Political discourse in the United States today includes many references to fascism, a term that is frequently misunderstood. This essay is a brief introduction to what was meant historically, in contrast to the ways the term is being used today. While there are similarities, the differences are stark enough.
Fascism is a closed ideological system that places the state and the nation at the center of all human life. Classical fascism was developed in the early 1920s in Italy, by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, in the aftermath of World War One. But the origins of fascism can be traced back to a negative reception of the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Enlightenment began as a philosophical movement in Great Britain and France, in response to the rise of a new capitalist class of merchants who challenged the power of the crown and demanded the “right of the individual” to economic and political self-determination. The movement, however, was rejected by a number of Europeans who believed the new order was destructive to a Western culture then based upon Christianity and hierarchy. The followers of German philosopher Karl Marx, beginning in the mid-1800s, also rejected this novel social order, as did those who espoused an extreme form of nationalism which argued that each “nation” was a collective that had a unique transcendent essence or soul that distinguished it from other nations.
By the early twentieth century, nationalism had become popular as new countries such as Germany and Italy were created out of the unification of states in the late 1800s. Racism would be gradually attached to nationalism so that many Europeans conceived of a biologized hierarchy of nations, from high to low, which justified European imperialism such that poet and author Rudyard Kipling could extol the gift of the British to the world as “The White Man’s Burden.”
World War One and its aftermath did little to dampen the appeal of nationalism, racist or otherwise. Political leaders in Italy, for example, were angry that its nineteenth-century claims to national self-determination remained unfulfilled. The question of what to do led Mussolini, a veteran of the war and a well-known former socialist, to consider how best to respond to this betrayal. He concluded that the issue was a symptom of Italian degeneration as a result of Western notions of excessive individualism. His answer was the notion of “fascism” and the formal establishment of the National Fascist Party in November 1921.
A number of historians hold the position that true fascism was a European phenomenon between World War One and World War Two.
Mussolini set about developing a “fascist” ideology that took as its symbol the fasces, a bundle of rods resurrecting the power and unity of empire as reflected by a Roman magistrate. Fascism posited the nation as the prime mover in history, and it was the job of the state to protect the nation from harm.
A definition of nation was thus essential, and fascism was quite clear that nations were a living, organic whole. From Mussolini’s perspective, Western democracies, specifically the United States, the United Kingdom, and even Italy, were black holes of unbridled individualism, and thus disunity, death, and destruction.
Racism was actually less of a concern than was the fragmentation of Italian culture; unsurprising, given that Italy was only completely unified in 1871. Among the tools that were available to generate national unity, the most effective were the police, paramilitaries, and the military, each of which wielded enormous power in the struggle to overcome perceived degeneration. Additional tools included the development of fascist propaganda and educational narratives; press and film censorship; the conflating of private and public life; and the “cleansing” of the nation’s cultural assets of all that was “un-Italian.” If all else failed, concentration camps and executions were always available.
To accomplish these goals, it was necessary to install a leader with total control of all aspects of life in the nation. Mussolini represented the state and was its self-appointed leader, il Duce.
In the United States, the use of the term “fascism” to describe the agenda of numerous American politicians is thus problematic. Any analysis should begin with asking, “To what end?” If the answer includes the content of fascism as propounded by Mussolini, one can certainly make the case that fascism is the right concept. Indeed, some in the United States hold the view that white Americans constitute a collective biological nation, and thus claim the right to “rule” over the “chaos” of people of color. A number of historians, including myself, however, hold the position that true fascism was a European phenomenon between World War One and World War Two. The use of the term to describe later movements is, in this view, historically incorrect, and one should label them simply as fascistic to avoid confusion over the prewar movements of Hitler and Mussolini. What they have in common is authoritarianism and a preference for oligarchy.
Fundamentally, the difference is the concept of an individualism inherited from the Enlightenment versus that of a national organic unity that is a reflection of some transcendent “soul.” In the United States, for some white Christians, the notion of a transcendent essence may ring true, yet the reality of an organic unity does not. Indeed, the entire history of the United States is predicated upon a unique multiculturalism that defies such organic unity. With its large population base and a vast array of ethnic, religious, and cultural identities, I argue fascism as a national ideology cannot exist in the United States, although political oppression might, thus there may be little distinction between fascist tools and fascism. The distinction between them, however, might be useful if only to allow an accurate analysis of the ultimate goal of the oppressor, which in turn can provide insights into causes and possible responses.