Talk:Fascism

Regarding recent significant changes that have expanded the article's size

Recent significant changes have been made by Opostylov that have expanded the article's size. I had a discussion with Opostylov on his talk page here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Opostylov#Fascism_article_-_contributors_are_trying_to_reduce_the_size_of_the_article about the issue we are having with the size of the article as it was too large prior to the edits that added more content. This needed to be discussed here so I've moved the discussion here.

KEY POINT THAT I RECOMMEND: Both on the discussion above that I mention and here I strongly recommend that the article return to what it was prior to those major edits and then address here issues that Opostylov has mentioned. That way we can restore the article to when it was a smaller size and then figure out what can be added and removed, because the article was oversized prior to these edits restoring to the previous state will still require content to be removed for each content added and we need to be cautious about this.

1) Issue of Francisco Franco and the FET y de las JONS

They have raised legitimate issues about the Franco regime and the FET y de las JONS being identified as fascist and the Spanish Civil War being significant as Franco backed by two fascist regimes in Germany and Italy fought against a government that rallied anti-fascist international supporters to fight on its side. They note that although there is a "new consensus" of scholars on fascism that reject calling Franco's regime fascist that other scholarly sources that do regard it as fascist should be included. I have seen one perhaps two scholars that I've examined dividing Franco's regime into different sections of its history, with 1937 to 1943 being fascist, and then with the fall of Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy in 1943 and the decline of the Axis Powers Franco distanced his regime from fascism. What I have seen from several sources is that they identify Franco himself as a conservative but that he had his regime put on fascistic traits most likely to secure support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany at the time. However Opostylov has noted that Franco's regime held ties with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement and took part in the European Social Movement, so this shows ties between Franco's regime and neo-fascists.

2) Gombos and the Iron Guard

Opostylov mentions that Gyula Gombos though an early fascist in Hungary did not achieve much in his government that lasted four years until his death. So perhaps Gombos can be removed to allow content on the Spanish Falange and Franco's regime to be added. They have mentioned that content on the Iron Guard could be removed because the Iron Guard in spite of being a mass movement only briefly came to power.

3) Perón

We both agreed that content on Juan Perón could be removed, identifying him as possibly being a fascist seems to be controversial. Peron's regime had close ties with multiple leftist governments, the article on him on Wikipedia describes that his regime as having supported the Cuban Revolution, Salvador Allende, and Mao era China. It says that Peron was praised by communists including Che Guevara and Mao Zedong. I am not familiar with details about Perón's regime but from what is mentioned in the article already combined with these points it appears that such claims appear significantly contested.

4) Summary

We spoke about other things that can be seen in the link above, and these can be addressed here, however I think the major issue here is about the FET y de las JONS led by Francisco Franco, Francoist Spain, and the Spanish Civil War. As mentioned earlier everything we add to the article increases its size so whatever we add we need to be thinking about what to take out. If others think that content on Gombos' regime and the Iron Guard regime should be removed to put a focus on Spain then I would be fine with that.

If there are other areas of the article that could be cut, please make suggestions here as the article has been oversized for awhile.BlueberryA96 (talk) 20:39, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

first, i think that the reduction should concern primarily the "criticism" section, you guys already discussed that above, and i think "criticism" is not really a valuable part

partially due to fascism being so universally discredited that it being bad is something that more or less everyone knows

so "anti-fascism" is really the only really meaningful section

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idk

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i think history could be made longer at the expense of criticism section Opostylov (talk) 15:09, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

regarding peron, franco and "controversial", i'd say that peronism here is rather "irrelevant" than "controversial"

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franco is "controversial": it's an ongoing and voluminous debate with really strong arguments and a lot of authors being involved - and, well, kinda a debate of somewhat political significance i guess; other than that, his reputation as a fascist dictator is still *popular*

here's a fresh article of The Nation on franco - it's a fresh example of the regime being called fascism in public media, and it says that it's a question of a sort of a 'universal' significance ("will enable deeper understanding not only of Spanish fascism but of fascism as a whole")

peron doesn't have that, as far as i know - there isn't a really big debate, the definition of peronism as fascism is something only a pretty small number of historians insists on - so here the thing is confined to a narrow academic circle Opostylov (talk) 15:24, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

FET y de las JONS is descrbed as Falangist in its main article. Per the main article on the ideology, it "is ultranationalist, anti-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-liberal.". The Falangists initially advocated for national syndicalist economic policies, "while mirroring social democratic policies in supporting state jurisdiction over the setting of wages." ... "The Franco-era Falange supported the development of cooperatives such as the Mondragon Corporation"...

Peronism is quite a bit different than traditional fascist movements. The main article describes it as a strange combination of Progressivism and paternalistic conservatism. "Perón created a planned and heavily regulated economy, with "a massive public sector of nationalized industries and social services" that was "redistributive in nature" and prioritized workers' benefits and empowering trade unions.... "Some historians also consider Peronism to be a variant of Nasserism, which defines it as an ideology based on "middle-class military men who would utilize the armed forces to forge a socialist transformation of society." Dimadick (talk) 18:02, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

The Falangism article needs to be reworked, in its current form it is mostly WP:SYNTHESIS I've been talking with a Spanish user who agrees with me that the Falangism article effectively has to be rewritten to get rid of the synthesis in it now.

Franco himself at the time is believed to have been a conservative and an Alfonsist monarchist but that as part of seeking the support of the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany he set up a regime emulating fascism. A major official from Fascist Italy, Roberto Farinacci, visited Spain in March 1937 and met with Franco one month before the FET y de las JONS was founded and he urged Franco to create a fascist party that would merge the other Nationalist parties into it, Farinacci suggested an idea for its naming that could be the "Spanish National Party". It appears highly likely that this advice from a representative of the Italian government, the leading foreign supporter of the Nationalist faction in the civil war, directly led to Franco deciding to create the party using an existing fascist party as the base for it.

There are scholars that say that Franco's Falangist regime was fascist throughout its entire existence; as for incorporation of non-fascists into the party, this perspective notes that the National Fascist Party in Italy merged the non-fascist Italian Nationalist Association into it with a number of its members becoming high-ranking Fascists and the Nazi Party merged most of the members of the non-fascist German National People's Party into their party. Others that say it was parafascist or semi-fascist. And then there is a third interpretation that say it was fascist from 1937 to 1943 where the regime is regarded to have closely emulated Italian fascism; then with Mussolini's fall from power in 1943 and the Axis Powers starting to lose World War II then Franco distanced his regime from fascism to protect his regime from possible conflict with the Allied powers. BlueberryA96 (talk) 21:15, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

On the note of those termed parafascists (that is, there is disagreement on whether they are part of fascism proper), they are more likely better covered in the history of fascism articles than in this article on Fascism. They are still within the remit of more in-depth history articles due to their interconnectedness with accepted fascist regimes, and their drawing from fascist ideology in their development. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:55, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Opostylov: with regards to expanding the history section, I would advise that instead you edit the article History of fascism, as the point of creating that article was to keep the in-depth information we had on the history, while we cut down this article to get it below <10,000 prose words. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:00, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I think that Falangism and the Spanish Civil War should be covered regardless if most reliable sources see it as either fully fascist or parafascist. The original Falangists are widely regarded as fascist and in the initial years of Franco's regime a number of them held prominent positions in the regime. Plus as said above the Spanish Civil War involved two fascist powers - Germany and Italy - intervening in that war to support establishing an allied government, it provoked an international anti-fascist movement to arise with volunteers going to fight on the Republican side of the civil war. Also as mentioned above the Italian government directly advised Franco in March 1937 to create a fascist party uniting the Nationalists together into it and one month later the FET y de las JONS was created. BlueberryA96 (talk) 16:16, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I do support this, I apologise for not using specific examples, I was thinking more for mentions of Peron/Peronism in Argentina, the Estado Novo in Portugal, and others which have similar prominence and situations. In the example of Spain, while there is a vocal minority in scholarship who argue it is not fascist, as you point out the majority of scholarship just have it as a form of fascism, add onto it, as you also point out, the role that the two fascist powers (Germany and Italy) played in the civil war, and other their roles directly fed back into their own goals and development, it is very much important contextual history to include in the main article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:18, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

The main thing as I mentioned earlier is that the size of the article, I believe we need to restore the history section of the article to what it was prior to the size expansion and then edit the article to address points that Opostylov has made in as short and concise way as possible. I have been used to using the standard citation generator on Wikipedia as Opostylov appears also to have with edits to this article, while this article uses a different citation format, is there some place on Wikipedia that describes how to make the citation format as used here on this article? BlueberryA96 (talk) 10:37, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

It looks like three of us here agree that inclusion of Peron is not needed. If there are others who believe he should be included I will wait to see if there are. BlueberryA96 (talk) 21:24, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Make that four. Simonm223 (talk) 18:22, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I've been trying to work on a a revised history section, however the citation method used in this article is complicated, I've used one that has a different template for it. This one requires the citation plus a reference in the bibliography section. There are other things I'm not entirely sure about it, if someone could let me know where I learn more about the citation method used in this article that could help. BlueberryA96 (talk) 01:16, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

References

"good faith edits"

@Slatersteven you removed my edits which either did some minor stylistic corrections or were sourced. what are the objections? Opostylov (talk) 15:34, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

No you did not, changing "prominence in early-20th-century Europe" to "primarily in Europe of the interwar period" is none of those. For example. Slatersteven (talk) 15:41, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

that was a small edit, done since in my ESL experience "early" refers rather to the first decades, while the "interwar period" refers to 1918-1939 - so it summarizes what's written in the article. it's not a big detail, and the main thing you removed was a sentence citing Umland regarding Putin Opostylov (talk) 16:52, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

And removed another sourced statement. Slatersteven (talk) 16:57, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

because it's not exactly related to Russia which is being talked about. and also really vague. it follows a more concrete one, which is related to Russia, "short-circuits our ability to construct a more complex and differentiated picture". there's already a template demanding a shortening of the article, so it's better to avoid vague sentences. also found an another source, where it's said that she generally finds the term "fascism" useless for political analytics, and calls it "mirror games." Opostylov (talk) 17:45, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

RE the early-20th century Europe vs interwar period it's important to note that the fascist ball got rolling during the Fin de siècle and, as such, periodizing it to after WWI is not an accurate account. Simonm223 (talk) 18:14, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

So that is what I did, I shortened it, you just removed one thing and replaced it with another. Slatersteven (talk) 18:31, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

well, there's a distinguishment be proto-fascism and fascism proper. the latter became prominent only after 1919 Opostylov (talk) 18:42, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

In this edit, you cite a paragraph to {{sfnp|Paxton|2006|pp=31-32, 44, 106}}, can you please confirm the Paxton book you used, as we currently don't have a Paxton 2006 book in the article, and can you please break up the reference to specify which sentences in the paragraph are cited to which pages in the book. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:47, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

@Opostylov: -- Cdjp1 (talk) 08:46, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

@Cdjp1 sorry for lack of response stuff has been not that well for me lately Opostylov (talk) 12:32, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

@Cdjp1 "Not explained/agreed to on talk page" - adding Franco and the Spanish Civil War, clearly one of the main events in the history of fascism, while reducing the Gombos section were agreed on the talk page. Opostylov (talk) 12:34, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that, I hope whatever is happening resolves to a good outcome for you as soon as possible. On Not explained/agreed to on talk page I could not find the talk page discussion where the edits were agreed upon. If you could link to it, it would be appreciated. I'm inherently opposed to the change (beyond that it increases article size), so the revert was more because I couldn't substantiate the edit summary.

What I am more interested in, if you are able to help, this edit, you cite a paragraph to {{sfnp|Paxton|2006|pp=31-32, 44, 106}}, can you please confirm the Paxton book you used, as we currently don't have a Paxton 2006 book in the article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:45, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

oh, sorry, it must have been a typo from me, it should be 2004

i used Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism from the website libcom.org Opostylov (talk) 19:22, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

on Franco: it's the section above on this page

@BlueberryA96: "I think that Falangism and the Spanish Civil War should be covered regardless"; you: "I do support this"

on Gombos we agreed with Blueberry that words on him should be reduced. there have been no objections whatsoever, so me reducing his section seems consensual. Opostylov (talk) 19:25, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. As the paragraph is information dense, are you able to break down the citation and add it to the specific sections of the paragraphs that the pages 31-32, 44, and 106 relate to? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 10:06, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

done (separated the 1 footnote into separate 5 footnotes) Opostylov (talk) 12:22, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

A request for closure of RfC for inclusion of Trumpism/MAGA

There was an RfC regarding the inclusion of Donald Trump and his movement to this article taking place in October - see Talk:Fascism/Archive 57#RfC for inclusion of Trumpism/MAGA, discussed above. From what I can see, there was more or less an agreement that due to how many sources do associate Trump with fascism, with Robert O. Paxton being among the most prominent ones, there should be a section or a paragraph regarding the matter in the article. The RfC ended without a proper closure, so this subject wasn't added to the article nevertheless. A user above suggested requesting a closure, so that's what I'm doing here.

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a sort of a suggestion since i'm writing: the article makes "2008" as a cutting date, and divides the section after 2008 as a separate sub-section. previous sections don't do that. i feel like it would be good if these were captured in one section, maybe in a single context. Timothy Snyder is one of the so-called "alarmist" authors, and he terms "fascism" not only Trump, but also Putin and Orban - thus the three overlap in narratives of some authors. similarly, a volume which got released this year by Oxford, "The Trajectory of Trumpism", cites Ruth Ben-Ghiat, for example, linking Trump to Putin and Orban while drawing on Paxton's framework (page 119). so there is some context for Trump and Putin at least - and if so, perhaps, that is worthy of being described in one section? also, an another thing: considering that the inclusion of Trump would cite Paxton and using his concepts more. Paxton understands modern "fascism" as a "functional equivalent" of the interwar fascism without it being a strict continuation. in his book The Anatomy of Fascism he gives an example of such "equivalent", it's Serbia led by Slobodan Milosevic, while Payne seems to disagree here (i added that to his article). i think inclusion of that may reflect how different the understandings of fascism are, especially the one after 1945, and serve as one of the examples, though it may be not necessary Opostylov (talk) 16:49, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

@Opostylov See WP:RFCCLOSE. Not sure how requesting a "proper" closure would work when the RfC is already closed and archived. I think people can act on the perceived consensus without necessarily writing a summary of the discussion. I removed the RfC tag because its weird to have an RfC about closing another RfC thats already archived. Polygnotus (talk) 18:20, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

i never participated in RfCs really, but this is what Simonm223 on the grounds that it was not closed formally. the section Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Restarting an RfC says that an RfC can be restarted if it didn't receive closure Opostylov (talk) 18:30, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

@Opostylov But if you want to restart it, then its probably a bad idea to start a new RfC with no context here right? To me it would make more sense to unarchive the previous RfC. But this is unexplored territory for me.

I'll ping @WhatamIdoing: perhaps they'll know what to do/can give advice. Polygnotus (talk) 18:34, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

thanks Opostylov (talk) 18:40, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I looked at the old RfC and, from what I can see, it was never closed because it was not properly formatted as an RfC. If you want to reopen the line of discussion it might be best to instead just start a conversation and build out the RfC before - determine if an RfC is needed at this juncture. After all, the situation in American politics has been... fluid. Simonm223 (talk) 18:44, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

After all, the situation in American politics has been... fluid. Indeed, even Samuel Moyn –– one of the most prominent (and thoughtful) historians arguing against the "Trumpism is fascism" position after the January 6th attack –– has changed his tune in response to the anti-immigrant / anti-free-speech crackdowns of the second Trump administration. See e.g. "'The Wolves Came': Richard Steigmann-Gall on Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’s Did it Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America". Generalrelative (talk) 19:03, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Exactly. I think Griffin changed his tune too. And this is kind of what I'm getting at. I would support some inclusion of Trump material on this page, directing readers to Donald Trump and Fascism for details. I suspect this will be less controversial than it was even a year ago. But we shouldn't close of a stale discussion that wasn't properly formatted. Instead let's talk it through and see whether we have a current local consensus. Simonm223 (talk) 20:22, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree about what's appropriate here: a short, circumspect mention linking to Donald Trump and Fascism.

I'd be surprised to learn that Griffin had changed his tune given his full-throated dismissal of the notion last year. (I disagree with him on methodological grounds but it's a charming, humane presentation.) Do you recall where you heard he'd reconsidered? Generalrelative (talk) 20:52, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I'd have to look it up. I thought I remembered reading about it but don't immediately remember where. Simonm223 (talk) 21:57, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I thought he had as well, but searching for material after the Cambridge Union debate does not indicate he has. Though, as we quote Griffin from the debate in the "Donald Trump and Fascism" article, "in standard academic terms, he (Trump) is not one (a fascist), he is something worse". -- Cdjp1 (talk) 10:57, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Well I can't remember where I thought I saw it but I did find Griffin effectively saying he bites his tongue about Trump because he doesn't think it would help: I take part in debates in the press about whether Trump is a fascist and so on, but I know in advance that I would never change the mind of any Trump supporter and would be instantly demonized as a “woke” academic and thus “the enemy.” Simonm223 (talk) 11:36, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

@Opostylov, not sure why you started this discussion with an RFC tag given this discussion is not an RFC itself. If you want to request a close of that prior RFC, please see WP:CR. TarnishedPath^talk 00:40, 20 August 2026 (UTC)