Fascism

Category: Fields of research

Fascism is a far-right political system, and ideology that supports it, which emerged after the end of the First World War and came to power in several European countries – Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, and Greece – during the interwar period. During the same time regimes in Japan and Brazil also had many similarities with fascist regimes in Europe. Huan Linz defines Fascism, as a sub-type of totalitarian regimes, characterized by hyper-nationalism; anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and anti-communist populism. Fascism combines paramilitary tactics with elections, so fascist rule is based on a strange combination of legitimacy and violence. Other shared characteristics of fascist regimes are: the rejection of free market and promotion of corporatist state, expansionary militarism, and sexism. National-socialism that gained power in Germany was even more extreme and was marked by vicious racism and anti-semitism, hatred against the gay population, anti-masonic hate, and eugenics (sterilization of people deemed genetically unfit – individuals with mental or physical disabilities, promiscuous women, gays, etc.). During the Second World War Germany installed fascist or pro-fascist regimes in many countries that they occupied.

Theoretical Explanations for the Rise to Power of Fascism

Theodor Abel, for his book Why Hitler Came into Power (1938), collected 600 life histories of long-term members of the Nazi party. This book gives an insight into the individual circumstances and reasons for joining the Nazis in the period before the Second World War. Abel explores the political and social forces that, not only brought Hitler to power but also influenced the ideology of the National Socialist Party to become so consistent with the German national consciousness. He identified several key factors: deep and widespread discontent with the status quo, the goal of the Nazi movement was based on deeply rooted sentiments of the majority of the people, Hitler’s charisma, economic depression and extreme inflation, and political unrest in the country.

In the book The Myth of the State (1946), Ernst Cassirer studies the intellectual roots of the totalitarian state in Germany and concludes that in Nazi Germany, irrationality and mythical thinking about the nation and the state acted completely unfettered.

In his first book, Escape from Freedom (1941), Erich Fromm explores the history of the development of the authoritarian order in Western Europe in the Modern Age. The authoritarian order in Europe sought to restrict human freedom. Fromm distinguishes between two basic forms of freedom: "freedom from" (negative freedom) and "freedom for" (positive freedom). Capitalist society and Protestantism promote individualism reflected in selfishness and greed, and give people only "freedom from." Individualism brings people to a state of loneliness and helplessness, so they strive to find security under the auspices of the state, institutions, and political parties. Such people connect with the leader through an authoritarian and sadomasochistic relationship. As is a consequence of unfulfilled life, the repressed life energy accumulates, and the energy of destruction grows stronger. There is a denial of true human nature, so people adapt to society through conformism and mimicry. Instead of a real self, people have a false self. Fromm calls this rejection of his true nature an "escape from freedom." National-Socialism brought the escape from freedom to a climax, because it demanded the complete sacrifice of the individual to a whole, and because it strengthened the love for the strong and the hatred for the weak. But the escape from freedom is also common in democratic capitalist societies because pseudo-democracy and false freedom rule in these societies. Few people achieve positive freedom, which is reflected in the free will of fully integrated individuals.

In 1949, Theodor Adorno led a team of scientists who conducted extensive empirical research among American citizens, which had an authoritarian personality as its subject. This research, published in the book Authoritarian Personality (1950), became the inevitable theoretical and methodological basis for many subsequent studies of the authoritarian structure of personality around the world. During the research, over two thousand respondents were interviewed, through surveys and in-depth interviews. The questions referred to the political and economic attitudes towards other ethnic groups, as well as the personal attitudes of the respondents. The theoretical part of the research used Freud's theory of personality development, to connect the way of raising children, which includes physical punishment and instability of parental attention and love, with the development of an authoritarian personality structure. This type of upbringing produces children's aggression towards their parents, but this aggression is sublimated in adulthood and is directed at social groups that are perceived as weak or inferior, while at the same time the person submits to authoritarian leaders, who unconsciously represent the parent figure. The consequence of this personality development is a weak ego, conformism to conventional social values, intolerance of ambivalence, cynicism, and a tendency towards superstition. To empirically measure the expression of this personality structure in individuals, the authors developed the so-called F scale (F is abbreviated from fascism because the premise was that this type of personality is prone to accept fascist values). Research has found that this type of personality is prevalent in all social groups and classes.

According to Oliver Cox, racism in the United States is analogous to racism in Nazi Germany concerning the Jews. He believed that the cause of racism towards Jews was not in the authoritarian personality of members of the working class. Fascism acts as a politically organized aspect of capitalist class consciousness, and it arose as a reaction to economic problems, and it served to divert the anger of workers from capitalists to the members of other races.

In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963a), Hannah Arendt investigates the causes of evil and concludes that evil is often not caused by the sadistic character of a person, but that it is, in fact, a consequence of the tendency of ordinary people to carry out orders and conform to the masses.

Barrington Moore Jr., in his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966), argues that capitalism didn’t succeed in establishing itself in agriculture and industry in Germany and Japan. Specific circumstances in agriculture and the mode of the capitalist transition, in both countries, contributed to the defeat of democracy and in the installation of authoritarian regimes. In Germany landed aristocratic nobility established the labor-repressive agriculture system that couldn’t compete with more technically advanced economies. Aristocracy in Germany brought free cities into the dependent state, as it circumvented them in agricultural exports. Rulers from the Hohenzollern family succeeded in turning aristocracy and free citizens against each other, thus destroying the independence of both estates. It all led to the establishment of a militaristic bureaucratic state, with protectionist economic policies, that promoted and embodied the values of superiority of the ruling class and the doctrine of racial superiority. This state demanded utter and total obedience from the population it ruled over. This conservative form of modernization led to the establishment of the middle class of small bourgeoisie that, after the First World War, was strong enough to deter socialist and communist revolution, but not strong enough to build democratic institutions. That circumstance allowed the Nazi party to build an alliance between the middle class and industrialists by promoting economic development based on militarism and expansionism.

In his book Fascism and Dictatorship (1974, in French 1970), Nicos Poulantzas explores the class foundations of European fascism and concludes that the fascist state is a very specific form of the capitalist state. He believes that fascism was not an inevitable and natural outcome of the development of capitalism, but that it represents a specific response to the political and economic crisis that arose after the First World War.

Zygmunt Baumann studies Nazi crimes in his book Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). He wants to understand the causes of the Holocaust, but also the meaning that the Holocaust has for the social sciences. Bauman believes that sociologists have not dealt enough with the Holocaust and that they have generally viewed it as the only exception in civilized modern society. Bauman, on the other hand, believes that it is precisely the specific characteristics of modern society, in general, that have made the Holocaust possible. Modern technology and bureaucracy have enabled the Holocaust to be carried out quickly and efficiently, and, on the other hand, technology and bureaucracy have enabled individuals to renounce their own moral responsibility for crimes. The racist ideology and the centralized German state, which destroyed civil society and trade unions, freed up space for unfettered genocide.

Michael Mann, in his book Fascists (2004), uses a class approach to the study of the origin and rise of fascism, through the analysis of six cases in interwar Europe. In all cases, the main features of fascism were: the existence of paramilitary formations, anti-statism, and nationalist ideology. He believes that fascism is a unique case in history that is related to the situation that existed in Europe between the two world wars and which does not have a great chance of recurrence.

References:

Abel. The Nazi Movement: Why Hitler Came to Power (1938);

Adorno. The Authoritarian Personality (1950);

Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951);

- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963);

Aron. Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968, in French 1965);

Bauman. Modernity and the Holocaust (1989);

Cassirer. The Myth of the State (1946);

Cox. Caste, Class and Race (1948);

Elias. Studies on the Germans (2013, in German 1989);

Fromm. Escape from Freedom (1941);

Laclau. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (1977);