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Fascism (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement.<ref>Template:Harvp
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Template:Harvp</ref><ref name="Britannica">Template:Harvp</ref><ref name="m-w" /> It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="m-w">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,<ref>Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp;Template:Pn Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref>Template:Sfnp fascism is at the far right of the traditional left–right spectrum.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion"/>Template:Sfnp<ref name="University-Aristotle-Hartley-Reich-Payne">Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp;Template:Pn Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp;Template:Pn Template:Harvp</ref>
Fascism rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion">Template:Harvp</ref>Template:Sfnp The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries, most notably Germany.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion"/> Fascism also had adherents outside of Europe.Template:Sfnp Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the mass mobilization of society erased the distinction between civilians and combatants. A military citizenship arose, in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner.Template:Sfnmp The war resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines, providing logistics to support them, and having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.Template:Sfnmp
Fascism views forms of violenceTemplate:Sndincluding political violence, imperialist violence, and warTemplate:Sndas means to national rejuvenation.Template:SfnmpTemplate:Sfnp Fascists often advocate for the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state,Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp and for a dirigiste economy (a market economy in which the state plays a strong directive role through market interventions), with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency).<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>Template:Sfnp Fascism's extreme authoritarianism and nationalism can manifest as a belief in expansionism or a revival of historical greatness (like Mussolini seeking to restore the Roman Empire). It may also centre around an ingroup-outgroup opposition. In the case of Nazism, this involved racial purity and a master race which blended with a variant of racism and discrimination against a demonized "Other", such as Jews and other groups. Other marginalized groups including homosexuals, transgender people, ethnic outgroups, and immigrants have been targeted. Such bigotry has motivated fascist regimes to commit massacres, forced sterilizations, deportations, and genocides.Template:SfnmpTemplate:Sfnp During World War II, the genocidal and imperialist ambitions of the fascist Axis powers resulted in the murder of millions of people.
Since the end of World War II in 1945, fascism has been largely disgraced, and few parties have openly described themselves as fascist; the term is often used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied to contemporary parties with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion"/>Template:Sfnp
EtymologyEdit
The Italian term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is derived from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, meaning 'bundle of sticks', ultimately from the Latin word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name="m-w"/> This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's own account, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action were founded in Italy in 1915.Template:Sfnp In 1919, Mussolini founded the Italian Fasces of Combat in Milan, which became the National Fascist Party two years later. The fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},Template:Sfnp a bundle of rods tied around an axe,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> carried by his lictors.<ref>Template:Harvp: "When carried inside Rome, the ax was removed (unless the magistrate was a dictator or general celebrating a triumph) as recognition of the right of a Roman citizen to appeal a magistrate's ruling."</ref> The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.Template:Sfnp
Prior to 1914, the fasces symbol was widely employed by various political movements, often of a left-wing or liberal persuasion. For instance, according to Robert Paxton, "Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, was often portrayed in the nineteenth century carrying the fasces to represent the force of Republican solidarity against her aristocratic and clerical enemies."Template:Sfnp The symbol often appeared as an architectural motif, for instance on the Sheldonian Theater at Oxford University and on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.Template:Sfnp
DefinitionsEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote, "Trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."Template:Sfnp Each group described as "fascist" has at least some unique elements, and frequently definitions of "fascism" have been criticized as either too broad or too narrow.Template:SfnmpTemplate:Pn According to many scholars, fascists—especially when they are in power—have historically attacked communism, socialism, conservatism, and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far-right.<ref name="Laqueur 1997 p223">Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref>
Historian Stanley G. Payne's definition is frequently cited as standard by notable scholars, such as Roger Griffin,Template:Sfnp Bo Rothstein,Template:Sfnp Aristotle Kallis,Template:Sfnp David Renton,Template:Sfnp and Stephen D. Shenfield.Template:Sfnp His definition of fascism focuses on three concepts:Template:Sfnp
- "Fascist negations" – anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism.
- "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire.
- "Fascist style" – a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.Template:Sfnmp
Umberto Eco lists fourteen "features that are typical of what [he] would like to call 'Ur-Fascism', or 'Eternal Fascism'. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."Template:Sfnp Historian John Lukacs argues that there is no such thing as generic fascism. He claims that Nazism and communism are essentially manifestations of populism, and that states such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy are more different from each other than they are similar.Template:Sfnp
In his book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), Jason Stanley defined fascism thusly:
[A] cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation ... The leader proposes that only he can solve it and all of his political opponents are enemies or traitors.
Stanley says recent global events Template:As of, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020–2022 United States racial unrest, have substantiated his concern about how fascist rhetoric is showing up in politics and policies around the world.Template:Sfnp
Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism."Template:Sfnp Without palingenetic ultranationalism, there is no "genuine fascism" according to Griffin.Template:Sfnp Griffin further describes fascism as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism, and (iii) the myth of decadence."Template:Sfnp In Griffin's view, fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism, and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.Template:Sfnp
Kershaw argues that the difference between fascism and other forms of right-wing authoritarianism in the interwar period is that the latter generally aimed "to conserve the existing social order", whereas fascism was "revolutionary", seeking to change society and obtain "total commitment" from the population.Template:Sfnp In Against the Fascist Creep, Alexander Reid Ross writes regarding Griffin's view: "Following the Cold War and shifts in fascist organizing techniques, a number of scholars have moved toward the minimalist 'new consensus' refined by Roger Griffin: 'the mythic core' of fascism is 'a populist form of palingenetic ultranationalism.' That means that fascism is an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the 'new man.Template:'"Template:Sfnp Griffin himself explored this 'mythic' or 'eliminable' core of fascism with his concept of post-fascism to explore the continuation of Nazism in the modern era.Template:Sfnp Additionally, other historians have applied this minimalist core to explore proto-fascist movements.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser argue that although fascism "flirted with populism ... in an attempt to generate mass support", it is better seen as an elitist ideology.Template:Sfnp They cite in particular its exaltation of the Leader, the race, and the state, rather than the people. They see populism as a "thin-centered ideology" with a "restricted morphology" that necessarily becomes attached to "thick-centered" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus populism can be found as an aspect of many specific ideologies, without necessarily being a defining characteristic of those ideologies. They refer to the combination of populism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism as "a marriage of convenience".Template:Sfnp
Robert Paxton says:
[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.Template:Sfnp
Roger Eatwell defines fascism as "an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way",Template:Sfnp while Walter Laqueur sees the core tenets of fascism as "self-evident: nationalism; social Darwinism; racialism, the need for leadership, a new aristocracy, and obedience; and the negation of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."Template:Sfnp
Historian Emilio Gentile has defined fascism thusly:
[A] modern political phenomenon, revolutionary, anti-liberal, and anti-Marxist, organized in a militia party with a totalitarian conception of politics and the state, an activist and anti-theoretical ideology, with a mythical, virilistic and anti-hedonistic foundation, sacralized as a secular religion, which affirms the absolute primacy of the nation, understood as an ethnically homogeneous organic community, hierarchically organized in a corporate state, with a bellicose vocation to the politics of greatness, power, and conquest aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization.Template:Sfnp
Historian and cultural critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat has described fascism as "the original phase of authoritarianism, along with early communism, when a population has undergone huge dislocations or they perceive that there's been changes in society that are very rapid, too rapid for their taste".Template:Sfnp
Racism was a key feature of German fascism, for which the Holocaust was a high priority. According to The Historiography of Genocide, "In dealing with the Holocaust, it is the consensus of historians that Nazi Germany targeted Jews as a race, not as a religious group."Template:Sfnp Several historians, such as Umberto Eco,Template:Sfnp Kevin Passmore,Template:Sfnp and Moyra Grant,Template:Sfnp stress racism as a characteristic component of German fascism. Historian Robert Soucy stated, "Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk."Template:Sfnp Kershaw noted that common factors of fascism included "the 'cleansing' of all those deemed not to belong—foreigners, ethnic minorities, 'undesirablesTemplate:'" and belief in its own nation's superiority, even if it was not biological racism like in Nazism.Template:Sfnp Fascist philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretical commonality: all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion"/>
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, many experts see fascism as a mass political movement centered around extreme nationalism, militarism, and the placement of national interests above those of the individual. Fascist regimes often advocate for the overthrow of institutions that they view as "liberal decay" while simultaneously promoting traditional values. They believe in the supremacy of certain peoples and use it to justify the persecution of other groups. Fascist leaders often maintain a cult of personality and seek to generate enthusiasm for the regime by rallying massive crowds. This contrasts with authoritarian governments, which also centralize power and suppress dissent, but want their subjects to remain passive and demobilized.Template:Sfnp
Position on the political spectrumEdit
Scholars place fascism on the far right of the political spectrum.<ref name="RoutledgeCompanion"/>Template:Sfnp<ref name="University-Aristotle-Hartley-Reich-Payne"/> Such scholarship focuses on its social conservatism and its authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.<ref>Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref> Roderick Stackelberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the political right by explaining: "The more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be."Template:Sfnp
Fascism's origins are complex and include many seemingly contradictory viewpoints, ultimately centered on a mythos of national rebirth from decadence.Template:Sfnp Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who drew upon both left-wing organizational tactics and right-wing political views.Template:Sfnp Italian fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.Template:Sfnmp A major element of fascist ideology that has been deemed to be far right is its stated goal to promote the right of a supposedly superior people to dominate, while purging society of supposedly inferior elements.Template:Sfnp
Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile described their ideology as right-wing in the political essay The Doctrine of Fascism (1932), stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century."Template:Sfnmp Mussolini stated that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue for fascists: "[F]ascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center. ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words."<ref>Mussolini quoted in Template:Harvp</ref>
Major Italian groups politically on the right, especially rich landowners and big business, feared an uprising by groups on the left, such as sharecroppers and labour unions.Template:Sfnp They welcomed fascism and supported its violent suppression of opponents on the left.Template:Sfnp The accommodation of the political right into the Italian Fascist movement in the early 1920s created internal factions within the movement. The "fascist left" included Michele Bianchi, Giuseppe Bottai, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Sergio Panunzio, and Edmondo Rossoni, who were committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance the interests of workers and the common people.Template:Sfnp The "fascist right" included members of the paramilitary Blackshirts and former members of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI).Template:Sfnp The Blackshirts wanted to establish fascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought to institute an authoritarian corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy while retaining the existing elites.Template:Sfnp Upon accommodating the political right, there arose a group of monarchist fascists who sought to use fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.Template:Sfnp
A number of post-World War II fascist movements described themselves as a "third position", outside the traditional political spectrum.Template:Sfnp Falange Española de las JONS leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile."Template:Sfnp
Fascist as a pejorativeEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,Template:Sfnp regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'FascistTemplate:'",Template:Sfnp and in 1946 wrote that Template:"'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."Template:Sfnp Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".Template:SfnpTemplate:Rp Fascist is sometimes applied to post-World War II organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term neo-fascist.Template:Sfnp
Despite fascist movements' history of anti-communism, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as fascist, typically as an insult. It has been applied to Marxist–Leninist regimes in Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh.Template:Sfnp Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split, and the Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists,Template:Sfnp in addition to social democracy, coining a new term in social fascism. In the United States, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times asked in 1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?"Template:Sfnp J. Edgar Hoover, longtime FBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote extensively of red fascism.Template:Sfnp The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called fascist. Historian Peter Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental ... [the KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."Template:Sfnp
HistoryEdit
Background and 19th-century rootsEdit
Early influences that shaped the ideology of fascism have been dated back to ancient Greece. The political culture of ancient Greece and specifically the ancient Greek city state of Sparta under Lycurgus, with its emphasis on militarism and racial purity, were admired by the Nazis.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler emphasized that Germany should adhere to Hellenic values and culture – particularly that of ancient Sparta.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
Georges Valois, founder of the first non-Italian fascist party Faisceau,Template:Sfnp claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the late 18th century Jacobin movement, seeing in its totalitarian nature a foreshadowing of the fascist state.Template:Sfnp Historian George Mosse similarly analyzed fascism as an inheritor of the mass ideology and civil religion of the French Revolution, as well as a result of the brutalization of societies in 1914–1918.Template:Sfnp
Historians such as Irene Collins and Howard C. Payne see Napoleon III, who ran a 'police state' and suppressed the media, as a forerunner of fascism.Template:Sfnp According to David Thomson,Template:Sfnp the Italian Risorgimento of 1871 led to the 'nemesis of fascism'. William L ShirerTemplate:Sfnp sees a continuity from the views of Fichte and Hegel, through Bismarck, to Hitler; Robert Gerwarth speaks of a 'direct line' from Bismarck to Hitler.Template:Sfnp Julian Dierkes sees fascism as a 'particularly violent form of imperialism'.Template:Sfnp
Marcus Garvey, founder and leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, insisted that he and his organisation "were the first fascists".Template:Sfnp In 1938, C. L. R. James wrote "all the things that Hitler was to do so well later, Marcus Garvey was doing in 1920 and 1921".Template:Sfnp
Fin de siècle era and lead up to World War I (1880–1914)Edit
Template:See also The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} theme of that time.Template:Sfnmp The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and democracy.Template:Sfnp The {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism.Template:Sfnp They regarded civilization as being in crisis, requiring a massive and total solution.Template:Sfnp Their intellectual school considered the individual as only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as a numerical sum of atomized individuals.Template:Sfnp They condemned the rationalistic, liberal individualism of society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.Template:Sfnp
The {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments, including Darwinian biology, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Arthur de Gobineau's racialism, Gustave Le Bon's psychology, and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Henri Bergson.Template:Sfnp Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest.Template:Sfnp It challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment.Template:Sfnp Its emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered the legitimacy and appeal of nationalism.Template:Sfnp New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason.Template:Sfnp Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy, and modern collectivism, his concept of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} generation.Template:Sfnp Bergson's claim of the existence of an {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, or vital instinct, centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.Template:Sfnp
In his work The Ruling Class (1896), Gaetano Mosca developed the theory that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" would dominate and rule over an "disorganized majority",Template:Sfnmp stating that there are only two classes in society, "the governing" (the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized majority).Template:Sfnp He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority makes it irresistible to any individual of the disorganized majority.Template:Sfnp
French nationalist and reactionary monarchist Charles Maurras influenced fascism.Template:Sfnp Maurras promoted what he called integral nationalism, which called for the organic unity of a nation, and insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal collective subject.Template:Sfnp He claimed that a powerful monarch was a personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's people.Template:Sfnp Maurras' integral nationalism was idealized by fascists, but modified into a modernized revolutionary form that was devoid of Maurras' monarchism.Template:Sfnp
French revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel promoted the legitimacy of political violence in his work Reflections on Violence (1908) and other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a general strike.Template:Sfnp In Reflections on Violence, Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion.Template:Sfnp Also in his work The Illusions of Progress, Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy."Template:Sfnp By 1909, after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French patriotism with their views—advocating anti-republican Christian French patriots as ideal revolutionaries.Template:Sfnp Initially, Sorel had officially been a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of Benedetto Croce that "socialism is dead" because of the "decomposition of Marxism".Template:Sfnp Sorel became a supporter of reactionary Maurrassian nationalism beginning in 1909 that influenced his works.Template:Sfnp Maurras held interest in merging his nationalist ideals with Sorelian syndicalism, known as Sorelianism, as a means to confront democracy.Template:Sfnp Maurras stated, "A socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a beautiful hand."Template:Sfnp
The fusion of Maurrassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.Template:Sfnp Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.Template:Sfnp Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "plutocratic" French and British.Template:Sfnp Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".Template:Sfnp
The ANI held ties and influence among conservatives, Catholics, and the business community.Template:Sfnp Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism, and pacifism, and the promotion of heroism, vitalism, and violence.Template:Sfnp The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong state and imperialism. They believed that humans are naturally predatory, and that nations are in a constant struggle in which only the strongest would survive.Template:Sfnp
Futurism was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who founded the Manifesto of Futurism (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive."Template:Sfnp
Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.Template:Sfnp Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men saying that, in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books. He advocated segregation of the genders because womanly sensibility must not enter men's education, which he claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic."Template:Sfnp
World War I and its aftermath (1914–1929)Edit
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war but a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported war against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes had to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism.Template:Sfnp Angelo Oliviero Olivetti formed a pro-interventionist fascio called the Revolutionary Fasces of International Action in October 1914.Template:Sfnp Benito Mussolini upon being expelled from his position as chief editor of the PSI's newspaper {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for his anti-German stance, joined the interventionist cause in a separate fascio.Template:Sfnp The term "fascism" was first used in 1915 by members of Mussolini's movement, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action.Template:Sfnp
The first meeting of the Fasces of Revolutionary Action was held on 24 January 1915Template:Sfnp when Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems—including national borders—of Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended."Template:Sfnp Attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and the organization was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.Template:Sfnp
Similar political ideas arose in Germany after the outbreak of the war. German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).Template:Sfnp According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789"—such as the rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism—were being rejected in favor of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law and order.Template:Sfnp Plenge believed that racial solidarity ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.Template:Sfnp He believed that the Spirit of 1914 manifested itself in the concept of the People's League of National Socialism.Template:Sfnp This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.Template:Sfnp This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism because of the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.Template:Sfnp Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.Template:Sfnp
Impact of World War IEdit
Fascists viewed World War I as bringing revolutionary changes in the nature of war, society, the state and technology, as the advent of total war and mass mobilization had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant, as civilians had become a critical part in economic production for the war effort and thus arose a "military citizenship" in which all citizens were involved to the military in some manner during the war.Template:Sfnmp World War I had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines or provide economic production and logistics to support those on the front lines, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.Template:Sfnmp Fascists viewed technological developments of weaponry and the state's total mobilization of its population in the war as symbolizing the beginning of a new era fusing state power with mass politics, technology and particularly the mobilizing myth that they contended had triumphed over the myth of progress and the era of liberalism.Template:Sfnmp
Impact of the October Revolution in RussiaEdit
The October Revolution of 1917, in which Bolshevik communists led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia, greatly influenced the development of fascism.Template:Sfnp In 1917, Mussolini, as leader of the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, praised the October Revolution, but later he became unimpressed with Lenin, regarding him as merely a new version of Tsar Nicholas II.Template:Sfnp After World War I, fascists commonly campaigned on anti-Marxist agendas.Template:Sfnp
British historian Cyprian Blamires argues that there are similarities between fascism and Bolshevism, including that they believed in the necessity of a vanguard leadership, showed contempt for bourgeois values, and had totalitarian ambitions.Template:Sfnp In practice, both have commonly emphasized revolutionary action, proletarian nation theories, one-party states, and party-armies;Template:Sfnp With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro-interventionist fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The fascists presented themselves as anti-communists and as especially opposed to the Marxists.Template:Sfnp In 1919, Mussolini consolidated control over the fascist movement, known as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, with the founding of the Italian Fasces of Combat.Template:Sfnp
Fascist Manifesto and Charter of CarnaroEdit
In 1919, Alceste De Ambris and futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti created "The Manifesto of the Italian Fasces of Combat".Template:Sfnp The Fascist Manifesto was presented on 6 June 1919 in the fascist newspaper {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and supported the creation of universal suffrage, including women's suffrage (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded);Template:Sfnp proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, and communications, among others; and abolition of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy.Template:Sfnp The Fascist Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of profits.Template:Sfnp It also called for the fulfillment of expansionist aims in the Balkans and other parts of the Mediterranean, the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive.Template:Sfnp
The next events that influenced the fascists in Italy were the raid of Fiume by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio and the founding of the Charter of Carnaro in 1920.Template:Sfnp D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed the Charter, which advocated national-syndicalist corporatist productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views.Template:Sfnp Many fascists saw the Charter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a fascist Italy.Template:Sfnp This behaviour of aggression towards Yugoslavia and South Slavs was pursued by Italian fascists with their persecution of South Slavs—especially Slovenes and Croats.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
From populism to conservative accommodationsEdit
In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy and 1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Year" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}).Template:Sfnp Mussolini and the fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.Template:Sfnp
Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I.Template:Sfnp The fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness and believed in the rule of elites.Template:Sfnp The fascists assisted the anti-socialist campaign by allying with the other parties and the conservative right in a mutual effort to destroy the Italian Socialist Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above national identity.Template:Sfnp
Fascism sought to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda—abandoning its previous populism, republicanism and anticlericalism, adopting policies in support of free enterprise and accepting the Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy.Template:Sfnp To appeal to Italian conservatives, fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce—limiting the woman's role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state.Template:Sfnp
Although fascism adopted a number of anti-modern positions designed to appeal to people upset with the new trends in sexuality and women's rights—especially those with a reactionary point of view—the fascists sought to maintain fascism's revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying: "Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary."Template:Sfnp The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.Template:Sfnp
Prior to fascism's accommodations to the political right, fascism was a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members.Template:Sfnp After Fascism's accommodation of the political right, the fascist movement's membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921.Template:Sfnp A 2020 article by Daron Acemoğlu, Giuseppe De Feo, Giacomo De Luca, and Gianluca Russo in the Center for Economic and Policy Research, exploring the link between the threat of socialism and Mussolini's rise to power, found "a strong association between the Red Scare in Italy and the subsequent local support for the Fascist Party in the early 1920s."Template:Sfnp According to the authors, it was local elites and large landowners who played an important role in boosting Fascist Party activity and support, which did not come from socialists' core supporters but from centre-right voters, as they viewed traditional centre-right parties as ineffective in stopping socialism and turned to the Fascists. In 2003, historian Adrian Lyttelton wrote: "The expansion of Fascism in the rural areas was stimulated and directed by the reaction of the farmers and landowners against the peasant leagues of both Socialists and Catholics."Template:Sfnp
Fascist violenceEdit
Beginning in 1922, fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from one of attacking socialist offices and the homes of socialist leadership figures, to one of violent occupation of cities. The fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded to take over several northern Italian cities.Template:Sfnp The fascists attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic labour unions in Cremona and imposed forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Bolzano.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp After seizing these cities, the fascists made plans to take Rome.Template:Sfnp
On 24 October 1922, the Fascist Party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and to converge on three points around Rome.Template:Sfnp The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances.Template:Sfnp King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy perceived the risk of bloodshed in Rome in response to attempting to disperse the Fascists to be too high.Template:Sfnp Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy and Mussolini arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment.Template:Sfnp Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as "March on Rome", as a "seizure" of power because of Fascists' heroic exploits.Template:Sfnp
Fascist ItalyEdit
Historian Stanley G. Payne says:
[Fascism in Italy was a] primarily political dictatorship. ... The Fascist Party itself had become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy. ... The Fascist militia was placed under military control. ... The judicial system was left largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party leaders ... nor was a major new police elite created. ... There was never any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience. ... Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy, and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed. ... The Mussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly repressive.Template:Sfnp
Mussolini in powerEdit
Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government because the fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.Template:Sfnp Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, a member of the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.Template:Sfnp Initially, little drastic change in government policy had occurred and repressive police actions were limited.Template:Sfnp
The fascists began their attempt to entrench fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote.Template:Sfnp Through considerable fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the fascists.Template:Sfnp In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.Template:Sfnp The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession.Template:Sfnp On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. Mussolini proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament.Template:Sfnp From 1925 to 1929, fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.Template:Sfnp
Catholic ChurchEdit
In 1929, the fascist regime briefly gained what was in effect a blessing of the Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the 19th century, but within two years the Church had renounced fascism in the Encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno as a "pagan idolatry of the state" which teaches "hatred, violence and irreverence".Template:Sfnp Not long after signing the agreement, by Mussolini's own confession, the Church had threatened to have him "excommunicated", in part because of his intractable nature, but also because he had "confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years."Template:Sfnp By the late 1930s, Mussolini became more vocal in his anti-clerical rhetoric, repeatedly denouncing the Catholic Church and discussing ways to depose the pope. He took the position that the "papacy was a malignant tumor in the body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and for all,' because there was no room in Rome for both the Pope and himself."Template:Sfnp In her 1974 book, Mussolini's widow Rachele stated that her husband had always been an atheist until near the end of his life, writing that her husband was "basically irreligious until the later years of his life."Template:Sfnp
The Nazis in Germany employed similar anti-clerical policies.Template:Sfnp The Gestapo confiscated hundreds of monasteries in Austria and Germany, evicted clergymen and laymen alike and often replaced crosses with swastikas.Template:Sfnp Referring to the swastika as "the Devil's Cross", church leaders found their youth organizations banned, their meetings limited and various Catholic periodicals censored or banned. Government officials eventually found it necessary to place "Nazis into editorial positions in the Catholic press."Template:Sfnp Up to 2,720 clerics, mostly Catholics, were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned inside of Germany's Dachau concentration camp, resulting in over 1,000 deaths.Template:Sfnp
Corporatist economic systemEdit
The fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-fascist trade unions.Template:Sfnp The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes.Template:Sfnp In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and the employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.Template:Sfnp
Aggressive foreign policyEdit
In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included ambitions to expand Italian territory.Template:Sfnp In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya.Template:Sfnp This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps and the forced starvation of thousands of people.Template:Sfnp Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.Template:Sfnmp
Nazi adoption of the Italian modelEdit
The March on Rome brought fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian fascists was Adolf Hitler, who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.Template:Sfnp The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin" modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923.Template:Sfnp
International impact of the Great Depression and buildup to World War IIEdit
The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression brought about an international surge of social unrest.Template:Sfnp Fascist propaganda blamed the problems of the long depression of the 1930s on minorities and scapegoats: "Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik" conspiracies, left-wing internationalism and the presence of immigrants.Template:Sfnp
In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the fascist regime, Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.Template:Sfnp<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp In the 1930s, the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.Template:Sfnp
Fascist movements grew in strength elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and attempted to entrench his Unity Party throughout the country.Template:Cn He created an eight-hour work day and a forty-eight-hour work week in industry; sought to entrench a corporatist economy; and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors.Template:Sfnp The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government, and an Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca.Template:Sfnp The Iron Guard was the only fascist movement outside Germany and Italy to come to power without foreign assistance.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp During the 6 February 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far-right movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government resulting in major political violence.Template:Sfnp A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia.Template:Sfnp In the Netherlands, the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands was at its height in the 1930s due to the Great Depression, especially in 1935 when it won almost eight percent of votes, until the year 1937.Template:Sfnp
In the Americas, the Brazilian Integralists led by Plínio Salgado claimed as many as 200,000 members, although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937.Template:Sfnp In Peru, the Revolutionary Union was a fascist political party which was in power 1931 to 1933. In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile's parliament and attempted a coup d'état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.Template:Sfnp
During the Great Depression, Mussolini promoted active state intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary "supercapitalism" that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure because of its alleged decadence, its support for unlimited consumerism, and its intention to create the "standardization of humankind."Template:Sfnp Fascist Italy created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), a giant state-owned firm and holding company that provided state funding to failing private enterprises.Template:Sfnp The IRI was made a permanent institution in Fascist Italy in 1937, pursued fascist policies to create national autarky and had the power to take over private firms to maximize war production.Template:Sfnp While Hitler's regime only nationalized 500 companies in key industries by the early 1940s,Template:Sfnp Mussolini declared in 1934, "[t]hree-fourths of Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state."<ref>Template:Harvp; Mussolini's speech to the Chamber of Deputies was on 26 May 1934.</ref>
Due to the worldwide depression, Mussolini's government was able to take over most of Italy's largest failing banks, who held controlling interest in many Italian businesses. The IRI reported in early 1934 that they held assets of "48.5 percent of the share capital of Italy", which later included the capital of the banks themselves.Template:Sfnp Political historian Martin Blinkhorn estimated Italy's scope of state intervention and ownership "greatly surpassed that in Nazi Germany, giving Italy a public sector second only to that of Stalin's Russia."Template:Sfnp In the late 1930s, Italy enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency restrictions and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to balance payments.Template:Sfnp Italy's policy of autarky failed to achieve effective economic autonomy.Template:Sfnp Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality imported iron.Template:Sfnp
World War II (1939–1945)Edit
In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, both Mussolini and Hitler pursued territorial expansionist and interventionist foreign policy agendas from the 1930s through the 1940s culminating in World War II. From 1935 to 1939, Germany and Italy escalated their demands for territorial claims and greater influence in world affairs. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 resulting in its condemnation by the League of Nations and its widespread diplomatic isolation. In 1936, Germany remilitarized the industrial Rhineland, a region that had been ordered demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Germany annexed AustriaTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp and Italy assisted Germany in resolving the diplomatic crisis between Germany versus Britain and France over claims on Czechoslovakia by arranging the Munich Agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland and was perceived at the time to have averted a European war.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp These hopes faded when Czechoslovakia was dissolved by the proclamation of the German client state of Slovakia, followed by the next day of the occupation of the remaining Czech Lands and the proclamation of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. At the same time from 1938 to 1939, Italy was demanding territorial and colonial concessions from France and Britain.Template:Sfnp In 1939, Germany prepared for war with Poland, but attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland through diplomatic means.Template:Sfnp The Polish government did not trust Hitler's promises and refused to accept Germany's demands.Template:Sfnp
The invasion of Poland by Germany was deemed unacceptable by Britain, France and their allies, leading to their mutual declaration of war against Germany and the start of World War II. In 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis. During World War II, the Axis Powers in Europe led by Nazi Germany participated in the extermination of millions of Poles, Jews, Gypsies and others in the genocide known as the Holocaust. In 1943, after Italy faced multiple military failures, the complete reliance and subordination of Italy to Germany, the Allied invasion of Italy and the corresponding international humiliation, Mussolini was removed as head of government and arrested on the order of King Victor Emmanuel III, who proceeded to dismantle the Fascist state and declared Italy's switching of allegiance to the Allied side. Mussolini was rescued from arrest by German forces and led the German client state, the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany faced multiple losses and steady Soviet and Western Allied offensives from 1943 to 1945.<ref name="bi609">Bianchi (1963), pp. 609, 704</ref>Template:Full citation needed
On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian communist partisans. On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Shortly afterwards, Germany surrendered and the Nazi regime was systematically dismantled by the occupying Allied powers. An International Military Tribunal was subsequently convened in Nuremberg. Beginning in November 1945 and lasting through 1949, numerous Nazi political, military and economic leaders were tried and convicted of war crimes, with many of the worst offenders being sentenced to death and executed.<ref name=dg21>De Felice in Grandi (1983), p. 21</ref>Template:Full citation needed<ref name=def1391>De Felice (1996), p. 1391</ref>Template:Full citation needed
Post-World War II (1945–2008)Edit
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The victory of the Allies over the Axis powers in World War II led to the collapse of many fascist regimes in Europe. The Nuremberg Trials convicted several Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity involving the Holocaust.Template:Sfnp However, there remained several movements and governments that were ideologically related to fascism.Template:Sfnp
Francisco Franco's Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially neutral during World War II, although Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War. The first years were characterized by a repression against the anti-fascist ideologies, deep censorship and the suppression of democratic institutions (elected Parliament, Spanish Constitution of 1931, Regional Statutes of Autonomy). After World War II and a period of international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with the Western powers during the Cold War, until Franco's death in 1975 and the transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.Template:Sfnp
Historian Robert Paxton observes that one of the main problems in defining fascism is that it was widely mimicked. Paxton says: "In fascism's heyday, in the 1930s, many regimes that were not functionally fascist borrowed elements of fascist decor in order to lend themselves an aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization." He goes on to observe that Salazar "crushed Portuguese fascism after he had copied some of its techniques of popular mobilization."Template:Sfnp Paxton says: "Where Franco subjected Spain's fascist party to his personal control, Salazar abolished outright in July 1934 the nearest thing Portugal had to an authentic fascist movement, Rolão Preto's blue-shirted National Syndicalists. ... Salazar preferred to control his population through such 'organic' institutions traditionally powerful in Portugal as the Church. Salazar's regime was not only non-fascist, but 'voluntarily non-totalitarian,' preferring to let those of its citizens who kept out of politics 'live by habit.Template:'"Template:Sfnp However, historians tend to view the Estado Novo as para-fascist in nature,Template:Sfnp possessing minimal fascist tendencies.Template:Sfnp Other historians, including Fernando Rosas and Manuel Villaverde Cabral, think that the Estado Novo should be considered fascist.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The term neo-fascism refers to fascist movements after World War II. In Italy, the Italian Social Movement led by Giorgio Almirante was a major neo-fascist movement that transformed itself into a self-described "post-fascist" movement called the National Alliance (AN), which has been an ally of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia for a decade.Template:Sfnp In 2008, AN joined Forza Italia in Berlusconi's new party The People of Freedom, but in 2012 a group of politicians split from The People of Freedom, refounding the party with the name Brothers of Italy.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp In Germany, various neo-Nazi movements have been formed and banned in accordance with Germany's constitutional law which forbids Nazism. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is widely considered a neo-Nazi party, although the party does not publicly identify itself as such.Template:Sfnp
In Argentina, Peronism, associated with the regime of Juan Perón from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, was influenced by fascism.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Between 1939 and 1941, prior to his rise to power, Perón had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism and modelled his economic policies on Italian fascist policies.Template:Sfnp However, not all historians agree with this identification,Template:Sfnp which they consider debatable<ref>Template:Citation</ref> or even false,Template:Sfnp biased by a pejorative political position.Template:Sfnp Other authors, such as the historian Raanan Rein, categorically maintain that Perón was not a fascist and that this characterization was imposed on him because of his defiant stance against US hegemony.Template:Sfnp
Contemporary fascism (2008–present)Edit
GreeceEdit
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After the onset of the Great Recession and economic crisis in Greece, a movement known as the Golden Dawn, widely considered a neo-Nazi party,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> soared in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's parliament,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> espousing a staunch hostility towards minorities, illegal immigrants and refugees.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 2013, after the murder of an anti-fascist musician by a person with links to Golden Dawn, the Greek government ordered the arrest of Golden Dawn's leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other members on charges related to being associated with a criminal organization.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Sfnp On 7 October 2020, Athens Appeals Court announced verdicts for 68 defendants, including the party's political leadership. Nikolaos Michaloliakos and six other prominent members and former members of parliament (MPs) were found guilty of running a criminal organization.Template:Sfnp Guilty verdicts were delivered on charges of murder, attempted murder, and violent attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Post-Soviet RussiaEdit
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Marlene Laruelle, a French political scientist, contends in Is Russia Fascist? that the accusation of "fascist" has evolved into a strategic narrative of the existing world order.Template:Sfnp Geopolitical rivals might construct their own view of the world and assert the moral high ground by branding ideological rivals as fascists, regardless of their real ideals or deeds.Template:Sfnp Laruelle discusses the basis, significance, and veracity of accusations of fascism in and around Russia through an analysis of the domestic situation in Russia and the Kremlin's foreign policy justifications; she concludes that Russian efforts to brand its opponents as fascist is ultimately an attempt to determine the future of Russia in Europe as an antifascist force, influenced by its role in fighting fascism in World War II.Template:Sfnp
According to Alexander J. Motyl, an American historian and political scientist, Russian fascism has the following characteristics:Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
- An undemocratic political system, different from both traditional authoritarianism and totalitarianism;
- Statism and hypernationalism;
- A hypermasculine cult of the supreme leader (emphasis on his courage, militancy and physical prowess);
- General popular support for the regime and its leader.Template:Sfnp
Yale historian Timothy Snyder has stated, "Putin's regime is ... the world center of fascism" and has written an article entitled "We Should Say It: Russia Is Fascist."Template:Sfnp Oxford historian Roger Griffin compared Putin's Russia to the World War II-era Empire of Japan, saying that like Putin's Russia, it "emulated fascism in many ways, but was not fascist."Template:Sfnp Historian Stanley G. Payne says Putin's Russia "is not equivalent to the fascist regimes of World War II, but it forms the nearest analogue to fascism found in a major country since that time" and argues that Putin's political system is "more a revival of the creed of Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century that emphasized 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality' than one resembling the revolutionary, modernizing regimes of Hitler and Mussolini."Template:Sfnp According to Griffin, fascism is "a revolutionary form of nationalism" seeking to destroy the old system and remake society, and that Putin is a reactionary politician who is not trying to create a new order "but to recreate a modified version of the Soviet Union". German political scientist Andreas Umland said genuine fascists in Russia, like deceased politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and activist and self-styled philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, "describe in their writings a completely new Russia" controlling parts of the world that were never under tsarist or Soviet domination.Template:Sfnp According to Marlene Laurelle writing in The Washington Quarterly, "applying the "fascism" label ... to the entirety of the Russian state or society short-circuits our ability to construct a more complex and differentiated picture."Template:Sfnp
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, collecting the opinions of experts on fascism, said that while Russia is repressive and authoritarian, it cannot be classified as a fascist state for various reasons, including Russia's government being more reactionary than revolutionary.Template:Sfnp In 2023, Oleg Orlov, the chairman of the Board of Human Rights Center "Memorial", claimed that Russia under Vladimir Putin had descended into fascism and that the army is committing "mass murder".Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp On 7 March 2024, in his 2024 State of the Union Address, American President Joe Biden compared Russia under Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler's conquests of Europe.Template:Sfnp
United StatesEdit
Template:See also While initially composed of distinctive movements, in the 21st century, many U.S. Neo-Nazi groups have moved towards more decentralized organization and online social networks with a terroristic focus.Template:Sfnp After the election of Donald Trump, fascist groups began coalescing around his right-wing populism to take advantage of it.Template:Sfnp In 2017, the Unite the Right rally,Template:Sfnp saw marchers come together from a variety of far-right groups and movements, including members of the alt-right,Template:Sfnp neo-Confederates,Template:Sfnp neo-fascists,Template:Sfnp white nationalists,Template:Sfnp neo-Nazis,Template:Sfnp Klansmen,Template:Sfnp and far-right militias.Template:Sfnp Around this period a number of prominent fascist groups were also founded including the Proud boys and Patriot Front.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
TenetsEdit
Robert Paxton finds that even though fascism "maintained the existing regime of property and social hierarchy", it cannot be considered "simply a more muscular form of conservatism" because "fascism in power did carry out some changes profound enough to be called 'revolutionary.Template:'"Template:Sfnp These transformations "often set fascists into conflict with conservatives rooted in families, churches, social rank, and property." Paxton argues:
fascism redrew the frontiers between private and public, sharply diminishing what had once been untouchably private. It changed the practice of citizenship from the enjoyment of constitutional rights and duties to participation in mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity. It reconfigured relations between the individual and the collectivity, so that an individual had no rights outside community interest. It expanded the powers of the executive—party and state—in a bid for total control. Finally, it unleashed aggressive emotions hitherto known in Europe only during war or social revolution.Template:Sfnp
UltranationalismEdit
Ultranationalism, combined with the myth of national rebirth, is a key foundation of fascism.<ref>Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref> Robert Paxton argues that "a passionate nationalism" is the basis of fascism, combined with "a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history" which holds, "the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers."Template:Sfnp Roger Griffin identifies the core of fascism as being palingenetic ultranationalism.Template:Sfnp
The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity that binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people.Template:Sfnp Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else and promoting cults of unity, strength, and purity.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp European fascist movements typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being inferior to Europeans.Template:Sfnp Beyond this, European fascists have not held a unified set of racial views.Template:Sfnp Historically, most fascists promoted imperialism, although there have been several fascist movements that were uninterested in the pursuit of new imperial ambitions.Template:Sfnp For example, Nazism and Italian Fascism were expansionist and irredentist.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Falangism in Spain envisioned the worldwide unification of Spanish-speaking peoples ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}).Template:Sfnp British Fascism was non-interventionist, though it did embrace the British Empire.Template:Sfnp
TotalitarianismEdit
Fascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state.Template:Sfnp It opposes liberal democracy, rejects multi-party systems, and may support a one-party state so that it may synthesize with the nation.Template:Sfnp Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism (1932), partly ghostwritten by philosopher Giovanni Gentile,Template:Sfnp who Mussolini described as "the philosopher of Fascism", states: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people."Template:Sfnp In The Concept of the Political, Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt argued against liberal and parliamentarian democracy as being obstacles to the execution of state power.Template:Sfnp In The Legal Basis of the Total State, Schmitt further described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart."Template:Sfnp
Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media, and regulation of the production of educational and media materials.Template:Sfnmp Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and to teach students to be obedient to the state.Template:Sfnp
EconomyEdit
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Historians and other scholars disagree on the question of whether a specifically fascist type of economic policy can be said to exist. David Baker argues that there is an identifiable economic system in fascism that is distinct from those advocated by other ideologies, comprising essential characteristics that fascist nations shared.Template:Sfnp Payne, Paxton, Sternhell et al. argue that while fascist economies share some similarities, there is no distinctive form of fascist economic organization.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Gerald Feldman and Timothy Mason argue that fascism is distinguished by an absence of coherent economic ideology and a lack of serious economic thinking. They state that the decisions taken by fascist leaders cannot be explained within a logical economic framework.Template:Sfnp
Fascists presented their views as an alternative to both international socialism and free-market economics.Template:Sfnp While fascism opposed mainstream socialism, fascists sometimes regarded their movement as a type of nationalist "socialism" to highlight their commitment to nationalism, describing it as national solidarity and unity.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfnp Fascism had a complex relationship with capitalism, both supporting and opposing different aspects of it at different times and in different countries. In general, fascists held an instrumental view of capitalism, regarding it as a tool that may be useful or not, depending on circumstances.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Fascist governments typically established close connections between big business and the state, and business was expected to serve the interests of the government.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.Template:Sfnp
Fascist governments advocated for the resolution of domestic class conflict within a nation in order to guarantee national unity.Template:Sfnp This would be done through the state's mediating relations between the classes (contrary to the views of classical liberal-inspired capitalists).Template:Sfnp While fascism was opposed to domestic class conflict, it held that bourgeois-proletarian conflict existed primarily in international conflict between proletarian nations and bourgeois nations.Template:Sfnp Fascism condemned what it viewed as widespread character traits that it associated with the typical bourgeois mentality that it opposed, such as materialism, crassness, cowardice, and the inability to comprehend the heroic ideal of the fascist "warrior"; and associations with liberalism, individualism, and parliamentarianism.Template:Sfnp From 1914, Enrico Corradini developed the idea of "proletarian nations", defining proletarian as being one and the same with producers, a productivist perspective that associated all people deemed productive, including entrepreneurs, technicians, workers and soldiers as being proletarian.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Mussolini adopted this view in his description of the proletarian character.Template:Cn
Because productivism was key to creating a strong nationalist state, it criticized internationalist and Marxist socialism, advocating instead to represent a type of nationalist productivist socialism. Nevertheless, while condemning parasitical capitalism, it was willing to accommodate productivist capitalism within it so long as it supported the nationalist objective.Template:Sfnp The role of productivism was derived from Henri de Saint Simon, whose ideas inspired the creation of utopian socialism and influenced other ideologies that stressed solidarity rather than class war and whose conception of productive people in the economy included both productive workers and productive bosses to challenge the influence of the aristocracy and unproductive financial speculators.Template:Sfnp Saint Simon's vision combined the traditionalist right-wing criticisms of the French Revolution with a left-wing belief in the need for association or collaboration of productive people in society.Template:Sfnp Whereas Marxism condemned capitalism as a system of exploitative property relations, fascism saw the nature of the control of credit and money in the contemporary capitalist system as abusive.Template:Sfnp
Unlike Marxism, fascism did not see class conflict between the Marxist-defined proletariat and the bourgeoisie as a given or as an engine of historical materialism.Template:Sfnp Instead, it viewed workers and productive capitalists in common as productive people who were in conflict with parasitic elements in society, including corrupt political parties, corrupt financial capital, and feeble people.Template:Sfnp Fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler spoke of the need to create a new managerial elite led by engineers and captains of industry—but free from the parasitic leadership of industries.Template:Sfnp Hitler stated that the Nazi Party supported {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("productive capitalism") that was based upon profit earned from one's own labour, but condemned unproductive capitalism or loan capitalism, which derived profit from speculation.Template:Sfnp
Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production.Template:Sfnp Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sectors, and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state.Template:Sfnp Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.Template:Sfnp
While fascism accepted the importance of material wealth and power, it condemned materialism, which was identified as being present in both communism and capitalism, and criticized materialism for lacking acknowledgment of the role of the spirit.Template:Sfnp In particular, fascists criticized capitalism, not because of its competitive nature nor support of private property, which fascists supported—but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged bourgeois decadence and alleged indifference to the nation.Template:Sfnp Fascism denounced Marxism for its advocacy of materialist internationalist class identity, which fascists regarded as an attack upon the emotional and spiritual bonds of the nation and a threat to the achievement of genuine national solidarity.Template:Sfnp
In discussing the spread of fascism beyond Italy, historian Philip Morgan states:
Since the Depression was a crisis of laissez-faire capitalism and its political counterpart, parliamentary democracy, fascism could pose as the 'third-way' alternative between capitalism and Bolshevism, the model of a new European 'civilization.' As Mussolini typically put it in early 1934, 'from 1929 ... fascism has become a universal phenomenon ... The dominant forces of the 19th century, democracy, socialism, [and] liberalism have been exhausted ... the new political and economic forms of the twentieth-century are fascist'.Template:Sfnp
Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving the weak and instead promoted social Darwinist views and policies.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp They were in principle opposed to the idea of social welfare, arguing that it "encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and the feeble."Template:Sfnp The Nazi Party condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic, as well as private charity and philanthropy, for supporting people whom they regarded as racially inferior and weak and who should have been weeded out in the process of natural selection.Template:Sfnp Nevertheless, faced with the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression, the Nazis found it necessary to set up charitable institutions to help racially pure Germans in order to maintain popular support while arguing that this represented "racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.Template:Sfnp Thus, Nazi programs such as the Winter Relief of the German People and the broader National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) were organized as quasi-private institutions, officially relying on private donations from Germans to help others of their race—although in practice those who refused to donate could face severe consequences.Template:Sfnp Unlike the social welfare institutions of the Weimar Republic and the Christian charities, the NSV distributed assistance on explicitly racial grounds. It provided support only to those who were "racially sound, capable of and willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce." Non-Aryans were excluded, as well as the "work-shy", "asocials" and the "hereditarily ill".Template:Sfnp Under these conditions, by 1939, over 17 million Germans had obtained assistance from the NSV, and the agency "projected a powerful image of caring and support" for "those who were judged to have got into difficulties through no fault of their own."Template:Sfnp Yet the organization was "feared and disliked among society's poorest" because it resorted to intrusive questioning and monitoring to judge who was worthy of support.Template:Sfnp
Direct actionEdit
Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics.Template:Sfnmp Fascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism identifies as being an "endless struggle";Template:Sfnp this emphasis on the use of political violence means that most fascist parties have also created their own private militias (e.g. the Nazi Party's Brown shirts and Fascist Italy's Blackshirts).Template:Sfnp The basis of fascism's support of violent action in politics is connected to social Darwinism.Template:Sfnp Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies.Template:Sfnp They say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.Template:Sfnp
Age and gender rolesEdit
Fascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and a spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to action.Template:Sfnp The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called Giovinezza ("The Youth").Template:Sfnp Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people who will affect society.Template:Sfnp Walter Laqueur argues "[t]he corollaries of the cult of war and physical danger were the cult of brutality, strength, and sexuality ... [fascism is] a true counter-civilization: rejecting the sophisticated rationalist humanism of Old Europe, fascism sets up as its ideal the primitive instincts and primal emotions of the barbarian."Template:Sfnp
Italian fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding sexuality.Template:Sfnp Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered deviant sexual behaviour.Template:Sfnp It condemned pornography, most forms of birth control and contraceptive devices (with the exception of the condom), homosexuality and prostitution as deviant sexual behaviour. However, enforcement of laws opposed to such practices was erratic, and authorities often looked the other way.Template:Sfnp Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth, declared homosexuality a social disease and pursued an aggressive campaign to reduce prostitution of young women.Template:Sfnp
Mussolini perceived women's primary role as primarily child bearers, while that of men as warriors, once saying: "War is to man what maternity is to the woman."Template:Sfnp In an effort to increase birth rates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families and initiated policies intended to reduce the number of women employed.Template:Sfnp Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation", and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to celebrate women's role within the Italian nation.Template:Sfnp In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing"; Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force."Template:Sfnp
The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep house.Template:Sfnp This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more children. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour.Template:Sfnp
The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy pure German, Aryan fetuses remained strictly forbidden.Template:Sfnp For non-Aryans, abortion was often compulsory. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.Template:Sfnp In 1935, Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders.Template:Sfnp The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not yet viableTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
The Nazis said that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted, and undermined masculinity because it did not produce children.Template:Sfnp They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology. Open homosexuals were interned in Nazi concentration camps.Template:Sfnp
Palingenesis and modernismEdit
Template:Main article Fascism emphasizes both palingenesis (national rebirth or re-creation) and modernism.Template:Sfnp In particular, fascism's nationalism has been identified as having a palingenetic character.Template:Sfnp Fascism promotes the nation's regeneration and purging it of decadence.Template:Sfnp Fascism accepts forms of modernism that it deems promote national regeneration while rejecting forms of modernism regarded as antithetical to national regeneration.Template:Sfnp Fascism aestheticized modern technology and its association with speed, power, and violence.Template:Sfnp Fascism admired advances in the economy in the early 20th century, particularly Fordism and scientific management.Template:Sfnp Fascist modernism has been recognized as inspired or developed by various figures—such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Knut Hamsun, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis.Template:Sfnp
In Italy, such modernist influence was exemplified by Marinetti, who advocated a palingenetic modernist society that condemned liberal-bourgeois values of tradition and psychology while promoting a technological-martial religion of national renewal that emphasized militant nationalism.Template:Sfnp In Germany, it was exemplified by Jünger who was influenced by his observation of the technological warfare during World War I and claimed that a new social class had been created that he described as the "warrior-worker";Template:Sfnp Like Marinetti, Jünger emphasized the revolutionary capacities of technology. He emphasized an "organic construction" between humans and machines as a liberating and regenerative force that challenged liberal democracy, conceptions of individual autonomy, bourgeois nihilism, and decadence.Template:Sfnp He conceived of a society based on a totalitarian concept of "total mobilization" of such disciplined warrior-workers.Template:Sfnp
CultureEdit
AestheticsEdit
In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), Walter Benjamin identifies aestheticization of politics as a key ingredient in fascist regimes.Template:Sfnp On this point he quotes Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Futurist art movement and co-author of the Fascist Manifesto (1919), who aestheticizes war in his writings and claims "war is beautiful."Template:Sfnp
In Simulacra and Simulation (1981), Jean Baudrillard interprets fascism as a "political aesthetic of death" and a vehement countermovement against the increasing rationalism, secularism, and pacifism of the modern Western world.<ref>Template:Harvp: "Fascism itself, the mystery of its appearance and of its collective energy, ... can already be interpreted as the 'irrational' excess of mythic and political referentials, the mad intensification of collective value (blood, race, people, etc.), the reinjection of death, of a 'political aesthetic of death' at a time when the process of the disenchantment of value and of collective values, of the rational secularization and unidimensionalization of all life, of the operationalization of all social and individual life already makes itself strongly felt in the West. Yet again, everything seems to escape this catastrophe of value, this neutralization and pacification of life. Fascism is a resistance to this, even if it is a profound, irrational, demented resistance, it would not have tapped into this massive energy if it hadn't been a resistance to something much worse. Fascism's cruelty, its terror is on the level of this other terror that is the confusion of the real and the rational, which deepened in the West, and it is a response to that."</ref>
The standard definition of fascism, given by Stanley G. Payne, focuses on three concepts, one of which is a "fascist style" with an aesthetic structure of meetings, symbols, and political liturgy, stressing emotional and mystical aspects.Template:Sfnp
Emilio Gentile argues that fascism expresses itself aesthetically more than theoretically by means of a new political style with myths, rites, and symbols as a lay religion designed to acculturate, socialize, and integrate the faith of the masses with the goal of creating a "new man".Template:Sfnp
Cultural critic Susan Sontag writes:
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Fascist aesthetics ... flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, 'virile' posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.Template:Sfnp{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Sontag also enumerates some commonalities between fascist art and the official art of communist countries, such as the obeisance of the masses to the hero, and a preference for the monumental and the "grandiose and rigid" choreography of mass bodies. But whereas official communist art "aims to expound and reinforce a utopian morality", the art of fascist countries such as Nazi Germany "displays a utopian aesthetics – that of physical perfection", in a way that is "both prurient and idealizing".Template:Sfnp
According to Sontag, fascist aesthetics "is based on the containment of vital forces; movements are confined, held tight, held in." Its appeal is not necessarily limited to those who share the fascist political ideology because fascism "stands for an ideal or rather ideals that are persistent today under the other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)."Template:Sfnp
Popular cultureEdit
In Italy, the Mussolini regime created the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} to encourage film studios to glorify fascism. Italian cinema flourished because the regime stopped the import of Hollywood films in 1938, subsidized domestic production, and kept ticket prices low. It encouraged international distribution to glorify its African empire and to belie the charge that Italy was backward.Template:Sfnp The regime censored criticism and used the state-run Luce Institute film company to laud the Duce through newsreels, documentaries, and photographs.Template:Sfnp The regime promoted Italian opera and theatre as well, making sure that political enemies did not have a voice on stage.Template:Sfnp
In Nazi Germany the new Reich Chamber of Culture was under the control of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's powerful Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.Template:Sfnp The goal was to stimulate the Aryanization of German culture and to prohibit postmodern trends such as surrealism and cubism.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
CriticismEdit
Fascist parties were closely contested by anti-fascist movements from the political centre and left wing throughout the Interwar period. The defeat of the Axis powers in World War II and subsequent revelation of the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust by Germany have led to an almost universal condemnation of both past and present forms of fascism in the modern era. "Fascism" is today used across the political spectrum as a pejorative or byword for perceived authoritarianism and other forms of political evil.
Anti-democratic and tyrannicalEdit
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One of the most common and strongest criticisms of fascism is that it is a tyranny.Template:Sfnp Fascism is deliberately and entirely non-democratic and anti-democratic.Template:Sfnmp
Fascism's extreme authoritarianism and nationalism often manifest as a belief in racial purity or a master race, usually blended with some variant of racism or discrimination against a demonized "Other", such as Jews, homosexuals, transgender people, ethnic minorities, or immigrants. These ideas have motivated fascist regimes to commit massacres, forced sterilizations, deportations, and genocides.Template:Sfnmp During World War II, the genocidal and imperialist ambitions of the fascist Axis powers resulted in the murder of millions of people. Federico Finchelstein wrote that fascism <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
...encompassed totalitarianism, state terrorism, imperialism, racism and, in the German case, the most radical genocide of the last century: the Holocaust. Fascism, in its many forms, did not hesitate to kill its own citizens as well as its colonial subjects in its search for ideological and political closure. Millions of civilians perished on a global scale during the apogee of fascist ideologies in Europe and beyond.Template:Sfnp{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Unprincipled opportunismEdit
Some critics of Italian fascism have said that much of the ideology was merely a by-product of unprincipled opportunism by Mussolini and that he changed his political stances merely to bolster his personal ambitions while he disguised them as being purposeful to the public.Template:Sfnp Richard Washburn Child, the American ambassador to Italy who worked with Mussolini and became his friend and admirer, defended Mussolini's opportunistic behaviour by writing:
Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for the reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believed that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and programmes.<ref>Template:Harvp. (Note: Mussolini wrote the second volume about his fall from power as head of government of the Kingdom of Italy in 1943, though he was restored to power in northern Italy by the German military.)</ref>
Child quoted Mussolini as saying: "The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow. The machine, first of all, must run!"Template:Sfnp
Some have criticized Mussolini's actions during the outbreak of World War I as opportunistic for seeming to suddenly abandon Marxist egalitarian internationalism for non-egalitarian nationalism and note, to that effect, that upon Mussolini endorsing Italy's intervention in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, he and the new fascist movement received financial support from Italian and foreign sources, such as Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companiesTemplate:Sfnp as well as the British Security Service MI5.Template:Sfnp Some, including Mussolini's socialist opponents at the time, have noted that regardless of the financial support he accepted for his pro-interventionist stance, Mussolini was free to write whatever he wished in his newspaper {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} without prior sanctioning from his financial backers.Template:Sfnp Furthermore, the major source of financial support that Mussolini and the fascist movement received in World War I was from France and is widely believed to have been French socialists who supported the French government's war against Germany and who sent support to Italian socialists who wanted Italian intervention on France's side.Template:Sfnp
Mussolini’s transformation away from Marxism into what eventually became fascism began prior to World War I, as Mussolini had grown increasingly pessimistic about Marxism and egalitarianism while becoming increasingly supportive of figures who opposed egalitarianism, such as Friedrich Nietzsche.Template:Sfnp By 1902, Mussolini was studying Georges Sorel, Nietzsche and Vilfredo Pareto.Template:Sfnp Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action, general strikes and neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion impressed Mussolini deeply.Template:Sfnp Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views.Template:Sfnp Prior to World War I, Mussolini's writings over time indicated that he had abandoned the Marxism and egalitarianism that he had previously supported in favour of Nietzsche's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} concept and anti-egalitarianism.Template:Sfnp In 1908, Mussolini wrote a short essay called "Philosophy of Strength" based on his Nietzschean influence, in which Mussolini openly spoke fondly of the ramifications of an impending war in Europe in challenging both religion and nihilism: "[A] new kind of free spirit will come, strengthened by the war, ... a spirit equipped with a kind of sublime perversity, ... a new free spirit will triumph over God and over Nothing."Template:Sfnp
Ideological dishonestyEdit
Fascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest. Major examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism.Template:Sfnmp Fascist Italy's official foreign policy positions commonly used rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions, although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister the country engaged in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} free of such fascist hyperbole.Template:Sfnp Italian fascism's stance towards German Nazism fluctuated from support from the late 1920s to 1934, when it celebrated Hitler's rise to power and Mussolini's first meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, by Austrian Nazis; and again back to support after 1936, when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.Template:Sfnp
After antagonism exploded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini and Italian fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories, particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism.Template:Sfnp Mussolini himself responded to Nordicists' claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy by claiming that while Germanic tribes such as the Lombards took control of Italy after the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers (about 8,000) and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin language within fifty years.Template:Sfnp Italian fascism was influenced by the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon Nordicists' claims and taking pride in comparing the age and sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical revival in the Renaissance to that of Nordic societies that Italian nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in comparison.Template:Sfnp At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian fascists over race, Mussolini claimed that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau.Template:Sfnp After the tension in German-Italian relations diminished during the late 1930s, Italian fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with German Nazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race, composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.Template:Sfnp
In 1938, Mussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic laws that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic.Template:Sfnp However, Italian fascism did not endorse antisemitism until the late 1930s when Mussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany, whose power and influence were growing in Europe.Template:Sfnp Prior to that period, there had been notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian fascist officials, including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's mistress.Template:Sfnp Also contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a small number of Italian fascists were staunchly antisemitic (such as Roberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi), while others such as Italo Balbo, who came from Ferrara which had one of Italy's largest Jewish communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed them.Template:Sfnp Fascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as Mussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks and that eight percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.Template:Sfnp
Anti-fascismEdit
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Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide.Template:Sfnp Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.<ref>Template:Harvp;Template:Pn Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp;Template:Pn Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref>
Organization against fascism began around 1920. Fascism became the state ideology of Italy in 1922 and of Germany in 1933, spurring a large increase in anti-fascist action, including German resistance to Nazism and the Italian resistance movement. Anti-fascism was a major aspect of the Spanish Civil War, which foreshadowed World War II.Template:Sfnp
Before World War II, the West had not taken seriously the threat of fascism, and anti-fascism was sometimes associated with communism. However, the outbreak of World War II greatly changed Western perceptions, and fascism was seen as an existential threat by not only the communist Soviet Union but also by the liberal-democratic United States and United Kingdom.Template:Cn The Axis Powers of World War II were generally fascist, and the fight against them was characterized in anti-fascist terms. Resistance during World War II to fascism occurred in every occupied country, and came from across the ideological spectrum. The defeat of the Axis powers generally ended fascism as a state ideology.Template:Sfnp
After World War II, the anti-fascist movement continued to be active in places where organized fascism continued or re-emerged.Template:Sfnp Modern antifa politics in the United States and Britain can be traced to opposition to the infiltration of the American and British punk scenes by white power skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s.Template:Sfnp From the late 1980s, the squatter scene and autonomism movement in West Germany were important in an upswing of antifa in Germany.Template:Sfnp There was a further increase in antifascism following the increase in neo-Nazism in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.Template:Sfnp In the 21st century, this greatly increased in prominence as a response to the resurgence of the radical right, especially after the 2016 election of Donald Trump.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
See alsoEdit
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- Anti-fascism
- Christian fascism
- Clerical fascism
- Conservative Revolution
- Crypto-fascism
- Ecofascism
- Hindutva
- Islamofascism
- Neo-Nazism
- Para-fascism
- Post–World War II anti-fascism
- Political strongman
- Proto-fascism
- Right-wing authoritarianism
- Reactionary modernism
- Squadrismo
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Tertiary sourcesEdit
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Further readingEdit
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External linksEdit
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- The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini (1932) Template:In lang
- Authorized translation of Mussolini's "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism" (1933) (PDF) media.wix.com
- Readings on Fascism and National Socialism by Various – Project Gutenberg
- "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" – Umberto Eco's list of 14 characteristics of Fascism, originally published 1995
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