On Monday, 20 February 1933, barely a month after Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a group of about twenty-five businessmen were summoned to attend a private meeting in the villa of Hermann Goering. They thought it would be meeting to discuss politics. It was not - it was a shakedown. There was another election coming up, and Hitler desperately needed money. Goring said their donations
would be so much easier . . . to bear if it [industry] realized that the election of 5 March will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years.1
If this sounds familiar, it is because Trump said almost the same thing2. The industry made their donations, and then they were on the hook. Every year that followed they would be expected to keep paying and ‘Adolf Hitler Spende’ all went towards Hitler’s personal expenses.
We urgently need to update our understanding of fascism. Instead of looking the constantly shifting surface phenomena of cultural and theoretical excuses that they hide behind, we need to drill down into the economic and psychological driving motives that fuel them.
History
A year ago I wrote an article on robber states where I sought to differentiate between fascism and modern robber states. But after spending time reading up on classical fascism, I realized the difference is merely superficial. It is quite fascinating how the academic study of fascism has changed much since the end of the war. From seeing it as global power rivalry by another form, to seeing it as an ideological movement, to finally now following the money. The two historians Adam Tooze and Götz Aly have above all spear-headed this latest change.
What the fascists of Nazi-Germany and Mussolini’s Italy did must be understood as state looting. This is what drove their actions, and underpinned their regimes. Their ideology was primarily meant as a distraction. As Götz Aly put it:
The Holocaust will never be properly understood until it is seen as the most single-mindedly pursued campaign of murderous larceny in modern history.
Too much attention has been paid to the nazis looting art and gold. The looting that actually made a difference was in state coffers, companies and entire groups of people.
Both Nazi-Germany and Mussolini’s Italy have traditionally been thought to have emerged out of the economic collapse of the 1930s through their new war economies. This is highly misleading. In fact, both countries constantly were constantly on the brink of economic collapse and went from crisis to crisis which they attempted to escape by constantly racking up even more debt and looting first parts of their own country, then other countries.
In Germany, the looting of the Jews began almost immediately. Historian Richard J Evans wrote:
the systematic confiscation of Jewish assets, beginning almost immediately on the Nazi seizure of power in 19333
This would only be a short-term relief. Then came the seizure of Austria, and as Tooze noted:
Altogether, the Austrian foreign exchange dowry came to at least 782 million Reichsmarks, more than doubling Germany’s reserves. These funds were crucial, because in the first weeks of 1938 Germany’s balance of payments situation looked extremely bleak.
It was not just the German state that benefited, it made sure to also spread the spoils across its patronage network, donating control of Jewish businesses to loyal party commissioners.
This too could only keep the finances going for so long. Soon the nazis were looking other places to loot. Aly wrote:
With Germany’s financial situation worsening by the day, the Nazi leadership in Berlin was keen to forge ahead with its annexation of Czechoslovakia and its domestic pogroms against Jews. The state treasury needed money.4
Once they had expended this source of funds, they turned their attention to Poland, where as
in every other nation defeated by Germany, the General Government of occupied Poland was forced to pay what was euphemistically termed a “contribution for military protection.” … These financial tributes soon exceeded the total peacetime budgets of the countries in question, usually by more than 100 percent and in the second half of the war by more than 200 percent.
It is important to remember that this started before the outbreak of the second world war, in which many more countries were about to be plundered in the same way. In those occupied countries that were deemed expendable, all of the occupying army joined in on the pillaging, sending enormous amounts of loot by train back to their own families.
Evans summed it up this way:
one of the major and too often neglected factors holding the top ranks of the Nazi Party together was corruption: the receipt of massive gifts, huge increases in income, property and so on, that cemented the patronage relationship they had with Hitler in a relationship of clientage that then repeated itself on a smaller scale all the way down the hierarchy to the very bottom.
German professor of economic history Christoph Buchheim put it similarly:
the Nazi system was characterized by a great importance of personal and clientele relationships which were relatively open to bribery. Finally the high significance of state orders as part of overall demand certainly provided an often irresistible incentive for firms to use bribes in order to participate in lucrative business with state agencies. More than that they even developed a form of systematic and permanent corruption5
Mussolini’s Italy was the same. It quickly racked up enormous debt, and its economic growth was far below its democratic neighbors, while wages fell and inequality increased6. Its ministers and key people were seen as both incompetent and corrupt. And as the historian Paul Corner wrote:
corruption represented a kind of glue, keeping the network together … the regime always had the knife by the handle… it was, above all, this discretionary nature of decision-making that rendered people so vulnerable to what was, in effect, blackmail7
So why, in their opinion, did so many people enthusiastically support these regimes?
Aly concluded:
The Nazi leadership did not transform the majority of Germans into ideological fanatics [- they] fell prey to the euphoria of a gold rush, certain that the future would be a time of unbridled prosperity.
In both countries, large portions of the population had been convinced that the only way they could hope for social mobility and improving their fortunes was to take it from someone else. In both countries their new leaders struggled to meet these expectations, and it did not help that they instituted deeply corrupt regimes that bled money everywhere.
No ideology
No fascist country has actually had or has an ideology.
For a country to have an ideology means that the country has a stable creed that is more important to it than any one particular leader. This is the opposite of fascism where the leader’s current opinion is everything, and anyone who profess to hold any ideology over the leader will be removed.
If a country has an ideology, that means that policy proposals will be made to align with it. In a fascist country, proposals do not work this way. They only pay attention to whatever the top leader thinks at the moment, and immediately conform. Subordinates are expected to be submissive weather-vanes, not argue.
Ideology is not just some words put to paper. It is an institution with some agreed upon means of arguing, reasoning and appealing to evidence. Catholic have an ideology rooted in their church. Liberalism has an ideology rooted in think-tanks. Socialists have an ideology rooted in academia. For religious communities, the main difference between a sect and a cult is whether they actually have an ideology or whether it is all up to conforming with the changing opinions of the leader. Fascists are united by their shifting provocations, trolling, outrage and lies, not a stable ideology that could even be refuted.
Sartre noticed the same thing a long time ago:
Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play.8
Fascist positions that appear ideological are more similar to cult markers - counter-factual statements made to prove loyalty. The same is the case for the Trump regime. Tooze is skeptical of comparing the present fascist to those of the past9, but I think the opposite - while appearances may change, the underlying engine we can find is the same. As writer Amanda Marcotte noted about MAGA:
The lie is not a thing the MAGA person sincerely believes. It’s a weapon Trump has provided them. … This also helps explain why MAGA experiences no cognitive dissonance when Trump openly contradicts himself … No doubt that feels powerful, this ability to speak out of both sides of your mouth, and never being held to account for it. … this strategy is the oldest technique in the con artist’s book. The best way for a grifter to gain a mark’s trust is to make him feel like he’s in on the con. Cult leaders operate the same way, by creating this sense of intimacy with their victims. Once the mark feels he’s part of the conspiracy, it’s that much easier to victimize him. The mark feels like the predator and not the prey, and so he lets his guard down around the actual villain picking his pocket.10
Lying, toxic attacks and wild exaggerations as loyalty tests and tribal commitments. These are not the signs of an ideological regime, but the mechanisms of cults and mafia organizations. Saddam’s Iraq had “comical Ali”, an information minister who would say the most absurd things, and nobody in Iraq would dare question it. Russia has ministers like Medvedev regularly debasing themselves with absurdities to make sure they do not outshine their leader. Chavez used triggering outrage as a formidable weapon to make his followers feel in on the con, just like Trump.
The new far right never ever posts anything positive about the future. There is no vision, no plan, no ideal. It is all looking back or scaring people about what the future might hold if they don’t get to do whatever it is they want to do. Never will they tell you what kind of world they want to make or what it looks like. In a sense, and only in this sense, is the new fascism different from the old. The early fascist did put forward an image of the future using the ancient regimes of the past as a warped imaginary blueprint. The aesthetics and the architecture all pointed towards a grand idea for a future for the nation.
The new fascists have nothing - all they care about is their own wealth and power. This makes analysis easier, and, I think, is not so much due to a difference in politics as it is a large gap in competence. The old fascists understood that if you want to hold power in the nation, you need to build the nation towards something and dazzle the people with the spectacle of massive construction. The new fascists are incapable of even thinking in this way.
Lessons learned
If we take this lesson and broaden our historical horizon to see where else we can find this pattern of fascism as the politics of shared spoils of looting, we can find many examples. It is, however, important to note one important key difference between many of them: How they define their constituency, that is, who they will share their spoils of looting with. This varies widely, and is a key variable that determines the trajectory of the regime.
On one extreme end of the scale we have Assad’s Syria, a regime of which looted Syria and sharing the spoils mainly with its 10% Alawite population with a periphery of sycophants, hangers-ons and dependents from other ethnic groups. It was a regime that was not just corrupt, it was systematically corrupt. Everyone in government or an important business had a client relationship with someone above them in a pyramid of corruption that went all the way up to the top. Having such a small constituency for its regime made it very stable - it could afford to keep this arrangement going for a long time, and delivering to its base made it both loyal and hated by everyone else - and thus tied their own future to that of the regime.11
Nazi-Germany was on the other extreme end of this scale. They attempted to share the spoils of loot with the entire German “Aryan” population. This was completely unsustainable, and the only way they deliver on it was to go to war and loot other countries.
Iraq is another interesting case here, where the its constituency was the around 25% large Sunni Arab group12. Relying on such a larger constituency made it less stable, and despite having massive oil resources, repeatedly tried to plunder its neighbors, first Iran, then Kuwait. However, another trait of these regimes is that if they last long enough, eventually they devour themselves from within and become extremely ineffective hollow shells. Iraq was humiliated in both wars, despite being counted as the world’s fourth largest military at the time, both in terms of manpower and mass of military hardware.
Entire nations living off looting in this way is in no way historically unique. Anthropologist David Graeber noted that during early human history, looting functioned often as an economic engine of entire nations. Many of the so-called “great” empires throughout history worked this way. However, today things work quite differently. Modern large scale industries with huge logistic networks are fragile and cannot function in a world without predictable rules and reliable civil services.
Corruption, decisions moved to patronage networks and arbitrary upholding of laws adds a level of overhead to business that makes such industries unsustainable. It is for this reason that countries with fascist regimes over time regress into relying on more primitive forms of industry such as raw materials and metallurgy, although this process will be much slower in industries of regime focus such as the arms industry. Both Russia and Venezuela are examples of this today, and Nazi-Germany went through the same in the previous century where overall productivity dropped and as Christoph Buchheim argued, it saw its “industry losing instead of gaining ground in the international productivity race”13.
Venezuela is a country that claims to be socialist yet manages to make an already deep unequal country even more so, and impoverishes a nation with one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. Its fascist constituency are organized criminal gangs who keep the rest in line. Despite massive waves of emigration and some 70-80% of the population in poverty, the relatively small number of constituents paid off with plundering the rest can still keep the regime going.
Russia is a regime that has as its constituency the urban elites of Moscow and St Petersburg, while keeping much of the country in deep poverty and use them as expendable cannon fodder for its wars. Since its fascist constituency is a small sliver of its total population, it can keep itself in power for a long time. The hollowness of its country was for everyone to see when it decided to invade Ukraine and its much overestimated army was shown to be an utter mess eaten up from within by corruption.
These regimes have no ideology. They only have individuals holding crackpot ideas that they suddenly have the power to implement with little feedback mechanisms or checks and balances to hold them back from creating disaster.
The result is always the same - rising inequality, overall less money to go around, more wars, and massive corruption. Why would anyone want this?
The appeal
Fascism draws in people who want one or both of two things: Attention and power. A successful fascist movement happens when it combines the two groups led by someone who embodies both elements. Trump is the perfect example of this, and Mussolini and Hitler were both the same. Almost invariably the leader also has malignant narcissistic tendencies. Many of the leading post-war fascist leaders also embodied both attention-seeking and grifting, often defrauding their own followers (e.g. David Duke).
I want to identify five distinct groups who can come to support fascism:
1. The attention-seekers
These are generally cranks, marginalized and outcasts who do not necessarily have a coherent or unified ideology. In times of low support, they may be splintered into many different sects or just be individual contrarians who do anything to get noticed and draw attention through causing controversy. These are the online trolls, the thugs, the lonely and desperate men (and some women) who seek validation in any warped way they can find.
One example here is the US neo-nazi / white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Having spent nearly a decade as a “far-right influencer” and “white identity” agitator supporting Donald Trump and attacking immigration, despite being the son of a Mexican immigrant himself, he recently turned on his own followers:
“At one point we were the trolls and now we're the butthurt ones. There was a point in time when we were having fun and we were laughing and we were trolling and we were making jokes and now our side are the biggest butt hurts of all time. The far right has become the biggest butt hurts ever. Everybody's mad all the time. You can't make jokes.”14
This is someone who just wants attention, be a comedian, and does not actually care about actual political outcomes. As the regime he supported into power implements the policies he argued for, he finds the transition from faux dissident into a regime lackey who is supposed to toe the party line chafing.
2. The powerful desiring pillage and impunity
These are people who see the government trough as the fastest way to become even richer and more powerful by turning into government-linked oligarch or join a patronage network. They can use such movements as vehicles for their own enrichment in times of high support, or even in times of low support if they can link up with foreign fascist regimes. A lust for sexual spoils and desire for impunity for such crimes may also be a motivator, as seen with the Epstein network - which was perhaps just as much about patronage and corruption as it was about sexual abuse (these things are often deeply intertwined).
They generally tend to come from sectors of raw materials, materials processing or finance. The same sectors that generally do well in a kleptocratic regime, as they are less dependent on or held back by a well run government and its regulations than more tech-oriented sectors.
3. Aspiring grifters
These see an opportunity for social mobility (chaos is a ladder), achieving power, and making money. They will only join a movement that is seen as rapidly ascendant. They may be politicians, influencers, writers, artists, and so on. They may be coming from a liberal, socialist, social-democratic or conservative background - the origin matters not, only that they prove that their principles are hollow and meaningless and just for show.
To me the perfect specimen of this type of person is the former New York congress representative George Santos15 - the gay son of immigrant parents and former drag queen who went on to support both the homophobic Bolsonaro in Brazil and anti-immigrant Trump in the US, eventually managing to get voted into the US Congress. Why? As biographers and chroniclers eventually pieced parts of his real life together, it became clear that he had been a fraud and a grifter his entire life. As the Independent put it:
Given his prodigious propensity for telling fibs, basic details of Santos’ personal history, such as his real name, marital status, and precisely where he was born merit a healthy dose of scepticism.16
Eventually he became only the sixth lawmaker ever expelled from the House and sentenced to 87 months in prison for wire fraud and identity theft. People like this will recognize the rising klepto-fascist movement for what it is, and want a slice of the stolen cake. But not everyone will be as chronically inept as this petty criminal.
On the other end of the competence scale, I would put right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson, who once admitted: “I always vote for the more corrupt candidate”17. There are also absolute madmen like RFK Jr.. Fascist Italy and Germany also had its equally eclectic cast of grifters and cranks quickly rising into positions they had no business being in. And sometimes the top leader just runs to escape prison: Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Orban and Fico all have reasons to fear that prison would be next if they were to actually lose an election.
4. Individuals feeling lost
These are people who are feeling left out of the great society, desperate for having somewhere to belong. They may be on the bottom rungs of the social and employment ladder, or just lack a social friend network. They join early to look for meaning and community in their lives, and most of the individual stories of people joining far-right movements and then leaving them disillusioned are from this group of people. They are at the same time the most loyal to the fascist network, and the most capable of actual redemption and change of heart.
One story that stuck with me from my own country was that of Asbjørn Elden, a drifter who joined the fascist movement during the last world war. After the war, he became a union activist and member of the labour party, and at age 60 became an author. His book ‘Oppgjør’ (unfortunately not available in English) is a really good view into the psychological isolation that turns these people to fascism. Many others exist.
However, it is important to realize that while these are often key people and much literature exist on them, they make up a very small part of the total movement.
5. Ordinary people feeling left out
These are people who are feeling left out and have lost hope in social mobility, and are lured in by promises of the redistribution of wealth and restoration of lost social pride. Having become disillusioned by other alternatives, and they put their hopes into fascism instead. They may not all know that the result is massively negative-sum, but once it becomes plainly apparent that this is the case, most are not moved by it. The whole point is redistribution and retribution fuck-the-consequences.
It is no coincidence that the same men who root for fascism often have extreme opinions and behavior toward women as well - as women are also seen as objects of conquest and pillage. It is no surprise then that the overwhelming majority of fascist supporters are men.
There is also an overwhelming majority of fascist support from rural and suburban areas as these are places with much lower social mobility and opportunity than urban areas.
Trump’s USA is an exceptional case in so many ways. I can think of no other case where they attempted to solidify power so fast - and displayed such incompetence doing it. And yet, their potential constituency of aggrieved rural and suburban whites is vast - and hungry for change. It is not impossible for them to solidify their regime. If they do, it will not be a stable one like Syria, Venezuela and Russia, it will be a rapidly expansionist one like Nazi-Germany, desperate to loot other countries to reward its large MAGA base as its own economy starts to shrink under the weight of all the corruption.
Last words
If you look for fascism by identifying stated beliefs or resemblance to established checklists, you will misidentify their operatives. Instead, look for grifters and people with a compromised past or past criminal behavior who suddenly want to enter politics. Look for patronage networks helping each other into positions of power and protecting each other from accountability.
If you want to see if a country is heading towards fascism, it is not the cultural cues that give it away, it is the grifting, the promises of impunity, and lure of stolen wealth. Hitler promised to redistribute the wealth of “the Jews”. Trump promised to redistribute the wealth, jobs and houses of the “illegal immigrants”.
How do you argue and convince someone who is eager to support this kind of national suicide? You cannot. This is an irrational position arrived at by emotional grievance. Only a better alternative can guide them away from the brink of such disaster.
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Adam Tooze
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they-wont-have-vote-after-this-election-2024-07-27
https://www.richardjevans.com/lectures/corruption-plunder-third-reich/
Hitler’s Beneficiaries, Götz Aly
Christoph Buchheim, German Industry in the Nazi Period, https://media.dav-medien.de/sample/9783515091503_p.pdf
https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/seeing-through-mussolinis-lies/
Mussolini in Myth and Memory: The First Totalitarian Dictator, by Paul Corner
Anti‐Semite and Jew, Jean Paul Sartre
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/15/the-crisis-whisperer-how-adam-tooze-makes-sense-of-our-bewildering-age
https://www.salon.com/2024/06/26/donald-claims-joe-biden-is-jacked-up-on--it-reveals-how-he-controls-the-maga/
http://notesbyrandom.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-fall-of-al-assad
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/548988/EPRS_BRI(2015)548988_REV1_EN.pdf
Christoph Buchheim, German Industry in the Nazi Period, https://media.dav-medien.de/sample/9783515091503_p.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8XlKBawoYE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santos
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/george-santos-court-fraud-case-timeline-b2598546.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-fox-news-democrat-ignition-mayor-most-corrupt-candidate-2017-12