Fascism is a word that many say but fewer understand and explain. The word Fascist comes from fasces, a tied bundle of rods or sticks. One stick can be easily broken, but many bound together cannot. The ancient Romans used a bunch of rods and an ax tied together as a symbol of Rome, and rulers would often have such a bundle carried in front of them and symbolically present in halls and during speeches. The Italian fascists identified with and glorified Roman power and empire, and they named themselves after the bundle and put it on their flag. These were the first “fascists”, followed soon by German Nazis under Hitler and Spanish fascists under Franco.
The definition and philosophy of fascism is highly debated. Industrialization is typically identified as a necessary condition for fascism, and as we have seen political philosophy in Europe is profoundly concerned with industry, technology, and capitalism rising along with these two. Right wing authoritarianism and nationalism, with patriotic support of war and empire and conservative taste in culture, tends to be the weak consensus among theorists, but does that make all conservatives or nationalists fascists? The tempting answer from the left is a simple yes, but there were a great variety of philosophies and policies that supported fascism before WWII and still today, and fascists want to transform society even if they often celebrate traditional culture, masculinity, discipline and patriotism. There were left wing and right wing factions among Italian fascists, and fascists were influenced by ideas from both wings.
Consider that Mussolini supported Jewish rights before adopting Hitler’s antisemitism. Consider that the Nazis said many anti-capitalist pronouncements that sound identical to those made by communism, calling themselves national socialists before accepting corporate backing soon after they started to become successful and dropped all anti-capitalist rhetoric and policies long before Hitler gained power (Nazis believed that Jews controlled the world economy and were ruining Europe during the great depression, so they were angry at capitalism as a Jewish device before they allied themselves with corporate interests in Germany, Britain and America). Consider that there were Christian Nazis and anti-Christian Nazis. Consider that there were Neo-Kantians as well as existentialists like Heidegger who joined the Nazi cause on both sides of the dogmatism/skepticism spectrum in philosophy.
We could try the opposite approach, and say what fascism ISN’T by looking at its triadic hate relationship with communism (or international socialism) and anarchism. Fascists do not like anarchist ideas like getting rid of war, the police state, national borders, or free love. They do not like communism because even if communists believe in imposing an authoritarian structure in the name of revolution they argue, in theory, for a dismantling of authoritarianism by process. Anarchists, as we have seen, argue that communism is authoritarianism in the name of anarcho-syndicalism, so an anarchist might say that there is no difference between the two. Fascists would argue that anarchism, communism and libertarian capitalism are all the same, as they lack the strength and discipline of authoritarianism. Like communism, fascists argue that the time of crisis requires authority and order, but unlike communists they do not argue for a more bottom-up democratic future. One could say that Stalin’s “socialism in one country” approaches fascism, but even still evolution is expected.
Italy Under Mussolini
Mussolini was the first fascist dictator, as the Italians coined the term fascism from the Roman symbol. His glorification of violence inspired Hitler, who imitated Mussolini and then surpassed him with the superior power and technology of Germany. World leaders praised both Mussolini and Hitler for standing up and viciously smashing communists, but then when Italy and Germany expanded their empires, Italy first in Africa and then Germany in Eastern Europe, the British, French and Americans amongst others declared war for cutting in on their action (since they themselves wished to maintain control and exploitation of Africa as well as everywhere else). The Pope said that Mussolini was sent by divine providence. Churchill said Mussolini was the Roman genius whose triumphant struggle against communism had rendered a service to the entire world. Italy hoped for an empire in Africa and thus a seat at the table with other powerful European nations, but they banded together to eventually defeat both Italian and German ambitions.
With the Great Depression of the 1920s, despair was everywhere and one had to ask how to rebuild and thrive. Communism offered a way forward, and their numbers exploded. In reaction against communism’s anti-religious, anti-elite, anti-authoritarian internationalism, many on the right but some on the left joined the fascist cause. After Russia, and then again after WWII with China, many national leaders were deeply afraid of communism and were willing to give full support to right wing brutality. After WWII, when communism again threatened to take Italy by storm, the OSS (precursor of the CIA) worked with Italian fascists and the Italian mafia to crush the movement, just as America supported right wing dictatorships (some of whom called themselves fascist by name) in Central America to prevent communism there. The upper and middle class feared that their property would be seized, so many celebrated Mussolini and Hitler’s rise to power. Both Mussolini and Hitler had socialist views in their early years, but through intense nationalism at a time of crisis abandoned socialism for capitalism as the strength of their nations was bound up with corporations, industry and technology, particularly military technology.
In Italy in the 1920s, fascists fought against peasant, worker and Catholic unions that rallied under the red flag and set up co-ops. Mussolini’s fascist black shirts, that later inspired Hitler’s brown shirts, set out to destroy the communist threat through open violence often with the full support of the police, the military, the king, and the pope. The fascists, in military style black uniforms, were thus a paramilitary group that had the full support of the authorities without official office.
In both Italy and Germany, first fascists started getting elected to office, then they began gaining seats but remained in the minority, and finally Mussolini and Hitler, who were made the heads of parliament, declared wartime emergency powers and dissolved parliament such that their minority became the totality. The population of both countries accepted the emergency dictatorial decrees in the name of protecting family, faith and nation.
Mussolini was careful to give the king and Pope whatever they wanted. The Catholic Church was given the Vatican as an independent country and it remains so today. The communists and socialists wanted the Church removed from Italian politics, but Mussolini strengthened the Church’s presence. In return, the Church invested heavily in government bonds and continued to do so in wartime.
Those who spoke out in Italy against Mussolini’s dictatorship, either in conversation or in print, were beaten by black shirts, often to death. Schools were ordered to teach fascist conservative values. Little boys were given black shirts and toy wooden rifles. The salute, the raised palm open towards the saluted, became common in greeting (the Nazi salute, with open palm and arm straight and at a sharp angle, is more notorious). The military adopted the Roman salute of raising swords vertically in the air as the leader passed, but for a modern army this meant military issued knives raised instead.
When Libya, in North Africa, revolted against Italian control, Italy under Mussolini viciously pacified it. It is important to consider that fascist brutal and glorified warfare, including the first fascist concentration camps, started in Africa and were influenced not only by economic but also racist tyranny. Italy used torture, camps, chemical weapons, targeting civilians and refugees with bombs, and destroyed mosques. At first, Mussolini ridiculed Hitler’s racial theories while remaining quite racist himself, as he did not believe that Germany was a racially pure nation. Then, when Hitler seized Jewish property and bank accounts and used them to finance the party and warfare, Mussolini followed, arguing that the Italians had to learn to become hard and brutal like the Germans to become masters. Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, bombing civilians and using chemical weapons. The wars were popular in Italy, but the British and French began to feel that their hold on much of Africa was threatened. As Franco rose in Spain, Mussolini and Hitler welcomed and supported his fascist regime as they believed Spain would be a powerful ally should war break out. Mussolini seized Albania, Hitler seized Poland, and Britain, France, America and others declared war.
As the Italians and Germans began losing to the allied powers, both Mussolini and Hitler blamed their troops and nation for being weak and not strong enough to overcome the challenge of crisis. Fascism does stand for unity, but it seems that in times of failure they blame each other as much as they blame foreign nations and religions for their problems in times of success. If the rods start breaking, it seems the axe gets angry at the arrangement. In the same way, with repeated failures in the war including a failed invasion of Greece, the Italian king imprisoned Mussolini and changed sides in the war. Hitler invaded Italy, dividing the country, and Mussolini was given puppet control of Northern Italy before Germany eventually lost the war.
Germany Under Hitler
Since everybody likes calling each other Hitler in America today, including the religious and the anti-religious (“Nazi’s were essentially religious” vs. “Nazi’s essentially anti-religious”) and the progressives and conservatives (“Bush is Hitler” vs. “Obama is Hitler”), let us be clear:
Nazi Germany was art and artists, health and doctors, truth and philosophy, science and scientists, religion and religious, technology and engineers, poetry and poets, environment and volunteers, exercise and instructors, order and peacemakers, business and investors, pest control and exterminators, the group and helping your neighbor, life and the living, and, at the same time, death and the killers.
Doctors opened the gas caps to euthanize the mentally ill to give it scientific legitimacy. Athens, Sparta and Rome, the origin of the supposed West, were Hitler’s Mecca, the source and model of legitimate culture. Hitler wrote that the European and German forefathers were the Greeks, and if the Nazis could create a synthesis of these three cultures that the Nazi German state would never perish. Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, Nazis glorified the human body, nature, and warfare through art and literature. Other cultures were diseases, the Jews microbes that had to be eradicated or made servile. The gas Zyclon B was first developed to kill insects and rodents before being used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and elsewhere. Antisemitism, racism and murder were called hygiene, medical and scientific. The gas chambers were considered a humane alternative to firing squads, more effective and efficient.
Next time, we will consider the thought of Hitler and the Nazi's use of the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
