Although political commentators have pointed out similarities between the two ideologies (and started many a Flame War in the process), on paper Nazism and Communism are polar opposites. Communismnote preaches a materialist worldview, where culture is a construct at the mercy of economic conditions and exploitation, while Nazism/Fascism preach an idealistnote worldview, with culture as the expression of a race or country's "collective soul", and considers Marxism a symptom, if not the cause, of societal decay. At least, that's what they printed in their respective textbooks. The mainstream liberal worldview sees both however, as monstrously totalitarian systems, as do adherents of other ideologies, and is more concerned with the dehumanizing methods that Marxist and Fascist dictatorships utilize than with their utopian claims. And that's where the confusion starts. While there are notably many self-described communists who don't subscribe to the methods of Stalin, Mao, etc. it's generally accepted that the essence of fascism is its propensity for violence for violence's sake, so non-violent libertarian socialistsnote are miffed when their (in their view, at least) self-defensive ultima ratio use of violence against fascists is deemed "the same as" what their fascist enemies do by liberals.
There is a grain of Truth in Television in this trope: "Nazi" itself is German shorthand for "National Socialist Worker's Party".note Fascism both in Italy and Germany presented itself as a right-wing moral substitute to communism and appropriated the characteristic solid red background of the Communist flag for its own design. Its ideology was a non-elitist way to attract the masses away from the Communist Party (which had formerly been the first ideology that offered a coherent way for mass mobilization and participation) for nationalistic ends, and justified it by a broad majoritarian ideology, rather than the universalist one of the Communist Party. Adolf Hitler once claimed "You can easily get a good National Socialist out of a Communist, but out of a Social Democrat, never", implying that fanatics can easily be converted to one's own cause, but moderates will resist any conversion attempts.note Hitler also admitted that the differences between Nazism and Communism were more tactical than they were philosophical, saying that "without race, National Socialism would simply be competing with Marxism on its own ground". Heck, there are even actual Commie Nazis active in Russia
. Earlier, Commie Nazis were active in both the Communist and Nazi parties in Germany during the twenties and thirties, with a considerable chunk of left-wing Nazis (called the "Strasserists", see below) being led by Hitler's main party rival, Otto Strasser. However, the socialists resigned in disgust due to the Nazis appealing more to the propertied and professional middle-classes rather than the working class, Otto Strasser being one of them, leading to his brother disowning himnote . By 1930, many commentators had noted that "The Socialists had left the National Socialist Party", firmly placing the Nazi party on a right-wing extremist trajectory. The KPD,note the most important German communist party, was the first party to be forbidden by the Nazi government, with all other parties except for the NSDAP following shortly after. Despite that, some Communists continued fighting the government — for example, the "Rote Kapelle". This wasn't a single organization, it is a term for different groups who were against National Socialism and had contacts to the Soviet Union. Many, but not all, members of these groups were Communists.
However, these correspondences were fringe and unrepresentative of the global tensions of The '30s, where the Comintern in the middle of the Thirties supported a global Popular Front, an alliance between communists, liberals, fellow-travelers and anti-fascists against Nazism and Fascism, and repeatedly considered the expansion of fascism in Europe a threat. Most people who joined communist parties in this era considered themselves anti-fascists rather than communists (and they later left the party in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact). Economically, Nazism offered considerable incentives to capitalist ventures and while state intervention heavily increased in the economy, business still maintained some room for maneuver in their own enterprises despite tight restrictions in the market itself. A good number of businessmen supported Nazism after mid-1932, when Hitler's rise to power was seen as inevitable, and thus as a preferable if questionable alternative to the KPD. Its repression targeted political, social, and racial minorities while leaving a good majority of civil society untouched, and in general picture and surface appearance, resembling many other advanced Western nations of the 20s and 30s. Communism, by contrast, was a state-owned economy, which, having flirted with a mixed economy under Vladimir Lenin in the twenties, underwent a mass period of collectivization and industrialization during the era of Josef Stalin, intended to promote rapid modernization to a region that was largely rural and agrarian. These policies were implemented with considerable ruthlessness and criminal incompetence, resulting in a terrible famine in the early 30s but which otherwise significantly increased infrastructure development and life expectancy. In other words, the goals of Communism and Nazism during The '30s differed drastically. Nazism, having come to power in an already developed economy, was devoted to a largely cultural, social, and nationalistic program (though key infrastructure programs, such as the Autobahn, were conceived before their rise to power and implemented with far less than ideal competence and full employment of the population never actually achieved, despite government claims), while the Soviet Union was a revolutionary regime committed to modernizing vast swathes of its underdeveloped region.
In Germany during The '80s, equations between Communism, specifically Stalinism, and Nazism became a public controversy during the Historikerstreit, where German historians clashed on an interpretation of Nazism that saw it as a specific totalitarian ideology triggered by Communism (and so hold the latter culpable for it), or a distinct German nationalistic ideology that had no real distinct and consistent ideology and program, and whose most extreme actions could still be sourced to features of German society. Liberal and social democratic historians as well as Marxists defended the latter positions and argued that Nazism and its crimes were unique and distinct on many grounds. This controversy returned in 2008, during the Prague Declaration which called for a day of remembrance for the crimes of Stalinism and Nazism, a move that was opposed by many critics on the grounds that it allowed Eastern European nations to whitewash their history of collaboration with the Nazis under the rubric of equivalency. As noted by Israeli historian Efraim Zuroff, this has to led to the situation in Lithuania where Jewish partisans who fought with the Red Army are being targeted for war crimes while Lithuania has largely failed to bring to trial Nazi collaborators or acknowledge the severity of the Holocaust in the Baltic states (where 99% of Jews were killed, largely by local collaborators rather than directly by the Nazis). Needless to say, comparison or equivocation of Communism and Nazism remains a contentious political issue in Europe, where the matter is not merely academic in nature, but potentially deadly in consequence. (And let's not get started on the Middle East.)
Academically, the debate was more analytical and theoretical, at least before the opening of the Soviet Archives, which challenged some aspects of the totalitarian twin concept. For a Cold War view, you're advised to give Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism a read; for a post-Cold War view, one is advised to read works by historians such as J. Arch Getty and Sheila Fitzpatrick, in addition to Ian Kershaw, scholars of Stalinism and Nazism respectively who have made use of new archival sources, geared towards a vision that complicates the conventional idea of "totalitarianism". Two psychological analyses of totalitarian governments comparing Nazism and Stalinism have been published: The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, which primarily concentrates on a psychoanalytic view centering on sexual repression, and Political Ponerology by Andrzej M. Łobaczewski, concentrating on a cognitive-behavioral analysis of hysteria in society in general and psychopathy among politicians in general. For further examples and discussion of the similarities between individuals and groups on "opposite" ends of the political spectrum, see The Horseshoe Effect. This isn't to say however that comparisons of the two regimes have been entirely invalidated either despite the opening of the archives. As the likes of Richard Evans, Richard Overy and Timothy Snyder have noted, the two regimes were similar in that they shared similar concepts of a police state, state terror, mass mobilization, propaganda (right down to the aesthetics), and total control over society to recreate human nature to create a new type of human being. But, as Richard Evans notes, whatever the similarities between the two regimes, the differences in the origins, rise, and triumphs of the two systems are too different for the concept of twin totalitarianism to accurately explain. In the end, it serves more usefully as a description of how they behaved than how they got there, thus serving in itself better as a description than an explanation.
It is important to note that a "third way" between socialism and capitalism exists in the political world, and is used to describe welfare policies. This "third way" is often advocated by center left Keynesians and Social Democrats or center right Christian Democrats alongside usually Liberal social views. It's also advocated by some far right groups as a means of recruiting workers, but right-wing extremists often up supporting capitalism or neo-feudalism anyway (good examples would be the policies of Pinochet or Franco). Note that this is not what is about to be discussed below.
While many have debated whether or not The Horseshoe Effect is something legitimate or a grasping of straws to promote centrism; actual "third way" ideologies exist that seek to marry far-right principles with far-left ones. Often, this will involve ultra-nationalist and reactionary social policy mixed in with a far-left economic and anti-imperialist policy to ensure a highly anti-liberal ideology.
Several notable examples of these would be:
- Strasserism: An ideology pushed forth by Nazi brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser. Essentially, this ideology seems to represent Nazism in its original form, but with an even heavier economically radical tinge, supporting guild socialism. The ideology and party at first was clearly third positionist, advocating pro-working class and anti-capitalist politics while also being extremely nationalistic, and focusing more on hating Jewish Capitalists than Jewish Communists note . This was reflected in Hitler's early rhetoric, where he focused mainly on Jewish capitalists and war profiteers, only starting to talk about "Judeo-Bolshevism" in earnest when Alfred Rosenberg joined the party. His rhetoric had largely been anti-capitalist, anti-big business and anti-bourgeois in the 20s, but by the 30s it had focused mainly on anti-Marxism. In addition, they were also open to forming an alliance of mutual interest with the Soviet Union against the capitalist West. However, any claims of the Nazis being a socialist party (at least in the conventional sense) were discredited to most during the Night of the Long Knives, where Gregor Strasser and Ernst Rohm (who had his own distinct version of Nazi socialism as well as ideas of national revolution) and some of their most prominent respective supporters were killed (along with anti-Nazi right-wingers and people who high-ranking party officials wanted to settle scores with) and Otto had already resigned by 1930. The Nazis ended up becoming a pure far-right party that advocated class unity, emphasized racial supremacy and command-capitalism, and made appeals to the old elite and military over the rough and rowdy SA.
- Otto Strasser left the Nazi Party before they came to power because he came to realize Hitler and he had very different ideas of what constituted a "Socialist". note He developed his theories more fully in exile and in the aftermath of World War II his writings exerted a strong influence on Neo-Fascist and Neo-Nazi parties throughout Europe, such as the various National Fronts. Gregor Strasser was less ideologically sophisticated than his brother and his own views lay somewhere in-between Otto and Hitler, and his attempt to craft an alternate programme was a bit of a shambles and still fairly close to Hitlerism.
- Joseph Goebbels early on was a disciple of the Strasser brothers and was committed to their more left-wing view of things, but Hitler was impressed by his propaganda talents and converted him to his side by appealing to his vanity, driving a wedge between him and his mentors and encouraging him to be more violent and extreme in his views. Despite this, Goebbels thereafter still hoped to one day sway Hitler around to a more leftist way of running the country. Goebbels thus represented a more extreme, violent version of the socialism in National Socialism overall, though his stance of particular issues of the day often depended on whichever put him in favor with Hitler. It was solidified on the Night of the Long Knives, where he had helped in the final phase of it.
- Despite East Germany often receiving the Commie Nazis treatment, it would not fit the Strasserist label, since its government advocated direct proletarian internationalism mixed in with Prussian values rather than German nationalism. It was also fairly socially progressive. In theory, its government would have also given up power to the workers rather than continue to exist as a militarist state like what Strasserists advocate. Since reunification, far-right political parties including the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD; Alternative for Germany) have seen their strongest support base in the former East outside of cosmopolitan Berlin.
- Ba'athism: A pan-Arab ideology with roots in Marxism and anti-imperialism that seeks to unite the Arab world. Ba'athists often rallied support by appealing to the workers and taking a secular stance in social life. However, their replacement of Worker's Struggle with pan-Arab Struggle has made all the difference, as it limits its internationalism (a tenet of Marxism) and promotes an authoritarian government with a ruling hierarchy that won't let the state wither away. This emphasis on Arab supremacy has led to infamous incidents like the persecution of Jews and Kurds within countries under Ba'athist regimes. That said, the ideology is very secular and holds progressive (at least by the Arab World's standards) views regarding women and welfare, which keeps it at odds with far-right Islamists who generally oppose such secularism and attempts to remedy poverty — many Islamists believe that only God can decide who is poor or rich.
- Communist Romania: Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu was a repressive Communist dictatorship that heavily emphasized Romanian nationalism, in part because the Romanian "Home Communists" had purged the "Muscovite Communists" (those trained in and loyal to Moscow) from the party early on (thus preventing the Muscovite faction from purging them as was standard in other Eastern Bloc nations). Ceaușescu presented himself as the "maverick" of the Warsaw Pact and pursued his own foreign policy at odds with the rest of the Soviet Bloc, more open to working with the capitalist West and becoming friendly with Maoist China and Juche North Korea and adopting a cult of personality inspired by them, and desiring that Romania become a "Great Power" in its own right. In his final years he was even starting to rehabilitate the pro-Nazi Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu, and Gorbachev even openly referred to Ceaușescu as "the Romanian Fuhrer" for his opposition to his liberalization policies. His regime was brought down largely by bad oil investments and the recall of foreign loans, with his brutal crackdown on protesters and the lavish un-Communist lifestyle of the leader and his wife throwing fuel on the fire.
- Post-Soviet Belarus: Shortly after his ascendancy to premiership, Khrushchev made "Sovietizing" the Belarusian Socialist Republic a priority due to the territory's perceived vulnerability to western influences. Idealistic Russians were often imported while teaching of the Belarusian language was forbidden. This resulted in the most successful replacement of traditional culture out of any of the constituent Republics of the Soviet Union. The breakup of the Soviet Union thus put Belarus in an odd place, where a significant portion of the new nation's identity was being part of the territory of a country that no longer existed and following an ideology that the world was rapidly abandoning. It's perhaps unsurprising that Belarus didn't mind so much when Alexander Lukashenko took charge and transformed the nation into what's infamously called "Europe's last dictatorship"note . Under Lukashenko, things are much as they were under the Soviet Union, with large parts of industry owned by the state, hammer and sickles on every corner, and Lenin statues pointing the way toward a glorious future. Only, nobody is under any delusion that that glorious future will ever come. Belarus isn't even officially socialist anymore despite all the industry owned by the state in the name of the people. Rather than working toward a communist utopia, Belarus keeps up the trappings of the Soviet Union as very weird sort of conservative zeal. Or perhaps it's better to say "fascist zeal." Lukashenko is notoriously homophobic, antisemitic, sexist and racist and thinks these are qualities all Belorussians should have, has outright stated Hitler is one of his role models, and disdains advanced technology. He also views the country as a bulwark to save the east, especially Russia, from western degeneracy and decadence. Such a notion is even written into the Belarusian constitution. To Lukashenko and his supporters, Soviet culture is simply a part of traditionalism.note
- Juche: The ideology officially practiced by North Korea is another strange modern example of fusing Communist with Nazi elements, along with being an absolute monarchy in all but name. It started out as a Communist off-shoot during the Cold War with support from both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, being a command economy where the state owns the means of production in the name of "the people" and brutally represses political dissidents through totalitarian dictatorship. Now, Juche has evolved into a Frankenstein's monster of Stalinist Marxism-Leninism, Korean mythology, Confucianism, Maoism, and Japanese Fascism. They now have their own brand of racial purity in addition to running gulags. All references to Communism have been removed from the constitution, but the ruling party still goes by the same name: the "Korean Worker’s Party".
- Lehi: Officially known as the "Lohamei Herut Israel" or "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel", Lehi was a Zionist paramilitary group founded and led by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine. While being devout Jews, they collaborated with the Nazis, seeing the British as the greater threat to the Zionist project. After Stern's assassination in 1942 and the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir, Lehi was pulled in a more leftward direction towards the Soviet Union, and in 1944 Lehi officially declared their support for National Bolshevism.
- National Anarchism: An ideology, also known as anarcho-fascism, which advocates the abolishment of the government and the separation of ethnic groups into autonomous communes that prioritize cultural homogeneity, traditionalist values, non-capitalist communitarian economic structures, and environmental protection. It justifies the abolishment of government while worshipping the nation due to esoteric views of the "true nation" being primordial and deriving from the "volk". Mainstream anarchists unsurprisingly despise them, as anarchists are even more diametrically opposed to fascism than communists are and tend to take the exact opposite stances on most issues compared to fascist political positions, and National Anarchists' support for "natural" hierarchies between races, sexual orientations and genders are abhorrent to them. Some Anarcho-Capitalists will give some airtime to them despite their very different economic views, but even most of them are fed up with them.
- National Bolshevism: Sounds oddly similar to National Socialism (Nazism), eh? Well, National Bolshevism is an ideology solidified by Eduard Limonov and Alexander Dugin that sees the USSR as the peak of Russian supremacy rather than the former Empire like most of the Russian Far Right does. Like Ba'athism, National Bolshevism has replaced Marxist international struggle with a pan-Slavic or Russian supremacist struggle, which has led to NazBols promoting very conservative world views, especially in regards to Orthodox Christianity being the center of social life. All said, however, the NazBols hold Lenin and Stalin in high regard for overthrowing the Russian Empire they viewed as weak, corrupt and/or too "European" and for centralizing the economy rather than letting the nobles or business elites have power. Its foreign policy is a mash up of Far-Right Militarism and Far-Left Anti-Imperialism. Some NazBols have claimed that Vladimir Putin and the United Russia Party fit this label, even though Putin seemingly wants nothing to do with them. Despite this, many of Putin's foreign policy initiatives, such as his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have been supported by Nazbols as a means to restore Russia as an imperial hegemon.
- Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: The official and current position of the government of the People's Republic of China. Developed by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, it claims to promote market economics under the control of a "socialist" government in order to build productive forces for a future transition into communism. In practice, it's an autocracy with heavy amounts of state involvement and a rich mixed economy. Defenders of the ideology point to the regular executions of billionaires and the seeming eradication of absolute poverty, as well as the fact that capitalism only exists within designated "special economic zones" with all industry outside of that being state-owned, while those opposed to the ideology point out the fact that China's abandonment of Marxist-Leninist and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movements in its own backyard (namely the Filipino Maoists) in favor of continuing ties with the countries suppressing said movements discredits China as a bulwark of socialist internationalism, that China's poverty reduction measures can only be seen as a success if one solely assesses poverty reduction in the context of absolute poverty over other more comprehensive indicators of poverty and that China's methods of tackling poverty aren't too different from those of most capitalist states, as well as how the only billionaires that are executed are those that go against the wishes of the state, that there are currently more of them in China than in the United States, and most politicians in the party itself are either suspected or known to be auspiciously wealthy while hiding their income. The government incorporates heavy amounts of nationalistic rhetoric, pointing to the glory and strength of the united Chinese nation, claiming all criticism of the government to be anti-Chinese and Sinophobic and supports an assimilationist agenda against ethnic groups, resulting in state repression of ethnic and cultural minorities such as Tibetans and more recently Uyghurs, the latter of which has been denounced as a genocide by several western governments.
- Stalinism: The governing style of Josef Stalin is sometimes derogatorily referred to as "Red Fascism" by ideological enemies, but not entirely without merit. He greatly centralized power to himself and made the Soviet Union more authoritarian than ever, while strongly appealing to Russian nationalism during the Second World War after the Nazi invasion. He promoted "Socialism in One Country" after the World Revolution failed to appear, consolidating the gains of the revolution in Russia (as well as his own power) rather than trying to incite similar upheavals in other countries, although the intention was that the cause of global Communism was merely postponed rather than thrown away entirely. Most damningly, Stalin was not above cooperating with Nazi Germany when it suited him, such as temporarily allying with Hitler to divide Europe between them with Poland being split between Germany and the USSR; his "Great Terror" campaigns may also have been inspired by Hitler's "Night of the Long Knives" purge which Stalin reportedly viewed with admiration. On top of it all, while less of an overt bigot than Hitler, Stalin carried out acts of ethnic cleansing against many non-Russians and was nonetheless an antisemite who grew increasingly suspicious of the Jews before his death. Most notably, some modern Stalinist parties have been accused of holding reactionary and ultranationalist views indistinguishable from those of the far-right, with the Communist Party of the Russian Federationnote , the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist)note and the American Center for Political Innovationnote being often singled out as the most infamous examples of this trend.
- LaRouche Movement: The ideology of the LaRouche Movement, a cult formed around the late Lyndon LaRouche, has been described as combining elements of the far-left and far-right. The LaRouche movement seeks to implement a progressive New Deal-inspired technocratic economic system in the US involving strong regulations, massive infrastructure projects connecting North America with Eurasia, and the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, viewing these measures as necessary both to fight capitalism by "reindustrializing" the United States. They also take an extreme ultranationalist view of geopolitical and social issues, viewing every tragedy in American history, as well as every controversial or overtly imperialist foreign policy decision, to be carried out by British elites supposedly infiltrating the American government and subverting its leaders with the ultimate goal of destroying most of the world's population and ruling over what remains. LaRoucheites view every single American left-wing organization except themselves to be corrupted by British intelligence, with socially progressive and eco-socialist organizations being singled out as supposedly promoting anti-nationalist and "Malthusian" beliefs among Americans at the behest of the British because of both growing Anti-Americanism among much of the Western left and the opposition of pretty much the entire rest of the American left to the hyper-nationalist and hyper-technocratic ideas upheld by the LaRouche movement. Notably, the LaRouche movement has been involved in various hard-right and outright far-right causes such as homophobia, AIDS hysteria, and full-throated support for the Trump presidency in opposition to the rest of the far left.
- Pro-Soviet Neo-Nazism: Surprisingly enough, despite the original Nazis viewing the Soviet Union as a center of "Judeo-Bolshevism" and declaring all Slavs as subhumans to be exterminated to make room in the east for German Lebensraum, there was a current of post-war Neo-Nazism that viewed a potential victory of the Soviet Union in the Cold War as preferable for Fascism to outcomes where the West triumphed. While elements of this strain of thought were expressed by Russian Fascist Konstantin Rodzaevsky, this tendency primarily evolved from the ideas of both German Neo-Nazi Otto Ernst Remer and American Neo-Nazi Francis Parker Yockey. Pro-Soviet Neo-Nazis viewed the Soviet Union as abandoning Communism for Russian ultranationalism due to Stalin's purges against the Old Bolsheviks, the rollback of various social reforms, the reversal of Stalin's initial pro-Israel stances, and creeping antisemitism following the Doctors Plot. Yockey would perceive these political shifts as a supposed shift towards Fascism by the Soviet Union and seek to influence other neo-Fascists to adapt a geopolitical outlook supporting both the Soviet Union and Arab nationalism. For his part, Remer would both receive Soviet funding and declare an intention to collaborate with the Soviet Union in the event of a war with the United States. While this political tendency would have little influence in the United States outside of a few far-right figures close to Yockey such as James Madole and Willis Carto, it had significant influence on later third positionist neo-Fascist movements in Europe.
- Kitaism: “The Father of Japanese Fascism”, political philosopher Ikki Kita was a significant influence on Imperial Japan’s national ideology of Showa Statism. Taken at face value, you’d be mistaken for thinking that he was a nutter who appeared to have preached an unholy cocktail of fascism, state socialism, agrarianism, ultranationalism and militarism in his writings. The brand of socialism Kita preached had nothing in common with Marxist socialism, as he saw Marxism and working class-oriented socialism as outdated and instead relied on evolutionary theory owing to Social Darwinism. Kita envisioned a military coup d'état to usher in a totalitarian regime based on direct rule by the Emperor, who would suspend the Constitution and purge the Diet of "malign influence" (read: liberal and Western influences). The new "National Reorganization Diet" would nationalise industries, impose limits on individual wealth and private property, enact land reforms to benefit farmers and thus strengthen Japan to enable it to free Asia from Western imperialism. This blend of conflicting philosophies led Kita to support Japanese expansion into Korea and Manchuria, as well as for war with the Soviet Union and Britain, whom he dubbed "landlord nations", with Japan a so-called "proletarian nation". Although fellow nationalists subscribed to an Aryan-like Yamato myth that the Japanese were demigod descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, Kita held progressive views about race and wanted assimilated subjects to have the same rights as Japanese citizens. Kita’s passionate support for equality came from the belief that Japan’s classism could not end without resolving international distribution issues. In his eyes, Japan’s self-appointed role as the champion of pan-Asianism demanded support for Indian independence and ending China’s partition by Western powers. Thus, even while advocating Japan partitioning China by taking over Manchuria, Kita supported Japanese imperialist expansion "in the name of justice".
- The Irish Republican Army: Throughout the 20th century, the Irish Republican Army fought for independence and, at times, leaned towards various extremist ideologies such as Communism and Fascism. After the Irish Civil War ended, the IRA from 1922-1938 was left-leaning and anti-Fascist in response to the right-wing Cumann na nGaedheal government. The IRA swung further left after the election of Moss Twomey as IRA chief of Staff, a popular leftist leader. At the time, many members of the Communist party of Ireland and Saor Éire were also members of the IRA. The IRA’s anti-Fascism manifested in their war with the Blueshirts, Ireland’s fascist party, in street brawls with them and breaking up their meetings. After meeting Stalin in 1925, the IRA allied with the Soviet Union, spying on the British and American military in return for financial support. However, by 1934, the leftist factions of the IRA parted, forming a separate organisation, the Republican Congress. The remaining IRA was socially conservative and unabashedly nationalist, making the organisation open to courting by Nazi Germany in 1937. The Abwehr promised funding and arms to the IRA in return for espionage in the UK. Later, with war looming, the Nazis’ shopping list expanded to include active sabotage directed at military and naval bases in Northern Ireland and England. The Nazis dangled the ultimate prize: reuniting Ireland after winning the war. At this point, the IRA’s ranks began to swell with fascist sympathisers and establish friendly contacts with Ailtirí na hAiséirghe (“Architects of the Resurrection”), a bizarre far-right, antisemitic group seeking to establish a totalitarian Christian corporatist state. At least two prominent IRA members were also members of the Ailtirí. Jim O’Donovan, probably the Abwehr’s most reliable contact within the IRA and the architect of S-Plan, was an outspoken antisemite and admirer of Hitler. In the 1960s, Cathal Goulding became the Chief of Staff of the IRA and its political arm, Sinn Féin. This marked a shift in their ideology as they moved back towards the far left, embracing Democratic Socialism. In support of this cause, murals and other forms of propaganda were created that sympathised with Third World anti-colonial struggles, such as those of South Africa, the Basque Country, and various Black Nationalists. Connections between leftist radicals existed during The Troubles. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the largest IRA faction active during this period, had ties with other revolutionary groups such as Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, FARC guerrillas in Colombia, and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Their members received military training from camps in the Middle East, whilst weapons were smuggled into Northern Ireland from Cuba and Palestine. Today, these connections can still get seen in the form of murals located in Nationalist neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland. Additionally, it is common to spot various Palestinian flags waving in these areas.
- The Khmer Rouge: Officially named the Communist Party of Kampuchea and led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge led one of the most infamous communist regimes of all time. Notorious for their brutal, disastrous rule over Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge's ideology was a toxic mixture of Marxism and ethnic nationalism. Their flavor of communism took heavy influence from Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theories of Frantz Fanon. Viewing Enver Hoxha's Albania as the most advanced communist state in existence, they sought to emulate his rule in practice. Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was known during the Khmer Rouge's brief but horrific rule over it, may have the dubious distinction of being the most utterly destructive communist state ever to exist. Despite existing for less than five years, the regime killed 1.5 million to 2 million of its own people, around a quarter of pre-takeover Cambodia's population of 7.8 million. The Khmer Rouge's form of communism was radical even by the standards of its Chinese and Southeast Asian neighbors; once in charge, they abolished money and forced most of the urban population (the few exceptions being people with jobs necessary for maintaining the cities) to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where they were subjected to backbreaking work. Like many other communist regimes, the Khmer Rouge persecuted the religious, anyone they considered "aristocratic" or "bourgeois", and officials of previous governments. However, they also adhered to an extreme form of Khmer nationalism, which led them to also target members of non-Khmer ethnic groups; Cambodia's Vietnamese population was singled out for particularly harsh mistreatment. This ultranationalism meant they further sought to purge Cambodia of all foreign influences. Intellectuals were also a major target of the Cambodian genocide; doctors, lawyers, journalists, academics, and even people who wore glasses were all victims of Khmer Rouge Anti-Intellectualism. A combination of the desire to "export the revolution" and the desire to restore the old Angkorian Empire led to a disastrous invasion of Vietnam which ended with their fall from power. While their communist credentials are undeniable, quite a few have identified fascist elements in the ideology; Pen Sovan, at the time the General Secretary of a rival Cambodian communist party (the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party), referred to the Khmer Rouge's government as a "draconian, dictatorial and fascist regime", while a Vietnamese official compared its leadership to "Hitlerite-fascists".
- Rankovićism: Named after Yugoslav Partisan leader turned Serbian communist politician Aleksandar Ranković, who was considered the third most powerful man in Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito and Edvard Kardelj in his heyday, Rankovićism was a Yugoslavian ideology that hybridized socialism and nationalism; it ran counter to official state policies but gained popularity among many Serbs and Montenegrins. Ranković was a hardline communist who opposed democratization and reform, but also a devoted Serbian nationalist who supported advancing what he considered the collective interests of the Serbs. Advocating for a more centralized Yugoslavia on the grounds that Tito's decentralized model supposedly jeopardized the Serbs, he sought to ensure the primacy of Serbs even in areas where they were a minority group. He disliked and distrusted Kosovo's ethnic Albanians and feared that granting them autonomy would bring harm to the Serb minority there. Under the pretext of hunting collaborators with Albania's pro-Soviet government, Ranković not only upheld Serb minority control of Kosovo, but instituted repressive anti-Albanian measures and policies, turning the province into a Police State. Not content with murdering "irredentist" political opponents and having thousands of Albanians tried on trumped-up charges of "Stalinism", Ranković undertook similar campaigns against the Hungarians of Vojvodina and Muslims of Sandžak and openly opposed official recognition of Bosniak nationality. While Ranković was removed from power in 1966 due to multiple criminal charges, the desire for Serb hegemony remained. As ethnic tensions in Kosovo began escalating in 1981, many Serbs adopted Ranković as a hero figure; after his death in 1983, his funeral quickly turned into a Serbian nationalist demonstration. Slobodan Milošević was heavily influenced by Rankovićism (though he moved away from communism and advocated transition to a mixed economy) and declared in his 1989 inauguration speech as Serbian President that he opposed decentralization. Before and during The Yugoslav Wars, many prominent strains of Serbian nationalism were derived from Rankovićism, and it still plays a role in Serbian politics today, especially among revanchists. While not every individual or movement influenced by Rankovićism fits the label, it's easy to argue that the original form of Rankovićism is at a bare minimum very similar to a communism-fascism synthesis due to its Marxist economic system, advocacy of centralized government and extreme ethnic nationalism.
Perhaps the most telling part about these ideologies is the fact that Fascists and Leninist Communists always seem to agree on supporting the same people. Some of Putin's biggest fans in Russia, for example, are Neo-Soviets who praise his foreign policy and Neo-Tsarists who praise his promotion of social conservatism. On the Ba'athist side of things, some of Assad's and Saddam's biggest fans are communists who support their anti-west and secular stances and fascists who support their promotion of nationalism and rejection of liberal ways of running government. Meanwhile, North Korea is so isolated and totalitarian that it's more like a pharaonic cult; writer Michael Malice likened it to a "hostage situation". The people living there aren't citizens or even followers: They're subjects.
Regarding associations, western Commie-Nazis in the modern day tend to associate more with the far-right over the far-left, given that the far-left in the Western world still has massive libertarian and socially progressive wings. Which has caused Commie-Nazis appealing to them on economic terms to be labeled as overtly chauvinistic. The issue is that as a whole: Western culture (particularly the anglosphere) is socially liberal, individualistic and economically capitalist, things these third positionists oppose. The far-right in the west is slightly more receptive towards them due to their mutually-shared views regarding social issues (namely promoting traditionalism) and nationalism, but even then, the far-right believe Commie-Nazis are foolish at best for thinking economic equality is an achievable or desirable end goal. Those on the far-left that do subscribe to authoritarianism meanwhile could associate with Commie-Nazis if they prioritize economic issues, but a significant contingent of them believes traditionalism, nationalism and bigotry divide the workers.
In the Arab world, by contrast, Ba'athists and Social Nationalists tend to associate with the far-left even if they vehemently oppose each other's overall worldview. Islamists, as mentioned above, tend to make up the far right of the Middle East and their fundamental adherence to Islamism over all and belief in only Islamic-approved economics puts them far more at odds with Ba'athists and Social Nationalists.
