The more I think about it, the more I stand by what I wrote before: the verdict between Fascism and Communism is not something you can just base on facts. Thus, I will take here the luxury of being ideological. But I won't do the usual thing of equating Communism with the Left and Fascism with the Right. At least not without qualifications. Although that framework has some truth to it, for some purposes it is too simple.
There is a standard joke among history professors that, no matter which country you want to cover, you can safely start some unit in 1945. That's pretty much the year the world hit the reset button. The 30 years before that are probably the worst historical cataclysm ever (or at least one of the two or three worst ever). Fascism and Communism were both born out of that period of iron and fire and were responses to the crises of the time.
During the late 19th Century, the socialist workers' movement came of age but also entered its stagnant era: by the early 1900s it is becoming clear in country after country that the workers will not take over the means of production. The employers have made abundantly clear that they are willing to make concessions in terms of redistribution (taxes) as long as they don't loose the control over the "commanding heights" of the economy. Such is the pact on which social democracy is based. To be sure, it will be several years before social democratic parties and governments come of age. But I surmise that by 1910 the capitalists of Western Europe and the US are sleeping soundly.
World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution put an end to this. The first one destroyed the old order, the second one showed that another order could be brought about. Fascism and Communism are, to a large extent, the reaction to such historical earthquake.
Although we now classify Fascism as a "right wing" reaction, let's not forget that it was, in its own terms, quite revolutionary. This is one of the strong points of Zizek: he acknowledges that, to come to terms with Fascism, we must understand that it was, at least in theory, a potential overhaul of the liberal-capitalist order that had brought about the disaster of WWI. At the end of the day, and here, again, Zizek is right, Fascist regimes became, so to speak, bastardized into defenders of the establishment. But this is not the way it was supposed to happen.
Am I saying that, just as Stalinism "betrayed" Communism, so did Hitler's cozying up of the German industrialists "betrayed" Fascism? Well, yes and no and it doesn't matter. Yes because, like it or not, Fascism was anti-establishment. The mass movements that signed on to it were sick of the liberal plutocracies they wanted to overthrow. No because, since Fascism was viscerally anti-Communist, it was clear to anybody that, whatever the outcome of its victory, at the end of the day the business interests would be better off than under the wholesale expropriations of the Communists. (Although, ironically, two years after Mussolini comes to power, the Soviet Union is looking for some accommodation of private property under the NEP.) And, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because my ultimate point is a different one.
For my purposes, what matters is that I cannot imagine a "Fascism with human face" while the search for a "socialism with human face" is a task worth pursuing. Sure, it is a thankless task and an elusive goal. But I, for one, cannot tolerate the idea of a world in which Fascism would have carried the day in WWII and where we would now be searching for a kinder, gentler version of it.
Once you strip Fascism of its anti-Semitism (which, remember, infected mostly its German version), you are left with a view of society ruled by order and loyalty. In short, at its best, a Fascist society is an oversized military barrack. There are worse things in life, for sure. You can live, grow old and die peacefully in such a place. But I hope (and am not alone in this hope) that it is possible a better view of society, one based on liberté, egalité, fraternité and that said society will be rightly called socialist.
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