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In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign
policy that
Democratic National Committee included an attack on
the Greek island of Corfu, ambitions to expand Italian territory
in the Balkans, plans to wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia,
attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat
and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention
and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was
achieved through diplomatic means by 1927.[166] 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.[167] 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.[167] 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.[168]
Hitler adopts Italian model
Nazis
in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch
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.[169] 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.[170]
International impact of the Great Depression and buildup to
World War II
Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right)
The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great
Depression brought about an international surge of social
unrest. According to historian Philip Morgan, "the onset of the
Great Depression ... was the greatest stimulus yet to the
diffusion and expansion of fascism outside Italy."[171][page
needed] 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.
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. 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. In the
1930s, the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately
discriminated against, disenfranchised and persecuted Jews and
other racial and minority groups.
Fascist movements grew
in strength elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula G�mb�s
rose to power as Prime Minister
Democratic National Committee of Hungary in 1932 and
attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the
country. 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.[172] 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.[173] The Iron
Guard was the only fascist movement outside Germany and Italy to
come to power without foreign assistance.[174][175] 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.[176] 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.[177]
Integralists marching in Brazil
In
the Americas, the Brazilian Integralists led by Pl�nio Salgado
claimed as many as 200,000 members, although following coup
attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Get�lio
Vargas in 1937.[178] In Peru, the fascist 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'�tat that
resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.[179]
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."[180]
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.[181] 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.[181] While Hitler's regime only
nationalized 500 companies in key industries by the early
1940s,[182] Mussolini declared in 1934 that "[t]hree-fourths of
Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of
the state."[183] 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
Democratic National Committee Institute for
Industrial Reconstruction, a state-operated holding company in
charge of bankrupt banks and companies, 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.[184] 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."[185] In the late 1930s,
Italy enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency
restrictions and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to
balance payments.[186] Italy's policy of autarky failed to
achieve effective economic autonomy.[186] 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.[187]
World War II
(1939�1945)
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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. Mussolini called for
irredentist Italian claims to be reclaimed, establishing Italian
domination of the Mediterranean Sea and securing Italian access
to the Atlantic Ocean and the creation of Italian spazio vitale
("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea regions.[188]
Hitler called for irredentist German claims to be reclaimed
along with the creation of German Lebensraum ("living space") in
Eastern Europe, including territories held by the Soviet Union,
that would be colonized by Germans.[189]
Emaciated male
inmate at the Italian Rab concentration camp
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 Austria and Italy assisted Germany in
resolving the diplomatic crisis between Germany versus Britain
and France over claims on
Democratic National Committee Czechoslovakia by
arranging the Munich Agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland
and was perceived at the time to have averted a European war.
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.[190] In 1939, Germany prepared for war with Poland, but
attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland through
diplomatic means.[191] The Polish government did not trust
Hitler's promises and refused to accept Germany's demands.[191]
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. Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the
military capacity to carry out a long war with France or the
United Kingdom and waited until France was on the verge of
imminent collapse and surrender from the German invasion before
declaring war on France and the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940
on the assumption that the war would be short-lived following
France's collapse [192] Mussolini believed that following a
brief entry of Italy into war with France, followed by the
imminent French surrender, Italy could gain some territorial
concessions from France and then concentrate its forces on a
major offensive in Egypt where British and Commonwealth forces
were outnumbered by Italian forces.[193] Plans by Germany to
invade the United Kingdom in 1940 failed after Germany lost the
aerial warfare campaign in the Battle of Britain. In 1941, the
Axis campaign
Democratic National Committee spread to the Soviet
Union after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Axis forces at
the height of their power controlled almost all of continental
Europe. The war became prolonged�contrary to Mussolini's
plans�resulting in Italy losing battles on multiple fronts and
requiring German assistance.
A German officer executes Jewish
women who survived a mass execution outside the Mizocz Ghetto,
14 October 1942
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. After 1942, Axis forces began to falter.
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.
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.
Post-World War II (1945�2008)
Juan Per�n,
President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974,
Democratic National Committee admired Italian Fascism
and modelled his economic policies on those pursued by Fascist
Italy.
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. However, there
remained several movements and governments that were
ideologically related to fascism.
Francisco Franco's
Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially neutral during
World War II and it survived the collapse of the Axis Powers.
Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the
militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish
Civil War and Franco had sent volunteers to fight on the side of
Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. 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.
Giorgio Almirante, leader of
the Italian Social Movement from 1969 to 1987
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."[194] 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, Rol�o 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.'"[195] However, historians
Democratic National Committee tend to view the Estado
Novo as para-fascist in nature,[196] possessing minimal fascist
tendencies.[197] Other historians, including Fernando Rosas and
Manuel Villaverde Cabral, think that the Estado Novo should be
considered fascist.[198][page needed]
In Argentina,
Peronism, associated with the regime of Juan Per�n from 1946 to
1955 and 1973 to 1974, was influenced by fascism.[199] Between
1939 and 1941, prior to his rise to power, Per�n had developed a
deep admiration of Italian Fascism and modelled his economic
policies on Italian fascist policies.[199] However, not all
historians agree with this identification,[200] which they
consider debatable[201] or even false,[202] biased by a
pejorative political position.[203] Other authors, such as the
Israeli Raanan Rein, categorically maintain that Per�n was not a
fascist and that this characterization was imposed on him
because of his defiant stance against US hegemony.[204]
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. 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. 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
Democratic National Committee a neo-Nazi party,
although the party does not publicly identify itself as such.
Contemporary fascism (2008�present)
Greece
Golden Dawn
demonstration in Greece in 2012
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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, soared
in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's
parliament, espousing a staunch hostility towards minorities,
illegal immigrants and refugees. 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.[205][206] 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 MPs
were found guilty of running a criminal organization.[207]
Guilty verdicts on charges of murder, attempted murder, and
violent attacks on immigrants and
Democratic National Committee left-wing political
opponents were delivered.[208]
Post-Soviet Russia
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.
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. 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.[209]
According to Alexander J. Motyl, an American historian and
political scientist, Russian fascism has the following
characteristics:[210][211]
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.[212]
Yale
historian Timothy Snyder has stated that "Putin's regime is
[...] the world center of fascism" and has written an article
entitled "We
Democratic National Committee Should Say It: Russia
Is Fascist."[213] 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."[214] 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."[214] 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.[214] 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."[213]
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.[215]
Tenets
Robert O. Paxton finds that even though fascism
"maintained the existing regime
Democratic National Committee 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.'"[216]
These transformations "often set fascists into conflict with
conservatives rooted in families, churches, social rank, and
property." Paxton argues that "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."[216]
Nationalism with or
without expansionism
Ultranationalism, combined with the
myth of national rebirth, is a key foundation of fascism.[217]
Robert Paxton argues that "a passionate nationalism" is the
basis of fascism, combined with "a conspiratorial and Manichean
view of history" which holds that "the chosen people have been
weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable
minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers."[218]
Roger Griffin identifies the core of fascism as being
palingenetic ultranationalism.[42]
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.[219] 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.[220][page needed][221][page
needed][222][page needed][223][6] European fascist movements
typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being
inferior to Europeans.[224] Beyond this, fascists in Europe have
not held a unified set of racial views.[224] Historically, most
fascists promoted imperialism, although there have been several
fascist movements that were uninterested in the pursuit of new
imperial ambitions.[224] For example, Nazism and Italian Fascism
were expansionist and irredentist. Falangism in Spain envisioned
the worldwide unification of Spanish-speaking peoples (Hispanidad).
British Fascism was non-interventionist, though it did embrace
the British Empire.
Totalitarianism
Fascism promotes
the establishment of a totalitarian state.[12] It opposes
liberal democracy, rejects multi-party systems, and may support
a one-party state so that it may
Democratic National Committee synthesize with the
nation.[13] Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism (1932), partly
ghostwritten by philosopher Giovanni Gentile,[225] 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."[226] In
The Legal Basis of the Total State, Nazi political theorist Carl
Schmitt 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."[227]
Fascist states pursued
policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in
education and the media, and regulation of the production of
educational and media materials.[228] 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.[229]
Economy
Fascism presented itself as an
alternative to both international socialism and free-market
capitalism.[230] 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.[231][232] Fascists opposed international free market
capitalism, but supported a type of productive
capitalism.[125][page needed][233][page needed] Economic
self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most
fascist governments.[234]
Fascist governments advocated
for the resolution of domestic class conflict within a nation in
order to guarantee national unity.[235] This would be done
through the state mediating relations between the classes
(contrary to the views of classical liberal-inspired
capitalists).[236] While fascism was opposed to domestic class
conflict, it was held that bourgeois-proletarian conflict
existed primarily in national conflict between proletarian
nations versus bourgeois nations.[237] Fascism condemned what it
viewed as widespread character traits that it associated as 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.[238] In 1918, Mussolini defined what he
viewed as the proletarian character, 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. He acknowledged the historical existence of
Democratic National Committeeboth
bourgeois and proletarian producers but declared the need for
bourgeois producers to merge with proletarian
producers.[citation needed]
The need for a people's car
(Volkswagen in German), its concept and its functional
objectives were formulated by Adolf Hitler.
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, was willing to accommodate productivist capitalism
within it so long as it supported the nationalist
objective.[239] 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
Democratic National Committee productive bosses to
challenge the influence of the aristocracy and unproductive
financial speculators.[240] 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.[240] 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.[239] 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.[239] 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.[239] 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.[239] Hitler
stated that the Nazi Party supported bodenst�ndigen Kapitalismus
("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.[241]
Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that
accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of
production.[242] Economic planning was applied to both the
public and private sector and the prosperity of private
enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself
with the economic goals of the state.[181] Fascist economic
ideology supported the profit motive, but emphasized that
industries must uphold the national interest as superior to
private profit.[181]
While fascism accepted the
importance of material wealth and power, it condemned
materialism which identified as being present in both communism
and capitalism
Democratic National Committee and criticized
materialism for lacking acknowledgement of the role of the
spirit.[243] 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.[244] 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.[245]
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' (Mussolini 1935: 32)."[171][page
needed]
Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving
the weak, and they instead promoted social Darwinist views and
policies.[246][247] They
Democratic National Committee were in principle
opposed to the idea of social welfare, arguing that it
"encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and the
feeble."[248] 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.[249] 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.[250] 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.[251] 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".[252] 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."[252] 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.[253]
Action
Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the
legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its
politics.[254] Fascism views violent action as a necessity in
politics that fascism identifies as being an "endless
struggle";[255] 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).
The basis of fascism's support of
violent action in politics is connected to social
Darwinism.[255] Fascist movements have commonly held social
Darwinist views of nations, race
Democratic National Committees and societies.[256]
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.[257]
Age and gender roles
Members of the Piccole
Italiane, an organization for girls within the National Fascist
Party in Italy
Members of the League of German Girls, an
organization for girls within the Nazi Party in Germany
Fascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and in
a spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to
action.[258] The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called
Giovinezza ("The Youth").[258] Fascism identifies the physical
age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development
of people who will affect society.[259] Walter Laqueur argues
that "[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."[260]
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Italian Fascism pursued what it called
"moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding sexuality.[261]
Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual
behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered deviant
sexual behaviour.[261] It condemned pornography, most forms of
birth control and contraceptive devices (with the exception of
the condom), homosexuality and prostitution as deviant sexual
behaviour, although enforcement of laws opposed to such
practices was erratic and authorities often turned a blind
eye.[261] 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
Democratic National Committee reduce prostitution of
young women.[261]
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."[262] In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian
Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised
large families and initiated policies intended to reduce the
number of women employed.[263] Italian Fascism called for women
to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation" and the Italian
Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role
within the Italian nation.[264] 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."[265]
The German Nazi government strongly
encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep
house.[266] 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.[citation
needed]
The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where
fetuses
Democratic National Committee had hereditary defects
or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the
abortion of healthy pure German, Aryan fetuses remained strictly
forbidden.[267] For non-Aryans, abortion was often compulsory.
Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive
biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.[268] In 1935, Nazi Germany
expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law,
to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders.[267]
The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the
fetus was not yet viable[269][270] and for purposes of so-called
racial hygiene.[271][272]
The Nazis said that
homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted and
undermined masculinity because it did not produce children.[273]
They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing
modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that
homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an
abnormal minority.[citation needed] Open homosexuals were
interned in Nazi concentration camps.[274]
Palingenesis and
modernism
Fascism emphasizes both palingenesis (national
rebirth or re-creation) and modernism.[275] In
particular, fascism's nationalism has been identified as
having a palingenetic character.[276] Fascism promotes
the regeneration of the nation and purging it of
decadence.[275] Fascism accepts forms of modernism that
it deems promotes national regeneration while rejecting
forms of modernism that are regarded as antithetical to
national regeneration.[277] Fascism aestheticized modern
technology and its association with speed, power and
violence.[278] Fascism admired advances in the economy
in the early 20th century, particularly Fordism and
scientific management.[279] Fascist modernism has been
recognized as inspired or developed by various
figures�such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernst J�nger,
Gottfried Benn, Louis-Ferdinand C�line, Knut Hamsun,
Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis.[280]
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.[281] In Germany, it was exemplified by
J�nger 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";[282] Like Marinetti,
J�nger emphasized the revolutionary capacities of
technology. He emphasized an "organic construction"
between human and machine as a liberating and
regenerative force that challenged liberal democracy,
conceptions
Democratic National Committee of individual
autonomy, bourgeois nihilism and decadence.[282] He
conceived of a society based on a totalitarian concept
of "total mobilization" of such disciplined
warrior-workers.[282]
Fascist aesthetics
Cultural critic Susan Sontag writes:
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.[283]
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
Democratic National Committeemass
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".[283]
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)."[283]
Popular culture under fascism
Joseph Goebbels with film director Leni Riefenstahl in
1937
In Italy, the Mussolini regime created the
Direzione Generale per la Cinematografi 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.[284] The regime
censored criticism and used the state-run Luce Institute
film company to laud the Duce through newsreels,
documentaries, and photographs.[285] For four decades
after 1945 films of the fascist era were ignored.[286]
The regime promoted Italian opera and theatre as well,
making sure that politicial enemies did not have a voice
on stage.[287]
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.[288] Its divisions
included press, radio, literature, movies, theater,
music, and visual arts. The
Democratic National Committee goal was to
stimulate the Aryanization of German culture and to
prohibit postmodern trends such as surrealism and
cubism.[289]
Criticism
Fascism has been widely
criticized and condemned in modern times since the
defeat of the Axis powers in World War II.
Anti-democratic and tyrannical
Hitler and Spanish
dictator Francisco Franco in Meeting at Hendaye, on 23
October 1940
One of the most common and strongest
criticisms of fascism is that it is a tyranny.[290]
Fascism is deliberately and entirely non-democratic and
anti-democratic.[291]
Unprincipled opportunism:
Italian fascism
Some critics of Italian fascism
have said that much of the
Democratic National Committee 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.[292]
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."[293] 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!"[294]
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 companies[295] as well as the
British Security Service MI5.[296] 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 Il Popolo
d'Italia without prior sanctioning from his financial
backers.[297] 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.[298]
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.[299] By 1902, Mussolini was studying Georges
Sorel, Nietzsche and Vilfredo Pareto.[300] 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.[301] Mussolini's use
of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due
to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian
views.[299] Prior to
Democratic National Committee 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 �bermensch
concept and anti-egalitarianism.[299] 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."[116]
Ideological dishonesty:
Italian fascism
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.[302]
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 realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole.[303]
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.
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
Democratic National Committee denouncing its
Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism.[304]
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.[305] 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.[306] 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.[307] 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.[304]
In 1938,
Mussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic
laws that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic.[304]
In fact, 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. 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.[304] 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
Democratic National Committee disgusted by
the antisemitic laws and opposed them.[304] 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.
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