Fascism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fascism is an authoritarian nationalist ideology focused on solving economic, political, and social problems that its supporters see as causing national decline or decadence.[1][2][3][4] Fascist governments typically seek to prepare a nation for armed conflict with other nations, to defend itself or to expand its state to allow for the growth of a nation. Fascists aim to create a single-party state in which the government is led by a dictator who directs a nation towards collective unity by requiring individuals subordinate self interest for the interests and welfare of the collective, be it the nation as in Italian Fascism or the race as in Nazism.[5][6]
Fascist movements commonly oppose: liberalism, communism, conservatism, democracy, individualism, internationalism, pacifism and laissez-faire capitalism.[7] [8][9][10][11][12][13]
Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, there have been few self-proclaimed fascist groups and individuals. In contemporary political discourse, the term fascist is sometimes used as a pejorative word.
Contents
|
[edit] Etymology
The term fascismo was brought into popular and demeaning usage by the Italian founders of Fascism, Benito Mussolini and the Neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile.[14] It is derived from the Italian word fascio, which means "bundle" or "union", and from the Latin word fasces. [15] The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of ropes that were very rarely tied around an axe, were an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrates; they were carried by his Lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command.[15] Furthermore, the symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[16] This is a familiar theme throughout different forms of fascism; for example the Falange symbol is a bunch of arrows joined together by a yoke.[17] In 1919 Fasci italiani di combattimento was founded and the Fascist manifesto was published, outlining Italian fascism, which was the original meaning of the term.
[edit] Definitions
The popular presentation of fascism in the publications of the Western World have been radically different in the period during and after World War II than in the period 1919—1939, when Mussolini and the Italian fascists were widely acclaimed.[18][19] Fascism was primarily associated with the Axis powers who fought and lost the war, and so it has been difficult to provide a neutral view of the topic. English-speaking (and other) historians, political scientists, and other scholars have engaged in long and furious debates concerning the exact nature of fascism.[20] Since the 1990s, scholars like Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin and Robert O. Paxton have begun to gather a rough consensus on the system's core tenets.
While various attempts to define fascism have been made, the problem scholars often run into is that each form of fascism is different from any other, leaving many definitions as too wide or too narrow.[21][22] Below are two examples of attempts to define fascism:
[Fascism is] a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti conservative nationalism. As such it is an ideology deeply bound up with modernization and modernity, one which has assumed a considerable variety of external forms to adapt itself to the particular historical and national context in which it appears, and has drawn a wide range of cultural and intellectual currents, both left and right, anti-modern and pro-modern, to articulate itself as a body of ideas, slogans, and doctrine. In the inter-war period it manifested itself primarily in the form of an elite-led "armed party" which attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to generate a populist mass movement through a liturgical style of politics and a programme of radical policies which promised to overcome a threat posed by international socialism, to end the degeneration affecting the nation under liberalism, and to bring about a radical renewal of its social, political and cultural life as part of what was widely imagined to be the new era being inaugurated in Western civilization. The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation's imminent rebirth from decadence. – Roger Griffin, The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology[23]
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. – Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism .[24]
[edit] Political spectrum
There is no clear consensus on where fascism is on the political spectrum. Common views include that fascism is far right or that it is outside the conventional left-right spectrum. Some have argued that it is extreme centrist, and others have claimed that it belongs on the political left.
Fascism rejects the idea of class conflict in favor of class collaboration,[25] and internationalism in favor of statist nationalism.[26] In 1932, Italian fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile described fascism as a collectivist and statist right-wing ideology:
Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the "right", a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State."[27]
Walter Laqueur says that historical fascism "did not belong to the extreme Left, yet defining it as part of the extreme Right is not very illuminating either", but that it "was always a coalition between radical, populist ('fascist') elements and others gravitating toward the extreme Right".[28] Some authors, such as Roger Griffin argue that since the end of World War II, fascist movements have become intertwined with the radical right, describing certain groups as part of a "fascist radical right".[29][30] Stanley Payne notes the alliances and sometimes fusion between fascists and right-wing authoritarians, but stresses the important differences between the two.[31] Eugen Weber also addressed this point, saying about fascists that "...their most common allies lay on the right, particularly on the radical authoritarian right, and Italian Fascism as a semi-coherent entity was partly defined by its merger with one of the most radical of all right authoritarian movements in Europe, the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI)."[32]
A. James Gregor argues that the most "uninspired effort to understand fascism" is to simply place it on the right-wing, or the radical right.[20] The founders of fascism in Italy included people from different parts of the political spectrum, including futurists, nationalists, ex-socialists, syndicalists and ex-anarchists.The Fascist Manifesto's initial promises included nationalization of property, but many of their policies were moderated or removed. A few advocates of laissez faire capitalism, such as Ludwig von Mises, define socialism as any ideology that advocates a society in which the means of production are socialized, and argue that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were socialist countries according to this definition.[33] Zeev Sternhell sees fascism as an anti-Marxist form of socialism.[34]
A number of fascist movements described themselves a "third force" that was outside the traditional political spectrum altogether. Many scholars accept fascism as a search for a third way between capitalism and communism.[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, described his position as "hard centre" in the political spectrum.[44] Lipset sees fascism as "extremism of the center".[34]
[edit] Fascism as epithet
Following World War II, the word fascist has become a slur throughout the political spectrum, and since the end of the war, it has been uncommon for political groups to call themselves fascist. In contemporary political discourse, adherents of some political ideologies tend to associate fascism with their enemies, or define it as the opposite of their own views. In the post-war era, the terms fascism or neo-fascism have commonly been associated with white supremacy, anti-Semitism and racism. However, fascist movements have existed in non-white societies and racially mixed societies such as Brazil, and Japan, and arguably the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko.[45][46][47] Some have argued that the term fascist has become hopelessly vague over the years and that it has become little more than a pejorative epithet. George Orwell wrote in 1944:
The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. – George Orwell, What is Fascism?. 1944.[48]
Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that the term fascism is the "most misused, and over-used word of our times".[22]
[edit] Core tenets
[edit] Nationalism
Fascism sees the struggle of nation and race as fundamental in society, in opposition to communism's perception of class struggle[49] and in opposition to capitalism's focus on the value of productivity, materialism, and individualism. The nation is seen in fascism as a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is seen as a natural unifying force of people. Fascists promote the unification and expansion of influence, power, and/or territory of and for their nation. Fascism seeks to solve existing 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.[24][41][50][51][28] Many fascists have strongly emphasized the role of a nation in society, declaring the absolute necessity for national unity and a strong national spirit to exist.
"For us the nation is not just territory but something spiritual...A nation is great when it translates into reality the force of its spirit." Benito Mussolini, October 24, 1922.[52]
"We must lead the people always; nationally, socially and economically. We must clear up the economic mess and right the glaring social injustices of to-day by the corporative organization of Irish life; but before everything we must give a national lead to our people...The first essential is national unity. We can only have that when the Corporative system is accepted. We shall put our National programme to the people, and it is a programme in which even the most advanced Nationalist can find nothing to disturb him." Eoin O'Duffy, Irish National Corporatist, November 16, 1934.[53]
"The only way to help the German people achieve its goal is the Führer's way: to turn the German nation into a political factor of such power and internal cohesion that the conscience of an international community, deaf to rational argument, cannot help but be suddenly awakened." Paul Ritter, member of the Nazi Party, 1937.[54]
"The best governments in the world cannot succeed in pulling a country out of the quagmire, out of apathy, if they do not express themselves as national energies...Strong governments cannot result either from conspiracies of from military coups, just as they cannot come out of the machinations of parties or the Machiavellian game of political lobbying. They can only be born from the actual roots of the Nation." Plínio Salgado, leader of the Brazilian Integralist Action party, 1935..[55]
[edit] Expansionism
Fascists claim the expansion of a nation is a natural process. On the issue of expansionist imperialism, Italian Fascists described it as a necessity for the nation, the Italian Encyclopedia written in 1932 in Fascist Italy declared: "For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence."[56] Similarly the Nazis promoted territorial expansionism to in their words provide "living space" to the German nation.[57]
[edit] National socialism and national syndicalism
While fascists support the unifying of proletariat workers to their cause along socialistic or syndicalistic lines, fascists specify that they advocate national socialism or national syndicalism which promotes the creation of a strong proletarian nation, but not a proletarian class.[58] Fascists also make clear that they have no hostility to the Petite bourgeoisie (lower middle-class) and small businesses and promise these groups protection alongside the proletariat from the upper-class bourgeoisie, big business, and Marxism.[59] Also, national-socialistic fascists, unlike international socialists, do not believe in the notion of equality of people across ethnic, cultural, national, or religious lines. Fascists declare either nation or race as the supreme unifying source of a people, and claim that class divisions which they perceive as being imposed by capitalism, communism, and international socialism must be subdued to allow the nation or race to unify.
"The ideological basis of the national economy and programme of Hungarism is social nationalism and its conscious practice. The individual can become a conscious national socialist only through the ideology and function of social nationalism. National socialism is a nationalist order in socialism, and social nationalism is a social order within nationalism." Ferenc Szalasi, leader of the national-socialist fascist Arrow Cross Party.[60]
In the case of Italy, Fascism arose in the 1920s as a mixture of national syndicalist notions with an anti-materialist theory of the state. Many Italian Fascists were former international socialists who abandoned international socialism due to its perceived unpatriotic nature for being unwilling to support Italy's war against Austria-Hungary in World War I as international socialists condemned the conflict as being a "bourgeois war". While others with nationalist sympathies saw the war as necessary to reunite Italian territories in Austria to Italy to end what they perceived as national oppression of Italians in Austria-Hungary. Mussolini and other ex-socialists formed the Fascist movement in 1919 with a left-wing platform combined with nationalism in the Fascist Manifesto of 1919. Over time the Italian Fascists would drift rightward on social and economic policies, such as abandoning previous hostility to the monarchy, the Roman Catholic Church, and businesses in order to attract more support for the Fascist regime while retaining its nationalist agenda. Upon being ousted in 1943 and a new Fascist regime being created in the German puppet state of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini briefly returned to earlier left-wing promises to attempt to regain support for the Fascist movement, such as advocating major nationalization of property and promoting the Fascist movement as a left-wing movement.[61]
Fascists accused parliamentary democracy of producing division and decline, and wished to renew the nation from decadence. Fascists dismissed the Marxist concept of "class struggle" and oppose international socialists' promotion of internationalism instead of nationalism, by advocating "class collaboration" devoted to unifying the nation.
[edit] Economic nationalism
Fascist regimes have advocated economic nationalism as a means to bolster their economies and economic conditions for society and reduce the country's dependence on other countries. To do this fascists promoted a policy called autarky which was designed to create a fully self-sufficient country which would no longer have any dependence on international trade.
[edit] Third Position economics
- Further information: Economics of fascism
Fascists promoted their ideology as a "third position" between capitalism and communism.[62] Italian Fascism often involved corporatism, but German Nazism officially rejected corporatism.[21] What fascists did have in common was the goal of a new national multiclass economics which is either labeled national corporatist, national socialist or national syndicalist.[21] Thus, Third Position economics stipulates fascists' opposition to the elements of capitalist and communist political and economic systems. Fascism opposes the demands by capitalist systems for little government intervention, opposes capitalism's unequivocal support of free trade (i.e. fascists enacted protectionist policies), opposes capitalism's support for free international movement of capital, and opposes capitalism's support of individualism. Fascism opposes communism for its promotion of a class-based world society where nations would cease to exist. Fascists see communism as unpatriotic and a major enemy to their agenda.
[edit] Corporatism
Corporatism generally refers to a political system in which economy is collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at national level. [63] In such system capital and labor are integrated into guilds, known as "corporations" (not the same as contemporary business corporations), that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, and professional groups. These associations are obligatory bodies with a strict hierarchy; their purpose is to exert control over their respective areas of social or economic life through class collaboration.
[edit] Class collaboration
Fascism seeks class collaboration as a means to resolve class conflict and create a unified society across class lines. Fascism blames capitalist liberal democracies for creating class conflict and in turn blames communists for exploiting class conflict.[64]
[edit] Economic planning
Fascists opposed laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression.[65] After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.[66] Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering.[67] Some fascists, particularly Nazis, considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy".[68] Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. Fascist governments introduced introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.[69] Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors.
Other than nationalization of certain industries, private property was allowed, but property rights and private initiative were contingent upon service to the state.[70] For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labor than he would find profitable."[71][71] According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies.[72] The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7:
- "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation," then goes on to say in article 9 that: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management." Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual."[73] They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures.[69]
Fascism had Social Darwinist views of human relations and promoted "superior" individuals and saw people who were weak as being inferior.[74] In terms of economic practice, this meant promoting the interests of successful businesses while banning trade unions and other workers' organizations.[75] Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."[76]
According to sociologist Stanislav Andreski, fascist economics "foreshadowed most of the fundamental features of the economic system of Western European countries today: the radical extension of government control over the economy without a wholesale expropriation of the capitalists but with a good dose of nationalisation, price control, incomes policy, managed currency, massive state investment, attempts at overall planning (less effectual than the Fascist because of the weakness of authority)."[69] Politics professor Stephen Haseler credits fascism with providing a model of economic planning for social democracy.[77]
In Nazi economic planning, in place of ordinary profit incentive to guide the economy, investment was guided through regulation to accord to the needs of the State. The profit incentive for business owners was retained, though greatly modified through various profit-fixing schemes: "Fixing of profits, not their suppression, was the official policy of the Nazi party." However the function of profit in automatically guiding allocation of investment and unconsciously directing the course of the economy was replaced with economic planning by Nazi government agencies.[78]
[edit] Mixed economy
Fascist economies are typically inbetween laissez-faire capitalist and statist socialist economic systems. Unlike laissez-faire capitalist systems, fascist corporatism involved significant government intervention such as regulations, objectives, and nationalization of certain enterprises. Unlike statist socialist systems, fascist economies for the most part protect the right of private property and allowed significant independence for private free enterprise except in areas deemed vital to the national interest where private enterprise was not able to meet economic expectations of the state, in which such enterprises are nationalized. In Italy, the Fascist period presided over the creation of the largest number of state-owned enterprises in Western Europe such as the nationalization of petroleum companies in Italy into a single state enterprise called the Italian General Agency for Petroleum (Azienda Generale Italiani Petroli, AGIP).[79]
Fascists made populist appeals to the middle class (especially the lower middle class) by promising to protect small business and small property owners from communism, and by promising an economy based on competition and profit while pledging to oppose big business.[80]
[edit] Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism
All fascist movements advocate the creation of an authoritarian government that is an autocratic single-party state led by a dictator. Many fascist movements support the creation of a totalitarian state. The Italian Doctrine 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. Doctrine of Fascism 1935.[81]
Political theorist Carl Schmitt as a member of the Nazi party published a work titled "The Legal Basis of the Total State" in 1935, describing the Nazi regime's intention to form a totalitarian state, as shown in this statement:
The recognition of the plurality of autonomous life would, however, immediately lead back to a disasterous pluralism tearing the German people apart into discrete classes and religious, ethnic, social, and interest groups if it were not for a strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity. Every political unity needs a coherant inner logic underlying its institutions and norms. It needs a unified concept which gives shape to every sphere of public life. In this sense there is no normal State which is not a total State. Carl Schmitt, 1935[82]
Japanese fascist Nakano Seigo described the need for Japan to follow the Italian Fascist and Nazi regimes as a model for Japanese government and declared that a totalitarian society was more democratic than democracies, saying
Both Fascism and Nazism are clearly different from the despotism of the old period. They do not represent the conservatism which lags behind democracy, but are a form of more democratic government going beyond democracy. Democracy has lost its spirit and decayed into a mechanism which insists only on numerical superiority without considering the essence of human beings. It says the majority is all good. I do not agree, because it is the majority which is the precise cause of contemporary decadence. Totalitarianism must be based on essentials, superseding the rule of numbers. Nakano Seigo[83]
Some have claimed however that in spite of Italian Fascism's attempt to form a totalitarian state, this was not achieved in Italy, arguing that Fascism in Italy as a political movement devolved to a cult of personality around Mussolini.[84] However both proponents and opponents of Italian Fascism at the time of its rule in Italy claimed that it had a clear intention to establish a totalitarian state.[85] In addition, Hungarian fascist leader Gyula Gömbös and his fascist Hungarian National Defence Association attempted to form a totalitarian state in Hungary but failed after Gömbös' death in 1936 and the movement subsequently failed to remain in government.[86]
The Nazi regime in Germany has also been seen by most scholars as well as critics as being a totalitarian regime.[87][88]
In addition while fascist movements declared their intention to form a totalitarian state, they exercised much less influence over the economy that that of communist-led states, in that private property remained largely free from government interferance.[89] Nevertheless, like the Soviet Union, fascist states pursued economic policies to strengthen state power and spread ideology, such as by consolidating trade unions to be state-controlled unions.[90] Attempts were made by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to establish "autarky" (self-sufficiency) through singificant economic planning, but both failed to make the two countries self-sufficient.[91]
[edit] Dictatorship
A key element of fascism is its endorsement of the leadership over a country of a dictator, who is often known simply as the "Leader" or a title referring to a leader of some sort such as Duce in Italian, Führer in German, Caudillo in Spanish, Conducător in Romanian, Shogun in Japanese. Fascist leaders that rule countries are not always heads of state, but heads of government, such as Benito Mussolini who held power under the largely figurehead King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III. As part of a totalitarian agenda, the fascist movement does not only ask for obedience to the leader, but wants people to recognize and worship the leader as an infallible saviour of the people.
[edit] Statism
Fascism is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic, by way of a strong, single-party government for enacting laws and a strong militia or police force for enforcing them through threat of reprisal against dissidents or through political violence directed at opponents.[92] Fascism exalts the nation, state, or group of people as superior to the individuals composing it, and uses explicit populist rhetoric. It calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness, and demands loyalty to a single leader, leading to a cult of personality and unquestioned obedience to orders (see Führerprinzip). Fascism is also considered to be a form of collectivism.[93][94][95] Fascism promotes the indoctrination of people into the movement, such as through education, propaganda, and organizations.
[edit] Indoctrination
Fascist states have pursued policies of indoctrination of society to their fascist movements such as through propaganda deliberately spread through education and media through regulation of the production of education and media material.[96][97] Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement, inform students of it being of major historical and political importance to the nation, attempted to purge education of ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement, and taught students to be obedient to the fascist movement.[98]
[edit] Societal transformation
Multiple fascist movements speak of the need to create a "new man" and a "new civilization" as part of their intention to transform society to fit the ideology and agenda of the movement.[99] Mussolini promised a “social revolution” for “remaking” the Italian people.[100] Hitler promised to purge Germany of non-Aryan influences on society and create a pure Aryan race through eugenics.
[edit] Interventionist social policies
On the question of whether one can speak of “fascist social policy” as single concept with logical and internally consistent ideas and common identifiable goals, some scholars say that one cannot, pointing for example to German National Socialism where such policy was mostly opportunistic and pragmatic.[101] Generally fascist movements endorse social interventionism dedicating to influencing society to promote the state's interests.
[edit] Social welfare
Mussolini promised a “social revolution” for “remaking” the Italian people which was only achieved in part.[102] The groups which primarily benefited from Italian Fascist social policy were the middle and lower-middle classes who filled the jobs in the vastly expanding government – the government expanding from about 500,000 to a million jobs in 1930 alone.[103] Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, welfare rising from 7% of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.[104] The Fascist government advocated a number of policies on improving living standards for labourers such as by establishing the nationwide Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro in 1925, which was a state-sponsored organization that created numerous municipal clubs across Italy that allowed lower-income citizens to attend recreational activities, watch movies, and listen to musical performances, etc.
Hitler was opposed to social welfare because, in his view, it encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and feeble.[105] Once in power the Nazis created welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. Unlike social welfare programs in other countries, Nazi social welfare programs were residual, as they excluded certain people from the system whom they felt were incapable of helping themselves and would only pose a threat to the future health of the German people.[106]
[edit] Positions on abortion, eugenics and euthanasia
The fascist government in Italy banned abortion and literature on birth control in 1926, declaring them both crimes against the state.[107] The fascist government began the "Battle for Births" in 1927, a measure against birth control and abortion.
Nazi eugenics placed the improvement of the Germanic race through eugenics at the center of their concerns, and targeted humans they identified as "life unworthy of life" (German Lebensunwertes Leben), such as mentally and physically disabled, homosexual, feeble-minded, insane, and weak people. Adolf Hitler decriminalized abortion in cases in which fetuses had racial or hereditary defects, while the abortion of healthy "pure" German, "Aryan" unborn remained strictly forbidden.[108] For non-Aryans, abortion was not only allowed, but often compelled.[109] The Nazis based their eugenics program on the United States' programs of forced sterilization.[110] Their eugenics program stemmed also from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.[111] Like their forebears, neo-Nazis oppose abortion not because of concerns about preservation of life, but about propagation of their race. The Aryan Nations security chief stated: "I’m just against abortion for the pure white race. For blacks and other mongrelized races, abortion is a good idea."[112]
[edit] Positions on culture, gender roles and relations, and sexual orientation
Fascism tends to promote principles of masculine heroism, militarism, and discipline; and rejects cultural pluralism and multiculturalism.[113]
The Italian Fascist government during the "Battle for Births" gave financial incentives to women who raised large families as well as policies designed to reduce the number of women employed to allow women to give birth to larger numbers of children.[114] Mussolini perceived women's primary role as childbearers while men should be warriors such, once saying "war is to man what maternity is to the woman".[115]
Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted pre- and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood, and divorce and at other times opposed such behaviour.[116] The growth of Nazi power, however, was accompanied by a breakdown of traditional sexual morals with regard to extramarital sex and licentiousness.[117]
The Italian Fascist government declared homosexuality illegal in Italy in 1931.[118]
The Nazis' opposition to homosexuality was based on the Nazis' view that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, and perverted and undermined the masculinity which they promoted and because they did not produce children for the master race.[119] Nevertheless the Nazis considered homosexuality curable through therapy. They explained it though modern scientism and the study of sexology which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority.[120] Critics have claimed that the Nazis' claim of scientific reasons for their promotion of racism, and hostility to homosexuals is pseudoscience,[121][122] in that scientific findings were selectively picked that promoted their pre-existing views, while scientific findings opposing those views were rejected and not taken into account.
The Romanian Iron Guard opposed homosexuality as undermining society.[123]
[edit] Militance and Militarism
Fascism sees the struggle of a nation or race as requiring the utilization of violence to preserve and promote it such as through the threat and use of political violence against against political opponents or people that fascists deemed enemies of movement itself or their nation or race, as well as the threat or engagement of war against other countries to advance the interests of a nation or race. Fascist movements typically are militant organizations. In Italy, Fascists fought on the streets against communists and anarchists. In Germany, Nazis also fought on the streets against communists and anarchists along with attacking minority groups such as Jews who were deemed enemies according to Nazi doctrine. In Spain, Falangists fought against communist and international leftist factions during the Spanish Civil War. In some fascist regimes, the fascist movement itself has a paramilitary wing which is included in the armed forces of the country, such as the SS in Germany and the MVSN in Italy, which are devoted directly and specifically to the fascist movement.
Militarism is apparent in that the leaders of fascist movements often identify with the military, often wearing military-appearing uniforms. Fascism commits the state to mobilization for war, jingoism, and actively promoting military service as a position of honour. While supporting militarism, fascism in turn strongly opposes pacifism. Mussolini spoke of war idealistically as a source of masculine pride while he spoke of pacifism in negative terms, saying:
War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of mobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. Fascism carries this anti-pacifist struggle into the lives of individuals. It is education for combat...war is to man what maternity is to the woman. I do not believe in perpetual peace; not only do I not believe in it but I find it depressing and a negation of all the fundamental virtues of a man. Benito Mussolini.[124]
Joseph Goebbels of the Nazi Party, compared the importance of World War II to Germany to that childbirth and described war as a positive transformative experience while claiming that fear of war was equivelant to a woman being cowardly to pain during childbirth:
"Every birth brings pain. But amid the pain there is already the joy of a new life. It is a sign of sterility to shy away from new life on the account of pain[...] Our age too is an act of historical birth, whose pangs carry with them the joy of richer life to come. The significance of the war has grown as its scale has increased. It is relentlessly at work, shattering old forms and ideas, and directing the eyes of human beings to new, greater objectives." Joseph Goebbels, 1942.[125]
[edit] Anti-intellectualism
Fascism tended to be anti-intellectual.[126] The Nazis in particular despised intellectuals and university professors, with Adolf Hitler declaring them unreliable, useless and even dangerous.[127] Nevertheless, Hitler stated: "When I take a look at the intellectual classes we have - unfortunately, I suppose, they are necessary; otherwise one could one day, I don't know, exterminate them or something - but unfortunately they're necessary."[128]
[edit] Positions on racism
Initially Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were at odds over the idea of racism. Mussolini in the early 1930s claimed that the concept of a biologically pure and superior race as believed by Hitler was flawed and impossible and saw racism as a flawed ideology. On the subject of social equality, Mussolini on a number of occasions rejected racism, and rejected the notion of the Nazis of biologically superior races. Hitler believed that race and racism was fundamental, and many of his views and policies reflected these. Under pressure from Germany, Mussolini enacted racist policies in the late 1930s, including anti-Semitism which was highly unpopular in Italy and in the Italian Fascist movement itself. Fascists in other countries also had varying positions on racism, Plínio Salgado and his Integralists of Brazil opposed racism, Gyula Gömbös and his M.O.V.E. party in Hungary supported racism, and others were divided on this subject as well. Neofascism has tended to associate with racism.
[edit] Positions on religion
The attitude of fascism toward religion has run the spectrum from persecution, to denunciation, to cooperation, [129] to embrace.[130] Stanley Payne notes that fundamental to fascism was the foundation of a purely materialistic "civic religion" which "would displace preceding structures of belief and relegate supernatural religion to a secondary role, or to none at all" and that "though there were specific examples of religious or would-be 'Christian fascists,' fascism presupposed a post-Christian, post-religious, secular, and immanent frame of reference." [131]
According to a biographer of Mussolini, "Initially, fascism was fiercely anti-Catholic" - the Church being a competitor for dominion of the people's hearts. [132] Mussolini, originally a socialist internationalist and atheist, published anti-Catholic writings and planned for the confiscation of Church property, but eventually moved to accommodation. [129] Hitler was born to Roman Catholic parents.[citation needed] Mussolini endorsed the Roman Catholic Church for political legitimacy, as during the Lateran Treaty talks, Fascist officials engaged in bitter arguments with Vatican officials and put pressure on them to accept the terms that the regime deemed acceptable.[133]. Protestantism in Italy and Spain was not as significant as Catholicism and the Protestant minority was persecuted. Mussolini's sub-secretary of Interior, Bufferini-Guidi issued a memo closing all houses of worship of the Italian Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses, and imprisoned their leaders. In some instances, people were killed because of their faith.[134]
Nazis arrested and killed thousands of Catholic clergy (18% of the priests in Poland were killed), consigning thousands of them to concentration camps (2600 died in Dachau alone).[135] While Jews were the greatest and primary target, Hitler also sent Roman Catholics to concentration camps and killed 3 million Catholic Poles along with three million Jewish Poles.[135] The Nazi party had pagan elements. Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anticlerical, some believe they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely, such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, being put off while they dealt with other enemies. [136]
Relations were close in the likes of the Belgian Rexists (which was eventually denounced by the Church). In addition, many Fascists were anti-clerical in both private and public life. [137] In Mexico the fascist[138][139][140] Red Shirts not only renounced religion but were vehemently atheist[141], killing priests, and on one occasion gunned down Catholics as they left Mass.[142]
Others have argued that there has been a strong connection between some versions of fascism and religion, particularly the Catholic Church.[143] Religion did play a real part in the Ustasha in Croatia which had strong religious (Catholic) overtones and clerics in positions of power.[144] Spain's Falangists emphasized the struggle against the atheism of the left. The nationalist authoritarian movement in the Slovak Republic (the People's Party) was established by a catholic priest (Father Hlinka) and presided over by another (Father Tiso). The fascist movement in Romania known as the Iron Guard or the Legion of Archangel Michael invariably preceded its meetings with a church service and "their demonstrations were usually led by priests carrying icons and religious flags." Similar to Ayatollah Khomeini's Shi'a Islamist movement in Iran, it promoted a cult of "suffering, sacrifice and martyrdom."[145] [146] In Latin America the most important Fascist movement was Plinio Salgado's Brazilian "Integralism." Built on a network of lay religious associations, its vision was of an "integral state," that `comes from Christ, is inspired in Christ, acts for Christ, and goes toward Christ.` [147][148][149] Salgado, however, criticised the "dangerous pagan tendencies of Hitlerism" and maintained that his movement differed from European fascism in that it respected the "rights of the human person".[150] According to Payne, such "would be" religious fascist only gain hold where traditional belief is weakened or absent, as fascism seeks to create new nonrationalist myth structures for those who no longer hold a traditional view.[151] Hence, the rise of modern secularism in Europe and Latin America and the incursion and large scale adoption of western secular culture in the mideast leave a void where this modern secular ideology, sometimes under a religious veneer, can take hold.
One theory is that religion and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic weltanschauungen" claiming the whole of the person. [129] Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible[152][153], and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion.[154] Such political religions vie with existing religions, and try, if possible, to replace or eradicate them. [155] Hitler and the Nazi regime attempted to found their own version of Christianity called Positive Christianity which made major changes in its interpretation of the Bible which said that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but was not a Jew and claimed that Christ despised Jews, and that the Jews were the ones solely responsible for Christ's death. By 1940 however, it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianty.[156]
[edit] Variations and subforms
- See also: European fascist ideologies
Movements identified by scholars as fascist hold a variety of views, and what qualifies as fascism is often a hotly contested subject. The original movement which self-identified as Fascist was that of Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party. Intellectuals such as Giovanni Gentile produced The Doctrine of Fascism and founded the ideology. The majority of strains which emerged after the original fascism, but are sometimes placed under the wider usage of the term, self-identified their parties with different names. Major examples include; Falangism, Integralism, Iron Guard and Nazism as well as various other designations.[157]
[edit] Italian Fascism
- See also: The Doctrine of Fascism, Actual Idealism, and March on Rome
Italian Fascism was the first form of fascism to emerge and the originator of the name. Founded by Benito Mussolini, it is considered to be the model for the other fascisms.
Fascism was born during a period of social and political unrest following World War I. The war had seen Italy, born from the Italian unification less than a century earlier begin to appreciate a sense of nationalism, rather than the historic regionalism.[158] Despite the Kingdom of Italy being a fully fledged Allied Power during the war against the Central Powers, Italy was given what nationalists considered an unfair deal at the Treaty of Versailles; which they saw as the other allies "blocking" Italy from progressing to a major power.[158] A significant example of this was when the other allies told Italy to hand over the city of Fiume at the Paris Peace Conference, this saw war veteran Gabriele d'Annunzio declaring the independent state Italian Regency of Carnaro.[36] He positioned himself as Duce of the nation and declared a constitution, the Charter of Carnaro which was highly influential to early Fascism, though he himself never became a fascist.[36]
An important factor in fascism gaining support in its earliest stages was the fact that it opposed discrimination based on social class and was strongly opposed to all forms of class war.[159] Fascism instead supported nationalist sentiments such as a strong unity, regardless of class, in the hopes of raising Italy up to the levels of its great Roman past. Mussolini did not ignore the plight of the working class, however, and he gained their support with stances such as those in The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle, published in June 1919.[159] In the manifesto he demanded, amongst other things, creation of a minimum wage, showing the same confidence in labor unions (which prove to be technically and morally worthy) as was given to industry executives or public servants, voting rights for women, and the systemisation of public transport such as railways.[159]
Mussolini and the fascists managed to be simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist;[160][161] because this was vastly different from anything else in the political climate of the time, it is sometimes described as "The Third Way".[162] The Fascisti, led by one of Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans called Blackshirts (or squadristi) with the goal of restoring order to the streets of Italy with a strong hand. The blackshirts clashed with