Is Fascism Over?
Many people believe that Fascism ceased to be of any real political importance after 1945. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, Fascist parties were emerging, active and growing. Can we be sure that in the 21st century, Fascism will really be a thing of the past?
âFascistâ has become an all-purpose word. We often use it to describe people and things we dislike. It is applied indiscriminately to figures in authority, to modes of behaviour, to ways of thinking, to kinds of architecture.
What âFascistsâ have in common is that they are the enemies of liberal or left-wing thought and attitudes. They can be seen as threatening, aggressive, repressive, narrowly conservative and blindly patriotic.
But this catch-all use of the word raises obvious questions. Are all people who could be defined in these terms really âFascistsâ? Are all right-wing parties or groups, all conservative right-wing governments, necessarily âFascistâ?
What is Fascism?
Italy was the first country to have a party that called itself Fascist. The Italian word fascio (pronounced âfashoâ) means a bundle-of firewood, for instance. It was first used in the 1890s by workers in the notorious Sicilian sulphur mines.
In Italy after World War I the name was taken over by right-wing nationalistic groups who formed fasci di combattimento (combat squads). They came together in 1922 to found the first Fascist Party.
Some people argue that strictly speaking âFascistâ means a member of this Italian Fascist Party or of any similar parties that sprang up in Europe between WWI and the Allied victory in 1945.
The examples shown are incomplete. Many of these parties drew on political traditions stretching back to the 19th century.
Ultraconservatism
The intellectual traditions behind Fascism are ultraconservative.
The Italian sociologists Mosca and Pareto were in some respects old-fashioned exponents of laissez-faire economics, but they also believed democracy was a dream and stressed the superiority of elites in society.
Besides being anti-democratic, ultraconservative thinkers were virulently opposed to socialism which was steadily developing in the 1880s. Socialism had its roots in the 18th century intellectual movement of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Socialismâs remedies to injustices and oppression, its opposition to war and its internationalism, were condemned as materialist, unpatriotic and weak.
The Ultraconservatives and Racism
Ultraconservatives in France were fiercely patriotic, anti-republican and nostalgic for past glories. An example was Charles Maurras (1868-1952), the Catholic, monarchist and anti-Semite who hated Freemasons, Protestants and foreigners resident in France.
Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) writer of a notorious racist book, La France Juive (Jewish France). published in 1886. He also edited a popular anti-Semitic daily, La Libre Parole.
Wagner and other intellectuals in Germany had made anti-Semitic nationalism fashionable and respectable, at least on one level of âhigh cultureâ. But how could ultraconservatism occupy the popular level and capture the imagination of the nation as a whole?
Ultraconservatives like Maurras and Drumont were also looking for an excuse to transfer anti-Semitism from the academic level to the streets and strengthen the âtraditional Christian orderâ of France.
Nostalgic monarchists, Catholics and the army with its reactionary caste-system were all...