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Fascist parties evolved in most European societies after World War I (1914–1918), and the war was the most important reason for their emergence. Fascist parties were often founded after 1918 by semi demobilized units from regular armies, and they reflected both the incubated nationalism generated by the war and the extremely high levels of militarization that marked many European societies after armistice. The most notable parties broadly characterized as Fascist are the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) in Italy, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter par tei (NSDAP) in Germany, and the group of parties known as the Falange in Spain. Less significant examples of Fascist parties are the British Union of Fascists, the Arrow Cross Party (Hungary), and the Iron Guard (Rumania). Fascist parties were normally organized around one powerful leader: for example, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Franco in Spain.

Fascism, Liberalism, And Capitalism

Fascist parties were defined by their hostility to the pluralistic principles of liberal democracy, and they normally came to power by mobilizing paramilitary units to contest the power of the democratic state and to disrupt nor mal democratic procedures. Where they entered government, Fascist parties either suspended or demolished the institutions of liberalism, that is, elected legislatures, independent judiciaries, and formal constitutions. They opted instead for a system of strong leadership, in which the directive or quasi-dictatorial force of the party was checked neither by countervailing powers nor by catalogues of general rights, and in which the party executive fused functions normally divided in liberal states between legislatures and executives. In most cases, Fascist parties imposed str ict censorship on the media, and they ensured that activities in civil society were subject to repressive control. Fascist parties were also marked by the belief in the integrative function of extreme nationalism. This latter feature meant that some Fascist parties pledged themselves to racist policies and legislation. The NSDAP was a fervently anti-Semitic and racist party, and after its assumption of power in 1933, it violently persecuted all minorities, especially Jewish people. However, the PNF was not originally a racist party, but it began to adopt racist policies in the later 1930s. The nationalist regime in which the Falange was integrated was not essentially marked by racist policies.

In addition to World War I, the factor triggering the growth of Fascist parties was the economic crises of the early 1920s and 1930s.The appeal of Fascist doctrine was conditioned by a widespread anxiety about both the collapse of capitalism and the threat of Bolshevik revolution. Fascist parties tended initially to campaign on a collectivist platform, and both the PNF and the NSDAP employed anticapitalist rhetoric in their earliest manifestos. Debate still persists as to whether Fascist parties should be classified as belonging to the family of left-wing or right-wing parties. However, it was crucial to the structure of Fascist parties that they lacked a solid ideological core, allowing them to adapt their message to the opportunities of the political landscape in which they operated. In most European countries after 1918 the anticapitalist vote was already captured by entrenched socialist and communist parties, so Fascist parties soon abandoned their anticapitalist stance and recruited support from among the middle classes and even (albeit to a debatable degree) among business elites, who were alarmed by the rise of the far left and the power of the union movement. Fascist parties thus developed a catch-all ideology, which traversed a number of points in the conventional left/ right spectrum, and this eclectic ideological design was fundamental to their success. This meant that Fascist parties could create unusual cross-class fronts and that they could produce new and destabilizing political cleavages to weaken established parties. In consequence, Fascist parties tended to campaign successfully in political systems whose transitions to parliamentary democracy had lacked deep consensual foundations, that were marked by precariously balanced and easily unsettled coalitions, that possessed strong left/right polarizations, and in which no one social class possessed a clear monopoly of power. A divided labor movement was a common precondition for the emergence of strong Fascist parties. Once established in power, Fascist parties did little to alter existing patterns of production, and they pioneered a highly technocratic pattern of corporate-capitalist growth management.

Fascism And Weak States

Fascist parties also tended to be successful in societies that were marked by a history of weak or belated state integration. In Italy and Germany, in particular, the delayed process of national unification in the 1860s and 1870s meant that these countries were governed by states that lacked institutional cohesion, that struggled to perform reliable fiscal and judicial functions, and that failed to exercise power evenly across all their territories. In consequence, these states could be easily destabilized, their executive structures could be easily detached from their representative institutions, and they were highly susceptible to the influence of private groups seeking to arrogate public authority. Arguably, in fact, government by Fascist parties was not government by states at all: it was government by compensatory organs of coercion, which assumed control of the means of public violence in societies in which the traditional organs of statehood were too weak to withstand intense economic pressures, and which farmed out state power to a diffuse array of quasi-privatistic societal actors and organizations. A strongly integrated state, possessing a broad-based democratic apparatus, was the main bulwark against the success of Fascist parties.

The Legacy Of Fascism

Most Fascist regimes collapsed during World War II (1939–1945), and after 1945 Fascism lost potency. Some elements of Spanish Fascism arguably survived in South America, notably in Argentina under Pero´n. Some parties of the post- 1945 European right have identified with the Fascist legacy. Examples are the Movimento Sociale Italiano in Italy, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Deutsche Volksunion in Germany, and arguably, the Front National in France. Since the 1980s, some populist parties, although clearly outside the Fascist camp, have successfully recruited voters by reviving elements of Fascist ideology. Examples are the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, the Progress Party in Norway, the Schweizer ische Volkspartei in Switzerland, and the Alleanza Nazionale in Italy. However, most populist parties campaign primarily on an anti-immigration ticket, and their link with Fascism is merely a questionable element of their own propaganda.

Bibliography:

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