3. Fascism Flashcards
How does Mark Antliff describe Nazi and italian fascism?
“the Nazi regime-like its Italian counterpart and fascist movements in France-looked to both a mythic past and a technological future in a manner that seems highly contradictory.”
What was the rise of fascsism in response to?
“Indeed, the rise of fascism in Europe responded to a widespread search for spiritual values and “organic” institutions capable of counteracting what was considered the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on the body politic.” (Antliff)
How did Marxists see fascism?
“Marxists Robert Sayre and Michael Lowry have configured fascism as one manifestation of what they call “Romantic anti-capitalism,” an umbrella term for an “opposition to capitalism in the name of pre-capitalist values””
“For Sayre and Lowry this worldview precipitated a “nostalgia” for a “pre-capitalist past, or at least for one in which capitalism was less developed.””
What had capitalism done to humanity?
“Capitalism had reportedly stifled our imaginative capacity by immersing human subjectivity and emotions in a system based on “extreme mechanization” and “quantitative calculation and standardization,” thus instigating a “yearning for unity” both with “the universe of nature” and “the human community.” (Antliff)
What was a key component of fascism according to Antliff?
“This appeal to past values in the name of a noncapitalist future society is a key characteristic of fascism”
Even though fascsim rejected the present, what did they do?
“Indeed, fascists, though opposed to Enlightenment ideals and capitalist precepts, were eager to absorb those aspects of modernity (and modernist aesthetics) that could be reconfigured within their antirational concept of national identity.” (Antliff)
“the Weimer Republic and the Third Reich “who rejected liberal democracy and the legacy of the Enlightenment, yet simultaneously embraced the modern technology of the second industrial revolution.” (Antliff)
What are some common features of fascism?
“Common denominators uniting modernist aesthetics and fascism include concepts of cultural, political, and biological regeneration”
What is Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism?
“Griffin’s definition of fascism as “a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”
What role did myths play in fascism?
“In each case, mythmakers drew a strong contrast between a decadent present, rife with political and ethical corruption, and their vision of a regenerated future society, premised, in no small part, on the spiritual transformation of each individual within the body politic.”
What is palingenesis?
“According to Griffin, the mythic core of fascism was that of national palingenesis. “Etymologically,” states Griffin, “the term ‘palingenesis,’ deriving from palin (again, anew) and genesis (creation, birth), refers to the sense of a new start or of a regeneration after a phase of crisis or decline which can be associated just as much with mystical (for example the Second Coming) as secular realities (for example the New Germany).”
How would paligenesis come about?
“to reinvigorate the body politic, fascists looked beyond a decadent present to past eras, but they did not advocate a nostalgic return to, say, the era of Imperial Rome. Instead, they sought to incorporate qualities associated with past eras into the creation of a radically new society, fully integrated with twentieth-century industrialism and technology. In Sorelian fashion, selective moments from a nation’s historical past were utilized for their mythic appeal as a catalyst for the radical transformation of present society.” (Antliff)
What role did the past play in fascsism?
“Griffin notes that the role of the past in Nazi ideology was rather to supply values that would facilitate the nation’s rebirth, pointing out that “the Nazis no more wanted to return Germany to the period of the Volkswanderungen (tribal migrations) or the Holy Roman Empire than the [Italian] fascists wanted to return literally to the age of the Romans or the Renaissance. Instead, fascists selectively plundered their historical past for moments reflective of the values they wished to inculcate for their radical transformation of national consciousness and public institutions.” (Antliff)
How did Nazi’s use the countryside?
“Nazi imagery used the countryside as “the focus for the palingenetic myth of renewal and sustenance, not for a retreat from the twentieth century.” Similarly, the Nazi celebration of Athenian society and Greek sculpture as an aesthetic ideal was wed to the modern pseudoscience of eugenics; the sculpture of Classical Greece functioned as a mythic prototype for the fascist “new man” who was destined to inhabit an industrialized Third Reich, devoid of “degenerate” races.” (Antliff)
How did Italin fascsim use the past?
“This simultaneous relation with both past and future also pertained to Italian fascism. Historian Emilio Gentile has concluded that in Italian fascist discourse and in Mussolini’s personal identification with Emperor Augustus, the “cult of Romanness was reconciled, without notable contradiction, with other elements of fascism, such as its activism, its cult of youth and sport, the heroic ideal of adventure, and above all the will to experience the new continuity in action projected towards the future, without reactionary nostalgia for an ideal past perfection to be restored.” (Antliff)
Where did the power of myths come from?
“the power of its myth lay precisely in an imaginary national essence of origins to be recovered and created anew.” (Antliff)
What role did art play in fascsim?
“Art, in short, was an agent for social transformation, a form of mythic activism marshalled by fascists to retool consciousness and society. Through its recourse to myth, fascism could address both past and future in its ideology. Implicit in the myth is the judgment of a decadent present in need of regenerative cultural renewal.” (Antliff)
What is a secular religion?
“Emilio Gentile, following George Mosse, has described this new politics as a form of “secular religion,” wherein fascist regimes “adapted religious rituals to political ends, elaborating their own system of beliefs, myths, rites, and symbols” with the aim “not only to govern human beings but to regenerate them in order to create a new humanity.” (Antliff)
What role did party rallies play in secular religion?
“Party rallies in turn took on all the trappings of religious ceremonies. “The Introitus, the hymn sung or spoken at the beginning of the church service, became the words of the Fuhrer; the ‘Credo’ a confession of faith pledging loyalty to Nazi ideology; while the sacrifice of the Mass was transformed into a memorial for the martyrs of the movement” (Antliff)
What impact did WW1 have for fascists?
“Fascists thought World War I had such mythic significance, for in their view citizens who had fought in the trenches had undergone a moral transformation as a result of their heroic defense of the nation. Mussolini and his followers then drew a dramatic contrast between these valiant soldiers and the corrupt politicians who had retained power throughout the conflict.” (Antliff)
How did fascist followers percieve themselves?
“The fascist rank and file conceived of themselves not as servile followers of a totalitarian leader but as converts to a cause who had undergone a spiritual and palingenetic transformation.” (Antliff)
What were the local fascist headquarters?
“Even the local public headquarters of the Fascist Party, the Casa del Fascio, were referred to as “churches of our faith” or “altars of the Fatherland’s religion,” and during the 1930s the party specified that each casa should have a “lictorial tower” equipped with bells that would ring during every party ceremony.” (Antliff)
What is the significance of primitive to fascists?
“For Hitler and his followers, the term primitive held positive and negative valences depending on its racial import. Nazis argued that the essence of the German folk resided in an Aryan genealogy with roots in Classical art and culture and that of the Gothic and Renaissance eras. Historians have noted Hitler’s and Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg’s literal association of Greek sculpture with their own eugenic program to create a fascist “new man,” untainted by the degenerative effects of racial “mixing.””
What had industrialism done to people?
“In effect, modern industrialism simultaneously declared “war on the organic manufacturer of whole products” and robbed workers of their own “qualitative” craft skills by reducing their labor to simple repetitive tasks and preventing them from producing a wholly finished object.” (Antliff)
How did the Italian fascists control time?
” The most dramatic instance of such social engineering was the “superimposition over the Gregorian calendar” of a fascist time frame, in which 1922 became ‘‘Year I” of the fascist era, signaling a regenerative break from the plutocratic decadence of the immediate past. The new calendar was then punctuated with certain days of national celebration, each with “a two fold mythic significance” (Antliff)
What is the link between the Nazis and rome?
“While images of labor inspired the German people to participate in this spiritual journey, Hitler’s monumental building projects asserted Nazi Germany’s status as a millennial regime not unlike ancient Rome. As Alex Scobie has demonstrated, Hitler and his principal architects pointedly modeled their architectural plans after Roman precedents. Ludwig Ruff’s proposed Kongresshalle in Nuremberg (1934- 35) was to resemble the Roman Colosseum; Speer’s and Hitler’s Volkshalle in Berlin (1937-40) imitated Hadrian’s Pantheon; and Casar Pinnau’s Public Bath planned for the capital (1940-41) was based on ancient Roman thermae.” “ (Antliff)
Were followers of fascism manipulated or convinced according to Mark Antliff?
“Too often fascism’s cultural politics are cast in terms of a cynical manipulation of the docile masses, with no allowance made for the appeal fascism had for the individual, or the internal point of view of the fascist rank and file. Concepts of secular religion were more than ideological tools for thought control; for the fascist believer they were agents for the spiritual uplifting and psychic conversion of individuals, who could then experience fascism’s redemptive value as a counter to the socioeconomic upheavals of interwar Europe.”
How have fascist regimes been portrayed?
“Fascist movements and regimes have usually been conceived as and presented themselves as national political forces. In fact, contemporaries as well as scholars have highlighted hyper-nationalism as one of the most important features of fascism which separated fascist movements and regimes from each other.”
What interpretation about international fascism has recieved acceptance?
“The interpretation that “international fascism is unthinkable, a contradiction in terms” has received broad support from most historians.” (Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe)
Was fascism transnational?
“Although its centers were in Rome and Berlin, fascism in interwar Europe was clearly transnational. Its reduction to Italy and Germany simplifies or even distorts the history of fascism. “
What are the three dimensions of transnation fascism?
“In conceptual terms, at least three dimensions of “transnational fascism” are to be distinguished. First, fascism was a transnational movement. It spread across borders, but specific national manifestations are conspicuous. Second, fascism was perceived as a transnational phenomenon, both by its adherents and its foes. Third, fascism can be analyzed from a transnational perspective. It includes comparative studies as well as investigations of transfers, exchanges, and even entanglements.”
How did fascism cross borders?
“Leaders as well as minor functionaries and members from different European states or movements met on innumerable occasions and different levels, not only to exchange views on ideological questions and policies, but also to communicate on political styles and representations. Not least, fascists of different nation-states repeatedly agreed on common initiatives.”
Where were the links between different national fascisms?
“Many fascists were aware of their affinity, as reflected in fascist political staging, especially its symbolism and rituals. For instance, they not only wore uniforms in order to impress and intimidate their opponents in domestic politics but also to demonstrate their claim to represent a transnational movement of warriors united by the hostility to common enemies, including the communists, democrats, conservatives, and liberals. The Soviet Union, in particular, was as strongly repulsed and despised as the Jews.”
What was the changing relationship between italian and german fascism?
“In World War II, the Duce had to adjust to an inferior position, although the remaining Italian Fascists emphasized Italy’s leading role as a cultural power. In 1944–45, Mussolini finally became Hitler’s lackey. Smaller fascist movements that never managed to seize power, or at least to exert sizable political influence in their countries, remained subordinate to or even dependent on the two major fascist regimes throughout the years from 1922 to 1945.”
How do Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe describe fascism?
“fascism was a moving target rather than a static entity”
How did George Orwell describe fascism?
As George Orwell stated in 1937: “Fascism is now an international movement, which means not only that the Fascist nations can combine for purposes of loot, but that they are groping, perhaps only half-consciously as yet, towards a world system.”
What other fascist regimes emerged after Musollini became prime minister?
“After Mussolini had been sworn in as prime minister of Italy in Rome on 31 October 1922 and successfully set up a full-fledged dictatorship in 1925, the Duce found an increasing number of admirers in European states as different as Britain, France, Germany, Croatia, and Ukraine. Thus, Rotha Lintorn Orman established the British Fascisti in 1923, and Pierre Taittinger set up his Jeunesses Patriotes in France two years later.”
How did fascist leaders overcome the failings of the modern world?
“Appalled by the contradictions and frictions of liberal and capitalist modernity, the fascist leaders strove for a comprehensive renewal, which was to be achieved by instilling heroic vitality, imposing military order, promoting racism, and subordinating individuals to the community and state.”
What did Mussolini celebrate?
“Mussolini and his followers celebrated the political and cultural legacy of ancient Rome through exhibitions, urban reconstructions, and excavations in Italy and North Africa.”
How did Italian fascists see themselves?
“Although Mussolini and his lieutenants initially emphasized the national character of Italian Fascism, their political ambitions clearly transcended the borders of Italy as early as the 1920s. They busily propagated the model of a new transnational European Fascist civilization purportedly embodied by their dictatorship. The Duce, therefore, encouraged Italian Fascists living in different European states to support the new regime.”
What had Mussollini committed humself to?
“Even before the Duce had openly committed himself to a “political and spiritual renewal of the world” in 1932, Italian Blackshirts were delegated to foreign countries in order to mobilize support for the Fascist regime. In China, 400 out of the 430 Italian residents belonged to the branch of the Fasci Italiani all’Estero in Beijing.”
What did Mussollini do in response to Hitler’s rise?
“As he felt challenged by the ascending rival movement, the Duce openly committed himself to intensified cross-border propaganda for the Italian model in 1932. To buttress his claim to political leadership in Europe, Mussolini started to subsidize fascists in foreign countries. In 1933–34, for instance, the Italian ambassador, Dino Grandi, passed considerable funds to the British Union of Fascists (BUF). It had been officially founded by former Conservative and Labour politician Sir Oswald Mosley in October 1932, following his encounter with Mussolini in Rome. “
What was the adoption of anti-semitism by foreign fascist movements in response to?
“The adoption of anti-Semitism and racism was largely due to the growing attractiveness of National Socialism to the radical Right throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, for instance, Anton Mussert’s Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (National Socialist Movement, NSB), which had initially been inspired by Italian Fascism, launched a propaganda campaign against the Jews in 1935.”
Why did transnational fascism not work?
“Fascists clearly espoused different versions of European unity. Thus, the Nazis aimed at German hegemony. Moreover, fissures between the Third Reich and Fascist Italy grew in the early 1940s. Due to his country’s weakness as an industrial nation, Mussolini had to succumb to Nazi Germany’s claims of superiority. As the Italian war efforts virtually collapsed in 1942–43, the Duce increasingly rejected the racist ideology and annihilation policies of the Nazis. “
How did fascists from different nations relate to each other?
“Despite their strong nationalist convictions, fascists felt related to each other and performed transnational exchange on a regular basis, regarding it as a part of their everyday life. The multifarious interactions resulted from diverse motivations such as common beliefs and interests, the hostility to communism, liberalism, and democracy, as well as the perceived need to discuss and agree on the future shape of their countries or of their continent.”
What aesthetics did fascists share across borders?
“Similarly, fascist aesthetics, including the style of uniforms, symbols on (national) flags, words, and the tunes of marching songs were clearly shaped by influences across national borders, although we should not disregard national specifics such as the role of folkloristic costumes in the movements of East and Southeast European fascists”
What was Italy meant to be?
“Italy was intended to spread fascist culture in the entire continent, which would create a common European fascist identity. Other parts of Europe would subordinate themselves to Italy and consider themselves to be the colonies of the true European fascist center—the truly Italian Rome.”
What is the solution to fascism for Eagleton?
“Yet the fight against fascism is also an inseparable aspect of the fight against the kind of society which produces it, and so indivisible as a task from the problem of building revolutionary leadership.”
What varies between fascisms for Eagleton?
“Whether or not that preparation involves racism and anti-semitism is historically variable. It obviously does so in the case of Nazism, where the Jew and foreigner are selected as devices for the displacement of internal class-struggle to national corporatism and inter-national aggression; but though all fascism involves such chauvinist corporatism at the ideological level, fascist formations such as the Iberian ones, which are not to be categorised with the ‘classical’ fascisms in terms of their economic goals, do not need to express this chauvinism in racist terms. (In 1932, the Chief Rabbi of Italy was a member of the fascist party.)”
How does Terry Eagleton define fascism?
“To risk a reductive formulation: fascism is essentially the attempt to ensure the rule of monopoly capitalism in its purest, most untrammelled, most invulnerable form.”
Who produces fascism according to Eagleton?
“It is, characteristically, the political product of those hordes of little possessors and investors who see their savings being cut to shreds, who fear being depressed into the proletariat below them yet simultaneously revolt against the ineffectual ruling class set above them.”
What are Eageltons ingredients of fascism?
“The ingredients of fascism, then, are multiple : economic and political crisis, proletarian defeat, failure of social democracy, absence or impotence of revolutionary leadership.”
What allows fascism to develop in Eagleton’s view?
“It is a dangerous leftist myth that fascism is the product of a frightened counter-reaction by the bourgeoisie to thrusting proletarian insurgency. On the contrary, it signifies a massive offensive by the bourgeoisie at a time when the working class is disorganised and defensive, betrayed by a reformist leadership, lacking a revolutionary alternative.”
Is fascism forced on people for Eagleton?
“For just as capitalism in its liberal forms governs largely with the consenting complicity of the governed, so fascism - which is effectively a slave-society - differs from classical slave-society in that it, too (at least to begin with) is an enormously popular movement, with its roots deeply sunk in every sector of the social formation.”
How does Eagleton describe the state under fascism?
“Fascism strips the veils of social democratic decency from the monopoly capitalist machine: the relations between the dominant social class and the state become less and less discreetly mediated through apparatuses like parliament and political parties, and become more and more brutally visible and direct.”
Eagleton on defining fascism
“There are no limits to which monopoly capitalism will not go to ensure its continuing hegemony”
How does Roger Eatwell define fascism?
“Generic fascism, transcending place and time, is identified as ‘an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way, though in practice fascism has tended to stress style, especially action and the charismatic leader, more than detailed programme, and to engage in a Manichaean demonisation of its enemies.’”
What differences have historians pointed to between italian and german fascism?
“Historians especially have pointed to major differences between what are commonly seen as its two paradigmatic examples—Nazism and Italian Fascism (both of which grew out of movements formed in the same year, 1919). Most frequently, the biological racist ideology of the Nazis is contrasted with the cultural nationalism of Italian Fascist leaders.” (Eatwell)
What has one leading student said about attempts to define fascism?
“Thus one leading student of the social-psychology of Nazi activists has written of the quest to identify a meaningful ideology that ‘rarely has so much intelligence been wasted on so unpromising a subject’.” (Eatwell)
How have marxists seen fascism?
“Marxists have typically seen it as a form of ‘dictatorship of capital’, while an influential sociological approach has defined fascism as ‘extremism of the centre’, a movement which emerges when the middle class experiences economic and status tensions.” (Eatwell)
Who has largely used the term fascist?
“the term has largely been used by opponents rather than as a form of self-reference (the Nazis rarely called themselves ‘fascist’).” (eatwell)
How many regimes were generally accepted as fascist?
“there were only two in peace-time inter-war Europe which are generally accepted as fascist” (Eatwell)
What undermines the idea that fascism was a product of the middle class?
“the now increasingly accepted fact that fascism could attract support from different social groups and was not merely a movement of the middle class. “ (Eatwell)
Where does Zeev Sternhell trace the origins of fascism to?
“Sternhell traces the birth of fascism to an anti-positivistic cultural revolt which began in the late nineteenth century in a variety of European countries, but which he believes became most clear in French developments” (Eatwell)
What people does Sternhell identify with fascism’s origin?
“a series of meetings before 1914 between Georges Valois and several other members of the Action Frangaise, and a group of revolutionary syndicalists led by Georges Sorel. “ (Eatwell)
What is Sternhell’s fascist minimum?
“Sternhell offers Valois’s famous formulation that ‘nationalism + socialism = fascism’ as his fascist minimum.” (Eatwell)
What sort of nationalism is sternhell concerned with?
“Sternhell is concerned with the new nationalism of the late 19th century, influenced by the rise of racial thinking, and typified in France by the organicist publications of Maurice Barrés, the high prophet of holistic’ ‘rootedeness’ and the need to forge a more martial youth—and one of the first thinkers in Europe to employ the term ‘national socialism’. “ (Eatwell)
What does Sternhell not consider to be fascist?
“A fourth problem concerns Sternhelľs long-standing rejection of Nazism as a form of fascism (though this view is shared by other notable commentators, such as Italy’s leading biographer of Mussolini, Renzo De Felice). Whilst Sternhell accepts that Barrés’s blood and soil views and anti-semitism had many affinities across the Rhine, he holds that Nazism’s biological determinism made it fundamentally different from fascism.” (Eatwell)
What is Stanley Payne’s definition of fascism?
“a form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as end as well as means and tends to normatize war and/or the military virtues.” (Eatwell)
What are some disparities between fascisms that Eatwell notes?
“Early Italian Fascism was not in any significant sense anti-Semitic. Even the centrality of anti-communism varied across Europe, depending on its immediate importance: for instance, it was not central to early Mosleyite fascism (though attacks from the communists led to growing street confrontations). Nor did most British and French fascists view violence as cathartic. Some forms of French fascism did not even stress the leader-principle—most notably Georges Valois’s Faisceau, which he had founded after breaking with the reactionary right-wing Action Frangaise.”
What is Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism?
“He holds that fascism’s ‘mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism’. The theme of rebirth (palingenesis) has been noted by other major commentators, including Gregor, Mosse and Sternhell. But Griffin is unique in having placed it at the heart of his definition” (Eatwell)
What is the benefit of Griffin’s definition?
“His definition also has the advantage of not being locked into a specific time period, thus avoiding the error of seeing fascism as essentially an inter-war phenomenon. Partly as a result of this, one of the leading pioneers of academic studies of fascism, Walter Laqueur, has recently written that Griffin’s definition ‘might be difficult to improve on’.” (eatwell)
What did the theme of rebirth allow fascists to do?
“the theme of rebirth was important because it allowed fascist propaganda to fudge whether what was really sought was a radically new society, or essentially a restoration of the old.” (Eatwell)
