Red fascism refers to the association of certain communist regimes with having strong similarities with fascism. Red fascism is commonly used in a pejorative way to describe Stalinism. However ideological similarities between communist and fascist governments have been noted. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (2009), note close ideological similarities between Stalinism and Nazism.
Benito Mussolini positively reviewed Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into a Slavic fascism. Despite ideological differences, Adolf Hitler admired Stalin and his politics and believed that Stalin was in effect transforming Soviet Bolshevism into a form of National Socialism.
Famous quotes containing the words red and/or fascism:
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
—Michel Foucault (1926–1984)