Fascism was an organic European development which arose in response to communism and which married social conservatism with leftist economics.
Not in response, but in adapted immitation to communism.
Mussolini was all about Lenine, using WWI and economic problems as a means to gain power due to discontent and a ready statist-military educated people returning home. It is the social equivalent of Ceasar returning to Rome to rule as a dictator using military staff doctrine.
He only had to tune communism to the nationalist inclinations of Italy to gain power there, but really, like Hitler, the locals were a hindrance in fact. Hitler wanted to replace Germans with islamists