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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.
Zeev Sternhell was a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer. He was one of the world's leading theorists of the phenomenon of fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote for Haaretz newspaper.
Georges Valois was a French journalist and national syndicalist politician. He was a member of the French Resistance and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Fascist has been used as a pejorative epithet against a wide range of people, political movements, governments, and institutions since the emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920s. Political commentators on both the Left and the Right accused their opponents of being fascists, starting in the years before World War II. In 1928, the Communist International labeled their social democratic opponents as social fascists, while the social democrats themselves as well as some parties on the political right accused the Communists of having become fascist under Joseph Stalin's leadership. In light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, The New York Times declared on 18 September 1939 that "Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism." Later, in 1944, the anti-fascist and socialist writer George Orwell commented on Tribune that fascism had been rendered almost meaningless by its common use as an insult against various people, and argued that in England the word fascist had become a synonym for bully.
Cercle Proudhon was a national syndicalist political group in France. The group was inspired by Georges Sorel, Charles Maurras and a selective reading of anarchist theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
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.
Historians and other scholars disagree on the question of whether a specifically fascist type of economic policy can be said to exist. David Baker argues that there is an identifiable economic system in fascism that is distinct from those advocated by other ideologies, comprising essential characteristics that fascist nations shared. Payne, Paxton, Sternhell et al. argue that while fascist economies share some similarities, there is no distinctive form of fascist economic organization. Gerald Feldman and Timothy Mason argue that fascism is distinguished by an absence of coherent economic ideology and an absence of serious economic thinking. They state that the decisions taken by fascist leaders cannot be explained within a logical economic framework.
Robert Owen Paxton is an American political scientist and historian specializing in Vichy France, fascism, and Europe during the World War II era. He is Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science in the Department of History at Columbia University. He is best known for his 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, which precipitated intense debate in France, and led to a paradigm shift in how the events of the Vichy regime are interpreted.
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.
What constitutes as a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars ever since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is a book by Jonah Goldberg, who was then a syndicated columnist and the editor-at-large of National Review Online. In contrast to the mainstream view among historians and political scientists that fascism is a far-right ideology, Goldberg argues in the book that fascist movements were and are left-wing. Published in January 2008, it reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover non-fiction in its seventh week on the list.
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.
Fascism has a long history in North America, with the earliest movements appearing shortly after the rise of fascism in Europe. Fascist movements in North America never gained power, unlike their counterparts in Europe.
Paolo Orano was an Italian psychologist, politician and writer. Orano began his political career as a revolutionary syndicalist in Italian Socialist Party. He later became a leading figure within the National Fascist Party, in part through his legitimization of antisemitism.
Fascism in Its Epoch, also known in English as The Three Faces of Fascism, is a 1963 book by historian and philosopher Ernst Nolte. It is widely regarded as his magnum opus and a seminal work on the history of fascism.
Sorelianism is advocacy for or support of the ideology and thinking of Georges Sorel, a French revolutionary syndicalist. Sorelians oppose bourgeois democracy, the developments of the 18th century, the secular spirit, and the French Revolution, while supporting Classicism. A revisionist interpretation of Marxism, Sorel believed that the victory of the proletariat in class struggle could be achieved only through the power of myth and a general strike. To Sorel, the aftermath of class conflict would involve rejuvenation of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Bourgeois nation was a term used by Italian fascists to refer to nations that had embraced what the fascists saw as decadent and materialistic lifestyles associated with standard bourgeois culture. Early fascist movements expressed contempt for "those who wanted only to earn money, filthy money," and denounced bourgeois culture as being too weak and individualistic to make a nation strong. Fascists idealized sport, physical activity, life in the open air, and virile athletic pursuits, which they contrasted with the image of "corpulent politicians", "great, sedentary bourgeois", and tobacco-smoking left-wing intellectuals in "anxious waiting for the hour of the aperitif." Italian Fascists also accused wealthy nations of hypocrisy because they built colonial empires in the past and then used the League of Nations to prevent nations like Italy from conquering colonies of their own. Nevertheless, despite these early denunciations of bourgeois culture and the pursuit of monetary gain, fascist parties in power helped large companies to achieve greater profits by banning strikes and lowering wages, and they "showered money on armaments industries, to the immense satisfaction of employers."
National syndicalism is a far-right adaptation of syndicalism to suit the broader agenda of integral nationalism. National syndicalism developed in France in the early 20th century, and then spread to Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Fascist syndicalism was an Italian trade syndicate movement that rose out of the pre-World War II provenance of the revolutionary syndicalist movement led mostly by Edmondo Rossoni, Sergio Panunzio, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Michele Bianchi, Alceste De Ambris, Paolo Orano, Massimo Rocca, and Guido Pighetti, under the influence of Georges Sorel, who was considered the "'metaphysician' of syndicalism". The fascist syndicalists differed from other forms of fascism in that they generally favored class struggle, worker-controlled factories and hostility to industrialists, which lead historians to portray them as "leftist fascist idealists" who "differed radically from right fascists." Generally considered one of the more radical fascist syndicalists in Italy, Rossoni was the "leading exponent of fascist syndicalism", and sought to infuse nationalism with "class struggle".
References
- 1 2 Gordon, Philip; Hoffman, Stanley (1 March 2004). "The Anatomy of Fascism". Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 13 December 2021.
- 1 2 Power, Samantha (2004-05-02). "The Original Axis of Evil". The New York Times . Retrieved 2021-12-13.
- ↑ Lyttelton, Adrian (2004-10-21). "What Was Fascism?". New York Review of Books . Retrieved 2021-12-13.
- 1 2 "The Anatomy of Fascism". Publishers Weekly. 2004-03-01. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
- ↑ Bergen, Peter (2015-12-09). "Is Donald Trump a fascist?". CNN . Retrieved 2021-12-13.