Memes

Imperialism is a result of capitalism...

When the resources of your home country are insufficient to feed the need for constant growth of profits, the resources of other people begin to look attractive. It's just a matter of convincing your people that it's worth it to go take those other people's resources. Its easier to convince your people to exploit other people if you have dehumanized the other people, so you revert to racism and other tactics of making the others look like barbarians. Then you go make colonies and suppress the native population while exploiting them for labor and resources.

Fascism is imperialism turned inward...

Either the flow of resources from your colonies are insufficient to feed your need for the continual growth of profits or you don't have the means to colonize far away lands, so the resources of countries closer to home begin looking very attractive. Its easier to suppress people at home first, so you turn that imperialist oppression on for a portion of your population at home, exploiting them more than other parts of your population. This doesn't satisfy your needs for more resources for long, so you continue to exploit your own people more and expand the definition of who gets to suffer the imperialist oppression.

When your population can no longer satisfy your needs for continued growth of profits, you turn that imperialism on countries nearby. This process is why people say fascism is imperialism turned inward.

More food for thought...

Some argue this process is why Hitler and the Third Reich are looked on as the ultimate evil. The Nazis took imperialist oppression, a tool that every European country had historically only used on people in far away lands where the culture and the way the people looked was strange to the people at home and they turned that imperialist oppression on the white populations of Europe. Europeans finally began to experience the horrors they had been inflicting on the rest of the world for centuries.