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As an ideal type, Fascism is an ultranationalist totalitarianism of the extreme right and an ideology of the twentieth century, the era of mass politics. Fascism has appealed to people who reject modern bourgeois democracy, with its individualism and materialism, but who also oppose revolutionary communism.

The earliest Fascist governments were a reaction to the social upheaval, economic decline, and psychological impact of World War I (1914–1918) and its aftermath in postwar Europe. The despair of Europeans, their suffering and deprivations during this interwar period (1918–1939), together with the fear of communism, fed into a willingness by many people to blame other groups (usually racial) and nations for various economic and social problems, and to follow politicians who voiced their grievances. The rise of Fascism demonstrates how democratic liberties can be abolished and totalitarian ideas and regimes gain acceptance.

Regimes

The first Fascist government came to power in Italy in 1922, led by Benito Mussolini (1883–1945). Mussolini skillfully combined syndicalism with nationalism. He called for direct action and advocated a national mission to revolutionize society from above, using government, and from below, using a mass movement to create an organized and robust community. To Mussolini, all liberty belongs to the state, and the only individual rights are those that stem from the needs of the state. Under the guidance of its natural leader, or Duce, the nation finds liberation from bourgeois and Marxist values in a culture dominated by elite warriors, heroic men ready to sacrifice their lives and their treasure for the good of the nation.

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) came to power in Germany in 1933, demanding revision of the entire domestic and international order and promising new, permanent solutions. The prior government, dominated by social democrats and their allies, seemed unable to respond to a series of crises faced by a German people despondent after losing World War I and confronting heavy war reparations, together with massive unemployment, daily violence in the streets, runaway inflation, and a worldwide economic depression. The result was a population with shattered belief systems, willing to submit to any authority that promised to reestablish the old values and greatness of the past. Offering national salvation and leading a political revolution that secured social stability by applying a reactionary program combined with economic and social modernization, Hitler soon replaced the democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic with a dictatorship of his National Socialist German Workers’, or Nazi, Party that made him supreme leader (Fuehrer) of both state and party.

Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf (1925, 1926), presages key themes of his years in power. He combines radical and conservative notions in an often-shifting muddle of ideas. Hitler views Mussolini as an early model but soon surpasses him, emphasizing a more virulent form of racism that is irrational, anti-intellectual, and ant modern on its face and includes large doses of pseudoscientific social Darwinism: all life is an instinctive struggle by the pure race for victory over all other races, and for a loving unity among racial brothers. This is the historical destiny of the superior Aryan race.

Hitler posits that world history is made by culture founders, the pure race, which is strong, loyal, and willing to realize its historic mission and obey the leader. This race is the source of all natural leaders and is destined to rule the world. All loyal members must be willing to sacrifice themselves to this end, to be ready to hate and kill their racial enemies to the point of total extermination, and to dedicate themselves to absolute obedience to the leader and his chosen deputies.

Hitler’s regime institutionalized the leadership principle. He was the absolute leader, answerable to nobody else, the only one who truly knew the will of the people and could lead them to their promised destiny as rulers of the world. He instituted a virtual police state under the direction of Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), which empowered the new, paramilitary army of elite men whose only thoughts were to obey and fight for their leader to establish a legal reign of terror, including establishing death camps and concentration camps, and to arrest, imprison, and murder enemies of the regime. Every institution was designed to express the spirit of the Volk and to advance the victory of the Aryan race. To gain control, Hitler’s followers first used street violence. Once in power, state violence was employed.

Together with his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), Hitler refined the big lie as a means to keep the masses in line. They used emotional appeals to a romanticized nationalism, including myths of a wonderful past that would be resurrected once all their enemies were defeated. A cult of personality was created around the supreme leader.

Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and Hitler’s Nazi Germany provide two concrete examples of Fascism in practice. They illustrate both the interaction of ideas and their application in a tangible setting, which at times led to the diluting or jettisoning of what had earlier seemed to their followers essential objectives. Many ideas were declared but never implemented, such as nationalization of trusts, profit sharing by large enterprises, communalization of wholesale distribution, and division of landed property. Indeed, some of these ideas were directly undercut by Hitler’s support of conservative elites willing to be coopted by him, such as the Prussian landed aristocracy, the military, the bureaucracy, and major capitalists. But he voiced a few constant themes: racial purity, the leadership principle, and the importance of Lebensraum, or imperialist expansion of national borders to provide living space and abundant resources in the east for favored ethnic groups.

Aims And Methods

In light of the often thin relationship in Fascist governments between theory and practice, some consider the importance Fascists place on irrational myths, social Darwinist ideas such as survival of the fittest, and racism as a capricious mix of often conflicting or incoherent promises signifying little of substance other than political opportunism in the service of power. Nevertheless, there are constants that can be identified, then related to philosophies and other ideologies and illustrated with reference to the goals and practices of actual regimes.

Fascist goals are reactionary, offering coordinated political action to revive a mythic triumphal era of the past, including traditional class structures and relationships, through the creation of a new order dominated by a new man whose mission is to cleanse the world of all enemies of the people, revolutionize society, and create a new way of life and a new civilization to be enjoyed by all. Only then can a new national civilization be realized.

Fascism promises to secure these utopian goals by instituting an elitist, repressive state apparatus that does not shrink from violence and bloodshed. Fascists believe the state should have every right to intervene in any sphere of human activity. Total conformity is demanded. No individual or group political or social rights against the state are permitted; neither is any disagreement with state goals. Any who are different and who might dissent and thus threaten the regime lose their freedom to act independently, especially religious and labor groups, academics and other intellectuals, and artists.

Fascism sees unlimited government at the moral center of the nation, and only a single political party is permitted to exercise total power. That party and its offshoots in the government and secret police organizations embody all the virtues of the new man, whose only purpose is to obey and fight for the leader. These bodies are entitled to wield unrestricted power as their members employ a monopoly of terror, organized violence, even genocide, unchecked by any law, against regime enemies.

Fascists’ reviled enemies are members of repudiated, purportedly inferior racial, religious, or other targeted groups, such as homosexuals and assertive women. But the common foe also includes supporters of parliamentary democracy and Marxists. Fascists disdain the methods of the former, including their espousal of individual liberties, the rule of law, and open and competitive elections, and they reject the goals of the latter, such as the wish to create a society of economic and social equals where neither nation nor state has any purpose. Xenophobic hatred of enemies and foreigners is both a result of such revulsion and a useful tool for unifying the population behind the leadership and giving it an outlet for its grievances.

Fascists claim this serves the real interest of all the people. The people, it should be clear, does not refer simply to those living within the geographical borders of the state. In this new homogenized and revitalized organic community, membership is restricted to members of the preferred ethnic or national group, race, or religion.

Under Fascism, religion becomes a tool of the state. Traditional religions are subordinated to newly devised, quasireligious beliefs and co-opted as a way to further the regime’s power. These new beliefs promote a messianic civil religion that promises national resurrection. Fascism posits that this will be accomplished by a communal body of believers who owe their highest loyalty not to themselves, their families and friends, or any traditional religious authorities who do not share the vision of the leader but to their nation.

As an alternative to coercion, Fascists seek the cooperation of established conservative elements of the old regime, including army, church, and industry. Each group is promised rewards: the protection of private ownership and virulent anti-Bolshevism for the owners of production, full employment for the workers, national regeneration for traditional conservatives, imperialist ventures for the military, state support for compliant religious authorities, recognition of special status for farmers and peasants, and encouragement to engage in xenophobic nativism for the masses seeking scapegoats for their grievances, real or imagined. As William Brustein (1996) argues in his book The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, the motives of these groups may provide evidence for the thesis that many Germans joined the Nazi Party to promote their economic interests.

Change comes from the top, engineered by a government using the power of the total state dominated by a single political party and headed by a self-anointed supreme leader who embodies the national will and is aided by a paramilitary vanguard. Together they pledge to transform the chaos and degeneracy of the past into a resurgent community. The state is the creator of all values, secular and spiritual. It embodies national unity and is the guarantor of this oneness. Its strength is in the spiritual union of the masses. The nation is the source of all that is good—culture, civilization, true freedom—and the duty of all people is to patriotically serve their nation.

In the new community, equality of all is impossible because the masses are not fit to govern. The only attainable equality of the atomized masses is that of conformity as obedient contributors to the goals proclaimed by the leadership. When directed to it, even mob action is an appropriate means of public policy, particularly when carrying out racist policies. Regime supporters are whipped into a hysterical state in mass meetings by carefully crafted calls to defeat perceived enemies, all of whom can justifiably be subjugated, even eliminated.

Following a military model, at the head of this movement is the charismatic leader, the undisputed possessor of all the virtues of the new man, who instinctively knows what the incoherent masses really want because he embodies the spirit of the people. He is above criticism, as he is never wrong. All power flows from his desires, his will, his commands. He is the embodiment of the national purpose, the head of nation, state, party, and all their organs. He chooses the few qualified to serve as his subordinate leaders, who are often allowed to operate, unchecked, in their own assigned spheres of influence.

The leadership is almost exclusively male. Those few women who have a government function are placed in positions subordinate to men because of their assumed inferiority, and they are given work that is stereotypically the province of females, such as directing a women’s organization or working as a secretary.

Traditional gender roles are rigidly observed. The state is the guardian of public morals and actively suppresses banned activities, such as demands for gender equality and homosexuality.

In elevating the leader to a godlike status among the people, the state’s organs monopolize all means of information and communication, both to propagandize in support of the regime and to limit internal opposition. This monopoly enables the media to generate big lies without fear of contradiction. Big lies are untruths of such enormity and impudence that they are certain to influence the masses, for whom an emotional response is easier than reasoning.

State organs of propaganda also create a communal liturgy for mass organizations, where patriotic rituals, such as parades, songs, and flag-waving rallies, replace rational discussion and deliberation. They develop cults of physical strength, personal sacrifice for the fatherland and its people, and the need for violence and brutality toward enemies as they engage in imperialist conquest in pursuit of utopian goals.

War is good. It shows the capacity of individuals for sacrifice and mobilizes the masses for common purpose. It illustrates the value of unity of command, centralization of authority, and hierarchical leadership.

The state is the master of the economy. Fascism utilizes new methods for enhancing state power through control, planning, and mobilization of the national economy, including agriculture, industry, and finance. While Fascist regimes may permit ownership of private property and capitalist enterprise, these are subject to state regulation. Business and labor are placed in an organic and corporatist relationship with the state. These ties are organic, wherein individuals and groups are seen as subordinate parts of a complex structure of interdependent elements whose roles and value are determined by contributions to the state. Thus, where business or other elites have been active in putting a Fascist government in power, they have contributed and can expect to benefit.

Corporatism refers to a harmonious society divided into a limited number of noncompetitive corporations or monopolies based on the function each performs, such as labor or management. These corporations are created and sanctioned by the state to represent the interests of each functional group when economic decisions are made, but under close control of the regime. They replace both independent trade unions and owner organizations. Strikes are illegal, disputes are mediated by state agencies, and government sets all prices and wages. Class antagonism and class struggle are replaced by state-guided cooperation and an almost feudal bond between classes. All classes work together, each to its own task, each to its own place in a hierarchy, and each to its (unequal) rewards.

Influences

Fascism draws on certain ideas of political philosophy and incorporates ideas from other ideologies, particularly nationalism and anarcho-syndicalism, as well as from the organicist strain of socialism. From the ancients, such as Plato and Aristotle, Fascist thinker Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) took the idea that humans are by nature social and political animals who are free only as members of a community, in opposition to those liberal democrats who think humans are atomistic individuals.

Assimilating ideas from Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Hegel, Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), French politician and theorist, favored extreme nationalism. The central goal of politics is organizing and maintaining the power of the nation that expresses the organic needs of the vital collective. A strong hierarchical regime organizes the masses for united action. Incorporating biological determinism, romanticism, social Darwinism, and anti-Semitism, Barrès saw an unconscious, irrational vitalism at the root of the national soul. All values, such as justice and liberty, even honesty, must be measured in relation to the indispensable needs of the nation and the essential requirement that it conquer its enemies, especially the twin evils of Marxism and liberal democracy.

Georges Eugene Sorel (1847–1922) was an anarchist of the syndicalist school who supported socialism through collective action of the workers but preferred strikes and direct action to politics. In Reflections on Violence (1908) he advocates a general strike by the working class that would swiftly lead to a violent revolution that would wipe out decadent bourgeois society. Parliamentary government would be replaced by workers organized into industrial syndicates. These small economic communities would serve as the center of economic, social, and indeed all productive life, and all daily decisions would be made by people at their workplaces. Mussolini used some of Sorel’s ideas, skillfully combining syndicalism with nationalism.

Contemporary Fascism

Today Fascism is widely reviled. Still, most Western industrial nations have small, transitory groups that could be considered neo-Fascist and that often model themselves on Fascist movements of the past, agitate for their version of chauvinism and racial purity, and threaten a revival of some kind of Fascist government. These include political parties and organizations such as the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, Pamyat in Russia, the National Alliance in Italy, the National Front in France, and the Freedom Party in Austria.

In addition, some scholars have regarded movements and regimes in Latin America (Peron’s in Argentina, Stroessner’s in Paraguay, Pinochet’s in Chile), Africa (Qaddafi in Libya, the National Party in South Africa), and Asia (Hindu extremists in India and governments in China, North Korea, and Myanmar) as Fascist. Other writers consider a number of these as more authoritarian than Fascist, and the difference between the two remains open to debate. Today the Internet serves as a means to propagate race hatred, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denial, frequent themes of contemporary Fascists.

What has been termed Islamo-Fascism is an extreme fundamentalist version of Islam. It is a response to the failure of Western and Marxist ideologies to meet the perceived needs of the masses in Middle Eastern nations. It preaches such messages as the need for revolutionary struggle against enemies and the use of the power of the state in a totalitarian manner to achieve utopian goals, including a regenerated worldwide

league of Muslim nations that would serve as a bulwark against the decadent, secular, capitalist Christian and Jewish West. As a result of an apocalyptic war, the Islamic caliphate of ancient times would be reestablished in a new society. The former Taliban regime and its warrior loyalists in Afghanistan and elsewhere reflect this outlook.

The evaluation of the impact of Fascist regimes depends on such empirical questions as whether the leaders are all powerful or rule over a mix of competing subordinates and bureaucrats of both state and party. For Nazi Germany, at least, regime outcomes might have reflected the unplanned consequences of competing elites in the economic sphere. But the case can be made that when it came to the Holocaust, a—perhaps the— major policy initiative of the Third Reich, there was a unity of purpose that, in most cases, reflected the direct and total wishes of Hitler. Another dispute is between so-called functionalists and intentionalists about whether most governmental action in Fascist nations was accidental or planned. Again looking at the Holocaust, one sees a series of carefully planned actions that were implemented in a sometimes-haphazard manner due to unanticipated circumstances, as observed by Daniel Goldhagen (1996). Finally, Hannah Arendt (1951) raises the question of the pervasiveness of totalitarianism. Were all Germans cowed by the organs of the state, particularly the secret police, or was the regime sensitive to popular resistance and willing to allow some individual liberty and choice? Once more, the Holocaust is instructive: a few favored elites who had Jewish ancestry may have escaped the heavy hand of the Nazi regime, including most notably Himmler’s immediate subordinate, Reinhard Heydrich, and Erhard Milch, the head of the German Air Force. But with the exception of a few selected key people, resistance to this policy was typically met with severe retribution, including arrest, imprisonment in a concentration camp, and even execution. Until his assassination, Heydrich was one of the major enforcers of this strict policy.

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