Anti-Imperialism Critiqued

by Zoltanous

A steadfast commitment to opposing imperialism and colonialism unites a wide array of ideological factions, from progressives to patriots, evident in their rhetorical and visual messaging. Such factions often rely on ethical appeals centered on ideas like national liberation and idealistic futures, while overlooking the tangible advantages of imperial systems, including their role in fostering economic expansion and possible gains for the receiving country — a factor that any genuine patriot ought to weigh. Furthermore, they overlook how the advancement of productive capacities in a territory tends to intensify social conflicts, paving the way for a working class that edges society closer to dismantling capitalist structures, in line with the principles of historical materialism.

Progressives and self-proclaimed “anti-imperialist patriots” frequently ignore the broader ramifications of imperial expansion outside of economics, especially in realms like international relations and strategy. They selectively ignore expansionist moves by countries such as Mao-era China or the USSR, yet vehemently denounce comparable actions by adversaries. Instances include Stalin’s incursions into Poland and the Baltic regions, framed as “protective operations” or “efforts to defend minorities”; his seizure of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania; his aggression against Finland; or Mao’s advances into Indochina alongside border clashes with the USSR and India based on ambiguous “territorial rights.” These are seldom labeled as imperialism because of frameworks set by Vladimir Lenin and Marxist-Leninist theory, which I argue are inherently skewed and partisan, as I’ll elaborate.

In critiquing opposition to imperialism, I’ll adopt a supportive stance toward it, examining multiple past cases of imperial activity, outlining their upsides, downsides, and conceptual foundations, with the goal of validating their role. That said, my view on imperialism is flexible; I see it as fitting in certain situations, much like the notion of “self-determination.” Before proceeding, a clear definition of imperialism is essential, given the difficulties Marxists, left-leaning nationalists, anarchists, and similar groups face in agreeing on it, stemming from their flawed grasp and misapplication of the term. Marxists derive their understanding of imperialism primarily from Vladimir Lenin. In his view, imperialism constitutes:

“A specific historical stage whereby the flow of capital cannot be relegated to a particular nation-state, and flows outwards from the host, imperializing nation to nation in a considerably less dominant position with the aims of resource extraction and creating a financial monopoly in the various imperialized nations.”

— Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism

This framing of imperialism is narrowly tailored and functions mainly as an ideological weapon. It relies on self-reinforcing logic, designed that way intentionally. Under this Marxist-Leninist lens, aggressive acts, invasions, or destabilizations aren’t deemed imperial unless perpetrated by the capitalist elite, who alone can manipulate and export capital. This serves purely to shield worker-led states from scrutiny. It’s akin to how modern conservatives wield anti-globalization rhetoric to endorse unregulated, borderless free-market capitalism. For instance, the Marxist Michael Hudson conveniently absolves pre-capitalist empires like Rome or the Ottomans, or even socialist expansionism, by tying imperialism exclusively to monopoly capitalism’s “highest stage.” This circularity allows some Marxists to dismiss any criticisms of Soviet or Chinese actions as non-imperial, despite their clear parallels to capitalist conquests in terms of territorial aggrandizement and resource domination. Moreover, Lenin’s emphasis on finance capital as the driver overlooks geopolitical and cultural motives, reducing complex historical phenomena to a mechanistic economic model that I would argue distorts Marx’s own dialectical approach. In essence, it transforms imperialism into a partisan cudgel rather than a robust analytical tool, enabling the justification of proletarian hegemony while vilifying bourgeois variants— a hypocrisy that undermines its theoretical integrity.

The imperialism I endorse encompasses any effort by a group—be it based on faith, nationality, ethnicity, race, or socioeconomic class — to amplify its influence. This might involve military conquest, covert political interference, fostering economic reliance, or comparable tactics. Giovanni Gentile in Genesis and Structure of Society described the aims of war and imperialism as this:

“The enemy must be placed in a position in which he can no more offend; and he must recognize our will as his own. He must therefore survive to set the seal on our victory by his recognition. Thus, war does not derive from an inhuman desire for solitude. The other people, with whom we disagree, are our collaborators; they play their part in the formation of that spiritual organization or patrimony which is our world. The cause of war is only dissent, and its end therefore is nothing but the conquest of this dissent.”

— Giovanni Gentile, Genesis and Structure of Society

This offers a thorough and subtle perspective on imperialism, differing from Lenin’s focus on capitalists exporting funds for personal enrichment. Embracing this broader view makes it clear that communist regimes can’t dodge blame for their expansionist behaviors, despite their reliance on Lenin’s limited definition to evade responsibility.

Imperial expansion has been a constant throughout human development, particularly amid industrialization and the rise of financial systems. Intriguingly, this pattern isn’t unique to people; creatures like chimpanzees display comparable drives for conflict and land acquisition. A key case is the Gombe Chimpanzee War of the mid-to-late 1970s, fueled by rivalries over resources, dominance, and space. Esteemed researcher Jane Goodall documented this extensively, with her work appearing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The conflict erupted in 1974 following a split in the Kasakela community, resulting in deadly assaults that eradicated the Kahama faction by 1977, allowing Kasakela to claim more territory.

Jane Goodall talking about chimpanzee’s and conflict

Since chimpanzees are viewed as war-prone and our nearest kin, this query was posed to Nicholas E. Newton-Fisher, a specialist in primate behavior at the University of Kent, UK.

“It probably depends on the definition of war, there’s good evidence that chimpanzees conduct deliberate raids on neighboring communities, and that this can lead to annexation of territory. For instance, during a ten-year study of a chimp family in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, the primates killed or injured 18 chimps from other groups and took over their land.”

— Nicholas E. Newton-Fisher, in an interview with National Geographic

Essentially, chimpanzees partake in lethal territorial disputes, revealing that our evolutionary cousins can orchestrate planned attacks, killings, and near-genocidal acts. Their mental faculties allow for tactical planning and the creation of tribe-like alliances.

On chimpanzee warfare

Harvard’s Richard Wrangham has contended that chimpanzee aggression points to an innate evolutionary bias toward warfare spanning eons. As our closest relatives per scientific consensus, chimpanzees underscore humanity’s inherent violent tendencies, backed by scholarly evidence. In The Goodness Paradox, Wrangham expands that coordinated proactive violence in chimps parallels human battles, positioning aggression as an evolutionary advantage. The methods chimps use resemble those of indigenous North American groups, foragers, and early societies. These communities could amplify disputes into full-scale wars, sometimes wiping out opponents — a tactic mirroring chimp behavior. Ambushes by groups targeting lone rivals were standard.

Napoleon A. Chagnon’s Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - The Yanomamö and The Anthropologists delves into the Yanomami’s lineage, conflicts, and customs. Through immersion from 1964 to the 1990s, Chagnon gathered familial and dispute records. His approach drew from E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology, which posits evolution shapes behaviors like cooperation and hostility. Chagnon’s data revealed that violent Yanomami males had more offspring, linking aggression to reproductive success. His studies highlighted correlations between family ties and violence, concluding on practices like female captures, surprise attacks, child exploitation, and group exterminations. This spurred research on violence’s evolutionary perks, contributing to anthropology and behavioral science debates, illuminating our primal urges for combat. Robert Walker, an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri, adds:

“The same reasons for revenge, honor, territory and jealousy over women. That fueled deadly conflicts in the Amazon. It continues to drive violence in today’s world. Humans’ evolutionary history of violent conflict among rival groups goes back to our primate ancestors. It takes a great deal of social training and institutional control to resist our instincts and solve disputes with words instead of weapons.”

— Robert Walker, Amazonian Tribal Warfare and Modern Violence

Walker’s analysis of fatalities in 44 Amazonian groups, from 11 studies, examined cultural influences on death tolls. He found intra-group raids (similar languages) more common but less fatal than inter-group ones (different languages), linking cultural divides to violence intensity, akin to modern conflicts like Libya’s embassy assault or Afghanistan’s war. Amazonian fights often featured woman abductions, echoing chimp patterns, with equal rates in both raid types. Deceptive strategies, like feigned hospitality leading to attacks on inebriated or sleeping foes, yielded high casualties, occasionally genocidal. Speculation exists on Neanderthal parallels, and biblical tales like Jehu’s deception of Baal followers before their slaughter echo this.

“Revenge was necessary in historical intertribal warfare, just as in modern gang conflicts, because showing weakness would result in further attacks, that cycle of revenge could result in tribes eradicating each other.”

— Robert Walker, Amazonian Tribal Warfare and Modern Violence

Generative Anthropology, advanced by Eric Gans and Adam Katz, gains support from Amazonian studies and ties to René Girard’s mimetic desire in Violence and The Sacred. Girard posits desires are culturally derived, sparking rivalry over shared wants, escalating to crises resolved via scapegoating — channeling group ire onto a victim. This underpins Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy divide. Amazonian data illustrates human violent expansion, explained by mimetic rivalry and scapegoating, which Girard sees as founding culture and religion through ritualized aggression.

“The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.”

— Carl Schmitt, The Concept of The Political

Girard, Gans, and Katz view scapegoating as culture and language’s origin. The video Anti-Individualism History of a Social Species by Trudiltom explores Generative Anthropology, chimp insights, and the state of nature.

“It is important to notice that from an external point of view the criterion of economic efficiency can be applied to the lower animals as well as man. The behavior of the lower animals is purposive and therefore ‘useful’; it is more immediately hedonistic. Their behavior is not free but mechanical, and in that sense necessary - which is what we mean by instinctive for ‘Instinct’ is rational behavior. The Analogy between the instinctive behavior of Brutes and the Utilitarian activity of man does not break down because intelligence is involved in the latter. Intelligence is not absent even in the actions of the lower animals.”

— Giovanni Gentile, Genesis and Structure of Society

Building upon these anthropological foundations, we can elevate the discussion to a philosophical plane, where the primal aggressions observed in chimpanzees and tribal societies reflect deeper ontological truths about human existence. This innate drive for dominance and expansion aligns with Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power,” wherein life itself is characterized by an unceasing striving to overcome, assimilate, and affirm one’s being through conquest and growth. Imperialism, in this light, is not mere barbarism but a manifestation of vital energy, a philosophical imperative for civilizations to transcend stagnation and decay. Economically, this translates to the acceleration of productive forces: imperial ventures compel resource mobilization, technological innovation, and market integration, as seen in historical precedents where empires catalyzed leaps in wealth creation. For instance, the British Empire’s opium trade with China, while coercive, forced open markets that integrated East Asia into global commerce, fostering infrastructural developments like ports and railways that outlasted the imperial era and laid foundations for modern economic hubs such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

European dominance in Africa entailed organized resource harvesting from long-underutilized lands, supplying industrial and military needs, sustaining imperial cycles and growth. This left behind advanced tech and facilities in areas like eastern, northern, and southern Africa, aiding post-colonial progress and funding. Ethiopia, independent longer, gained from European commerce. Colonialism helped keep it comparatively advanced. Europeans built sectors and innovations Ethiopians leveraged. In South Africa, UK funding for gold and diamonds created mines, transport networks, and harbors, making it among Africa’s most developed, thanks to British oversight and capital.

In ex-French North Africa, like Algeria and Morocco, strategic investments were heavy. Today, despite inequalities, Algeria ranks among Africa’s top economies by nominal GDP (third in 2025 per IMF data, at around $288 billion), serving as a regional force due to Mediterranean access and continental ties. French-built systems enabled vast oil and gas exports, driving its economy. French efforts in West Africa focused on boosting resource output, expanding peanut and cotton production via rewards to spur economic involvement. Agricultural zones saw encouraged relocations for wage work, enhancing colonial output. Notably, figures from Adolf Hitler to Friedrich Engels viewed slavery as civilization’s bedrock, a view echoed by historians across eras and ideologies, recognizing its global role in societal advancement.

Detailing that slavery is the human condition

Bruce Gilley’s The Case For Colonialism contends colonialism aided both sides. Karl Marx, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s Marxist-Leninist sections, noted imperialism’s positive societal shifts absent external force, as in The British Rule in India. Marx employed moral language on exploitation but, rejecting morality as capitalist construct, critiqued Indian traditions as tyrannical and mystical, justifying British oversight. He saw it sparking Indian societal overhaul — economic progress per historical materialism, essential positively. Slavery’s developmental role is referenced. Friedrich Engels employs the same type of language.

“For now slavery had also been invented. To the barbarian of the lower stage, a slave was valueless. Hence the treatment of defeated enemies by the American Indians was quite different from that at a higher stage. The men were killed or adopted as brothers into the tribe of the victors; the women were taken as wives or otherwise adopted with their surviving children. At this stage human labor-power still does not produce any considerable surplus over and above its maintenance costs. That was no longer the case after the introduction of cattle-breeding, metalworking, weaving and, lastly, agriculture. just as the wives whom it had formerly been so easy to obtain had now acquired an exchange value and were bought, so also with the forces of labor, particularly since the herds had definitely become family possessions. The family did not multiply as rapidly as the cattle. More people were needed to look after them; for this purpose use could be made of the enemies captured in war, who could also be bred just as easily as the cattle themselves.”

— Friedrich Engels, Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State

Slavery’s link to civilization appears in texts like the Quran, Hadith, and philosophical works across cultures and peoples. Civilization’s emergence often featured slavery to assert control over land and assets. George Fitzhugh’s Civilization: The Result of Compulsory Labor mirrors Engels and Hitler on slavery’s civilizational function. Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery asserts slavery propelled Europe’s global economic rise, with New World conquest relying on enslaved labor generating industrial capital. Abolition, he claims, stemmed from economic motives, not ethics.

The Roman Empire exemplifies how Pax Romana’s stability rested on imperial order and growth, with slavery central to its framework, built on captive work. Schmitt’s friend-enemy concept shaped Roman identity and outreach. Violence and societal structure interlink, each vital to the other. Societies depend on shared awareness of violence’s repercussions for intra-group trust. Breaching this invites reform for survival. Sanctioned violence serves collective good, correcting injustices. Slavery represents organized violence to curb chaotic variants, improprieties, and harms. While some decry systems with inherent flaws, civilization’s nuance accepts some imperfection. Hierarchy and society coexist; erasing hierarchy is ultimate error. Structure implies violence, and productive structured violence counters societal threats from unstructured forms. Richard Spencer argues Africans gained from white dominance encounters. Slavery isn’t eternal; post-abolition, forms like servitude persisted in French West Africa for development, aiding resource extraction and force concentration.

WWII-era Italian expansion sought industrialization resources, lagging behind Europe until Marshall aid. Balkan acquisitions of iron, coal, copper, wood, and livestock fueled Italy’s progress while improving sourced areas. In Greece, Italy aimed to boost its underdeveloped steel sector, aiding both via trade and investment. African plans would spur funding and commerce, extracting riches for Italy’s growth, ultimately advancing Africa.

Japanese imperialism, despite brutality, could have developed subjugated regions. Though the Imperial Japanese forces were zealous and biased, full control was improbable; civilian pressures would yield autonomy. Military radicals contrasted milder civilians, enabling Zaibatsu investments in China’s, Indochina’s, and Indonesia’s potentials for needed resources like oil and metals. Terrorizing populations would squander labor and potential, so unsustainable. East Asian economies would tie to Japan’s, supplying resources and revenue for empire maintenance, while locals under Tokyo-aligned governments received yen infusions for infrastructure. Geopolitically, as Hideki Tojo to Inejiro Asanuma advocated, expelling Western capitalists secured Asia from dominance.

Beyond infrastructure, colonizers imparted social frameworks — like governance, economics, and norms — benefiting natives, unlikely under stagnant local systems from differing worldviews. History shows conquerors often impose culture and mistreat, but not inevitably. Colonization can forge nations, as with America — arguably “taken land,” yet all land is historically contested. Philosophically, this echoes Hegel’s dialectics of history, where imperial clashes propel the unfolding of the spirit into higher forms of state and society. Economically, such forges create unified markets, as in the American West’s integration via Manifest Destiny, which, despite its genocidal elements, spurred unprecedented growth through railroads, mining, and agriculture.

Germany’s origins: Pope Alexander III authorized northern crusades against pagan Old Prussians. After Polish failures, Teutonic Knights seized Prussia, demoting locals and erasing heritage. Lithuania resisted more; Polish alliances complicated. Post-Thirteen Years’ War, Prussia partly unified with Poland. Reformation secularized the Teutonic state into Duchy of Prussia, evolving to Brandenburg-Prussia. Frederick William elevated it to kingdom. Frederick William I instilled militarism; Frederick the Great’s genius seized Silesia post-Austrian Succession War, and Poland’s first partition reclaimed lands. Further partitions absorbed Poland. Napoleonic losses reversed some; Vienna Congress restored much. Otto von Bismarck’s rise in 1862 led to Seven Weeks’ War dominance over Germany. Franco-Prussian War unified the empire, birthing greatness from imperialism.

British Fascist (BUF) leader Oswald Mosley proposed this for India:

“Question Number 84: What reforms would you substitute for the India Bill [Government of India Act 1935]?

The retention of absolute power by the British Crown over all problems of Defence and Fiscal policy, to the extent necessary to finance defence and prevent the erection of trade barriers against Britain. The complete abolition of the Indian Tariff against British goods on the grounds that it is only just that some return should be made to Britain for all she has done for India. Factory legislation to abolish the vile industrial conditions in India which are a disgrace to British civilisation. A strong and advanced economic policy—irrigation, cooperative farming and marketing; the establishment of agricultural banks to break the grip of the money-lender on the Peasant. The establishment of a Corporate system in place of a western Democratic system built on occupational lines in the towns, and built up in the countryside, tier upon tier, to the central Authority from the traditional basis of the village Panchayat. Such a system is at once more in accord with Indian tradition and with modern western thought. In general, we should cease to argue with lawyers and enlist the services of genuine Indian patriots in the wide scope of a Corporate system designed to raise the condition of the Indian masses in a great new economic drive. Economic action is the surest antidote to political disorder. Thus, in the strength of Government, we go further than Conservative Diehards, but we couple with a strong government an economic policy far in advance of the concepts of any present Party.”

— Oswald Mosley, Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered

Mosley, neither anti-colonial nor anti-segregation, sought empire retention for strength and autonomy under British sway, post-BUF dissolution. He opposed abusive capitalist exploitation, favoring corporatism in India to enhance rights, integrating Panchayat traditions respectfully.

Empires historically used harsh methods, but imperialism can preserve and elevate subjugated cultures and welfare. Moral critiques on oppression and erasure are contestable; imperialism needn’t entail out-group destruction. When subordinates receive near-equal legal treatment, barring some separation, anti-imperial moral cases weaken. Philosophically, this aligns with Kant’s later critique of imperialism’s “civilizing mission” as hypocritical, yet even he initially entertained racial hierarchies that justified expansion — a tension revealing how philosophy often grapples with empire as a vehicle for enlightenment, albeit flawed. Early Ottoman Greek incursions, culminating in Constantinople’s fall, treated Greece as empire core. Capital in renamed Greek city, key hubs in Greek areas like Salonika, Izmir, Athens. Greeks held high roles, encouraged urban migration, with Ottoman funding for development and official compensations. Churches subsidized for freedom. Harsher Balkan treatment stemmed from revolts and northern expansion needs.

The USSR enacted imperialism in Central-Eastern Europe and Asia to centralize for revolution. Russian settlers balanced natives in Asia against uprisings; Baltic post-WWII deportations imported Russians similarly. Invasions exploited resources for USSR industrialization, as in Poland, Romania, Finland. Finland invasion sought copper for Five-Year Plan ammo. Baltics for resources and ice-free ports (Leningrad froze). Territorial consolidation intensified antagonisms. Stalin’s COMECON bound socialist states economically; Warsaw Pact controlled territories for growth enabling geopolitics, opposing West.

Imperialism advances productive forces via industrialization, growing proletariat in both nations through factories and tech, expanding capital, labor, bureaucracy, priming revolutions. Proletarian states imperialize for resources against plutocracies like Britain, America, France in class wars. WWII exemplified proletarian-bourgeois clashes, per Mussolini. France and Britain solidified via African and Asian expansion, resource gains reinforcing divides. Such power could aid worker states geopolitically. For example, Britain’s control over Egypt’s Suez Canal not only secured trade routes but also modernized Egyptian cotton production, integrating it into global markets and providing economic infrastructure that persisted post-independence.

Socialism requires imperialism for position and forces. USSR imperialized for industrialization and geopolitics but faltered against US post-British decline hegemony. Dissolution shrank Russia via separatism and neglect. Socialism demands hegemonic imperialism for dominance; else subjugation. This bolsters Mussolini and Hitler’s ambitions, China’s Schmitt adoption too. Schmitt: Politics justifies combat as enemy threatens existence or lifestyle, risking war. Two passages from The Concept of The Political are worth quoting to understand Schmitt’s treatment of war:

“War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy. It is the most extreme consequence of enmity. It does not have to be common, normal, something ideal, or desirable. But it must nevertheless remain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enemy remains valid”

“The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy. War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”

— Carl Schmitt, The Concept of The Political

These emphasize war as enmity’s outcome. For Schmitt, war was politics’ facet.

“But as an ever-present possibility it is the leading presupposition which determines in a characteristic way human action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behaviour.”

— Carl Schmitt, The Concept of The Political

Schmitt’s ever-present war potential underscores his modal logic, revealing conflict’s essence with implications like national gain via power, tied to industrialization, modernization, expansion. Chimps and “primitive” peoples understand this; liberals, Marxists, capitalist nationalists don’t — perhaps less astute. They’re ensnared by pacifist propaganda. Politics centers friend-enemy, power struggles for supremacy via growth, security.

Alexander Dugin’s Russian “narod” and his Eurasianism matches Nazi ideological volk worship, justify Lebensraum. Liberalism’s pinnacle: pacifism, eradicating distinctions — contradictory, as they found civilization. Imperialism: natural power expression. Anti-imperialism perpetuates liberal dominance. Defensive imperialism, as a philosophical theory, posits security as the core motive, echoing ancient Roman expansions justified as preemptive safeguards against threats — a rationale that philosophically elevates empire from aggression to necessity.

“When middle classes turned to pacifism, the working classes turned to anti-militarism. Proletarian Anarchism, Syndicalism, and revolutionary Socialism turned violently against capitalist war. After all, these groups furnished the chief regiments of cannon fodder and feared warfare more than any other. Their anti-war activity was only part of the general struggle for emancipation of the working class.”

— Albert Weisbord, Offshoots of Liberalism: Pacifism

These movements succumbed to pacifism, ignoring social laws. Anarchists to Tolstoyan co-op i.e. liberal objection; syndicalists to strikes halting war; socialists to votes i.e. disarmament. Stalinists revived disarmament utopia. All failed against militarism and war. Dugin critiques the West’s cultural superiority imposition as “universalization,” per Schmitt. States, under human rights guise, deem opposers anti-human, justifying extinction for peace — fueling US imperialism. Domination employs all means. Eurasian and Atlanticist civilizations share genocides, slavery, state supremacy, and national interests. British-Chinese opium wars, Soviet Russification, US Manifest Destiny’s native cleansings, Ustase Balkan atrocities, Roman Jewish subjugation — all prioritize the national interests.

I’ve outlined imperialism’s instances as power assertion, often benefiting subjects via conqueror resources, new lands, or development. Industrialization and infrastructure from imperialism taps untapped assets. Despite critiques; imperialism, colonialism, and war aid socialism, benefiting nation-states — why I embrace nationalism. “Nationalist” denotes a collective uniting against greater external threats via partial self-sacrifice, driven by structures.

1. Humans prioritize material and biological security.

2. Some instinctively seek excess.

3. In-group myths necessitate out-group denial.

The nation self-justifies as profound good. Nationalism, existential core, manifests as Dasein. Heidegger’s being requires grasping Being; Dasein worldly, understanding entities. Being infuses anthropology. Humans transcend Greek rational animals or Protestant theology; essence from inner potential. Dasein’s authenticity: embodying culture, language, ethnicity, and collective consciousness. The National Socialists’ völkisch ideology, Geisteswissenschaft (human sciences) resonate with Fascist Italian awakening, Roman exceptionalism. The nation realizes its resolute destiny pursuit, group authenticity.

Nationalism is virtuous in struggles negation, victory. Imperialism: expansion drives will to power and our consciousness. Civilizational force, civilizing humanity. History forged is an embrace of structured violence for harmony. This is Hobbes’ Leviathan, where the state of nature’s bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all) necessitates hierarchies to impose order, transforming raw anthropological violence into structured economic productivity and philosophical self-realization.

“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit—i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand—a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or arise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples.”

— Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism