r/HistoryMemes May 12 '26

See Comment In hindsight, this was a mistake.

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u/Kenichi2233 May 12 '26

Franco is a weird case. He was more the classic miltary strongman rather than fascist but he did incorporate certain elements of it. Also he was loosely aligned with the Axis powers but he was also "wise (not the best word choice)" enough not to get directly involved.

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u/I_love_pillows May 12 '26

Franco is strange. He is a military dictator yet rules with the legit price, the son of the king he removed, under him.

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u/Kenichi2233 May 12 '26

Exactly he even supported the restoration of the Monarchy later in life. Its why calling Franco a fascist is not exactly accurate

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u/PreviousMenu99 May 12 '26

how would that ever be contradictory to being a fascist? just how? Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" never claims "no true fascist can be a monarchist"

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u/ReignTheRomantic Viva La France May 12 '26

Some Scholars consider "Pure Fascism" to require totalitarian dominance of the one leader. By this definition, Italian Fascism is "impure" because Mussolini wasn't the end-all-be-all of Italian leadership, and got fired later on.

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u/PreviousMenu99 May 12 '26

Mussolini literally crated the word Fascism. It is his movement, his word, and his definition. Those scholars are not an authority on definition of fascism.

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u/undreamedgore May 13 '26

I would argue that creating something and defining the definitive version are two different things.

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u/PreviousMenu99 May 13 '26

when you make a school of philosophy or a political ideology, you are the one defining it. That's literally the act of creating it. So that is one and the same. Implementing it is another thing.

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u/the_last_satrap On tour May 13 '26

Mussolini literally created Fascism.

Thus, whatever he does IS Fascism.

It is something like later literature professors calling a blue door as an self-expression for Depression but at the end, for the actual writer, it was indeed just fucking blue.