Fascism

D

Emphasis on Militarism

Fascist movements also vary in their reliance on military-style organization. Some movements blend elite paramilitary organizations (military groups staffed by civilians) with a large political party led by a charismatic leader. In most cases, these movements try to rigidly organize the lives of an entire population. Fascism took on this military or paramilitary character partly because World War I produced heightened nationalism and militarism in many countries. Even in these movements, however, there were many purely intellectual fascists who never served in the military. Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini stand as the most notable examples of a paramilitary style of organization.

Since the end of World War II, however, the general public revulsion against war and anything resembling Nazism created widespread hostility to paramilitary political organizations. As a result, fascist movements since the end of World War II have usually relied on new nonparamilitary forms of organization. There have been some fascist movements that have paramilitary elements, but these have been small compared to the fascist movements in Germany and Italy of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition, most of the paramilitary-style fascist movements formed since World War II have lacked a single leader who could serve as a symbol of the movement, or have even intentionally organized themselves into leaderless terrorist cells. Just as most fascist movements in the postwar period downplayed militarism, they have also abandoned some of the more ambitious political programs created in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Specifically, recent movements have rejected the goals of corporatism (government-coordinated economics), the idea that the state symbolizes the people and embodies the national will, and attempts to include all social groups in a single totalitarian movement.

E

Use of Political Rituals

Another feature of fascism that has largely disappeared from movements after World War II is the use of quasi-religious rituals, spectacular rallies, and the mass media to generate mass support. Both Nazism and Italian Fascism held rallies attended by hundreds of thousands, created a new calendar of holidays celebrating key events in the regime's history, and conducted major sporting events or exhibitions. All of this was intended to convince people that they lived in a new era in which history itself had been transformed. In contrast to what fascists view as the absurdity and emptiness of life under liberal democracy, life under fascism was meant to be experienced as historical, life-giving, and beautiful. Since 1945, however, fascist movements have lacked the mass support to allow the staging of such theatrical forms of politics. The movements have not, however, abandoned the vision of creating an entirely new historical era.

IV

Compared to Other Radical Right-Wing Ideologies

Although fascism comes in many forms, not all radical right-wing movements are fascist. In France in the 1890s, for example, the Action Française movement started a campaign to overthrow the democratic government of France and restore the king to power. Although this movement embraced the violence and the antidemocratic tendencies of fascism, it did not develop the fascist myth of revolutionary rebirth through popular power. There have also been many movements that were simply nationalist but with a right-wing political slant. In China, for example, the Kuomintang (The Chinese National People’s Party), led by Chiang Kai-shek, fought leftist revolutionaries until Communists won control of China in 1949. Throughout the 20th century this type of right-wing nationalism was common in many military dictatorships in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Fascism should also be distinguished from right-wing separatist movements that set out to create a new nation-state rather than to regenerate an existing one. This would exclude cases such as the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia during World War II. This regime, known as the Ustaše government, relied on paramilitary groups to govern, and hoped that their support for Nazism would enable Croatia to break away from Yugoslavia. This separatist goal distinguishes the Ustaše from genuine fascist movements.

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Fascism also stands apart from regimes that are based on racism but do not pursue the goal of creating a revolutionary new order. In the 1990s some national factions in Bosnia and Herzegovina engaged in ethnic cleansing, the violent removal of targeted ethnic groups with the objective of creating an ethnically pure territory. In 1999 the Serbian government's insistence upon pursuing this policy against ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo led to military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But unlike fascist movements, the national factions in Yugoslavia did not set out to destroy all democratic institutions. Instead these brutal movements hoped to create ethnically pure democracies, even though they used violence and other antidemocratic methods. Another example of a racist, but not fascist, organization was the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, which became a national mass movement in the United States. Although racial hatred was central to the Klan’s philosophy, its goals were still reactionary rather than revolutionary. The Klan hoped to control black people, but it did not seek to build an entirely new society, as a true fascist movement would have. Since 1945, however, the Klan has become increasingly hostile to the United States government and has established links with neo-Nazi groups. In the 1980s and 1990s this loose alliance of antigovernment racists became America’s most significant neo-fascist movement.

V

The Origins of Fascism

Despite the many forms that fascism takes, all fascist movements are rooted in two major historical trends. First, in late 19th-century Europe mass political movements developed as a challenge to the control of government and politics by small groups of social elites or ruling classes. For the first time, many countries saw the growth of political organizations with membership numbering in the thousands or even millions. Second, fascism gained popularity because many intellectuals, artists, and political thinkers in the late 19th century began to reject the philosophical emphasis on rationality and progress that had emerged from the 18th-century intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment.

These two trends had many effects. For example, new forms of popular racism and nationalism arose that openly celebrated irrationality and vitalism—the idea that human life is self-directed and not subject to predictable rules and laws. This line of thinking led to calls for a new type of nation that would overcome class divisions and create a sense of historical belonging for its people. For many people, the death and brutality of World War I showed that rationality and progress were not inherent in humanity, and that a radically new direction had to be taken by Western civilization if it was to survive. World War I also aroused intense patriotism that continued after the war. These sentiments became the basis of mass support for national socialist movements that promised to confront the disorder in the world. Popular enthusiasm for such movements was especially strong in Germany and Italy, which had only become nation-states in the 19th century and whose parliamentary traditions were weak. Despite having fought on opposite sides, both countries emerged from the war to face political instability and a widespread feeling that the nation had been humiliated in the war and by the settlement terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In addition, many countries felt threatened by Communism because of the success of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

VI

The First Fascist Movement: Italy

A

Mussolini’s Fasci

The first fascist movement developed in Italy after World War I. Journalist and war veteran Benito Mussolini served as the guiding force behind the new movement. Originally a Marxist, by 1909 Mussolini was convinced that a national rather than an international revolution was necessary, but he was unable to find a suitable catalyst or vehicle for the populist revolutionary energies it demanded. At first he looked to the Italian Socialist Party and edited its newspaper Avanti! (Forward!). But when war broke out in Europe in 1914, he saw it as an opportunity to galvanize patriotic energies and create the spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice necessary for the country's renewal. He thus joined the interventionist campaign, which urged Italy to enter the war. In 1914, as Italian leaders tried to decide whether to enter the war, Mussolini founded the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia (The People of Italy) to encourage Italy to join the conflict. After Italy declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in May 1915, Mussolini used Il Popolo d'Italia, to persuade Italians that the war was a turning point for their country. Mussolini argued that when the frontline combat soldiers returned from the war, they would form a new elite and bring about a new type of state and transform Italian society. The new elite would spread community and patriotism, and introduce sweeping changes in every part of society.

Mussolini established the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Veteran’s League) in 1919 to channel the revolutionary energies of the returning soldiers. The group’s first meeting assembled a small group of war veterans, revolutionary syndicalists (socialists who worked for a national revolution as the first step toward an international one), and futurists (a group of poets who wanted Italian politics and art to fuse in a celebration of modern technological society’s dramatic break with the past). The Fasci di Combattimento, sometimes known simply as the Fasci, initially adopted a leftist agenda, including democratic reform of the government, increased rights for workers, and a redistribution of wealth.

In the elections of 1919 Fascist candidates won few votes. Fascism gained widespread support only in 1920 after the Socialist Party organized militant strikes in Turin and Italy’s other northern industrial cities. The Socialist campaign caused chaos through much of the country, leading to concerns that further Socialist victories could damage the Italian economy. Fear of the Socialists spurred the formation of hundreds of new Fascist groups throughout Italy. Members of these groups formed the Black Shirts—paramilitary squadre (squads) that violently attacked Socialists and attempted to stifle their political activities.

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