Everyone gets this totally wrong. Communism and Fascism are two versions of a centrally planned economy and both are socialist in nature because centrally planned economies by their very nature require massive state redistribution of wealth. Where they differ is that Fascism allows more free market activity through state controlled Corporations (the official economic model of Fascist Italy was called Corporatism!) whereas Communists seek to have the State itself make everything and have no private businesses whatsoever. This is why modern China resembles the Fascist model far more than the Communist model as it has 'special economic zones' where companies are allowed to engage in free market activities while still being dictated to by the Chinese state. National Socialism simply adds a racial component on top of the Fascist system. Where Communism portrays itself as championing the working class majority, National Socialism portrays itself as championing the main ethnic/racial group majority in a country. This gives both systems their route to appealing to a majority of the electorate. The irony is that most Communist systems tend to adopt a semi-Fascist economic system eventually once they realise that the State doing everything is not realistic (eg modern China) Even Trotsky famously said that the two systems end up being very similar in practice. You could actually make a good argument that the modern USA is also technically becoming Fascist as you can see the government is actively dictating to it's various AI companies what they can and can't do, far beyond what you would expect in a supposedly free market system.