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Fascism opposed class conflict and the egalitarian and international character of socialism. It strongly opposed liberalism, communism, anarchism, and democratic socialism.
- Overview
- Opposition to parliamentary democracy
- Opposition to political and cultural liberalism
- Totalitarian ambitions
Fascist movements criticized parliamentary democracy for allowing the Marxist threat to exist in the first place. According to Hitler, democracy undermined the natural selection of ruling elites and was “nothing other than the systematic cultivation of human failure.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, maintained that the people never rule themselves and claimed that every history-making epoch had been created by aristocrats. Primo de Rivera wrote that “our Spain will not emerge from elections” but would be saved by poets with “weapons in their hands.” In Japan the Tojo dictatorship dissolved all political parties, even right-wing groups, and reduced other political freedoms.
Before they came to power, Hitler and Mussolini, despite their dislike of democracy, were willing to engage in electoral politics and give the appearance of submitting to democratic procedures. When Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933, he abandoned his military uniform for a civilian suit and bowed profusely to President Paul von Hindenburg in public ceremonies. In 1923 Mussolini proposed an electoral reform, known as the Acerbo Law, that gave two-thirds of the seats in Parliament to the party that received the largest number of votes. Although Mussolini insisted that he wanted to save Parliament rather than undermine it, the Acerbo Law enabled the Fascists to take control of Parliament the following year and impose a dictatorship.
Fascist movements criticized parliamentary democracy for allowing the Marxist threat to exist in the first place. According to Hitler, democracy undermined the natural selection of ruling elites and was “nothing other than the systematic cultivation of human failure.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, maintained that the people never rule themselves and claimed that every history-making epoch had been created by aristocrats. Primo de Rivera wrote that “our Spain will not emerge from elections” but would be saved by poets with “weapons in their hands.” In Japan the Tojo dictatorship dissolved all political parties, even right-wing groups, and reduced other political freedoms.
Before they came to power, Hitler and Mussolini, despite their dislike of democracy, were willing to engage in electoral politics and give the appearance of submitting to democratic procedures. When Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933, he abandoned his military uniform for a civilian suit and bowed profusely to President Paul von Hindenburg in public ceremonies. In 1923 Mussolini proposed an electoral reform, known as the Acerbo Law, that gave two-thirds of the seats in Parliament to the party that received the largest number of votes. Although Mussolini insisted that he wanted to save Parliament rather than undermine it, the Acerbo Law enabled the Fascists to take control of Parliament the following year and impose a dictatorship.
Although circumstances sometimes made accommodation to political liberalism necessary, fascists condemned this doctrine for placing the rights of the individual above the needs of the Volk, encouraging “divisiveness” (i.e., political pluralism), tolerating “decadent” values, and limiting the power of the state. Fascists accused liberal “fellow travelers” of wittingly or unwittingly abetting communism. In 1935 the Cross of Fire berated “moderates”—i.e., democratic conservatives—for indirectly aiding the communists through their taste for “compromise and hesitation.” La Rocque urged the French people to stand up against revolution and its “sordid ally” moderation, warning that, on the final day of reckoning, complicit moderates—“guardians unfaithful to their charge”—would be “at the head of the list of the guilty.”
Fascist propagandists also attacked cultural liberalism, claiming that it encouraged moral relativism, godless materialism, and selfish individualism and thereby undermined traditional morality. Anti-Semitic fascists associated liberalism with Jews in particular—indeed, one precursor of Nazism, the political theorist Theodor Fritsch, claimed that to succumb to a liberal idea was to succumb to the Jew within oneself.
Although Hitler had not revealed the full extent of his totalitarian aims before he came to power, as Führer (“Leader”) of the Third Reich, he attempted not only to control all political power but also to dominate many institutions and organizations that were previously independent of the state, such as courts, churches, universities, social clubs, veterans groups, sports associations, and youth groups. Even the German family came under assault, as members of the Hitler Youth were told that it was their patriotic duty to inform on anti-Nazi parents. In Italy, Mussolini adopted the title of duce (“leader”), and his regime created billboards displaying slogans such as “The Duce is always right” (Il Duce ha sempre ragione) and “Believe, obey, fight” (Credere, obbedire, combattere). It should be noted that, despite their considerable efforts in this direction, neither Hitler nor Mussolini succeeded in creating a completely totalitarian regime. Indeed, both regimes were riven by competing and heterogeneous power groups (which Hitler and Mussolini played off against each other), and the Fascists in Italy were significantly limited by the wishes of traditional elites, including the Catholic church.
Before fascists came to power, however, they often disavowed totalitarian aims. This was especially true in countries such as France, where conservatives were alarmed by reports of the repression of dissident conservatives in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. After Hitler’s crackdown on Roman Catholic dissidents in Germany in 1934 and 1935, French fascists took pains to deny that they were totalitarians, lest they alienate potential Catholic supporters in France. Indeed, they attacked “statism” and advocated a more decentralized government that would favour local economic elites. However, La Rocque’s claim in 1936 that he supported republican liberties did not prevent him in 1941 from demanding “unanimity” under Pétain and a purge of practitioners of Freemasonry from all government departments.
- Robert Soucy
Fascism (/ ˈfæʃɪzəm / FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, [1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the na...
Fascism arose during the 1920s and ’30s partly out of fear of the rising power of the working classes; it differed from contemporary communism (as practiced under Joseph Stalin) by its protection of business and landowning elites and its preservation of class systems.
Oct 21, 2024 · Fascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and was characterized by extreme militant nationalism, hatred of communism and socialism, contempt for democracy, and belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites.
- Robert Soucy
- The word fascism comes from the Latin fasces, which denotes a bundle of wooden rods that typically included a protruding axe blade. In ancient Rome...
- Although fascism is a notoriously difficult ideology to define, many 20th-century fascist movements shared several characteristics. First, these mo...
- The most prominent 20th-century fascist regimes were those in Germany and Italy. German fascism took the form of Nazism, which rose out of the ashe...
- In the latter half of the 20th century, a resurgent fascism—termed neofascism—gained traction across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and So...
The Nazi government that ruled under Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1945 was a fascist government. Fascism is a far-right theory of government that opposes the political philosophies of the Enlightenment and the 19th century, including democratic liberalism, communism, and socialism.
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Nov 30, 2023 · Five classical explanations were developed regarding the origins of fascism: (1) the manifestation of a temporary aberration caused by the war; (2) an instrument of capitalism in crisis; (3) the mistakes of the opposition; (4) a revelation of profound characteristics in Italian society, as a result of the historical process through which Italy h...
