Anatomy of Fascism Flashcards
Engels prediction on political ideology:
Suffrage delivers more left votes, that, major part of society socialist by end of 19th century - in Class Struggles in France.
When did the word Facism become what it is?
Left-wing nationalist in Mussolini’s Italy, 1914 pressure to join WW1 on allied side - the Fascio Rivoluzionario d’Azione Interventista
Then Fascismo to describe nationalist ex-soldiers post WW1 that he was gathering around himself.
When was fascism officially born?
Milan, March 23 1919, over 100 peopel(intellectuals, syndicalists, futurists) gathered in Milan Industrial and Commercial Alliance meeting room, to ‘declare war on socialism, because it opposes nationalism’.
What was Italian fascists built on?
Italian Expansionist aimes into Bulkans and Mediterranean, proposed women’s suffrage and vote at 18, abolition of ‘upper house’, convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, assembling 8 hr work days in industry, expropriating wealth by capital tax, seizure of church profits…
Groups that made up bulk of Mussolonis followers:
Futurist intellectuals, pro-war syndicalists, demobilized war veterans - who felt entitled to rule the country they had saved.
Justification for Italy’s entry into WW1:
It would bring about the syndicalist social revolution
Who were the intellecutal Futurists in Italy:
Artists and writes ‘praised qualities of speed and violence over history and culture of museums and legacy.
How Italian Fascism burst into history:
Attack on the Avanti daily newspaper - 4 dead, 39 injured, in the name of higher national good - began with violence against socialism.
When Mussolini came to power?
1922, alongside aspiring dictators across Europe - nationalism, anti-capitalism, voluntarism, and active violence.
Aristotles 3 types of misgovernment:
Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Democracy
How did Marxists define fascism?
The instrument of the bourgeoisie of fighting the proletariat when legal means to subdue them were insufficient.
What did the Marxist fascism defintion evolve into in Stalin’s day?
The open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist, and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
What has the loose, malleable defintion of Fascism meant for the word?
It has become all-applicable, weaponised, and useless.
What personalises fascism?
An all-powerful dictator, with the false impression that we can understand it fully by scrutinizing the leader alonge.
Consequences of Fascist personalising:
Diverts attention from persons, groups, and institutions that supported fascism.
The prorpagandist personalisation of fascism:
Idea nation predisposed to fascism, responsding to it because of national character, that a defective history of certain nations spawned fascism.
Why is the historical personalising of fascism bad?
Presents idea that ‘It can’t happen here’ - Musollini’s italy backed initially by jewish people, turned anti-semetic very quickly
Supposed essential character of fascism:
Anticapitalist, antibourgeois sentiment - attacked international finance capitalism - yet when came to power, they enforced anti-socialist agenda (banned strikes, disolved labour unions, lowerered wage earners purchasing power, funded armaments industries.
How have many characterised fascism’s economic approach?
As anticapitalist by many, others coming to its aid in trouble, propped up by emergency means
Fascist anti-capital sentiment:
Extended to international finance, but supported local industries forming the social base for reinvigorated nation.
Fascism and Economic Forces:
Economy not prime mover of history, that interwar period dysfunctional capitalism not need reordering, but cured by full employment and productivity - selective confiscation of property from political opponents.
How fascism reshaped rights:
Redrew the frontiers between public and private: practice of citizenship not an enjoyment of constituional rights but participation in conformity
How did the relationship of modernity and fascism develop?
Facism explpoited protests of rapid industrilization and globalization using modern propaganda.
What is a ‘Fascist’?
Embracing of fascism ideology - a total system of thought harnessed to a world-shaping project
