Is Fascism Absolutely Evil?

Some concepts exist that, the moment they are uttered, do not spark debate but end it. Fascism is one such concept in many contexts. So many沉重 meanings are attached to the word that people often feel no need to examine any idea associated with it. “Fascism is evil; therefore, every institution, every economic policy, every social arrangement linked to fascism must also be evil.”

At first glance, does this inference not seem reasonable? Even today, opposition parties accuse governments of being fascist, and governments accuse oppositions of the same, using the term “fascist” almost as an insult. (One might recall the scene in the film Kibar Feyzo.) When we consider what those labeled fascist in the twentieth century inflicted, it is easy to understand where this reflex comes from. But is it truly correct?

One might think I am attempting to justify Hitler here, but I have no such intention. Yet saying “I have no such intention” alone may not suffice; because reopening debate on a concept is often mistaken for defending it. This confusion becomes even easier when the concept in question is not merely a political regime but one associated with violence, oppression, war, and the erasure of the individual before the state.

Nevertheless, I believe we must pause here to make a small but crucial distinction: Is the historical outcome of a system the same as every tool used within it or the solutions it proposed to the problems that gave rise to it? More fundamentally, a neutral and accurate definition of fascism must be established. But this essay is not the right place for such a definition.

Is it inherently evil for the state to guide the economy, limit private interests in the name of social needs, plan strategic sectors, involve producer groups in decision-making, or refrain from evaluating economic activity solely through individual profit?

If not, does the fact that these tools were used under a fascist regime render them entirely worthless?

The real issue here is recognizing how attaching concepts to one another leads us toward certain conveniences—and perhaps certain laziness. In political thought, the word “evil” sometimes works too easily. It is a powerful tool for morally condemning a regime, yet it often fails to explain how that regime functioned, what social needs it addressed, what tools it used to gather support, or which institutions it employed for what purposes. Sometimes it even renders understanding unnecessary. If something is already evil, why delve into its details? But history and politics become precisely difficult at this point. Structures that produce bad outcomes are not always built from evil intentions; more often, they respond to real problems with wrong answers. A wrong answer or its misapplication does not mean the problem itself was not real.

The problems that accompanied the rise of fascism in Italy were not entirely imaginary. Economic crises, unemployment, social disintegration, political representation failures, tensions between capital and labor, inequalities that markets could not resolve on their own, and widespread distrust in the existing order were all genuine. Fascism claimed to eliminate these problems—or rather, it sought to suppress them within a new political unity, discipline, and state authority. Here, the difference between “solving” and “suppressing” matters greatly. Indeed, a significant portion of this essay may revolve around this distinction.

Fascist corporatism was based on the idea of society not as a sum of conflicting economic groups but as an organized whole in which different functions work together. Workers, employers, producers, professionals, and the state would no longer represent separate interests; instead, they would be united around a common national goal. In theory, this idea did not sound entirely nonsensical, but in practice, it led to the abolition of independent unions, the elimination of the right to strike, and the subordination of economic organizations to state control. Thus, consensus was not achieved through free negotiation between parties but through the eradication of the possibility of conflict. Here again lies a small but decisive distinction: The reduction of conflict in a society is not the same as making conflict unspeakable. This method can only be primitive.

Yet reducing the idea of corporatism solely to this historical application seems inadequate to me. Society is not composed merely of completely disconnected individuals. People live within professions, production fields, specializations, shared needs, and mutual dependencies. A farmer’s, engineer’s, teacher’s, worker’s, entrepreneur’s, or artist’s place in social life cannot be explained solely by their income. Each produces benefit in different ways; yet the liberal market tends to measure this benefit almost exclusively through price. What the market rewards is not always what society needs. Here, we must use and understand the term “benefit” with some care. When we say “benefit,” we often immediately think of measurable economic output, efficiency, or profit. Yet a society’s sustainability does not depend solely on economic growth. Education, sports, art, science, security, morality, culture, and everyday solidarity also produce benefit. Some of these do not generate direct income; they may even appear as unnecessary expenses from a market perspective. Yet social life is sustained precisely by these invisible contributions. Therefore, centering benefit does not mean reducing humans to production machines; it means thinking more broadly about what production itself entails.

At this point, I also do not believe there is an inevitable opposition between individual freedom and social benefit. Individuals must be free; for any order produced by people who do not choose, think, change, or protest is socially impoverished, no matter how efficient it may appear. Yet freedom must not be understood merely as the expansion of one’s personal domain. When an individual’s freedom transforms into an economic, political, or social power that narrows the life space of others, are we still speaking of freedom—or of privilege?

Perhaps the real issue lies in the wide space between dissolving the individual into society and reducing society to the sum of its individuals.

Fascism occupied the first extreme: It accepted the individual as meaningful only within the state and the nation. The unlimited market view, by contrast, often approaches the other extreme: It sees society as the sum of individuals pursuing their own interests and assumes that the common good emerges spontaneously from the clash of these interests.

In my view, both approaches inadequately read human social existence. Humans are both singular and connected; they wish to shape their own lives while living within a world constructed by others. Therefore, what must be debated is not a system that locks people into predetermined roles, but a structure in which movement within society remains open. A person should not remain confined within the limits of their birth environment, family wealth, profession, or initial success. People must be able to transition between different fields, acquire new skills, assume responsibility, and rise to more effective positions based on the benefit they produce. Yet ascent should not be understood solely as vertical mobility. Horizontal movement—choosing a different field during a phase of life, selecting a job that is economically less rewarding but socially more meaningful, or restarting in a place better suited to one’s abilities—is just as important as vertical mobility.

Even the word “upward” here may be problematic. Does earning higher income, wielding greater authority, or occupying a more visible position always mean rising? Is the work of a manager inherently more valuable than that of a craftsman, teacher, or artist?

Societies often confuse wages with benefit, status with value creation, and visibility with success. Yet different functions do not require people to be hierarchically ranked by value. Responsibilities may differ, authority may vary, but these differences must not harden into rigid, hereditary classes.

One notable feature of the fascist economic model, at least theoretically, was its attempt to remove the economy from the exclusive domain of private interests. Property rights were preserved, entrepreneurship was not abolished, but it was argued that these activities carried a social function. To reject this idea outright seems wrong to me. It may be legitimate for an individual to own property, establish a business, and earn profit; yet I do not believe property rights are entirely independent of social consequences. No economic success arises solely from individual effort. Infrastructure, the education system, law, security, labor force, social trust, and the accumulated achievements of previous generations are invisible partners in economic activity. Even visible individual success must nourish these invisible collaborators.

In this context, a connection must be established between private gain and public responsibility. But who should establish this connection?

The state? Professional associations? Unions? Local communities? Or a pluralistic structure in which they all work together?

Fascism’s answer was the state—more precisely, a unitary state organized around the leader’s will. My objection begins precisely here. Defining the common good by a single center can quickly equate benefit with obedience. When the state alone decides what is good for society, individual freedom can exist only within permitted boundaries. Yet leaving this entirely to society risks producing a populist darkness—and it will produce it.

Thus, the problem with fascist corporatism was not its organization of economic interests, but its stripping of this organization of freedom. The participation of professions and production sectors in decision-making may be important. Indeed, if democracy operates solely through geographic representation and party competition, economic and professional knowledge may not adequately influence political decisions. But when economic representation replaces political representation; when the state decides which organizations are legitimate; when workers and employers sit at the same table but workers lose their right to strike—what emerges is not consensus. It is the institutionalization of the powerful’s terms. This phenomenon has also manifested in socialist, communist, democratic, and liberal regimes in recent history and today.

Therefore, the answer to the question “Is fascism absolutely evil?” is more complex than it may initially seem. The lived political practice of fascism—subordinating individual freedom to state objectives, eliminating opposition, and legitimizing violence as a political tool—cannot be defended. Yet dismissing every problem fascist regimes sought to solve and every tool they used as merely “fascist” is intellectually easy but not correct.

Perhaps what we truly need to do is not rehash fascism’s historical answers, but re-examine the problems it confronted.

Can the market alone measure social benefit?

Does private property carry public responsibility?

Should economic decisions be made only among capital owners and elected politicians?

How should professions and production sectors participate in governance?

How permeable should individuals’ positions within society be?

How can we hold individual freedom and the common good together without destroying one another?

These questions are not fascist. Yet fascism provided powerful and extremely dangerous answers to them in its time. Declaring it absolutely evil may be a correct initial stance, but it is not always helpful for thought.