Fascism and Nazism

The word "fascist" tends to be used very loosely, and is often applied to the political Right in general. I would like therefore to attempt to explore the salient aspect of Fascism which distinguish it not only from Liberalism and Socialism, but also from traditional Conservatism.

   Fascism takes its name from the Fasces, an axe in a bundle of rods carried by the Roman lictors as a symbol of the authority of the magistrates. Fascism as a political movement began in Italy in the aftermath of the First World War, when Italians thought they had been badly let down in the postwar settlement, and there was an economic downturn and political instability. There appeared to be a danger of revolution, on the Russian Bolshevik model. Soon young men (many being ex-soldiers) were being organised into squads called "Fascisti di combattimento"), parading in uniforms of black shirts. Initially they were used as strike-breakers, but soon they began invading towns that were under Socialist control, beating up and expelling the councillors and taking over themselves. The police and the military stood by and did nothing.
   Mussolini had been a prominent socialist before the war; the editor of the main socialist newspaper. By now he had his own paper and had switched to become an extreme right-wing nationalist. He did not personally lead any of the Blackshirt outrages, but he provided them with propaganda, encouragement and direction through his journalism. If he had ordered them to halt their violence, it is questionable whether they would have taken any notice. When in autumn 1922 the Blackshirt squads marched on Rome to overthrow the government, Mussolini prudently remained behind in Milan, and only took the train to Rome when the government collapsed without firing a shot and the King summoned him to become Prime Minister. He then allowed the Blackshirts to parade through the capital and burn down the Socialist Party headquarters. When installed in government, Mussolini was initially cautious, and it was only a few years later that, probably under grassroots pressure from the Blackshirts, that he formally abolished Italian democracy and formed a one-party Fascist state. Even then, his dictatorship was comparatively mild by later standards.

Mussolini's success led to a host of imitations, combining the key factors of quasi-military parades, street violence, extreme nationalist rhetoric and hatred of Socialism and Communism. Groups such as the Iron Guard in Romania, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Action Francaise and of course the Nazis in Germany attempted to follow his methods. The British Union of Fascists never made much impact, and were ruthlessly parodied by P. G. Wodehouse in "The Code of the Woosters" in the form of the would-be dictator Roderick Spode and his troop of Blackshorts (the supply of colouerd shirts having been exhausted). 

Fascism was not then the generalized term of abuse which we see nowadays. Indeed, Mussolini was admired by many in the Western democracies, on the grounds that he had saved Italy from Bolshevik revolution and restored order (the famous "made the trains run on time" argument). The British and French leaders accepted him as an equal partner and a potential force for stability. Many Conservatives, and Italian Catholics, had grave doubts about Mussolini's character and methods, but were prepared to overcome these doubts because of their much greater fear of revolution from the Left. Despite his earlier left-wing utterances, when in power Mussolini (and later Hitler) was careful not to upset the big businessmen and landowners; and negotiated the establishment of the Vatican City as an independent state by the Lateran Treaty.
  
   It was only in the later 1930s that this changed.

I have always seen Mussolini as essentially having the soul of a tabloid journalist; concerned principally with what would look good in the next day's headlines. So initiatives would be announced, striking pronouncements made and foreign policy adventures started; and if nothing much useful happened, it didn't matter, because soon new promises would be made and the old ones forgotten. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a genuine Facsist ideology behind the headline-grabbing.
   The first aspect would have to be not just the acceptance but the glorification of violence. Mussolini proclaimed that fighting was not just a means to an end, but a good thing in itself: it provided an opportunity for the "natural leaders" to come to the fore and separated the weak from the strong, both individually and nationally. He always stated that he wished to prepare the Italian people for war, without ever setting out any definite target or aim for this aggression.
   Fascism differed from both classical Liberalism and from Marxism. Take the famous ideals of equality, freedom, justice and human rights, pointing towards a democratic system of government, as first set out by John Locke and summarised by Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence. These have formed the basis of western democratic thought ever since. The Marxists also accept them as ideals; but argue that they cannot be fully achieved under capitalism. Fascism, however, rejects them entirely.
   Fascists would begin by denying the notion of equality. Humans, they would say, are not equal. Some are bigger and stronger than others, some are clever than others, some are more fitted to rule than others. Most people, let's face it, are mediocre. To treat everyone as equal is not only unjust, but also stupid. It is both natural and expedient that the strongest and the best should lead. A democratic political system serves only to give power to the mediocre masses. Instead government should be in the hands of the "natural leaders" who have the "will to power" and are strong enough to accept responsibility. This doctrine can be applied to nations and to races as well as to individuals: war leads to the strongest nations dominating the inferior ones and the lesser breeds, as is only right and proper. (Although Mussolini banged on endlessly about the glories of the Roman Empire, there was little specific racism in Italian Fascism, and it was only in the later 1930s, under the influence of Hitler, that he introduced antisemitic laws into Italy). If you wish to some up Fascist ideology in its simplest form; think of the school bully who says to smaller boys, "Get out of my way or I'll hit you!" What Fascism would allow the bully to say is, "I'm bigger than you, and therefore I'm more important than you, and so I have a right to hit you if I want to!"    

Hitler began as an imitator of Mussolini, with his brownshirted stormtroopers (S.A.) and campaigns of street violence in Munich. But in November 1923 his attempt to stage a coup there, Mussolini-style, was a complete failure. After he was released from a short prison sentence he realised he would have to adopt more constitutional means to take power; though he never renounced street violence. He came to power in January 1933 by a combination of electoral success, political intrigue and the threat of violence from the S.A. Very few in Germany could have anticipated what would follow.
   Hitler would have agreed with all the Fascist principles outlined above, but he had a clearer ideology and more precise aims. He did not identify with the German state (of which he only became a citizen in 1932), but with the German race. 
   Race was central to his outlook: the superiority of the German race and hence their rightful demand to rule the inferior ones. This especially applied to the Russians and other Slavic races to the east. Hitler's national circumstances were diferent: whereas Italy had been on the winning side in the war, Germany had lost. How could it possibly be that the superior German race had been defeated? Only if Germany had been betrayed by internal enemies; notably, in his mind, by Marxists and Jews. They must therefore be eliminated, both in revenge and to prevent any repetition of their treachery.
   The Jews loomed large in Hitler's mental world. He saw them as infiltrating all aspects of life in Germany, and in other countries too. Comparisions were drawn with rats, or maggots, or plague-germs. Exactly when, or why, Hitler became so aggressively antisemitic is not known. He was not alone in having these ideas, either in Germany or throughout Europe, though he expressed them with far more violence than most.
   Antisemitism is quite different from other forms of racism. Racist attacks on Blacks, Pakistanis, Irish or others usually portray them as mentally inferior to white people: little better than animals; but racist attacks on Jews suggest they are cunning, manipulative, and unscrupulous with money. Take the case of the classic antisemitic work, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; produced by the Tsarist secret police early in the 20th century. It purports to be a document in which Jewish leaders discuss their plans to take over the world. It was soon exposed as a crude forgery. But consider: postulating a Jamaican or an Irish plot to take over the world would simply be laughable, but a Jewish plot to take over the world would at least be worth considering. Antisemitism expresses the fear that Jews might be cleverer than us. How else could they have risen to dominate finance, culture, government?  
   19th century antisemitism had a persistent anti-capitalist tone, but after the First World War it tookon a new face. Many of the most prominent of the Russian revolutionaries had been Jewish (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others), and so was Rosa Luxemburg and other leaders of the failed left-wing revolutions in Germany after 1918. It occurred to Hitler, as a great revelation, that capitalism and communism were just opposite sides of the same coin: both part of the great Jewish conspiracy for world domination. In a famous speech as late as January 1939 he said that the financiers of Wall Street were in league with the commisars of the Kremlin; and that unless they were stopped, it would be the death of all civilisation.
   Hitler's attack on Russia in summer 1941 was therefore intended as the climax of his career. All his most deeply-held beliefs pointed towards it. The Slavs were an inferior race, led by Jewish communists, and for the good of humanity they must be crushed and the vast natural resources of Russia taken for the use of the superior race. The extermination of the Jews of Europe began at exactly the same time. No historian has ever found a directive from Hitler to initiate the Holocaust, and maybe no such document ever existed; but it is surely the case that such a major policy could not have begun without at least verbal instructions from the Fuhrer. 

As well as the notorious rant against the Jews in Book 1 of "Mein Kampf", Hitler had some interesting things to say about democracy at the start of Book 2. He asked why, if democracy was such a great system, there were no democratic armies or democratic companies? The strongest structure, he argued, was of hierarchical command. Thus, in an army, the generals decided strategy, the junior officers provided local leadership, the sergeants imposed discipline, and the rank and file did as they were told. Successful businesses were organised in a similar manner. It was significant, he argued, that this was actually how the Soviet Union was run, despite all the propaganda about "the workers' state". The purpose of any political system was to ensure that power was in the hands of the best leaders; and democracy was clearly failing to achieve this.   

Mussolini was openly contemptuous of Hitler when he met him for the first time in 1934. In that year he acted to deter a Nazi coup in Austria, which led Britain and France to see him as a useful check on Hitler's ambitions. But then he involved Italy in entirely unnecessary adventures, in Abyssinia and Spain and Albania, which are hard to view as anything other than mere headline-grabbers. As these increasingly alienated him from his Western friends, he instead hitched his wagon to Hitler's star. He signally failed to take action against Hitler's Anschluss with Austria in 1938, and joined the Axis alliance and the Anti-Comintern pact. He also passed pointless anti-Jewish laws.
   In a final belated act of sanity, Mussolini declared Italy neutral when war broke out in 1939, but a year later, with France about to collapse before the German offensive, he could not resist joining in. His intervention was disastrous for Italy, and at best dubiously helpful for Hitler. 

In 1945 Mussolini was shot by partizans and his body was strung upside down in Milan. It is tempting to say that it was no more than he deserved.