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There are numerous debates concerning fascism and ideology and where fascism fits on the political spectrum. The definitional debates and arguments by academics over the nature of fascism fill entire bookshelves.

Since the end of World War II, there has been considerable stigma associated with fascism, and few if any political groups in the past 60 years have openly identified themselves as fascist. As a result, fascism is often used as a term of abuse, a label used by people of all political views to insult their enemies (usually an Ad hominem). To a certain extent, this has spilled over into debates concerning the ideological nature of fascism, with adherents of some ideologies trying to draw parallels between fascism and their own ideological opponents. A common fallacy is Reductio ad Hitlerum, which is any argument along the lines of "Hitler (or fascism) supported X, therefore X must be evil". See also Godwin's Law. For the reasons outlined above, claims of a relationship between fascism and certain other ideologies (including those cited in this article) must be treated with caution.

Fascism

Fascism, capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. Similar political movements spread across Europe between World War I and World War II and took several forms such as Nazism and Clerical fascism. The term neo-fascism is generally used to describe post-WWII movements seen to have fascist attributes.

More generally, fascism, uncapitalized, is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizes) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.

There are elements of both left and right ideology in the development of fascism, but it generally attracts political support from right-wing and ultra-conservative movements and electoral parties. Some feel that fascism is more properly placed on the left than on the right, on the grounds that fascism is collectivist and statist rather than individualist. Some reject the dichotomy of left right politics entirely. This is discussed in more detail below.

Fascism and the political spectrum

Despite important differences from other right-wing ideologies, fascism is often considered to be a part of "the Right." This is somewhat parallel to the customary inclusion of Marxism-Leninism (and, in particular, that of the Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China) in "the left." Nonetheless, fascism differs significantly from other politics that are usually classified as right-wing, and most right-wingers (even many far right groups) reject any association with it. Most left-wingers (even many communists) similarly reject any association with Stalinism and Maoism.

Fascism developed in Italy out of fascio, a form of radical socialism. While opposing communism and social democracy, fascism was rooted in radical left philosophy, including the theories of those such as Gabriele D'Annunzio (a former anarchist), Alceste de Ambris (influenced by anarcho-syndicalism), or former socialist Benito Mussolini. Zeev Sternhell traced the roots of Fascism to the revolutionary syndicalist Left of Italy and France, before Mussolini took power in Italy. A. James Gregor also traced the development of fascism to the Syndicalist movement in Italy. Philosophers such as Robert Michel, Sergio Panunzio, and Giovanni Gentile were originally syndicalists, a group normally identified with the Left and whose tactical propensity for direct action became an element in Italian Fascism. Although Mussolini began as a socialist, he disavowed his ties by the time he was leading the fascist party, and many of his old comrades on the Left were the first targets of his political police.

David Schoenbaum argued in his book Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 that Nazism contained certain revolutionary and socialist aspects (although more in rhetoric than in reality), and it was no coincidence that the Nazis often found themselves in a struggle with the Communists for the same constituency. The DAP, which later became the Nazi Party, was formed in response and in opposition to a brief Communist revolt in Bavaria. While the Nazis opposed individualism and laissez faire capitalism, vigorous opposition to Communism and Social democracy was a founding and continuing tenet of National Socialism.

In Mussolini's essay Doctrine of Fascism, (probably written by Gentile), it is claimed that:

  • "Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the "right", a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State."*

Fascism rejects Marxism and the concept of class struggle in favor of corporatism and class collaboration. The fascist view of the role of the state is sometimes said to exemplify why fascism would be placed on the right, rather than the left. Marxism considers the state to be merely a "tool of the people", sometimes calling it a "necessary evil", which exists to serve the interests of the people and to protect the common good. Ultimately, according to Marxists, the state will "wither away" to be replaced by a truly communist society. Certain forms of libertarian socialism reject the state altogether. Fascism however holds the state to be an end in and of itself (see also statism).

Georgi Dimitrov developed the idea promoted by the Communist International that fascism is "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital," however many contemporary Marxists question that view.

Imperial Japan in the 1930s and during World War II, while a distinct phenomenon, is also ordinarily understood as an expression of a right-wing philosophy; but like other forms of fascism, it is only unequivocally right wing if the terms of comparison are limited.

Griffin, Eatwell, Laqueuer, and Weber are reluctant to call fascism simply a right-wing ideology. Yet in their lengthy discussions they observe that generally fascism and neofascism ally themselves with right-wing or conservative forces on the basis of racial nationalism, hatred of the political left, or simple expediency.

  • Laqueuer (1996): "But historical fascism was always a coalition between radical, populist ('fascist') elements and others gravitating toward the extreme Right" p. 223.

  • Eatwell (1996) talks about the need of fascism for "syncretic legitimation" which sometimes led it to forge alliances with "existing mainstream elites, who often sought to turn fascism to their own more conservative purposes." Eatwell also observes that "in most countries it tended to gather force in countries where the right was weak" p. 39.

  • Griffin (1991, 2000) also does not include right ideology in his "fascist minimum," but he has described fascism as "Revolution from the Right" (2000), pp. 185-201.

  • Weber: "...their most common allies lay on the right, particularly on the radical authoritarian right, and Italian Fascism as a semi-coherent entity was partly defined by its merger with one of the most radical of all right authoritarian movements in Europe, the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI)." (* 1982), p. 8.

According to these scholars, as well as Payne (1995), Fritzsche (1990), Laclau (1977), and Reich (1970), there are both left and right influences on fascism as a social movement, and right-wing ideology should not be considered part of the "fascist minimum", but, nonetheless, fascism, especially once in power, has historically attracted support primarily from the political right.

Fascists themselves often rejected categorization as left or right-wing, claiming to be a "third force" (see international third position and political spectrum for more information). However, the only relevant self-proclaimed fascist party in the post-war period, the Italian Social Movement called itself "National Right".

A. James Gregor in his book, The Faces of Janus, not only rejects the Marxist analysis of fascism, but also rejects the Left-Right dichotomy completely.

Some scholars, such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and John T. Flynn, dissent from the idea that fascism is a right-wing movement. This view also stresses the collectivist aspect of organizing the fascist nation, as do some other authors, primarily on the political right.*

In contemporary politics, neofascists and neonazis are said to be far-right. Authoritarian conservatives such as supporters of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet or supporters of the military juntas that ruled much of Latin America in the 1970s are also said to be far-right.

Hans Eysenck and others explored the issue of political values through interviews and found that adherents to fascist movements in post World War II societies test as only slightly more conservative than radical in political inventories, but are found to be much more marked in their support for "tough-minded" policies. This dimension of tough-mindedness strongly differentiated the members of fascist political organizations from conventional conservatives and particularly from exponents of right-wing religious ideologies, which tend to be more "tender-minded" On the other hand, fascists were found to share political tough-mindedness, together with traits such as dogmatism and aggressiveness, with members of communist organizations (although the communist subjects were much more radical in their political orientation than the fascist subjects).

Fascism and totalitarianism

Since the fall of the Nazi regime, many theorists have argued that there are similarities between the government of Nazi Germany and that of Stalin's Soviet Union. In most cases this has taken the form of arguing that both Nazism and Stalinism are forms of totalitarianism. They condemn both groups as dictatorships and totalitarian police states. They argue that communist states have had much in common with fascist states, in matters ranging from militarism to censorship. In addition, both Hitler and Stalin committed mass murder of their country's civilians who did not fit in with their plans. This view was advanced most famously by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

Hannah Arendt asserts that Nazism and Stalinism are two forms of totalitarianism, and that "totalitarian movements use socialism and racism by emptying them of their utilitarian content, the interests of a class or nation." (The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, page 348). Arendt, however, excludes Italian Fascism from that classification, claiming that it was a traditional form of dictatorship which didn't submit the state to the party (see the second section on Imperialism).

Most other authors have included Fascism in the definition of totalitarianism, among them Karl Popper and others. However, neither Arendt nor Popper challenged the prevailing perception of communism being on the left and fascism on the right.

Proponents of communism argue that the Marxist concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is not the same as the fascist concept of dictatorship. Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to mean workers' democracy: dictatorship by the working class, rather than the dictatorship by the capitalist class that Karl Marx claimed existed in the capitalist societies of his time.

They claim that this concept was distorted under Stalin, in a deviation from Marxism, to mean dictatorship by the General Secretary over the Party and the working class. Opponents of Communism, however, argue that the Soviet Union was already dictatorial under Lenin.

According to David Nolan's Nolan chart, "fascism" occupies a place on the political spectrum as the capitalist equivalent of communism, wherein a system that supports "economic liberty" is constrained by its social controls such that it becomes totalitarian.

Fascism, Nazism, socialism, collectivism, and corporatism

Italian Fascism clearly had roots in socialist circles, and Nazism is an abbreviation for "National Socialist German Workers Party", and Nazi leaders described their ideology as socialist. Thus, a number of people believe that Nazism were forms of socialism, or that there are similarities between fascism and socialism or communism. This connection has been rejected to by virtually all who consider themselves socialist in any sense other than "national socialism", then and now.

Much depends on the definition that one chooses to give to the term "socialism". Definitions of socialism can range from the very restrictive to the very broad; for instance, some libertarian writers use the word "socialism" to mean any state interference in the economy, regardless of the ideology behind it.

Critique by the Austrian School

Nazism is seen as a variant of socialism by the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Nobel prize winner Friedrich Hayek. In Omnipotent Government, von Mises lays out the case that the National Socialists were simply one of many possible forms of "socialism in practice," the Soviets another. They both pursued similar goals, including controlling their internal prices and wages (autarky), but the Germans simply didn't have the resources. Since the Germans had already learned the hard way in WWI that colonialism would not work, their only alternative was to absorb their neighbors. This line of argument is supported by the prognostication laid out in the "Eastern Policy" chapter in Mein Kampf.

Hayek argues that the differences between nazism and totalitarian forms of socialism, such as Stalinism, are rhetorical rather than actual. In particular, he states that the economic preferences of the nazis mirrored those of the socialists and communists. For example, all three put in place capital controls, wage and price controls as means of controlling the economy (and, subsequently, the people as Hayek's Road To Serfdom claimed). He found the distinctions to be nothing more than rhetorical differences in the justifications for why these economic preferences are put in place: to protect the lower class in class warfare, or to protect the interest of the state. Such rhetorical differences are therefore said to be negligible compared to the outcomes of the state economic control used by the three ideologies.

Hayek argued in The Road to Serfdom that central planning, as Hayek believed was required in any socialist nation, led inevitably toward totalitarianism. He claimed that Nazism was the logical outcome of central planning, not an aberration. One of the supports of his argument is the socialist pedigree of many of Hitler's intellectual forerunners, including Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Werner Sombart, and others*.

In 1947, Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book entitled Planned Chaos. He asserted that fascism and Nazism were socialist dictatorships and that both had been committed to the Soviet principle of dictatorship and violent oppression of dissenters. He argued that Mussolini's major heresy from Marxist orthodoxy had been his strong endorsement of Italian entry into World War I on the Allied side. (Mussolini aimed to "liberate" Italian-speaking areas under Austrian control in the Alps.)

Collectivism and corporatism

While fascist states generally allowed private property at least in name, many libertarian economists see similarities between the state intervention in fascist economies and that of socialist or even communist nations. Some economists like the Objectivist George Reisman argue that the National Socialist economy was "de facto socialism" due to extensive governmental control over nominal private property, noting especially the presence of wage and price controls. Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner, however, argue that the view that private property in the Nazi economy existed in name only is incorrect. They hold that while there was substantial central planning of private industry, the severity of the restrictions did not arise to the level of rendering private property a mere formality. Buchheim and Scherner describe the system as a "state-directed private ownership economy." Thomas R. Eddlem, a journalist with the John Birch Society, argues that private property in a fascist economy is "simply heavy government regulation and control of what is only nominally private property." .

Under an economic definition — for example one stating that socialism is any economic system based on extensive central planning of the economy and public ownership over the means of production — the distinction becomes less clear. Advocates of the view that Nazism was a typical instance of socialism often hold a broad definition of socialism; for example, they may argue that many forms of economic interventionism by the government necessarily constitute socialist policy. In contrast, socialists sometimes describe this as state capitalism.

Industries and trusts were not nationalised in Nazi Germany, with the exception of private rail lines (nationalised in the late 1930s to meet military contingencies). The only private holdings that were expropriated were those belonging to Jews. These holdings were then sold or awarded to businessmen who supported the Nazis and satisifed their ethnic and racial policies. Military production and even film production remained in the hands of private industries whilst serving the Nazi government, and many private companies flourished during the Nazi period. The Nazis never interfered with the profits made by such large German firms as Krupp, Siemens AG, and IG Farben. The Nazis did however demand 'voluntary' contributions from these private companies which were more often than not paid.

Nevertheless, efforts were made to coordinate business's actions with the needs of the state, particularly with regard to rearmament, and the Nazis established some state-owned concerns such as Volkswagen. The Nazis also engaged in an extensive public works program including the construction of the Autobahn system. Independent trade unions were outlawed, as were strikes, much like the labour practices of State Communism. The Nazi war economy, large public works projects, demand for total employment, and state interventions such as the National Labour Law of January 20, 1934 * involved strong state intervention in the economy.

The fascist economic model of corporatism, however, promoted class collaboration by attempting to bring classes together under the unity of the state, a concept that is anathema to classic socialism.

Critics of corporatism (ranging from libertarian economists Mises, Flynn, and Hayek to socialists such as Gabriel Kolko and anarchists such as Kevin Carson), argue that fascism is in some ways similar or even identical to corporatism.*.

Fascism and the United States

(More contemporary forms of fascism are discussed on the page Neo-Fascism).

While some people hold the view that there are certain fascist elements operating within the United States, very few scholars would call the U.S. a fascist country. Nonetheless, cases have been made both for and against this allegation, typically from those on the left and right of the political spectrum. Most of the discussion about 'American fascism' concerns America during the presidency of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, a time when fascism was on the rise throughout Europe and became a popularly known political phenomenon, resulting in comparisons between the United States and fascist nations such as Italy. Kolko, for example, saw some parallels between Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt. In 1954, however, Richard Hofstadter chided those who had worried about "several close parallels" between FDR’s N.R.A. and fascist corporatism.

Primarily from the political left are those who point to the Business Plot, which was an alleged attempt to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt by military coup, allegedly because the widespread popularity of the New Deal threatened the interests of the industrial and financial elite. The Business Plot became popularly known following 1933, when retired General Smedley Butler testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that he had been approached by a group of wealthy business interests, led by the Du Pont and J. P. Morgan industrial empires, to orchestrate a fascist coup against Roosevelt. The Fascist sympathies and support for Germany and Italy of many of the richest families in America and payments to William Randolph Hearst for favorable articles in the American press were mentioned in American ambassador to Germany William Dodd's letters to FDR. The idea of fascism developing in the United States was presented in the 1935 satirical novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and more recently in the 2004 Phillip Roth novel The Plot Against America.

On the other hand, some on political right, particularly libertarians and supporters of the free market, argue that particularly during Roosevelt's successive terms in Government introduced fascism to America. This view is nearly entirely based on an anti-statist criticism of the New Deal, which makes socialism, fascism and any form of state intervention ideologically equivalent (Comparisons are drawn between the cartelisation of Italian industry by Mussolini and the 'cartelisation' of American industry by Roosevelt under the National Recovery Act, which was ruled as an unconstitutional usurption of Legislative power by the Executive Branch.) Critics of Roosevelt's economic policy like John T. Flynn saw major links between the 'generic' fascism and a large number of policies of the United States. President Ronald Reagan argued that many New Dealers admired Benito Mussolini's Fascism.

Historical view from the Right

A small number of libertarians and ultraconservatives argue that the U.S. has been imposing a fascist system of government since the New Deal. The central argument is that while similar to state socialism in its authoritarianism, fascism prefers state control over ostensibly private property rather than nationalization as carried out by Roosevelt. According to Joseph R. Stromberg:

"More recently, historians have taken a second look at the actual structural parallels in these corporatist experiments. While it is now generally agreed that corporatism survived the demise of fascism, it can also be asked whether fascism survived its supposed death."

In 1944, John T. Flynn made the case in "As We Go Marching," where he enumerated the stigmata of generic fascism, surveyed the interwar policies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and pointed to what he called uncomfortably similar American policies.

For Flynn, the hallmarks of fascism were:
  • 1) unrestrained government;
  • 2) an absolute leader responsible to a single party;
  • 3) a planned economy with nominal private ownership of the means of production;
  • 4) bureaucracy and administrative "law";
  • 5) state control of the financial sector;
  • 6) permanent economic manipulation via deficit spending;
  • 7) militarism, and
  • 8) imperialism (pp. 161-62).
Flynn then argued that these all existed under the wartime New Deal administration (pp. 166-258).

"Pragmatic American liberalism had produced 'a genteel fascism' without the ethnic persecutions and full-scale executive dictatorship seen overseas." - Joseph R. Stromberg, Fascism: Déjà Vu All Over Again

Since 1959 the John Birch Society has promoted the idea that the New Deal was a form of collectivism borrowed from fascism and leading toward communism, often wrapping the package in conspiracy theory. For example, William P. Hoar says the "economics of Fascist Italy were...imported into this country by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose C.C.C., W.P.A., PWA. and other Depression-era schemes proved so damaging." He quotes President Herbert Hoover criticizing FDR's programs, in his memoirs, as being fascist: "Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 .... ideas were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's corporate state' and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true." Hoar says, "As was the case in corporate socialist Italy, and Germany, American corporations were financing and organizing corporate socialism right here in the United States in an effort to consolidate and control, i.e., monopolize, the wealth and productivity of the American economy for themselves. This was the essence of the New Deal."(Hoar, William P. Architects of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History, Western Islands, 1985, p. 127)

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President of the United States, he expressly adopted a variety of measures to see which would work; including several which their proponents felt would be inconsistent with each other. One of these programs was the National Recovery Administration, which, with its codes and industry organizations, bore a certain resemblance, as an economic institution, to Mussolini's syndicalism. This was a commonplace comparison at the time, and not necessarily a critical one; even Winston Churchill had moderately praised Mussolini. In partisan or eccentric moments, this might be extended to political likeness. When the NRA was found unconstitutional, many within the New Deal, including Adolf Berle and Harold Ickes, did not regret its passing. In the 1960s historians generally maintained that the NRA was a composite based on input from only Americans--it was modeled after the 1917 War Industries Board of Woodrow Wilson; Hawley found no European models whatever. (Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly 1966, ch 1) Hugh Johnson, from that board, had helped draft the NRA and was its first head, but he vehemently denied any Italian inspiration.

Historian Benjamin Alpers concludes 35:

A second major source of the decline of dictatorial rhetoric following the spring of 1933 was the disenchantment of American business with the Italian economic model. Much conservative business support for a dictator or a "semi-dictator" had been related to the idea of establishing a corporative state in the United States..... The last gasp of support for Mussolini's solution to the problems of labor and management may have been the publication of Fortune magazine's special issue on the fascist state in July 1934. Business approval of government intervention in capital-labor relations had begun to wear off as the business community began to actually experience it under the NRA; it discovered that such an arrangement, at least in its American incarnation, meant state involvement in business, not self-government by wealth....After 1935, business journals began to equate fascism with communism, denouncing both the Italian system and the NRA as "state socialism." At exactly the same moment liberal supporters of Roosevelt began to deny the similarity between the NRA and fascism.

Some Austrian School economists have since made similar claims about other aspects of the New Deal; for example, Sheldon Richman's sentence on the AAA This line of argument has also been adopted by supporters of later authoritarian regimes, such as the former Bosnian Serb spokesman and historian, Srđa Trifković who says that "Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust," the architects of the New Deal, were fascinated by Italy’s fascism — a term which was not pejorative at the time. In America, it was seen as a form of economic nationalism built around consensus planning by the established elites in government, business, and labor." Other historians who have analyzed the origins of the AAA in depth have discovered no inspiration from Europe. (Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal (1982)].

Critics of New Deal policies who make the comparison with fascism do not always argue that these policies acquired their roots in European fascism but held significant economic preferences shared by European fascism. This comparison view, however, does not mean that such policies are fascist, but only that these policies share common prefrences.

These matters are further discussed in the New Deal entry.

References
  1. From an earlier essay, collected in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 65.
  2. For example, Reply to Press Inquiry, Palo Alto May 15, 1935
  3. See, inter alia, Harold L. Ickes Autobiography of a Curmudgeon 1943
  4. Eddlem, Thomas R. Introduction. And Not a Shot is Fired by Jan Kozak, Appleton, WI: Robert Welch University Press, 1999.
  5. Richman, Sheldon ''Fascism Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 1993, 2002.
  6. Trifkovic, Srdja. FDR and Mussolini Chronicles magazine, August 2000.
  7. Buchheim, Christoph and Scherner, Jonas. The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry University of Mannheim, Germany.

Sources

  • Richard M. Ebeling, When the Supreme Court Stopped Economic Fascism in America
  • Richard M. Ebeling, Don't Blame the Thermometer for the Fever Freeman Magazine, 1999. This article refers to the NRA, not the rest of the New Deal
  • John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, by , San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1998. 0930073274Book Review
  • John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, Doran, 1944).
  • Friedrich A. Hayek, (ed.), Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism, Ludwig Von Mises as contributor (London: Routledge, 1935).
  • Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1944).
  • Ludwig Von Mises, Omnipotent Government, the Rise of the Total State and Total War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944).
  • Ludwig Von Mises, Planned Chaos (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y: Foundation for Economic Education, 1947).
  • Ludwig Von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, (Princeton, N.J: Van Nostrand. 1956).
  • Lawrence Reed, Great Myths of the Great Depression Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
  • Hans F. Sennholz, “The Great Depression,” The Freeman (April 1975): 212-213; quoted in Lawrence W. Reed, “Great Myths of the Great Depression” above.
  • FDR Scandal Page
  • Fireside Chat on Reorganization of the Judiciary, March 9 1937.

Fascism and Conservatism

There is some controversy about the ideological impact of the conservative element in fascism. European fascism drew on existing anti-modernist conservatism, and on the conservative reaction to communism and 19th-century socialism. Conservative thinkers such as historian Oswald Spengler provided much of the world view (Weltanschauung) of the Nazi movement. However, traditionalist, monarchist, and Roman Catholic conservatives often despised the fascist mass movements, and the personality cult around the leader. In Britain, the conservative Daily Mail enthusiastically backed Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and part of the Conservative Party supported closer ties with Nazi Germany. When defeat in World War II ideologically and historically discredited fascism, almost all Western conservatives tried to distance themselves from it. Nevertheless, many post-war Western conservatives continued to admire the Franco regime in Spain, clearly conservative but also fascist in origin. With the end of the Franco regime and Portugal's Estado Novo in the 1970s, the relationship between conservatism and classical European fascism was further weakened.

Militarism is perhaps the most striking similarity between Fascism and contemporary American conservatism. Of course, there are many liberals in America who support the military and even call for increased military spending. Even so, American liberals are traditionally more skeptical of the military than American conservatives. Left-wing activists and intellectuals often claim that, like Hitler, Neoconservatives see the military as a paradigm for problem solving (even in situations that may render militarism impractical or unethical).

The relationship of fascism to right-wing ideologies (including some that are described as neo-fascist) is still an issue for conservatives and their opponents, much as that between communism to left-wing ideologies is for liberals. Especially in Germany, there is a constant exchange of ideology and persons, between the influential national-conservative movement, and self-identified national-socialist groups. In Italy too, there is no clear line between conservatives, and movements inspired by the Italian Fascism of the 1920s to 1940s, including the Alleanza Nazionale which was a member of the governing coalition under ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi. Conservative attitudes to the 20th-century fascist regimes are still an issue.

Fascism and police state regimes

The fascist states from the period between the two world wars were police states as were many post-WWII communist states. Conversely, there have been multi-party socialist states that have not been police states, and non-socialist states that have been police states.

Examples of police states in modern times, outside of the Communist world, include:

Neo-Fascism

Contemporary neo-fascism and allegations of neofascism are covered in a number of other articles rather than on this page:

See also

References

General bibliography

  • De Felice, Renzo Interpretations of Fascism, translated by Brenda Huff Everett, Cambridge ; London : Harvard University Press, 1977 ISBN 0674459628.
  • Hughes, H. Stuart. 1953. The United States and Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914-45. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0299148742
  • Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.

Bibliography on Fascist ideology

  • De Felice, Renzo Fascism : an informal introduction to its theory and practice, an interview with Michael Ledeen, New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Books, 1976 ISBN 0878551905.
  • Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991, Routledge, London.
  • Schapiro, J. Salwyn. 1949. Liberalism and The Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France (1815-1870). New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press.
  • Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. * 1994. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution., Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195057805
  • Gentile, Emilio. 2002. Fascismo. Storia ed interpretazione . Roma-Bari: Giuseppe Laterza & Figli.

Bibliography on international fascism

  • Coogan, Kevin. 1999. Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia.
  • Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  • Weber, Eugen. * 1982. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)

Further reading

Conserative & Libertarian

External links

Conservative & Libertarian

Fascism | Political theories | Economic ideologies | Anti-communism

 

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