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or revolutionary fascism that harks back to Hitler and Mussolini, most neo-fascist parties have either broken ideologically with the past, at least formally, or denied that they are or ever have been fascist. Neo-fascism and ‘classical’ fascism differ in a number of substantive ways. These include the neo-fascist tendency to scapegoat non-European immigrants in particular, as opposed to communists, liberals and Jews; its greatly reduced emphasis on expansionism and war; and the accommodation it has reached with democracy (although this is an area of significant debate). Examples of parties commonly viewed as neo-fascist include the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was superseded in 1995 by the self-styled ‘post-fascist’ National Alliance (AN); the French National Front (now known as the National Rally), especially under the leadership, until 2011, of Jean-Marie Le Pen; the Liberal-Democratic Party in Russia, led, from 1991, by Vladimir Zhirinovsky; and Greece’s Golden Dawn (see p. 151). (For more on the far- right, see p. 181.) CORE THEMES Fascism is a difficult ideology to analyse, for at least two reasons. First, it is sometimes doubted if fascism can be regarded, in any meaningful sense, as an ideology. Lacking a rational and coherent core, fascism appears to be, as Hugh Trevor-Roper put it, ‘an ill- assorted hodge-podge of ideas’ (Woolf, 1981). Hitler, for instance, preferred to describe his ideas as a Weltanschauung , rather than a systematic ideology. In this sense, a world- view is a complete, almost religious, set of attitudes that demand commitment and faith, rather than invite reasoned analysis and debate. Fascists were drawn to ideas and theories less because they helped to make sense of the world, in rational terms, but more because they had the capacity to stimulate political activism. Fascism may thus be better described as a political movement or even a political religion, rather than an ideology. Second, so complex has fascism been as a historical phenomenon that it has been difficult to identify its core principles or a ‘fascist minimum’, sometimes seen as generic fascism. Where does fascism begin and where does it end? Which movements and regimes can be classified as genuinely fascist? Among the attempts to define the ideological core of fascism have been Ernst Nolte’s (1965) theory that it is a ‘resistance to transcendence’, A. J. Gregor’s (1969) belief that it looks to construct ‘the total charismatic community’, Roger Griffin’s (1993) assertion that it constitutes ‘palingenetic ultranationalism’ (palingenesis meaning rebirth) and Roger Eatwell’s (2003) assertion that it is a ‘holistic-national radical Third Way’. While each of these undoubtedly highlights an important feature of fascism, it is difficult to accept that any single-sentence formula can sum up a phenomenon as resolutely shapeless as fascist ideology. Perhaps the best we can hope to do is to identify a collection of themes that, when taken together, constitute fascism’s structural core. The most significant of these include: z z anti-rationalism z z struggle z z leadership and elitism z z socialism z z ultranationalism.
Weltanschauung : (German) Literally, a ‘world-view’; a distinctive, even unique, set of presuppositions that structure how a people understands and engages emotionally with the world.
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