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Did Fascism end with the Allied victory over the Axis powers in 1945, or has it been lying dormant and is now re-awakening as we move into the 21st century? Introducing Fascism trace the origins of Fascism in 19th-century traditions of ultra-conservatism, the ideas of Nietzsche, Wagner and other intellectuals which helped to make racist doctrines respectable and which led to the ultimate horrifying 'logic' of the Holocaust. Introducing Fascism investigates the four types of Fascism that emerged after the First World War in Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also looks beyond the current headlines of neo-Nazi hooliganism and examines the increasing political success of the far right in Western Europe and the explosion of ultra-nationalisms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
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Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPEmail: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-178578-007-3
Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights
Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Is Fascism Over?
What is Fascism?
Ultraconservatism
The Ultraconservatives and Racism
The Dreyfus Affair
Another Forgery
…and Pogroms
The Stage Is Set for World War One
The Breeding-Ground of Fascism
A Totalitarian or Corporative State
Nostalgia and Imperialism
The German Model
The Instrument is Terror
Purging the Brownshirt Storm Troopers
The Survival of the Fittest
The Logic of the Holocaust
“Ethnic Cleansing”
A War Economy
The End of Hitler’s “Thousand-Year” Reich
The Spanish Model
El Moviemento
The International Brigades
40 Years of Fascist Dictatorship
Other Brands of European Fascism
The British Case
Reasons for the Failure of Fascism in Pre-war Britain
The Battle of Cable Street
The Axis Domination of Europe
The Case of Japan
Recession and Rebellion
The Niniroku
Before Pearl Harbour
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
The Balance Sheet of Fascism
The Essential Scapegoat of Fascism
The Wannsee Conference
What are the Attractions of Fascism?
The “Greenness” of Fascism
THE MEDIA - How Fascism Made Itself Attractive
Film
The Pornography of Death
Fine Art
A Nostalgia for the Future
From Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto (1909)
Caricature
Symbols and Rituals
Architecture
The End of Fascism?
The Reverse Course and the Cold War
Japan’s Last Shogun
The Armed Forces That Don’t Exist
And in Occupied Germany?
And What About Former Collaborators?
Shelter and Escape Routes
The Case of Italy
Consequences of the Cold War Policy in Italy
The Massacre of Communists in Sicily
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist
An Attempted Coup
The Black Eversion
Don’t Ask Embarrassing Questions!
Italy in the 90s
The Case of Spain
Neo-Nazism in Germany
What about Neo-Nazi Violence?
Some Reasons for Neo-Nazism
Where Does That Leave Germany’s Conservatives?
Neo-Fascism in Eastern Europe
Neo-Fascism in Britain
A Left Opposition to the NF
Neo-Fascism in France
The Spread of Neo-Fascism
Did Hitler Really Exist?
The Respectable Right
Neo-Fascism - “News Today, Gone Tomorrow?”
Nostalgia and Maladjustment
Finally…
Fascism - An Update
Suggested Further Reading
Index
NOT COMPLETELY. THE SPANISH DICTATORSHIP OF GENERAL FRANCO LASTED TILL 1975.OF COURSE IT’S OVER! WE FINISHED IT OFF IN 1945.OVER? THAT’S NOT WHAT I SEE IN THE STREETS.
Many people believe that Fascism ceased to be of any real political importance after 1945. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, Fascist parties were emerging, active and growing. Can we be sure that in the 21st century, Fascism will really be a thing of the past?
“Fascist” has become an all-purpose word. We often use it to describe people and things we dislike. It is applied indiscriminately to figures in authority, to modes of behaviour, to ways of thinking, to kinds of architecture.
SEXUAL LIBERATION ENDS UP WITH AIDS!EVERY SOCIALIST OUGHT TO BE SHOT!EDUCATION IS IN A MESS. TOO LIBERAL. NO DISCPLINE ANYMORE!
What “Fascists” have in common is that they are the enemies of liberal or left-wing thought and attitudes. They can be seen as threatening, aggressive, repressive, narrowly conservative and blindly patriotic.
MODERN ART IS ALL CRAP!I’M NO FASCIST - BUT I SEE TOO MANY DAMN BLACK AND ASIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THIS COUNTRY!I HATE COPPERS - THEY’RE ALL FASCISTS!
But this catch-all use of the word raises obvious questions. Are all people who could be defined in these terms really “Fascists”? Are all right-wing parties or groups, all conservative right-wing governments, necessarily “Fascist”?
Italy was the first country to have a party that called itself Fascist. The Italian word fascio (pronounced “fasho”) means a bundle-of firewood, for instance. It was first used in the 1890s by workers in the notorious Sicilian sulphur mines.
FASCIO - SOMETHING DIFFICULT TO BREAK IF IT KEEPS TOGETHERA UNION IN OTHER WORDS.WE HIJACKED THE WORD FROM THE LEFT - LIKE SO MUCH ELSE!
In Italy after World War I the name was taken over by right-wing nationalistic groups who formed fasci di combattimento (combat squads). They came together in 1922 to found the first Fascist Party.
Some people argue that strictly speaking “Fascist” means a member of this Italian Fascist Party or of any similar parties that sprang up in Europe between WWI and the Allied victory in 1945.
The examples shown are incomplete. Many of these parties drew on political traditions stretching back to the 19th century.
The intellectual traditions behind Fascism are ultraconservative.
OUR IDEAL IS TO ACHIEVE THE SUPERMAN BY COLLECTIVE EXPERIMENTS IN DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING.OUR BOTTOM-LINE IS THE FREE PLAY OF MARKET FORCES WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION.THE ORGANIZED MINORITY WILL ALWAYS TRIUMPH OVER A DISORGANIZED MAJORITY.
The Italian sociologists Mosca and Pareto were in some respects old-fashioned exponents of laissez-faire economics, but they also believed democracy was a dream and stressed the superiority of elites in society.
Besides being anti-democratic, ultraconservative thinkers were virulently opposed to socialism which was steadily developing in the 1880s. Socialism had its roots in the 18th century intellectual movement of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
WE REJECT SOCIALISM’S ANALYSIS OF THE CLASS NATURE OF SOCIETY!
Socialism’s remedies to injustices and oppression, its opposition to war and its internationalism, were condemned as materialist, unpatriotic and weak.
RACES WHICH RETAIN THEIR PURITY ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHERS. BEST OF ALL IS THE ARYAN RACE.I FIRST COINED THE TERM ANTI-SEMITISM AND SPOKE OF RACIAL CONFLICT. JEWISH ASSIMILATION MUST BE REJECTED AS DANGEROUS!OF COURSE, WE GERMANS BELONG TO THE PURE ARYAN RACE!
ON OUR VISIST TO NUREMBERG IN JULY 1877, WE WERE VERY DISTURBED BY THE INSOLENTLY OSTENTATIOUS SYNAGOGUE IN THE HANS-SACHS-PLATZ.MY GOAL IS TO PRESERVE SACRED GERMAN ART FROM A FALSE AILEN POWER - THE JEWS!AND I BUILT UP MY RELIGION ON WAGNER’S OPERAS!
Ultraconservatives in France were fiercely patriotic, anti-republican and nostalgic for past glories. An example was Charles Maurras (1868-1952), the Catholic, monarchist and anti-Semite who hated Freemasons, Protestants and foreigners resident in France.
DEMOCRACY IS ANARCHY! IT IS FEMININE, WEAK, EVIL.I AGREE. THIS REPUBLIC IS DOMINATED BY JEWS. BUT WE MUST DO MORE THAN WRITE ABOUT IT. WE MUST GET TO THE PEOPLE IN THE STREETS!
Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) writer of a notorious racist book, La France Juive (Jewish France). published in 1886. He also edited a popular anti-Semitic daily, La Libre Parole.
Wagner and other intellectuals in Germany had made anti-Semitic nationalism fashionable and respectable, at least on one level of “high culture”. But how could ultraconservatism occupy the popular level and capture the imagination of the nation as a whole?
Ultraconservatives like Maurras and Drumont were also looking for an excuse to transfer anti-Semitism from the academic level to the streets and strengthen the “traditional Christian order” of France.
Nostalgic monarchists, Catholics and the army with its reactionary caste-system were allied against the liberals of the Third Republic, third generation offspring of the 1789 French Revolution.
The ultraconservative allies sought to challenge and undermine the legacy of the Enlightenment and republicanism which enshrined the radical ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and thereby re-establish traditional authority.
The opportunity arose in France in 1894.
In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, sole Jewish member of the French general staff, was accused of spying for Germany.
WE SENTENCE YOU TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT ON DEVIL’S ISLAND.THE EVIDENCE USED AGAINST ME IS A FORGERY!
For 12 years, France was the scene of violent conflict between pro- and anti-Dreyfusards which became the focus of worldwide attention.
EVEN AFTER I WAS PARDONED AT MY RE-TRIAL IN 1899, THE STRUGGLE WENT ON - UNTIL MY NAME WAS FINALLY CLEARED IN 1906.
In 1897, the novelist Emile Zola (1840-1902) wrote his internationally famous J’Accuse (I Accuse) for a reopening of the case.
I WAS TRIED FOR LIBEL, CONVICTED AND FLED TO ENGLAND.I WAS ELECTED TO THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES IN 1898 AND CAMPAIGNED AGAINST DREYFUS.
I BECAME AN ARCHETYPE, A SCAPEGOAT - NO LONGER, A HUMAN BEING!
The Dreyfus case split public opinion - in France but elsewhere too - along lines that determined political attitudes right up to the period of French collaboration with Hitler in World War II. It ranged liberals and socialists against the Racialist right and in defence of the Republic. Although the case ended with the defeat of an organized, official French anti-Semitism, it left deep wounds, enduring bitterness and a hate for Jews.
It was a dress rehearsal for Hitlerism.
Forgery was used to convict one Jewish individual of “conspiracy” - Dreyfus. Another far more dangerous forgery emerged in 1903 to convict all Jews of a “worldwide conspiracy”. This was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion concocted by Russian agents in the Tsarist secret police working in Paris during the Dreyfus Affair.
WE FORCED THE EVIDENCE OF A JEWISH WORLD CONSPIRACY PLANNED AT SECRET MEETINGS OF THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS IN 1897.I PUBLICIZED THE PROTOCOLS IN MY NEWSPAPER, THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT.
This campaign of anti-Semitic propaganda went in step with widespread pogroms during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the region with the largest Jewish population in the Tsarist empire. It was known as the Pale of Settlement where Jews were massed together in Russia.
UNDER THE TSARS, WE WEREN’T FREE TO CHOOSE WHERE TO LIVE.THE TSARIST POLICE OFTEN ORGANIZED THESE POGROMS.AN EARLY START TO “ETHNIC CLEANSING”!
In 1905, the Union of the Russian People, a right-wing organization, began to speak of the need for the physical extermination of the Jews.
Anti-Semitism, xenophobia and fervent nationalism were in place before the First World War was declared on 1 August 1914.
GOD IS ON OUR SIDE!GREAT DAYS AHEAD!OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR!NOW WE’LL SHOW THEM!
A strange, feverish mass hysteria gripped the “civilized world” at the outbreak of the war.
HERE WE GO!
By 1914, Europe already had a climate of opinion that would favour the rise of post-war Fascism.