3. Fascism Flashcards
(181 cards)
1
Q
How does Mark Antliff describe Nazi and italian fascism?
A
“the Nazi regime-like its Italian counterpart and fascist movements in France-looked to both a mythic past and a technological future in a manner that seems highly contradictory.”
2
Q
What was the rise of fascsism in response to?
A
“Indeed, the rise of fascism in Europe responded to a widespread search for spiritual values and “organic” institutions capable of counteracting what was considered the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on the body politic.” (Antliff)
3
Q
How did Marxists see fascism?
A
“Marxists Robert Sayre and Michael Lowry have configured fascism as one manifestation of what they call “Romantic anti-capitalism,” an umbrella term for an “opposition to capitalism in the name of pre-capitalist values””
“For Sayre and Lowry this worldview precipitated a “nostalgia” for a “pre-capitalist past, or at least for one in which capitalism was less developed.””
4
Q
What had capitalism done to humanity?
A
“Capitalism had reportedly stifled our imaginative capacity by immersing human subjectivity and emotions in a system based on “extreme mechanization” and “quantitative calculation and standardization,” thus instigating a “yearning for unity” both with “the universe of nature” and “the human community.” (Antliff)
5
Q
What was a key component of fascism according to Antliff?
A
“This appeal to past values in the name of a noncapitalist future society is a key characteristic of fascism”
6
Q
Even though fascsim rejected the present, what did they do?
A
“Indeed, fascists, though opposed to Enlightenment ideals and capitalist precepts, were eager to absorb those aspects of modernity (and modernist aesthetics) that could be reconfigured within their antirational concept of national identity.” (Antliff)
“the Weimer Republic and the Third Reich “who rejected liberal democracy and the legacy of the Enlightenment, yet simultaneously embraced the modern technology of the second industrial revolution.” (Antliff)
7
Q
What are some common features of fascism?
A
“Common denominators uniting modernist aesthetics and fascism include concepts of cultural, political, and biological regeneration”
8
Q
What is Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism?
A
“Griffin’s definition of fascism as “a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”
9
Q
What role did myths play in fascism?
A
“In each case, mythmakers drew a strong contrast between a decadent present, rife with political and ethical corruption, and their vision of a regenerated future society, premised, in no small part, on the spiritual transformation of each individual within the body politic.”
10
Q
What is palingenesis?
A
“According to Griffin, the mythic core of fascism was that of national palingenesis. “Etymologically,” states Griffin, “the term ‘palingenesis,’ deriving from palin (again, anew) and genesis (creation, birth), refers to the sense of a new start or of a regeneration after a phase of crisis or decline which can be associated just as much with mystical (for example the Second Coming) as secular realities (for example the New Germany).”
11
Q
How would paligenesis come about?
A
“to reinvigorate the body politic, fascists looked beyond a decadent present to past eras, but they did not advocate a nostalgic return to, say, the era of Imperial Rome. Instead, they sought to incorporate qualities associated with past eras into the creation of a radically new society, fully integrated with twentieth-century industrialism and technology. In Sorelian fashion, selective moments from a nation’s historical past were utilized for their mythic appeal as a catalyst for the radical transformation of present society.” (Antliff)
12
Q
What role did the past play in fascsism?
A
“Griffin notes that the role of the past in Nazi ideology was rather to supply values that would facilitate the nation’s rebirth, pointing out that “the Nazis no more wanted to return Germany to the period of the Volkswanderungen (tribal migrations) or the Holy Roman Empire than the [Italian] fascists wanted to return literally to the age of the Romans or the Renaissance. Instead, fascists selectively plundered their historical past for moments reflective of the values they wished to inculcate for their radical transformation of national consciousness and public institutions.” (Antliff)
13
Q
How did Nazi’s use the countryside?
A
“Nazi imagery used the countryside as “the focus for the palingenetic myth of renewal and sustenance, not for a retreat from the twentieth century.” Similarly, the Nazi celebration of Athenian society and Greek sculpture as an aesthetic ideal was wed to the modern pseudoscience of eugenics; the sculpture of Classical Greece functioned as a mythic prototype for the fascist “new man” who was destined to inhabit an industrialized Third Reich, devoid of “degenerate” races.” (Antliff)
14
Q
How did Italin fascsim use the past?
A
“This simultaneous relation with both past and future also pertained to Italian fascism. Historian Emilio Gentile has concluded that in Italian fascist discourse and in Mussolini’s personal identification with Emperor Augustus, the “cult of Romanness was reconciled, without notable contradiction, with other elements of fascism, such as its activism, its cult of youth and sport, the heroic ideal of adventure, and above all the will to experience the new continuity in action projected towards the future, without reactionary nostalgia for an ideal past perfection to be restored.” (Antliff)
15
Q
Where did the power of myths come from?
A
“the power of its myth lay precisely in an imaginary national essence of origins to be recovered and created anew.” (Antliff)
16
Q
What role did art play in fascsim?
A
“Art, in short, was an agent for social transformation, a form of mythic activism marshalled by fascists to retool consciousness and society. Through its recourse to myth, fascism could address both past and future in its ideology. Implicit in the myth is the judgment of a decadent present in need of regenerative cultural renewal.” (Antliff)
17
Q
What is a secular religion?
A
“Emilio Gentile, following George Mosse, has described this new politics as a form of “secular religion,” wherein fascist regimes “adapted religious rituals to political ends, elaborating their own system of beliefs, myths, rites, and symbols” with the aim “not only to govern human beings but to regenerate them in order to create a new humanity.” (Antliff)
18
Q
What role did party rallies play in secular religion?
A
“Party rallies in turn took on all the trappings of religious ceremonies. “The Introitus, the hymn sung or spoken at the beginning of the church service, became the words of the Fuhrer; the ‘Credo’ a confession of faith pledging loyalty to Nazi ideology; while the sacrifice of the Mass was transformed into a memorial for the martyrs of the movement” (Antliff)
19
Q
What impact did WW1 have for fascists?
A
“Fascists thought World War I had such mythic significance, for in their view citizens who had fought in the trenches had undergone a moral transformation as a result of their heroic defense of the nation. Mussolini and his followers then drew a dramatic contrast between these valiant soldiers and the corrupt politicians who had retained power throughout the conflict.” (Antliff)
20
Q
How did fascist followers percieve themselves?
A
“The fascist rank and file conceived of themselves not as servile followers of a totalitarian leader but as converts to a cause who had undergone a spiritual and palingenetic transformation.” (Antliff)
21
Q
What were the local fascist headquarters?
A
“Even the local public headquarters of the Fascist Party, the Casa del Fascio, were referred to as “churches of our faith” or “altars of the Fatherland’s religion,” and during the 1930s the party specified that each casa should have a “lictorial tower” equipped with bells that would ring during every party ceremony.” (Antliff)
22
Q
What is the significance of primitive to fascists?
A
“For Hitler and his followers, the term primitive held positive and negative valences depending on its racial import. Nazis argued that the essence of the German folk resided in an Aryan genealogy with roots in Classical art and culture and that of the Gothic and Renaissance eras. Historians have noted Hitler’s and Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg’s literal association of Greek sculpture with their own eugenic program to create a fascist “new man,” untainted by the degenerative effects of racial “mixing.””
23
Q
What had industrialism done to people?
A
“In effect, modern industrialism simultaneously declared “war on the organic manufacturer of whole products” and robbed workers of their own “qualitative” craft skills by reducing their labor to simple repetitive tasks and preventing them from producing a wholly finished object.” (Antliff)
24
Q
How did the Italian fascists control time?
A
” The most dramatic instance of such social engineering was the “superimposition over the Gregorian calendar” of a fascist time frame, in which 1922 became ‘‘Year I” of the fascist era, signaling a regenerative break from the plutocratic decadence of the immediate past. The new calendar was then punctuated with certain days of national celebration, each with “a two fold mythic significance” (Antliff)
25
What is the link between the Nazis and rome?
"While images of labor inspired the German people to participate in this spiritual journey, Hitler's monumental building projects asserted Nazi Germany's status as a millennial regime not unlike ancient Rome. As Alex Scobie has demonstrated, Hitler and his principal architects pointedly modeled their architectural plans after Roman precedents. Ludwig Ruff's proposed Kongresshalle in Nuremberg (1934- 35) was to resemble the Roman Colosseum; Speer's and Hitler's Volkshalle in Berlin (1937-40) imitated Hadrian's Pantheon; and Casar Pinnau's Public Bath planned for the capital (1940-41) was based on ancient Roman thermae." " (Antliff)
26
Were followers of fascism manipulated or convinced according to Mark Antliff?
"Too often fascism's cultural politics are cast in terms of a cynical manipulation of the docile masses, with no allowance made for the appeal fascism had for the individual, or the internal point of view of the fascist rank and file. Concepts of secular religion were more than ideological tools for thought control; for the fascist believer they were agents for the spiritual uplifting and psychic conversion of individuals, who could then experience fascism's redemptive value as a counter to the socioeconomic upheavals of interwar Europe."
27
How have fascist regimes been portrayed?
"Fascist movements and regimes have usually been conceived as and presented themselves as national political forces. In fact, contemporaries as well as scholars have highlighted hyper-nationalism as one of the most important features of fascism which separated fascist movements and regimes from each other."
28
What interpretation about international fascism has recieved acceptance?
"The interpretation that “international fascism is unthinkable, a contradiction in terms” has received broad support from most historians." (Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe)
29
Was fascism transnational?
"Although its centers were in Rome and Berlin, fascism in interwar Europe was clearly transnational. Its reduction to Italy and Germany simplifies or even distorts the history of fascism. "
30
What are the three dimensions of transnation fascism?
"In conceptual terms, at least three dimensions of “transnational fascism” are to be distinguished. First, fascism was a transnational movement. It spread across borders, but specific national manifestations are conspicuous. Second, fascism was perceived as a transnational phenomenon, both by its adherents and its foes. Third, fascism can be analyzed from a transnational perspective. It includes comparative studies as well as investigations of transfers, exchanges, and even entanglements."
31
How did fascism cross borders?
"Leaders as well as minor functionaries and members from different European states or movements met on innumerable occasions and different levels, not only to exchange views on ideological questions and policies, but also to communicate on political styles and representations. Not least, fascists of different nation-states repeatedly agreed on common initiatives."
32
Where were the links between different national fascisms?
"Many fascists were aware of their affinity, as reflected in fascist political staging, especially its symbolism and rituals. For instance, they not only wore uniforms in order to impress and intimidate their opponents in domestic politics but also to demonstrate their claim to represent a transnational movement of warriors united by the hostility to common enemies, including the communists, democrats, conservatives, and liberals. The Soviet Union, in particular, was as strongly repulsed and despised as the Jews."
33
What was the changing relationship between italian and german fascism?
"In World War II, the Duce had to adjust to an inferior position, although the remaining Italian Fascists emphasized Italy’s leading role as a cultural power. In 1944–45, Mussolini finally became Hitler’s lackey. Smaller fascist movements that never managed to seize power, or at least to exert sizable political influence in their countries, remained subordinate to or even dependent on the two major fascist regimes throughout the years from 1922 to 1945."
34
How do Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe describe fascism?
"fascism was a moving target rather than a static entity"
35
How did George Orwell describe fascism?
As George Orwell stated in 1937: “Fascism is now an international movement, which means not only that the Fascist nations can combine for purposes of loot, but that they are groping, perhaps only half-consciously as yet, towards a world system.”
36
What other fascist regimes emerged after Musollini became prime minister?
"After Mussolini had been sworn in as prime minister of Italy in Rome on 31 October 1922 and successfully set up a full-fledged dictatorship in 1925, the Duce found an increasing number of admirers in European states as different as Britain, France, Germany, Croatia, and Ukraine. Thus, Rotha Lintorn Orman established the British Fascisti in 1923, and Pierre Taittinger set up his Jeunesses Patriotes in France two years later."
37
How did fascist leaders overcome the failings of the modern world?
"Appalled by the contradictions and frictions of liberal and capitalist modernity, the fascist leaders strove for a comprehensive renewal, which was to be achieved by instilling heroic vitality, imposing military order, promoting racism, and subordinating individuals to the community and state."
38
What did Mussolini celebrate?
"Mussolini and his followers celebrated the political and cultural legacy of ancient Rome through exhibitions, urban reconstructions, and excavations in Italy and North Africa."
39
How did Italian fascists see themselves?
"Although Mussolini and his lieutenants initially emphasized the national character of Italian Fascism, their political ambitions clearly transcended the borders of Italy as early as the 1920s. They busily propagated the model of a new transnational European Fascist civilization purportedly embodied by their dictatorship. The Duce, therefore, encouraged Italian Fascists living in different European states to support the new regime."
40
What had Mussollini committed humself to?
"Even before the Duce had openly committed himself to a “political and spiritual renewal of the world” in 1932, Italian Blackshirts were delegated to foreign countries in order to mobilize support for the Fascist regime. In China, 400 out of the 430 Italian residents belonged to the branch of the Fasci Italiani all’Estero in Beijing."
41
What did Mussollini do in response to Hitler's rise?
"As he felt challenged by the ascending rival movement, the Duce openly committed himself to intensified cross-border propaganda for the Italian model in 1932. To buttress his claim to political leadership in Europe, Mussolini started to subsidize fascists in foreign countries. In 1933–34, for instance, the Italian ambassador, Dino Grandi, passed considerable funds to the British Union of Fascists (BUF). It had been officially founded by former Conservative and Labour politician Sir Oswald Mosley in October 1932, following his encounter with Mussolini in Rome. "
42
What was the adoption of anti-semitism by foreign fascist movements in response to?
"The adoption of anti-Semitism and racism was largely due to the growing attractiveness of National Socialism to the radical Right throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, for instance, Anton Mussert’s Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (National Socialist Movement, NSB), which had initially been inspired by Italian Fascism, launched a propaganda campaign against the Jews in 1935."
43
Why did transnational fascism not work?
"Fascists clearly espoused different versions of European unity. Thus, the Nazis aimed at German hegemony. Moreover, fissures between the Third Reich and Fascist Italy grew in the early 1940s. Due to his country’s weakness as an industrial nation, Mussolini had to succumb to Nazi Germany’s claims of superiority. As the Italian war efforts virtually collapsed in 1942–43, the Duce increasingly rejected the racist ideology and annihilation policies of the Nazis. "
44
How did fascists from different nations relate to each other?
"Despite their strong nationalist convictions, fascists felt related to each other and performed transnational exchange on a regular basis, regarding it as a part of their everyday life. The multifarious interactions resulted from diverse motivations such as common beliefs and interests, the hostility to communism, liberalism, and democracy, as well as the perceived need to discuss and agree on the future shape of their countries or of their continent."
45
What aesthetics did fascists share across borders?
"Similarly, fascist aesthetics, including the style of uniforms, symbols on (national) flags, words, and the tunes of marching songs were clearly shaped by influences across national borders, although we should not disregard national specifics such as the role of folkloristic costumes in the movements of East and Southeast European fascists"
46
What was Italy meant to be?
"Italy was intended to spread fascist culture in the entire continent, which would create a common European fascist identity. Other parts of Europe would subordinate themselves to Italy and consider themselves to be the colonies of the true European fascist center—the truly Italian Rome."
47
What is the solution to fascism for Eagleton?
"Yet the fight against fascism is also an inseparable aspect of the fight against the kind of society which produces it, and so indivisible as a task from the problem of building revolutionary leadership."
48
What varies between fascisms for Eagleton?
"Whether or not that preparation involves racism and anti-semitism is historically variable. It obviously does so in the case of Nazism, where the Jew and foreigner are selected as devices for the displacement of internal class-struggle to national corporatism and inter-national aggression; but though all fascism involves such chauvinist corporatism at the ideological level, fascist formations such as the Iberian ones, which are not to be categorised with the 'classical' fascisms in terms of their economic goals, do not need to express this chauvinism in racist terms. (In 1932, the Chief Rabbi of Italy was a member of the fascist party.)"
49
How does Terry Eagleton define fascism?
"To risk a reductive formulation: fascism is essentially the attempt to ensure the rule of monopoly capitalism in its purest, most untrammelled, most invulnerable form."
50
Who produces fascism according to Eagleton?
"It is, characteristically, the political product of those hordes of little possessors and investors who see their savings being cut to shreds, who fear being depressed into the proletariat below them yet simultaneously revolt against the ineffectual ruling class set above them."
51
What are Eageltons ingredients of fascism?
"The ingredients of fascism, then, are multiple : economic and political crisis, proletarian defeat, failure of social democracy, absence or impotence of revolutionary leadership."
52
What allows fascism to develop in Eagleton's view?
"It is a dangerous leftist myth that fascism is the product of a frightened counter-reaction by the bourgeoisie to thrusting proletarian insurgency. On the contrary, it signifies a massive offensive by the bourgeoisie at a time when the working class is disorganised and defensive, betrayed by a reformist leadership, lacking a revolutionary alternative."
53
Is fascism forced on people for Eagleton?
"For just as capitalism in its liberal forms governs largely with the consenting complicity of the governed, so fascism - which is effectively a slave-society - differs from classical slave-society in that it, too (at least to begin with) is an enormously popular movement, with its roots deeply sunk in every sector of the social formation."
54
How does Eagleton describe the state under fascism?
"Fascism strips the veils of social democratic decency from the monopoly capitalist machine: the relations between the dominant social class and the state become less and less discreetly mediated through apparatuses like parliament and political parties, and become more and more brutally visible and direct."
55
Eagleton on defining fascism
"There are no limits to which monopoly capitalism will not go to ensure its continuing hegemony"
56
How does Roger Eatwell define fascism?
"Generic fascism, transcending place and time, is identified as 'an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way, though in practice fascism has tended to stress style, especially action and the charismatic leader, more than detailed programme, and to engage in a Manichaean demonisation of its enemies.'"
57
What differences have historians pointed to between italian and german fascism?
"Historians especially have pointed to major differences between what are commonly seen as its two paradigmatic examples—Nazism and Italian Fascism (both of which grew out of movements formed in the same year, 1919). Most frequently, the biological racist ideology of the Nazis is contrasted with the cultural nationalism of Italian Fascist leaders." (Eatwell)
58
What has one leading student said about attempts to define fascism?
"Thus one leading student of the social-psychology of Nazi activists has written of the quest to identify a meaningful ideology that 'rarely has so much intelligence been wasted on so unpromising a subject'." (Eatwell)
59
How have marxists seen fascism?
"Marxists have typically seen it as a form of 'dictatorship of capital', while an influential sociological approach has defined fascism as 'extremism of the centre', a movement which emerges when the middle class experiences economic and status tensions." (Eatwell)
60
Who has largely used the term fascist?
"the term has largely been used by opponents rather than as a form of self-reference (the Nazis rarely called themselves 'fascist')." (eatwell)
61
How many regimes were generally accepted as fascist?
"there were only two in peace-time inter-war Europe which are generally accepted as fascist" (Eatwell)
62
What undermines the idea that fascism was a product of the middle class?
"the now increasingly accepted fact that fascism could attract support from different social groups and was not merely a movement of the middle class. " (Eatwell)
63
Where does Zeev Sternhell trace the origins of fascism to?
"Sternhell traces the birth of fascism to an anti-positivistic cultural revolt which began in the late nineteenth century in a variety of European countries, but which he believes became most clear in French developments" (Eatwell)
64
What people does Sternhell identify with fascism's origin?
"a series of meetings before 1914 between Georges Valois and several other members of the Action Frangaise, and a group of revolutionary syndicalists led by Georges Sorel. " (Eatwell)
65
What is Sternhell's fascist minimum?
"Sternhell offers Valois's famous formulation that 'nationalism + socialism = fascism' as his fascist minimum." (Eatwell)
66
What sort of nationalism is sternhell concerned with?
"Sternhell is concerned with the new nationalism of the late 19th century, influenced by the rise of racial thinking, and typified in France by the organicist publications of Maurice Barrés, the high prophet of holistic' 'rootedeness' and the need to forge a more martial youth—and one of the first thinkers in Europe to employ the term 'national socialism'. " (Eatwell)
67
What does Sternhell not consider to be fascist?
"A fourth problem concerns Sternhelľs long-standing rejection of Nazism as a form of fascism (though this view is shared by other notable commentators, such as Italy's leading biographer of Mussolini, Renzo De Felice). Whilst Sternhell accepts that Barrés's blood and soil views and anti-semitism had many affinities across the Rhine, he holds that Nazism's biological determinism made it fundamentally different from fascism." (Eatwell)
68
What is Stanley Payne's definition of fascism?
"a form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as end as well as means and tends to normatize war and/or the military virtues." (Eatwell)
69
What are some disparities between fascisms that Eatwell notes?
"Early Italian Fascism was not in any significant sense anti-Semitic. Even the centrality of anti-communism varied across Europe, depending on its immediate importance: for instance, it was not central to early Mosleyite fascism (though attacks from the communists led to growing street confrontations). Nor did most British and French fascists view violence as cathartic. Some forms of French fascism did not even stress the leader-principle—most notably Georges Valois's Faisceau, which he had founded after breaking with the reactionary right-wing Action Frangaise."
70
What is Roger Griffin's definition of fascism?
"He holds that fascism's 'mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism'. The theme of rebirth (palingenesis) has been noted by other major commentators, including Gregor, Mosse and Sternhell. But Griffin is unique in having placed it at the heart of his definition" (Eatwell)
71
What is the benefit of Griffin's definition?
"His definition also has the advantage of not being locked into a specific time period, thus avoiding the error of seeing fascism as essentially an inter-war phenomenon. Partly as a result of this, one of the leading pioneers of academic studies of fascism, Walter Laqueur, has recently written that Griffin's definition 'might be difficult to improve on'." (eatwell)
72
What did the theme of rebirth allow fascists to do?
"the theme of rebirth was important because it allowed fascist propaganda to fudge whether what was really sought was a radically new society, or essentially a restoration of the old." (Eatwell)
73
How does Eatwell define fascism in pne sentence?
"An ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way, though in practice fascism has tended to stress style, especially action and the charismatic leader, more than detailed programme, and to engage in a Manichaean demonisation of its enemies."
74
What is the first core theme of fascism according to Eatwell?
"The belief that the world is divided into nations is central to fascism, though the nation should not necessarily be equated with existing states, or ethnic groupings."
75
What is the second core theme of fascsim according to Eatwell?
"Fascism is based on a view that the collective predominates over individual rights and interests. This helps to explain its hostility to liberal democracy. However, the principle also has an individual aspect in the sense that it portrays man as a victim of alienation, divided from other members of the true community and as incapable of finding fulfilment within existing socioeconomic structures"
76
What is Eatwell's third core aspect of fascism?
"Fascism involves the desire to create a new political culture, partly through mobilisation and sometimes through cathartic violence. Although the idea of rebirth figures prominently in propaganda, there is no reactionary or populist desire to return to a former society or mythical past (though there is a desire to preserve aspects of the past)."
77
What is the fourth core theme of fascism according to Eatwell?
" Fascism is hostile to both capitalism and socialism, but draws on aspects of both. It sees capitalism as too individualistic, too dominated by the short run and ultimately not loyal to the community. It sees socialism as too internationalist and based on false views of equality...It syncretically seeks to draw on what is seen as the best of capitalism (the naturalness of private property, its dynamism) and socialism (its concern for the community and welfare). "
78
What came first, the thing or the idea?
"In the beginning was the idea. The fact that the term 'fascism' was not coined until 1919 does not mean that there was no embryonic fascist ideology before this date; scholars regularly trace the roots of liberalism back to thinkers like John Locke, who never used the term and who in some ways differed from later self-professed 'liberals'." (eatwell)
79
Why were many attracted to fascsim?
"many who voted for fascism did so for good economic reasons, even saw fascism as a relatively legitimate political movement offering an alternative to conservative reaction or communist revolution." (Eatwell)
80
What and when did Eco win an award?
"In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists — that is, for every young Italian)."
81
What sort of award did Eco win?
One that was both voluntary and compulsory.
82
What was Eco's essay on that he won an award for?
"I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy."
83
What did Eco do in his youth?
"I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise."
84
What was Eco's youth marked by?
" my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school."
85
How does Eco describe the end of the war?
"In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious sensation. I had been told that permanent warfare was the normal condition for a young Italian. In the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not only a local phenomenon but a European one."
86
Although Eco does not think Nazism will reappear, what does he think still survives?
"behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. "
87
What regimes were totalitarian in Eco's view?
"If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes. "
88
What is the siginificance of Italian fascism for Eco?
"Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing — far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America."
89
how does Eco characterise the contradictions of fascism?
"fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution."
90
What was the confusion of fascism like for Eco?
"But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion."
91
What was the fascist attitude towards action according to Eco?
"Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” "
92
What is Syncretism and what is its relation to fascism?
"This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions." (Eco)
93
What is diagreement to fascism?
"For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason." (Eco)
94
Is fascism racist to Eco?
"The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition."
95
What does fascism derive from for Eco?
"Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. "
96
What is another name for Eco's Ur-Fascism tha he gives?
Eternal Fascism
97
What is life for the fascist according to Eco?
"For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. "
98
What sort of elitism does fascism advocate?
"Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. " (Eco)
99
What is the individual to fasism?
"For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter." (Eco)
100
What was realised by italian fascists once they came to power according to Roberto Vivarelli?
"But when in October 1922 Mussolini became Italy's prime minister, his contemporaries had no idea of what was in store for them. There was no such thing as a fascist blueprint for government, simply because fascism was not an intellectual movement with anything comparable to a doctrine; and, in fact, among the fascist rank and file one finds at that time the most bizarre and varied collection of people. Consequently-and this is my second warning-the origins of fascism must be studied in situ, namely, in Italy, and they must be understood first of all within the context of Italian history."
101
Where must we look to to understand fascism?
"Fascism, at least in its origins, speaks Italian; and in order to understand what fascism was and how it came to life one must first restore Italy to the place it has occupied in the history of modem Europe." (Vivarelli)
102
What is the first aspect of fascism in Italy?
"The first is fascist violence. Over and over again, through the painstaking recollection of a number of episodes, Salvemini shows that fascist violence was not simply the by-product of a harsh political struggle taking place in a period of intense emotions; it was, instead, systematic brutality whose aim was to reduce every opposing voice to silence, leaving no room for any form of open dissent." (Vivarelli)
103
What is the second aspect of fascism for Vivarelli?
" The second element concerns the figure of Mussolini, who Salvemini reveals as a cynical opportunist and a shrewd demagogue extremely skillful in manipulating words and in presenting a different image of himself to each audience he faced, as well as the main sponsor of violence, which he recognized as a most effective political weapon."
104
What was responsible for Mussollini's success according to VIvarelli?
"But Mussolini's success was due to the fact that from the end of 1920 his movement was sponsored by the forces of traditional conservatism with which it practically merged. Eventually, fascism would succeed in defeating a liberal state which, for its own reasons and because of its own faults, had already lost all vitality. This is why Salvemini was right in pointing out that the secret of Mussolini's victory was precisely the support he found in the liberal state itself."
105
Which european nations had fascist movements?
"Every European nation, indeed all economically developed nations with some degree of political democracy, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Japan, had some kind of fascist movement and at least a rudimentary fascist organization or two in the twenty years after 1919" (paxton)
106
What have some concluded about definitions of fascism?
"In the case of fascism comparison is clouded by extensive differentiation among movements and regimes, and by abuse of the term as an epithet. Some have even concluded that the term ‘fascism is unworkable for serious social science, and should be abandoned." (Paxton)
107
Why does Paxton not think a definition of fascism should be abandoned?
"Communism, too, took on profoundly different forms: think of Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and Enrico Berlinguer. But no one suggests giving up the term on that account. In my view fascism fulfils easily the criteria of an appropriate subject for comparative study: a general phenomenon exists"
108
How does Robert Paxton view fascism/ define it?
"Despite their national variations, fascist movements and regimes share a sufficient number of common elements to sustain a general definition. Fascism might be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence, and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
109
Should nazi germany be considered fascist in Paxton's view?
"We must include Nazi Germany among the fascist states. This position is very widely rejected in Germany, and sometimes in Italy. Wrongly so, in my opinion. The two leaders had no doubt about their political kinship. Hitler kept a bust of Mussolini in his study in the Brown House in Munich, and, as late as 1942, when most Nazi leaders dismissed Mussolini as a liability to the Axis, Hitler sent the Duce an affectionate letter on the twentieth anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome, referring to himself (Hitler) as Mussolini's disciple. More profoundly, Nazism and Italian Fascism shared the basic qualities listed above."
110
What were the differences and similarities between italy and germany?
"The Italian squadristi employed violence more readily than the Nazis during the quest for power, while the ratio was reversed after power. Once in power, Mussolini put the state first while Hitler put the Nazi Party first, creating a greater potential for radicalization. The same political elements were in play in both regimes, however: charismatic leader, single party, absolute state, and residual civil society." (paxton)
111
What was the most important difference between germany and italy?
"The most important differences, of course, were Nazism's biological racism and its capacity for radicalization, although Italian Fascist imposition of a form of apartheid in Africa and fascist laws for the defence of la razza should not be ignored. Mussolini was more violent, expansionist, and racist than his current historical reputation allows." (Paxton)
112
What was necessary for fascism to develop?
"Space was available to this new phenomenon only after a number of prior developments had prepared the way: the arrival of mass politics; the maturation of liberalism and even socialism to the point of becoming part of the Establishment, giving them sufficient leeway to reveal their shortcomings; the discredit of both parliamentary liberalism and parliamentary conservatism by their inability to cope with the crises of war and revolution after 1917. The First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution were indispensable preconditions: the war revealed the incapacity of classical liberal solutions (elections, the market, the school) no less than the classical conservative solutions (paternalism, religion, deference, a passive citizenry) to the problems posed by total war and its aftermath. And after Bolshevik success in Russia, nonsocialists everywhere looked for an adequate riposte to revolution." (paxton)
113
How does Paxton describe fascists?
"Fascists were openly contemptuous of human reason and intellectual enquiry. They appealed viscerally to their followers. And although they proclaimed their ideologies immutable, they violated and amended them without compunction. Fascists did best where a wave of popular disillusionment engulfed the previous leadership. Fascist imagery (both positive and negative) took root in the void of collapsed loyalties."
114
What is most important for developing fascism?
"National defeat or humiliation is probably the most important single precondition, and fascists prospered by claiming to be the most uncompromising agents of renewal. Victor states could survive acute economic crisis without loss of legitimacy; Britain and the United States, for instance, had unemployment rates as high as Germany's in 1932." (Paxton)
115
How does communism influence fascist development?
"The apparent imminence of Bolshevik revolution is the other most obvious precondition. Fascists’ claim to be the best anti-communist bulwark was the other strong card that Hitler and Mussolini could play. Fear of communism and doubt that parliamentary democracy was tough enough to hold it off were quite likely the principal reasons for the acquiescence, or more, in fascism of much of the previously moderate centre and right." (Paxton)
116
What is the link between fascists and elites?
"Existing elites usually muddle through. Fascists did not so much overthrow them as profit by their discredit. Where either, or both, liberal democracy or constitutional conservatism failed, fascism could look like the only non-socialist alternative. Conversely, where either of these two more moderate alternatives was successful, as in Britain and France, fascism had little available space." (Paxton)
117
What made fascism appealing according to Paxton?
"Without question fantasies of virility, violence, and domination played important roles in the emotional appeal of fascist movements and regimes. Some of the most enduringly helpful studies show the Nazis used values of hardness and camaraderie to condition police and paramilitary groups."
118
What became an important source of legitimacy after gaining power for fascists?
"After power, fascists can ignore some of their first faithful, and, in any event, they have a new device for unifying the people: war. Success against foreign enemies went a long way toward stilling domestic discontent in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, though the corollary was that foreign defeat could quickly undermine the fascist chief's legitimacy. " (Paxton)
119
What did fascist leaders rely on?
"for while the fascist leader is indispensable, he does not rule alone. The common view that the leader does everything is the final triumph of fascist propaganda. Fascist leaders needed the help of elites and institutions in order to carry out their projects. It is a distortion to perceive the actions of fascist regimes as simple projections of the leader's will. Even fascist failures are not inevitably the leader's fault." (Paxton)
120
What did fascist leaders rely on?
"Fascist leaders inevitably had to contend with a party and its unruly militants. A ‘party of integration’ that claimed to speak for the whole nation, to energize and unite it, and to supplant a weak and corrupt liberal state is an essential character of fascism, as compared to traditional dictatorship or authoritarianism. But having unleashed the party for his own ascent, the fascist chief then had to discipline it when he assumed control of the state. The tense relationship between Il Duce and his ras is notorious. Hitler, too, faced repeated party rebellions, which he quelled at first with persuasion, and then with murder, as on the Night of the Long Knives. But the fascist leader could not totally suppress his party, for it gave him independence from traditional social powers. Leader and party remained locked in a state of constant tension." (Paxton)
121
Did the Nazis control civil society completely?
"Civil society could have considerable leverage, and even the Nazis could not simply give orders. Some elements of civil society, such as the churches and the army, had powerful autonomous sources of independence. At the same time, both were willing to cooperate as long as their independence was recognized. In the end, even the Nazis were obliged to accept a certain realm of independence for powerful economic and social groups in what Wolfgang Schieder has called a Herrschaft-skompromiss, a compromise for rule." (Paxton)
122
Did everyone have to be incorporated into the nazi regime?
"Collaborating social and economic groups did not have to be fully converted. It was enough for them to accept fascism as the least bad solution. Most German businessmen, we now know, had strong reservations about Hitler before 1933 and preferred Papen. Hitler, however, seemed to them preferable to any solution including socialists." (Paxton)
123
How did Hitler and Stalin differ?
"Hitler came to power with the complicity of traditional leaders and groups, and had to obtain at least their acquiescence in order to rule. Stalin reached power by establishing his personal dominance within a governing clique, and ruled a society radically simplified by revolution. Nazism had the ultimate aim of establishing the hegemony of a master race; Stalinism's ultimate aim was to establish a totally egalitarian society worldwide under Russian hegemony, by force if necessary. Stalin's victims may have been more numerous, but nothing in his regime—not even the displacement of suspect peoples like the Volga Germans—matched the systematic extinction of an entire people." (Paxton)
124
Was Japan fascist in the 1930s?
"For many Japanese historians – and not just the long-dominant Marxist school – Imperial Japan in the period between the ‘Manchurian Incident’ and Hiroshima was fascist. This certainty has now largely dissipated, and the thesis of an authoritarian ‘emperor-system-fascism’ or a ‘fascism from above’ has been called into question. However, the problem certainly remains present in internal Japanese debates." (Daniel Hedinger)
125
Did Mussolini believe fascism was international?
"Mussolini had long maintained that fascism was not exportable and had insisted on its italianità. But in retrospective he adopted a quite different tone: ‘Between 1929 and today [March 1934], fascism has evolved from an Italian phenomenon to a universal one’. " (Hedinger)
126
What did Mussolini say in 1932?
"As late as March 1932, in an interview with a German newspaper he emphasized that fascism could never be exported to any other country. Yet a change of heart followed. On October 25 of the same year he announced on Milan’s Cathedral Square: ‘In a decade Europe will be fascist!’ At the same time, he began to refer to the twentieth century as the century of fascism. The October issue of the party’s organ Gerarchia [Hierarchy] was entitled the ‘universal mission of Rome’ – for Mussolini, this was a mission which entailed uniting the Occident with the Orient, on a spiritual and moral level in particular. " (Hedinger)
127
Why did Mussolini change his mind on international fascism?
"A younger generation of fascists began to ask for change. Given the nature of the regime, the only thing left to them was to demand international expansion. Since domestic reforms had proved to be an utopia, the universalization of the ideology was an escapist impulse." (Hedinger)
128
What was the impact of the great depression?
"Far from signifying the ‘end of globalization’ – as is frequently maintained – the Great Depression certainly impelled globalization at other levels: including the universalization of fascism, to name but one." (Hedinger)
129
How was italian fascism recieved in Japan?
"Italian Fascism’s global ambitions met with a rapid and often enthusiastic response in Japan. " (Hedinger)
130
WHy did fascsim take hold in Japan?
"However, this is likely attributable less to the international effectiveness of fascist propaganda than to the situation in Japan itself. The occupation of Manchuria, without any immediate difficulties, in late 1931 had triggered euphoria among much of the Japanese population. However, fear and uncertainty increased amid serious fighting in Shanghai at the start of the new year, leading to international criticism of Japan’s behaviour. Meanwhile the League of Nations established a committee of inquiry in East Asia. Soon, leaving the League of Nations seemed the only feasible path for Japan. In this context, turning to fascism was an obvious step to escape international isolation." (hedinger)
131
How did the japanese define fascsim?
" From the spring of 1932, the Nihon Fasshizumu renmei [Japanese Fascist League] published a new monthly journal entitled Fasshizumu. It also provided a definition of Japanese fascism: ‘Japanese fascism is, above all, a (popular) nationalism deriving from Japanese consciousness, a national movement and a reform movement to strengthen social justice. It also resolutely faces the world as a nationalist movement which speaks majestically to the Japanese nation, the Japanese and Japan.’ " (Hedinger)
132
how did japan come to see italian fascism?
"Japanese decision makers began to emphasize their lack of need for Italian Fascism, as an alien import, while the Italian experts expressed doubts as to the authenticity of the Japanese version of fascism." (Hedinger)
133
Why did japan turn to fascist ideology?
"On the other hand Japan’s turning to fascistic ideologies has even less to do with the National Socialists’ seizure of power, which it also predated. Nor did Japan’s turning to fascistic ideologies have its main origins in the universalization of Italian Fascism. When international isolation threatened at the start of 1932, due to the Manchuria Crisis, Japan became interested in Italian Fascism for reasons of its own. Fascism appeared to offer a welcome third way which was independent of both the League of Nations and the Communist International." (Hedinger)
134
What is the overuse of the term fascism led to?
"However, its use as a discursive weapon threatens to blunt the concept's analytical incisiveness, a development that has had precursors. As Karl Dietrich Bracher noted in 1976, "over time, important historical and political terms […] not infrequently suffer the fate of undergoing such significant changes in their original content and meaning, of being utilized in such different ways, and of being deployed and extended as discursive weapons in such a way that their academic value becomes highly questionable. This is especially true of the frequently employed term fascism."" (Fernando Esposito)
135
Where were there other fascist movements?
"Although Italy's Fascists and Germany's National Socialists were the only movements that succeeded in establishing fascist regimes on their own, the interwar period spawned numerous other fascist movements. Spain's Falange , Hungary's Arrow Cross , and Romania's Legion of the Archangel Michael (later Iron Guard) grew in the slipstream of the success of Italian and German fascism, but in contrast for example to Croatia's Ustasha or Norway's Nasjonal Samling or National Unity, they gained a certain level of significance in their respective countries without German military occupation. " (Esposito)
136
What is the significance of italian fascism?
"Italian Fascism. Not only was the generic term derived from this first fascist movement and used to designate and understand similar movements. Italian Fascism was in fact the first model for comparable movements forming across Europe." (Esposito)
137
When did mussolini found his movement?
"Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). Together with various futurists, syndicalists, former Arditi (elite storm troopers) and other veterans, he founded the Fasci italiani di combattimento, a leftist nationalist anti-party, on 23 March 1919 in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro. Militant nationalist activism, a propensity for violence radicalized by war, anti-bourgeois and anti-Marxist attitudes, and contempt for the established political caste and practices served as the unifying elements of this extremely disparate alliance." (Esposito)
138
What was the third way?
"The initially slight yet growing fascination which Fascists exerted was based on the aura of renewal, on the proclaimed "third way", which was neither right nor left, and on the idea of unity and power of the nation that they advocated. The latter was to be (re)generated through violence, if necessary. This vision of a "Volksgemeinschaft", i.e. of the national and/or ethnic community", in which social conflicts between workers and the bourgeoisie, as well as discontent with industrial modernity, would be overcome, proves to be one of the core similarities that can be discerned between different forms of fascism" (Esposito)
139
What was the third way for italians?
"In Italy, the envisaged "third way" was initially embodied by the charismatic poet, war hero, and comandante Gabriele D'Annunzio, who campaigned against Italy's liberal political caste and the Allies' "mutilated victory". " (Esposito)
140
How did Giovanni Gentile view fascism?
"Gentile stated: "In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the 'totalitarian' scope of its doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and feeling of the nation." The "totalitarian character" was based not least on the fact that Fascism intended to bring about a different, greater Italy by creating a "New Man". Its aim was an ”anthropological revolution": On the one hand, eugenic measures were to be implemented to physically strengthen the "Italian race" and make it fit for warfare. On the other hand, education and indoctrination were supposed to fundamentally change the mentality of Italians and produce "modern Romans" – a warlike and disciplined people who placed the interests of the community before those of the individual. " (Esposito)
141
How did fascists view the state?
"For fascism, the state was the "purpose and the individual the means". Fascism sought to replace the "atomistic and mechanical society" marked by class conflicts with an "organic and historical" community in which the individual served the community and was to be subordinated to it through "total sacrifice, if necessary". The Nazi motto "you are nothing, your people is everything" was prefigured here." (Esposito)
142
What quote from mussolini show fascisms contraditions?
"Mussolini did not commit himself and stated in March 1921: "[…] we allow ourselves the luxury of being aristocratic and democratic, conservative and progressive, reactionary and revolutionary, legal and illegal, depending on the circumstances of the time, the place, the environment."" (Esposito)
143
What was the point of power for mussolini?
"However, the rest of Mussolini's speech shows that the aim was not only power for its own sake. That power was to be employed to restore Italy to its former greatness, to renew the "immortal fatherland" that had appeared in ancient Rome, but also in the Risorgimento and in wartime." (Esposito)
144
How did communist see fascism?
"Communists saw fascists as the lackeys of capital. Despite fascism's "very diverse" social base, ranging from peasantry and (declassed) petit bourgeois to the working class, it pursued a "politics of the bourgeoisie"." (Esposito)
145
What is a communist definition of fascism?
"the definition of fascism formulated in December 1933 by the Georgi Dimitrov, who became head of the Comintern in 1934, remained the basis of official doctrine and research, even after World War II. "Fascism in power" was "the openly terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialistic elements of finance capital". " (Esposito)
146
How did Hitler overtake musollini?
"On 30 January 1933, the "Führer" of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers' Party), Adolf Hitler, became chancellor of the German Reich. Within 18 months of "national revolution", Hitler and the NSDAP were able to dissolve trade unions, ban oppositional parties, penetrate the state's organization and societal life to a considerable extent, and to rid themselves by force of their conservative alliance partners as well as the "revolutionaries" within the party army, the SA. With this "radical-fascist acceleration" and the level of Gleichschaltung in German society achieved within a year and a half, Hitler had already surpassed his Italian model at the beginning of his dictatorship." (Esposito)
147
What is the sacralization of politics?
"the fascist emphasis on the ”sacralization of politics" highlighted important aspects of fascist political style, its justification of violence, and the consensus it generated – not least thanks to the transfer of religious topoi such as redemption and rebirth to immanent and secular ideas such as the nation and the people." (Esposito)
148
What is Stanley Payne's definition of fascism?
"In his succinct definition, fascism was "[…] a form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilisation, and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as an end as well as means and tends to normative war and/or military virtues"." (Esposito)
149
What does Payne see as necessary for the development of fascism?
"Among the conditions necessary for the growth of a fascist movement were: "[…] strong influence from the cultural crisis of the fin de siècle in a situation of perceived mounting cultural disorientation; the background of some form of organized nationalism before World War I; an international situation of perceived defeat, status humiliation, or lack of dignity; a state system comparatively new that was entering or had just entered a framework of liberal democracy; a situation of increasing political fragmentation; large sectors of workers, farmers, or petit bourgeois that were either not represented or had lost confidence in the existing parties; and an economic crisis perceived to stem in large measure from foreign defeat or exploitation"." (Esposito)
150
Why was mussolini not seen as a fascist by some?
"Mussolini's Italian biographer, Renzo De Felice, rejected the generic concept of fascism, for example, on the grounds that racism/antisemitism was obviously a characteristic feature of Nazism but "foreign to the nature" of Italian Fascism. " (Esposito)
151
Why did Gentile draw attention to italian fascism and its link to religion?
"Based on an analysis of various symbols (such as the fasces), rites (such as the leva fascista or Fascist confirmation), myths (the rebirth of ancient Rome), cults (of the Duce), public celebrations (the anniversary of the March on Rome), and buildings (among others, the case del fascio, the local party houses), Gentile called attention to the sacralization of politics in fascist Italy and demonstrated the extent to which Fascism was best understood as a totalitarian experiment and political religion." (Esposito)
152
What is at the heart of Griffins definition of fascism?
"Ultranationalism and palingenesis, that is, the rebirth and renewal of the national or "racist-völkisch" community, lie at the core of Griffin's radically slimmed-down, heuristic ideal type. " (Esposito)
153
What does fascsim ultimately seek to do?
"Its ultimate end is to overcome the decadence that has destroyed a sense of communal belonging and drained modernity of meaning and transcendence and usher in a new era of cultural homogeneity and health." " (Esposito)
154
Who did fascism appeal to?
"This was a magnet for young men with nationalistic and militant leanings, who found the paramilitary form of organization with its clearly defined hierarchies, camaraderie, and sense of community appealing. " (esposito)
155
What was the fascist regime rooted in?
"The fascist regime was rooted in force, violence, and exclusion, but it was also underpinned by what was at times a high level of support and participation from below, which resulted from a variety of disparate motives. This consensus was not only generated by repression and the "fabbrica del consenso" (propaganda factory). It also grew out of the grassroots fascism adhered to by numerous Italians as well as the attractive opportunities and upward mobility that fascism offered." (Esposito)
156
From where did fascist regimes emerge?
"From this perspective, fascism emerged from the perception that the existing order was fractured, rigid, outmoded, and decadent. It therefore had to be destroyed through revolutionary violence and, as Roger Griffin repeatedly emphasized, the rebirth of the ”eternal" – be it ancient Rome, the Germanic people, or legionary Romania – had to be initiated" (Esposito)
157
What made german and italian fascism seem different?
"But what role did racism and antisemitism play in Italian Fascism, as well as in the other forms of fascism? Antisemitism's pivotal role in National Socialism – be it "völkisch","racial-biological", "eliminatory" (Goldhagen), or "redemptive" antisemitism (Friedländer) – and the murder of millions of European Jews perpetrated by Germans, made the categorizing of National Socialist ideology under the generic term of fascism appear questionable to scholars in both Germany and Italy." (Esposito)
158
Was Italian fascism racist?
"But since the 1990s, perceptions of Italian Fascism have shifted, as it became clear that biopolitical and eugenic thinking were also firmly rooted in fin de sìecle Italian academia. And Italian racism – both as it was manifested with respect to the Slavic minorities in Italy's eastern regions and as it targeted the African inhabitants of the Italian colonial empire – proved to be murderous. The notion of antisemitism as a purely imported phenomenon, in particular, has been disproved. While Mussolini's perception of the now more radical and totalitarian northern successor did play a role, his regime's antisemitic policies were intrinsically motivated. Like the racist war launched by Italy against Ethiopia in October 1935, antisemitism was unleashed as a means of reviving the flagging revolutionary/antibourgeois spirit of Italian Fascism." (Esposito)
159
Has there been an ongoing debate about fascist definitions?
"For more than ninety years, there has been an ongoing controversy on the content and the range of the concept of fascism. As Roger Eatwell has noted, "no other 'ism' has produced such conflicting interpretations". " (Esposito
160
What was fasism a response to?
"The expectations that the war would purify, unite, and bring salvation had been disappointed everywhere in Europe, and liberalism failed to meet the hopes set in it. What remained was a longing for community, orientation, and order and a willingness to try radical solutions for the pressing issues of modernity. Fascism was a response that aimed to satisfy the desire for a new beginning, for a New Man, and for an alternative modernity – that fascism aimed to create on a drawing board, or rather on a tabula rasa created by murdering millions of people." (Esposito)
161
What is the risk of looking for ideal types of fascism?
"But in adopting this approach, fascism to an extent becomes an abstraction, with the attendant risks, in less careful hands, of reification, of treating the ‘idea’ as a real ‘thing’, a danger to which all the ‘isms’ are exposed." (Morgan)
162
How did the comintern help fascism?
"The official line in the late 1920s of the USSR-dominated international organisation of Communist parties, the Comintern, was so mistaken in its over-simplified view of fascism as ‘capitalism in crisis’ and intrinsically no different from other political forms of class domination, that it contributed directly to the coming to power of Nazism in Germany" (Morgan)
163
How are fascists often portrayed?
"They are usually portrayed as political opportunists (what politician is not?), politicians of action whose actions did not marry with their words, which were literally propaganda, and fixated on power ‘for its own sake’." (Morgan)
164
Were fascists only about action?
"Of course fascists were ‘action men’, and their activism and willingness to use violence against their political opponents and against their own societies, in some cases amounting to a cult of violence, distinguished the from most other contemporary political movements. But fascist leaders and movements did have an ideology, understood as a body of ideas or principles inspiring and informing political action, and political programmes and policies which embodied the ideology." (Morgan)
165
What did fascists do once in power?
"Once in power, the Italian Fascist and German Nazi governments did use that power to shape politics and society according to fascist beliefs and principles. This was a process; the ‘fascistisation’ of Italy and Germany proceeded at different rates, for various ‘national’ reasons which will be explored in the book, and some would justifiably argue that the Italian Fascist regime remained conditioned and held back by the compromises with other centres of power in Italian life, which it made in order to come to power." (Morgan)
166
What is the context of fascism's development?
"The context, or setting, for fascism was the crisis of what contemporaries called the ‘Versailles system’, in other words, the post-First World War economic and political order, which was based on a capitalist economy and parliamentary democracy internally, and the League of Nations internationally." (Morgan)
167
What is the first reason for the destabilisation of politics?
"The destabilisation of parliamentary democratic systems of government in the inter-war period came from three sources, which led to conflict and tension both within and between countries. For one thing, national–ethnic issues in Central and Eastern Europe were accentuated rather than eased by a post-war settlement apparently based on national self-determination. The mix of nationalities living in the areas of the pre-war multinational empires made it impossible to carve out viable single nationality states. " (Morgan)
168
What is the second source of instability after the war?
"The second source of political instability in the inter-war period was the threat from the left. The most significant event of the period was the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in October 1917. A proletarian socialist revolution was no longer a prospect, but a reality, subversive of the political and socio-economic systems of much of Europe, whose success was a tremendous stimulus to socialist revolutionaries elsewhere. Marxist socialist revolution was never meant to be contained by state frontiers, and this was particularly so, when the revolution had occurred in Russia, which as Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership realised, was the weakest and most backward link in the capitalist chain. Conditions for the creation of socialism were not immediately present in Russia, and for the revolution in Russia to last, it had to spread to the more economically advanced industrial countries to the west." (Morgan)
169
What was the impact of the great derpression on fascism?
"We may now see the so-called Great Depression of 1929–33 as a cyclical downturn in the global economy. But it was the watershed event of twentieth-century Europe. For one thing, its effects made parliamentary politics very difficult to operate, in some cases, including Germany, impossible to operate, to the point where they were destroyed altogether. " (Morgan)
170
What was the great depression to contemporaries and how did the influence fascism's growth?
"To contemporaries, it was not a crisis in the capitalist system, but the crisis of the system, and as such, led to a general questioning throughout Europe of the functionality of capitalism and democratic parliamentary government. By making incredible the claims of capitalist economies and political democracies to deliver the good life to the people of Europe, the Great Depression had the effect of highlighting the rival and competitive political alternatives to these systems in the 1930s, those of communism and fascism. The Depression helped to make fascism an international phenomenon, most notably in the triumph of Nazism in Germany, and also in the emergence of new fascist movements in various European countries. Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, and in power since 1922, could move under the impact of the Depression from a position in the mid-1920s that fascism was not for export, to one in the early 1930s which proclaimed a ‘universal’ fascism, capable of replacing in all countries demonstrably bankrupt and dysfunctional democratic and capitalist systems." (Morgan)
171
What is Philip MOrgan's definition of fascism?
"Setting the historical context also makes it possible to provide a passable working definition of fascism. Fascist movements were radical hyper-nationalist cross-class movements with a distinctive militarist organisation and activist political style. In a climate of perceived national danger and crisis, they sought the regeneration of their nations through the violent destruction of all political forms and forces which they held to be responsible for national disunity and divisiveness, and the creation of a new national order based on the moral or ‘spiritual’ reformation of their peoples, a ‘cultural revolution’ achievable only through the ‘total’ control of society, and on class-collaborative, regulatory forms of socio-economic organisation, often of a corporatist nature."
172
Did fascism develop before the first world war?
"Other historians, and this is now the more consensual view, see the origins of fascism in cultural and intellectual changes which occurred in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe, before the First World War, and trace a basic continuity in ideas from the pre-war period, through the war and into the inter-war years. The French historian of ideas, Zeev Sternhell, in his important book on the pre-war ‘revolutionary right’ in France (Sternhell 1978), argues that there was a fully fledged fascist ideology in existence in France by 1914." (Morgan)
173
Was the fascist view of violence something unique to it?
"Sorel wanted socialism to recover its revolutionary ‘soul’, and so emphasised the need for violence in the revolutionary process, a purgative and regenerative violence smashing the old order. He wanted people to be moved emotionally, inspired by socialism to act, recognising that there was more to human motivation than material concerns. Violence, in itself, was both a sign of the will to take action and a source of motivation. A violent act, for Sorel, was a kind of collective male-bonding session, the shared risk and responsibility helping to forge a sense of togetherness and solidarity which could fuel further action." (Morgan)
174
What scientific view was influential before the war?
"Darwin’s ground-breaking theory of the evolution of animal, plant and the human species by a process of natural selection, where the fittest survive through successful adaptation to environment, was applied or misapplied to contemporary human societies, as well as to the study of heredity in the new science of genetics." (Morgan)
175
What was the first political combination of darwin and sorel?
"These ideas took a more coherent political form in the nationalist movement founded in 1910, the Associazione Nazionale Italiana (ANI), which wanted a monarchist–authoritarian and corporatist political and economic system, capable of pushing through the industrial development and modernisation of the country, providing the resources for, and uniting the nation around, imperialistic war. " (Morgan)
176
What could be passed down through blood?
"Völkisch nationalism was often racist, with Germanic ‘blood’ seen by Julius Langbehn, one of its most widely-read exponents, as quite literally the carrier and transmitter of the German people’s moral virtues and qualities." (Morgan)
177
What was fascism for Sternhell and where was it first realised?
"For Sternhell, the ideological synthesis of nationalism and a revamped socialism, which was ‘fascism’, was realised in France before the First World War. Above all, there was Maurice Barrès, the novelist and militant ‘organic’ nationalist, who fought an election campaign in 1898 on a platform of what he called ‘socialist nationalism’." (Morgan)
178
How did nationalists see the first world war?
"All of this was a kind of dream come true for the nationalists of pre-war Europe. The nation at war was the working model of the anti-parliamentary authoritarian and corporatist order which they had put forward as the alternative to parliamentary democracy. Specifically, Italy at war seemed to match exactly that ANI projection of Italy as a ‘proletarian nation’. The country was fighting an imperialist war to improve its relatively weak international position and gain the redistribution of territory and resources. This international struggle for existence demanded the suspension of all internal conflict and a strong state unifying the nation around itself, in order to concentrate energies on winning the war. " (Morgan)
179
What did war society during ww1 come to represent?
"The ‘armed society’ of wartime also came to be the blueprint for the kind of society the fascists wanted to create in peacetime in preparation for war, so effectively removing the distinction between war and peace. Total war provided the rationale for, and a practical if incomplete demonstration of, the functions and potential of the later fascist totalitarian state." (Morgan)
180
How did hitler do things differently?
"The Nazi dictator intended to win a new war by avoiding what he believed had caused defeat in the Great War. Like most post-war German nationalists, he subscribed to the ‘stab in the back’ myth that Germany had been defeated in 1918 not on the field of battle, but as the result of internal defeatism and subversion by various ‘anti-national’ forces, which had prevented the full militarisation of German society. Defeat was, therefore, down to the state’s insufficient mobilisation of the German people. This could be rectified through the action of the Nazi totalitarian regime, which would not only permanently repress those ‘anti-national forces’ ( Jews, socialists, Catholics), but also, in its propaganda and organisations, ‘arm’ the people morally and psychologically with the will and commitment to wage and win the future war." (Morgan)
181
What did the separation between homefornt and frontline lead to?
"The outcome of these two ‘separations’ was that frontline soldiers came to sense that they were a breed apart, living through their own kind of hell beyond the experience and comprehension of their indifferent commanders and the people on the ‘home front’. This sense of having experienced a different and more terrible war to the rest of the population made for a very difficult re-entry into civilian life on demobilisation, and some of them never made, or bothered to make, the transition. " (Morgan)
