What IS "Fascism"?

14 Feb 2017

      ...
From the publisher of Right-Wing Watch.
[My note: If you read this carefully you will note that one of the
endearing traits of Fascism is "Shapeshifting". It really has no fixed
ideology. It morphs to suit whatever society it infests. It relies on
popular opinion of whatever is 'wrong' about a society and utilizes
reactionary behavior to accomplish it's goals. No political ideology is
required. It's parasitic to political ideologies using the (snigger)
"Little Man"(Wilhelm Reich) to make the "Big Man" bigger.]

http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/listen_little_man.pdf
A reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeIgAlIxI0I

Originally published in 1997.

[Author’s Note: I am skeptical of efforts to produce a “definition” of
fascism. As a dynamic historical current, fascism has taken many
different forms, and has evolved dramatically in some ways. To
understand what fascism has encompassed as a movement and a system of
rule, we have to look at its historical context and development–as a
form of counter-revolutionary politics that first arose in early
twentieth-century Europe in response to rapid social upheaval, the
devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. The following
paragraphs are intended as an initial, open-ended sketch.]

Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the
nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other
loyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a
period of decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a
“spiritual revolution” against signs of moral decay such as
individualism and materialism, and seeks to purge “alien” forces and
groups that threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate
masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of
violence. Often, but not always, it promotes racial superiority
doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. At
the same time, fascists may embrace a form of internationalism based on
either racial or ideological solidarity across national boundaries.
Usually fascism espouses open male supremacy, though sometimes it may
also promote female solidarity and new opportunities for women of the
privileged nation or race.

Fascism’s approach to politics is both populist–in that it seeks to
activate “the people” as a whole against perceived oppressors or
enemies–and elitist–in that it treats the people’s will as embodied in a
select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds
downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive
to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of
society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through
a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass
organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized
violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies
widely.

Fascism is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it
borrows concepts and practices from all three. Fascism rejects the
principles of class struggle and workers’ internationalism as threats to
national or racial unity, yet it often exploits real grievances against
capitalists and landowners through ethnic scapegoating or
radical-sounding conspiracy theories. Fascism rejects the liberal
doctrines of individual autonomy and rights, political pluralism, and
representative government, yet it advocates broad popular participation
in politics and may use parliamentary channels in its drive to power.
Its vision of a “new order” clashes with the conservative attachment to
tradition-based institutions and hierarchies, yet fascism often
romanticizes the past as inspiration for national rebirth.

Fascism has a complex relationship with established elites and the
non-fascist right. It is never a mere puppet of the ruling class, but an
autonomous movement with its own social base. In practice, fascism
defends capitalism against instability and the left, but also pursues an
agenda that sometimes clashes with capitalist interests in significant
ways. There has been much cooperation, competition, and interaction
between fascism and other sections of the right, producing various
hybrid movements and regimes.

Author’s postscript, December 2016.

In the nineteen years since I wrote “What is fascism?,” right-wing
politics have continued to evolve, and my thinking about fascism has
evolved as well. In particular, my concept of fascism has broadened with
regard to the following points in the above sketch:

1. “Fascism…celebrates the nation or race as an organic community
transcending all other loyalties…” I now believe the category of fascism
should be extended to include some movements for which nation and race
are secondary or irrelevant, but which promote a myth of collective
rebirth around a shared culture or ideology, notably membership in a
religious group. This includes certain totalitarian branches of the
Christian right, Islamic right, Jewish right, and so on.

2. “Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to
seize state power.” Some fascist movements, notably the European New
Right and currents influenced by it, have deferred state power as a goal
in favor of a “metapolitical” strategy. This means a long-term effort to
transform the political culture, as a precondition to transforming
institutions and systems of power.

3. Fascism “seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society…usually
through a totalitarian state.” Over the past half century, diverse
branches of the far right—including several branches of neonazism—have
rejected big centralized states in favor of various moves to
decentralize political power. These currents represent forms of what I
have called “social totalitarianism,” which seek to impose total
ideological control through local governments and/or non-state
institutions, such as church and family. I believe this represents a
major shift in fascist politics, and one that has been overlooked by
many scholars.

4. “[F]ascism defends capitalism against instability and the left…” Some
writers have argued that German National Socialism challenged the basic
economic principles of capitalism, by replacing the system of industrial
wage labor with a system of slave labor in which workers on a mass scale
were intentionally worked to death. This interpretation, coupled with
the rise of anticapitalist ideology among some neofascists, has raised
the question whether fascism might in some circumstances replace
capitalism with another form of class rule—or with a chaotic breakdown
of socio-economic systems.

For more in-depth discussions of what fascism means and how it relates
to recent political developments, see my essays “Two Ways of Looking at
Fascism” [http://sdonline.org/47/two-ways-of-looking-at-fascism/]
(2008), “Is the Bush Administration Fascist?”
[http://newpol.org/content/bush-administration-fascist] (2007), and
“Trump: A fascist upsurge is just one of the dangers”
[http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/12/trumps-impact-fascist-upsurge-is-j...]
(2015).

- See more at:
http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/12/12/what-is-fascism-2/

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