Nazi "philosophy" (mostly misinterpreted Nietzsche) isn't the sine qua non of fascism.
And while I agree that the term might be a bit ill-used here, there's definitely a tie between reactionary conservatism (and fantastic romanticism) and some fascist regimes. So maybe one could call it "proto-fascism", although I'd generally try to avoid this particular f-word, as it does tend to Godwin discussions.
And, yes, Moorcock was definitely writing in the pulp tradition. He might be quite political, but his worked isn't fully steeped in it. Quite often it's traditional "sword & sorcery" (a term Moorcock helped to coin), maybe with a single trait that differentiates it from other fantasy or that he wants to delve in. Elric was a counter-Conan, and the runestaff saga presented Great Britain as the evil empire.
The "Nomad of the Time Streams" trilogy is probably one of the more obviously political of his works, but still, it's mostly about adventure.
Yup. Fascism, like all ideologies isn't completely neat.
It contains those reactionary conservative elements (organic community, national tradition, criticism of modernity as shallow - i.e. very Tolkein but found in many fascist and even Nazi authors - i.e. Junger, Schmitt) alongside hyper modernist ones (eugenics, mass industry). Fascism contains criticisms of capitalism alongside praise for the most aggressive market competition. See Ishay Landa's work on this.
Define "conservatism" first ;)
That's usually a "I know it when I see it" thing, and there's a whole load of different strains when you look at the politicians espousing it as their primary value. Even within a single country, and once you cross borders it gets seriously confusing.
We can go the lazy route and say that if you're "conservative" and your current system isn't fascist, than you can't really promote or encourage fascism, because that would by definition be a change and change is bad. But I thin we can agree that this would be a type of conservatism that could only exist in a Moorcock novel about other planes, the Lords of Order or such things...
Also, one might not want to go too far back in the "inheritance" chain of fascism. I mean, to stay within the core topic, the Italian and German fascists certainly were quite "romantic" in the literary sense (a main point of Epic Poo), but I don't think we'd call Schiller or Byron proto-fascists...
So it probably comes down to having views who would touch fascist views in a big blurry Venn diagram, whereas crypto-fascists actually overlap in a more significant way.
But, again, this might be a fun topic for abstract discussion, but when it's tied to something more concrete it'll just prove to be needlessly divisive and incisive. I mean, just look up who popularized the term "crypto-fascist"...
This seems a very common British trait, by the way. Plenty of movies, books etc. about how nationalist and authoritarian you can get before you cross over into straight-forward 20th century fascism. Starting with the post-WW2 era and achieving a new high during the reign of the Wicked Witch.
And while I agree that the term might be a bit ill-used here, there's definitely a tie between reactionary conservatism (and fantastic romanticism) and some fascist regimes. So maybe one could call it "proto-fascism", although I'd generally try to avoid this particular f-word, as it does tend to Godwin discussions.
And, yes, Moorcock was definitely writing in the pulp tradition. He might be quite political, but his worked isn't fully steeped in it. Quite often it's traditional "sword & sorcery" (a term Moorcock helped to coin), maybe with a single trait that differentiates it from other fantasy or that he wants to delve in. Elric was a counter-Conan, and the runestaff saga presented Great Britain as the evil empire.
The "Nomad of the Time Streams" trilogy is probably one of the more obviously political of his works, but still, it's mostly about adventure.