ALL SUCCESSFUL FASCISTS ARE CAPITALISTS:

The concern for workers' rights is surely the forgotten element in far-Right ideology. In the first instance, far-Right ideas can bloom in those who consider themselves wronged or ignored by their political leaders. Early fascists latched on to low-paid workers, war veterans and others who felt betrayed by a system that gave them nothing in return for their sacrifices. As historian Samuel Moyn writes in Not Enough (2018): 'It is no accident that the inventor of the still most widely used measure of national inequality, Italian statistician Corrado Gini, was a Fascist.'

Gini wasn't just any fascist, either; he was the author of the paper: 'The Scientific Basis of Fascism' (1927). Yet, surely, national inequality is an obsession of the Left rather than the Right? In the end, what is the difference between fascist and Left-wing ideas? According to Oswald Mosley - the leader of the British Union of Fascists from 1932 to 1940 - the British Labour Party was pursuing policies of 'international socialism', while fascism's aim was 'national socialism'.

Mosley might have been wrong to regard mature fascism as a form of socialism. But he was right about its origins. Early Italian fascism broke from socialism only on the grounds of nationalism. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proposed giving women the vote, lowering the voting age to 18, introducing an eight-hour workday, worker participation in industrial management, heavy progressive capital tax and the partial confiscation of war profits. Of course, he also advocated extreme nationalism and Italian expansionism, but the pro-worker aspects of his programme are striking.

In Germany, as early as 1920, Hitler set out his 25-point manifesto for the Nazi Party, of which points 11 to 15 concern workers' rights:

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalisation of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

Connoisseurs will spot the antisemitic notes - 'unearned income' and 'war profits' - but, on the face of it, these points could have been taken from the manifesto of the German communists.

Mosley, who fell out with the socialists over their compromises with big business and what he perceived as the weakening of their principles, quipped: 'The Socialists wore red ties until they faded pink after the last Labour Government.' He added, in terms with which it is hard to quibble: 'Real freedom means good wages, short hours, security in employment, good houses, opportunity for leisure and recreation with family and friends.'

Mussolini and Mosley are a reminder that espousing a concern for workers' rights is not, in itself, a protection against authoritarianism. In the United Kingdom today, there is a growing belief that it was the Labour Party's failure to embrace nationalist policies - thought to be favoured by its traditional voters - that led to its humiliating electoral defeat in 2019. There's also the conviction, shared by some of the less thoughtful activists, that as long as they remain supportive of trade unions and retain pro-poor policies, their Left-wing credentials will remain intact, even if they embrace crude nationalism. But this terrain needs to be navigated very carefully indeed.

In practice, fascism's initial championing of the rights of workers came to little. But, especially in Germany, fascists relentlessly pursued their second goal of creating a racially pure state. The nation, said the Nazis, was being ruined by traitors and parasites, and it was essential that purity be restored by any means necessary. And, of course, the traitors were the communists and the parasites were the Jews.

The idea of the need to restore national purity is common to all fascisms. As the American political scientist and historian Robert Paxton wrote in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004): 'Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle.' This allows a person 'the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings'.

In fascist literature, we see repeated a language of enemies, traitors, parasites and foreigners, and the dehumanising metaphors of pigs, dogs, rats and cockroaches, accompanied by the readiness for violent action by paramilitary and extrajudicial forces. A mob in coloured shirts exudes an aura of organised - yet brutal - force, even when those assembled have no training and little individual muscle. In the 1930s, nationalist parties around the world dressed not just in black and brown, but also in blue, green, grey, orange, silver and khaki and, not to be forgotten, the more elaborate white outfit of the American white-supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.

As the British philosopher Brian Barry remarked in the 1980s, Anglo-American academia and liberal intellectual circles have had a difficult time with nationalism, regarding it as 'inimical to civilised values'. Yet, this has left a gap that has been exploited by ruthless opportunists, as made evident in the 2016 Brexit vote. The Leave campaign claimed a monopoly on British values. Fringe elements of the campaign were openly racist. Even members of parliament and parts of the press joined in the hostility to immigrants and foreign residents, with all the unpleasant imagery of 'swarms' or 'floods' of refugees and low-paid workers at the UK's doors.

In response, many on the Left have adopted an unashamedly pro-immigrant stance. But some Left-wing and centre-Right politicians have taken a different tack, attempting to capture nationalist sentiment without resorting to discriminatory or racist language, attitudes or policies.

The terms 'progressive patriotism' and 'liberal nationalism' have been used to try to capture this type of view. But what does it stand for? There are a number of ways to explain a distinction between 'bad' and 'good' nationalism. Bad nationalism, in the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's words, is 'a mindless loyalty to one's own particular nation'. Good nationalism, or what MacIntyre calls patriotism, is a matter of valuing the achievements and merits of one's country, both because they are achievements and merits, and because they are ours.

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