This is another of the attempts to tar Italian Fascism with the brush of Nazism. The Nazis were fascists, supposedly, therefore the Fascists were Nazis.
The problem here is that the murders by government (domestically) by the Fascists totaled about 250 in the 21 years between 1922 and 1943, at which point they became basically Nazi puppets. That compares with perhaps 12M to 25M by the Nazis in their 12 years in power.
To be fair, the Italian Fascists also killed somewhere around 250k in their Libyan and Ethiopian adventures, but those are more appropriately classified as colonial wars, in which the British, French and Americans, among others, also accumulated a pretty high number of killings.
IOW, lumping the Fascists in with the Nazis is an example of extremely biased thinking. Generally promoted by leftists, who hate the Fascists because they were anti-leftist, not because they committed great crimes.
Mussolini hated Hitler, but over time, had no choice but to support him as his armies faced troubles in the Balkans. But true, his rule was much more benign that Hitler.
And it’s worth nothing he started out as a Socialist.
Fascism, socialism, national socialism and communism are all one and the same - totalitarian tyranny. On the scale of government power versus personal freedom, which is the true scale by which we are to categorize any political philosophy, they all occupy the left side of the scale.
Anarchy, the Complete and total absence of governing authority, occupies the right side. The scale then trends into degrees of libertarianism as you move to the center where you find the republic, or equal rule for all by the law.
The left would love you to believe fascism is not leftist, but in truth you cannot reconcile it that way using the proper means to judge it.
“IOW, lumping the Fascists in with the Nazis is an example of extremely biased thinking. Generally promoted by leftists, who hate the Fascists because they were anti-leftist, not because they committed great crimes.”
The Italian Fascists and the German Nazis were just different varieties of leftists. The best way to view them is as warring religious sects. The Fascists and Nazis were *nationalist* socialist, the Soviets *internationalist* socialists.
Here is a source to show how the NAZIs in particular, were mainstream leftists of their day:
http://ray-dox.blogspot.com/2006/08/this-article-is-published-on-internet.html