Is North Korea fascist?

[Хahar 🤔]

IMO, if you call North Korea fascist, then you're saying that "fascist" is synonymous with "totalitarian", thereby making the word "fascist" useless. I prefer leaving that term for parties like Jobbik that closely resemble interwar European fascism.

[Хahar 🤔]

IMO, if you call North Korea fascist, then you're saying that "fascist" is synonymous with "totalitarian", thereby making the word "fascist" useless. I prefer leaving that term for parties like Jobbik that closely resemble interwar European fascism.

I was thinking more in terms of their gross nationalism, militarism, reactionary tendencies, etc.

Those are all pretty common to military dictatorships in general, though. North Korea is in a fundamentally different context, so I feel like the label of fascism would be off.

[Хahar 🤔]

The sole aim and end of the North Korean power structure is to remain the North Korean power structure (true of most power structures, but the North Korean one is particularly explicit and severe about it). This isn't technically fascist, although a lot of the rhetoric produced for domestic consumption is redolent of that of Japanese para-fascism, mixed with decreasing amounts of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and increasing amounts of a sort of homegrown almost Romanesque (terminal decline Rome, not Five Good Emperors Rome) god-emperor-worship*.

*Japanese para-fascism also involved god-emperor-worship, of course, but it wasn't the same kind.

Calling the Shōwa state fascist also seems wrong to me, although there were certainly elements that approached fascism (more nearly than in the North Korean case, because of the direct influence of fascist parties). But I'm sure you know much more about this field than I do.

[Хahar 🤔]

I think you're defining fascism too narrowly; any definition of fascism that excludes Dollfuss's movement doesn't really strike me as useful, especially considering the historic ties between Dollfuss and Mussolini. Moreover, one of the most important features of fascism in the Italian sense was futurism, whereas the Third Reich was not futuristic at all. The very name of the regime consciously hearkens back to Charlemagne and Otto. The Nazis might not have been reactionary in the same sense that the Junkers were, but they were preoccupied with the past all the same.

Furthermore, in terms of cultural policy, the futurism encouraged by Rome was condemned as degenerate in Berlin. I don't think it's possible to write this off as a simple preference of racialism over rationalism. Der Ring des Nibelungen is hardly a futuristic work in any sense, and it's not clear to me how the regime that glorified Wagner would differ essentially from the movements to its east but not those to its south.

[Хahar 🤔]

Fair enough. If you'd like to elaborate on that I'd be fascinated to hear what you have to say.