Fascism
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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Whereas liberalism, conservatism and socialism are nineteenth-century ideologies, fascism is a child of the twentieth century, some would say specifically of the period between the two world wars. Indeed, fascism emerged very much as a revolt against modernity, against the ideas and values of the Enlightenment and the political creeds that it spawned. The Nazis in Germany, for instance, proclaimed that ‘1789 is Abolished’. In Fascist Italy, slogans such as ‘Believe, Obey, Fight’ and ‘Order, Authority, Justice’ replaced the more familiar principles of the French Revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. Fascism came not only as a ‘bolt from the blue’, as O’Sullivan (1983) put it, but also attempted to make the political world anew, quite literally to root out and destroy the inheritance of conventional political thought. Although the major ideas and doctrines of fascism can be traced back to the nineteenth century, they were fused together and shaped by World War I and its aftermath, in particular by a potent mixture of war and revolution. Fascism emerged most dramatically in Italy and Germany. In Italy, a Fascist Party was formed in 1919, its leader, Benito Mussolini (see p. 156), was appointed prime minister in 1922 against the backdrop of the March on Rome, and by 1926 a one-party fascist state had been established. The National Socialist GermanWorkers’ Party, known as the Nazis, was also formed in 1919 and, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, it consciously adopted the style of Mussolini’s Fascists. Hitler was appointed German chancellor in 1933 and in little over a year had turned Germany into a Nazi dictatorship. During the same period, democracy collapsed or was overthrown in much of Europe, often being supplanted by right-wing, authoritarian or openly fascist regimes, especially in Eastern Europe. Regimes that bear some relationship to fascism have also developed outside Europe, notably in the 1930s in Imperial Japan and in Argentina under Juan Domingo Perón (see p. 171). These developments had dramatic implications for world affairs. Starting with the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of relentless military expansion, which led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Germany fought this war together with Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, as members of the Axis opposing the Allies. KEY FIGURE ADOLF HITLER (1889–1945)
An Austrian-born German politician, Hitler became leader of the Nazi Party (German National Socialist Workers’ Party) in 1921 and was the German leader from 1933 to 1945. Largely expressed in Mein Kampf [ My Struggle ] (1925), Hitler’s world-view drew expansionist German nationalism, racial anti-Semitism and a belief in relentless struggle together in a theory of history that highlighted the endless battle between the Germans and the Jews. Under Hitler, the Nazis sought German world domination and, after 1941, the wholesale extermination of the Jewish people.
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The defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 largely discredited fascism as an ideological project, in Europe and elsewhere. Nevertheless, fascist-inspired or fascist-like movements have
since emerged, albeit without anywhere coming close to rivalling the impact of interwar fascism. For want of a better term, these movements have been classified as ‘ neo-fascist ’, although they have also been portrayed, variously, as the ‘radical right’, the ‘far right’ and the ‘extreme right’. While certain, usually underground, groups have continued to endorse a militant
Neo-fascism: A form of fascism that has been shaped by the political, economic and social changes that have taken place since 1945.
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