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Clerical fascism (also clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.
The term clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) emerged in the early 1920s in the Kingdom of Italy, referring to the faction of the Roman Catholic Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) which supported Benito Mussolini and his régime. It was supposedly coined by Don Luigi Sturzo, a priest and Christian democrat leader who opposed Mussolini and went into exile in 1924, [1] although the term had also been used before Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922 to refer to Catholics in Northern Italy who advocated a synthesis of Roman Catholicism and fascism. [2]
Sturzo made a distinction between the "filofascists", who left the Catholic PPI in 1921 and 1922, and the "clerical fascists" who stayed in the party after the March on Rome, advocating collaboration with the fascist government. [3] Eventually, the latter group converged with Mussolini, abandoning the PPI in 1923 and creating the Centro Nazionale Italiano. The PPI was disbanded by the fascist régime in 1926. [4]
The term has since been used by scholars seeking to contrast authoritarian-conservative clerical fascism with more radical variants. [5] Christian fascists focus on internal religious politics, such as passing laws and regulations that reflect their view of Christianity. Radicalized forms of Christian fascism or clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) were emerging on the far-right of the political spectrum in some European countries during the interwar period in the first half of the 20th century. [6]
In 1870, the newly formed Kingdom of Italy annexed the remaining Papal States, depriving the Pope of his temporal power. However, in the 1929 Lateran Treaty, Mussolini recognized the Pope as sovereign ruler of the Vatican City state, and Roman Catholicism became the state religion of Fascist Italy. [7] [8]
In March 1929, a nationwide plebiscite was held to publicly endorse the Lateran Treaty. Opponents were intimidated by the fascist regime: the Catholic Action organisation (Azione Cattolica) and Mussolini claimed that "no" votes were of those "few ill-advised anti-clericals who refuse to accept the Lateran Pacts". [9] Nearly nine million Italians voted, or 90 per cent of the registered electorate, and only 136,000 voted "no". [10]
Almost immediately after the signing of the Treaty, relations between Mussolini and the Church soured again. Mussolini "referred to Catholicism as, in origin, a minor sect that had spread beyond Palestine only because grafted onto the organization of the Roman empire." [11] After the concordat, "he confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years." [11] Mussolini reportedly came close to being excommunicated from the Catholic Church around this time. [11]
In 1938, the Italian Racial Laws and Manifesto of Race were promulgated by the fascist regime to persecute Italian Jews [12] as well as Protestant Christians, [8] [13] [14] [15] especially Evangelicals and Pentecostals. [13] [14] [15] Thousands of Italian Jews and a small number of Protestants died in the Nazi concentration camps. [12] [15] In January 1939, the Jewish National Monthly reports "the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope have been issuing regularly".[ citation needed ] Pope Pius XI personally admitted Professor Vito Volterra, a famous Italian Jewish mathematician expelled from his position by the regime, into the Pontifical Academy of Science. [16] [ better source needed ]
Despite Mussolini's close alliance with Hitler's Germany, Italy did not fully adopt Nazism's genocidal ideology towards the Jews. The Nazis were frustrated by the Italian authorities' refusal to co-operate in the round-ups of Jews, and no Jews were deported prior to the formation of the Italian Social Republic following the Armistice of Cassibile. [17] In the Italian-occupied Independent State of Croatia, German envoy Siegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism. [18] As anti-Axis feeling grew in Italy, the use of Vatican Radio to broadcast papal disapproval of race murder and anti-Semitism angered the Nazis. [19] When Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943, the Germans moved to occupy Italy and commenced a round-up of Jews.
Around 4% of Resistance forces were formally Catholic organisations, but Catholics dominated other "independent groups" such as the Fiamme Verdi and Osoppo partisans, and there were also Catholic militants in the Garibaldi Brigades, such as Benigno Zaccagnini, who later served as a prominent Christian Democrat politician. [20] In Northern Italy, tensions between Catholics and communists in the movement led Catholics to form the Fiamme Verdi as a separate brigade of Christian Democrats. [21] After the war, the ideological divisions between former partisans re-emerged, becoming a hallmark of post-war Italian politics. [22] [23]
Examples of political movements which incorporate certain elements of clerical fascism into their ideologies include:
The National Union in Portugal led by Prime Ministers António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano is not considered Fascist by historians such as Stanley G. Payne, Thomas Gerard Gallagher, Juan José Linz, António Costa Pinto, Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and Howard J. Wiarda, though it is considered Fascist by historians such as Manuel de Lucena, Jorge Pais de Sousa, Manuel Loff, and Hermínio Martins. [26] [27] [28] [29] One of Salazar's actions was to ban the National Syndicalists/Fascists. Salazar distanced himself from fascism and Nazism, which he criticized as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognise either legal or moral limits. [30]
Likewise, the Fatherland Front in Austria led by Austrian Catholic Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg is often not regarded as a fully fascist party. It has been called semi-Fascist and even imitation Fascist. Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis, shot in his office by the SS and left to bleed to death. Initially, his regime received support from Fascist Italy, which formed the Stresa Front with the United Kingdom and France.[ citation needed ]
Scholars who accept the use of the term clerical fascism debate about which of the listed examples should be dubbed "clerical fascist". In the examples which are cited above, the degree of official Catholic support and the degree of clerical influence over lawmaking and government both vary. Moreover, several authors reject the concept of a clerical fascist régime, arguing that an entire fascist régime does not become "clerical" if elements of the clergy support it, while others are not prepared to use the term "clerical fascism" outside the context of what they call the fascist epoch, between the ends of the two world wars (1918–1945). [31]
Some scholars consider certain contemporary movements forms of clerical fascism, such as Christian Identity and Christian Reconstructionism in the United States; [32] "the most virulent form" of Islamic fundamentalism, [33] Islamism; [34] and militant Hindu nationalism in India. [32]
The political theorist Roger Griffin warns against the "hyperinflation of clerical fascism". [35] According to Griffin, the use of the term "clerical fascism" should be limited to "the peculiar forms of politics that arise when religious clerics and professional theologians are drawn either into collusion with the secular ideology of fascism (an occurrence particularly common in interwar Europe); or, more rarely, manage to mix a theologically illicit cocktail of deeply held religious beliefs with a fascist commitment to saving the nation or race from decadence or collapse". [36] Griffin adds that "clerical fascism" "should never be used to characterize a political movement or a regime in its entirety, since it can at most be a faction within fascism", while he defines fascism as "a revolutionary, secular variant of ultranationalism bent on the total rebirth of society through human agency". [37]
In the case of the Slovak State, some scholars have rejected the use of the term clerical fascism as a label for the regime and they have particularly rejected the use of the term clerical fascist as a label for Jozef Tiso. [38]
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and/or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
The Lateran Treaty was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between the Kingdom of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel III and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman Question. The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. The treaty recognised Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. The Italian government also agreed to give the Roman Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church. The treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion.
The Ustaše, also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian, fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. Its members assisted in assassinating King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, and went on to perpetrate The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma as well as Bosniak Muslims and Croatian political dissidents during World War II in Yugoslavia.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the state have been constantly evolving with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history, the Church has had to deal with various concepts and systems of governance, from the Roman Empire to the medieval divine right of kings, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of democracy and pluralism to the appearance of left- and right-wing dictatorial regimes. The Second Vatican Council's decree Dignitatis humanae stated that religious freedom is a civil right that should be recognized in constitutional law.
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941.
Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell that examines the actions of Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, before and during the Nazi era, and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933. The book is critical of Pius' conduct during the Second World War, arguing that he did not do enough, or speak out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argues that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Secretary of State, and Pope, was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argues that Pius was antisemitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews.
Anti-Protestantism is bias, hatred or distrust against some or all branches of Protestantism and/or its followers, especially when amplified in legal, political, ethic or military measures.
The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an elite minority. Fascism has also been connected to the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Fascism styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. From the same era, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of the nation.
Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig, and 1.5% as "atheist". Protestants were over-represented in the Nazi Party's membership and electorate, and Catholics were under-represented.
Catholic Action are groups of lay Catholics who advocate for increased Catholic influence on society. They were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic countries under anti-clerical regimes such as Spain, Italy, Bavaria, France, and Belgium.
Italian fascism, also classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian Fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist political organisations.
The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. It was succeeded, in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, by the Republican Fascist Party, ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
Fascist movements in Europe were the set of various fascist ideologies which were practiced by governments and political organizations in Europe during the 20th century. Fascism was born in Italy following World War I, and other fascist movements, influenced by Italian Fascism, subsequently emerged across Europe. Among the political doctrines which are identified as ideological origins of fascism in Europe are the combining of a traditional national unity and revolutionary anti-democratic rhetoric which was espoused by the integral nationalist Charles Maurras and the revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel.
Vatican City pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. Although the city of Rome was occupied by Germany from September 1943 and the Allies from June 1944, Vatican City itself was not occupied. The Vatican organised extensive humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the conflict.
Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Around a third of Germans were Catholic in the 1930s, most of them lived in Southern Germany; Protestants dominated the north. The Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazi Party, and in the 1933 elections, the proportion of Catholics who voted for the Nazi Party was lower than the national average. Nevertheless, the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. President Paul Von Hindenburg continued to serve as Commander and Chief and he also continued to be responsible for the negotiation of international treaties until his death on 2 August 1934.
Pietro Tacchi Venturi was a Jesuit priest and historian who served as the unofficial liaison between Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and Popes Pius XI and Pius XII. He was also one of the architects of the 1929 Lateran Treaty, which ended the "Roman Question", and recognized the sovereignty of Vatican City, which made it an actor of international relations. A claimed attempt to assassinate Venturi with a paper knife, one year before the treaty's completion, made headlines around the world. Venturi had begun the process of reconciliation by convincing Mussolini to donate the valuable library of the Palazzo Chigi to the Vatican.
Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany was a component of German resistance to Nazism and of Resistance during World War II. The role of the Catholic Church during the Nazi years remains a matter of much contention. From the outset of Nazi rule in 1933, issues emerged which brought the church into conflict with the regime and persecution of the church led Pope Pius XI to denounce the policies of the Nazi Government in the 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. His successor Pius XII faced the war years and provided intelligence to the Allies. Catholics fought on both sides in World War II and neither the Catholic nor Protestant churches as institutions were prepared to openly oppose the Nazi State.
Fascist Italy is a term used to describe the Kingdom of Italy governed by the National Fascist Party from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as prime minister and dictator. The Italian Fascists imposed totalitarian rule and crushed political opposition, while promoting economic modernization, traditional social values and a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church.
Para-fascism refers to authoritarian conservative movements and regimes that adopt characteristics associated with fascism such as personality cults, paramilitary organizations, symbols and rhetoric, but it diverges from conventional fascist tenets such as palingenetic ultranationalism, modernism, and populism. It often emerges in response to the need for a facade of popular support in an age of mass politics, without a genuine commitment to revolutionary nationalism, instead focusing on maintaining tradition, religion, and culture. Para-fascist regimes may co-opt or neutralize genuine fascist movements. Examples of para-fascism include the regimes and movements of Austrofascism in Austria, Metaxism in Greece, the “New State” of Salazars’ Portugal, and Francoism in Spain.
In the period following the signing of the 1929 Lateran Pact, which declared Catholicism as Italy's state religion in the context of a comprehensive regulation of Vatican and Italian government relations, Catholic cultural support for Mussolini is consolidated.— Wiley Feinstein, The Civilization of the Holocaust in Italy: Poets, Artists, Saints, Anti-semites (2003), p. 19, London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3988-7
In 1938, the Italian Fascist regime under Benito Mussolini enacted a series of racial laws that placed multiple restrictions on the country's Jewish population. At the time the laws were enacted, it is estimated that about 46,000 Jews lived in Italy, of whom about 9,000 were foreign born and thus subject to further restrictions such as residence requirements. [...] Estimates suggest that between September 1943 and March 1945, about 10,000 Jews were deported. The vast majority perished, principally at Auschwitz.
Lyons and I put Christian Identity into the category of clerical fascism, and we also included the militant theocratic Protestant movement called Christian Reconstructionism... a case can be made for... the Hindu nationalist (Hinduvata) Bharatiya Janata Party in India (which grew out of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Hindu religious movement).
In the most virulent form, theocratic Islamic fundamentalism could be a form of clerical fascism (theocratic fascism built around existing institutionalized clerics). This is a disputed view...
'Clerical fascism' is perhaps the nearest concept which comes closest to Islamism.
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