci had to bail Mussolini out in 1943.

yes

Indeed, it's typical of socialism too for example.

Italy and Japan were on the winning side of the first world war.
Russia and France suffered far more brutalizing than Germany who folded before the Allied armies made it very far into their territory.

Italy was promised grandiose spoils of wars (in the form of Adriatic territories) by the UK in exchange for their participation in the war, rewards they never actually received. The Italian delegation was basically ignored at the Treaty of Versailles. Italians felt robbed, betrayed and humiliated. Half a million Italians had died for what amounted to fucking nothing.
As for Japan, it cannot be accurately described as Fascist. All fascist coup attempts (most notably the 2-26 Incident) were brutally crushed and the country's leading fascist figure (Ikki Kita) was executed by firing squad. Japan was closer to being a more conventional conservative regime with some co-opted fascist elements (like in Franco's Spain).
But France did end up winning the war in the end, they even annexed Alsace and Lorraine back into French territory. They were one of the Big Three and their ultimate revanchist fantasy had been fulfilled. They were not forced into a situation where they'd have to repay impossibly high reparations.
As for Russia, the situation was different — the ruling class hadn't been capable of containing the revolution, so here's that.

That being said, it's entirely true the brutalization effects of WW1 affected all participants and was probably the chief reason Fascism emerged at all among "winning" and "losing" countries alike.

Looking this guy up, isn't he basically a Huey Long-esque figure? He's definitely more civic than ethno and the National Reorganization Diet seems similar to the Share our Wealth plan.

Francoist Spain and Salzar's Portugal were pseudo fascist

These were the real fascists of Iberia

institutenr.org/tag/ramiro-ledesma-ramos-the-creator-of-national-syndicalism/

openrevolt.info/2011/09/06/the-portuguese-national-syndicalist-movement/

I'm surprised we don't talk more about Salazar on here.

Huey Long was a progressive populist democrat. Ikki Kita supported totalitarian nationalism, defended class collaboration and promoted aggressive imperialism. All Fascist movements originally included a social justice platform, which they then proceeded to get rid of when no longer useful. There is no reason to believe a successful Japanese Fascist movement would not have done away with its promised wealth distribution scheme in the name of "strengthening the Kokutai" or something.

Why would we? He was a conservative Catholic. He was was so terrified by the prospect of class antagonisms and secular values staring to emerge that he purposefully held back industrialization, resulting in Portugal being one of the worst Western countries in terms of economic development and educational achievements.

This. The Nazis, Fascists, the Iraqi Ba'ath party: All of them were belligerent genocidal imperialists.
Because that's what happens when you run socialized capitalism with a cult of violence.
That's not to say Fascism has a monopoly on imperialism, capitalism, anti-communism, militarism, national mythology or cults of personality. Just that Fascism is a very particular expression of capitalism in decline, and the bourgeois reaction against it.

In what context is isolationism possible, if not in fascism? It seems obviously absurd that there's no ideology whatsoever that minds its own business and not that of others.

Have you got anything more vague than this nonsense?