I think it's the uniform

[kindkit]

Rotha Lintorn-Orman, driver with the Women's Reserve Ambulance during the First World War and founder in 1923 of the British Fascisti, the first fascist party in the UK. Disturbingly hot.




I found this picture in a really interesting article about Mary Richardson, a militant suffragette in early 20th century and a fascist supporter by the 1930s.

Comments

[kindkit]

Early fascism, including early Nazism, had a strong element or at least rhetoric of anticapitalism that could appeal to people who were basically on the left but unwary. For example, Michael Burn (journalist, on-and-off boyfriend of Guy Burgess, later a commando and POW in Colditz) was briefly a Nazi sympathizer and then became a communist. I suppose the state-focus of fascism wouldn't necessarily be a big problem to people on the authoritarian left, and a disturbing number of folks seem to have been unbothered by the nationalism, xenophobia, and (in Nazism) anti-semitism.

I find it harder to see how feminists were deluded by fascism, though.

ETA: Edited because I used entirely the wrong icon.