A second major tenet or characteristic of all Fascist movements was the glorification of war and violence. Half–measures and compromises, Mosse notes, were anathema to all Fascists; these were typical of the craven bourgeoisie, Fascists held, not of the virile Fascist "new man." For Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, for example, a true National Socialist would willingly carry out a scorched–earth policy or ruthlessly gun down deserters. Mussolini at one desperate point even threatened to execute schoolchildren who skipped classes. Fascists stressed the greatness of dying for the cause in war, the dignity of a mad heroism, and a willingness to struggle against all odds.
Nationalism and the love of violence and war—these are familiar themes in the copious literature on fascism’s attributes. Where Mosse is most interesting is on Fascist irrationalism and on fascism and revolution. In a fascinating chapter, originally published nearly four decades ago, Mosse explores the roots of National Socialism in nineteenth–century mysticism. Recreating the feverish world of such forgotten late–nineteenth century writers as Julias Langbehn, Alfred Schuler, and Paul de Lagarde, Mosse paints a disquieting portrait.
These irrationalists despised the cosmopolitan—and in their view largely Jewish—bourgeois universe of calculation, contract, and money. Instead, they surrendered themselves to "a belief in nature’s cosmic life force, a dark force whose mysteries could be understood, not through science but through the occult." In some of the most vivid pages in The Fascist Revolution, Mosse describes Schuler trying to cure Friedrich Nietzsche of his madness with an ancient Roman spring rite, bizarre seances, theosophical preachments, and much other anti–Christian and anti–Enlightenment nonsense—seemingly harmless until one realizes the culture of irrational barbarism it did its part in conjuring. But the Nazis weren’t alone in their irrationalism; Mussolini, too, drank from its well, in his case from the thought of Nietzsche and the theorist of violence George Sorel, though Mosse unfortunately neglects to discuss these intellectual sources of Italian fascism.
It is in Mosse’s discussion of fascism and revolution that he makes his most important contribution. In contrast to those analysts, especially Marxists, who interpret fascism as reactionary—a kind of last gasp of bourgeois capitalism—Mosse accents its revolutionary thrust. Mussolini called for a "revolution of the spirit"; Hitler spoke of the "German Revolution." In Mosse’s words, "Fascism encouraged activism, the fight against the existing order of things." Like all revolutionary movements, fascism in power had to restore order and prop up its own authority, diminishing revolutionary ardor; but fascism in its main thrust sought to remake the human world, to forge a new future—whether based on futurist ideas, as with Mussolini, or on an imagined pagan past, as with Hitler—that would break decisively with the corrupt and weak present. Though rightists and conservatives, sharing their rejection of the modern world, often supported Fascist movements, fascism was anything but conservative.
In a chapter dating from 1989, Mosse goes beyond the obvious political opposition between the spirit of the French Revolution and that of fascism to see deep commonalties and even subterranean influences that bind them across time. Mosse views both as products of the modern liberation of the will—rival manifestations of "the people worshiping themselves." Both the French Revolution and fascism sought to transcend the mundane complexities of politics and create perfect societies; both rejected the West’s biblical heritage; both aestheticized politics in public festivals and songs. Writing of the French Revolution, Mosse observes: "This new politics attempted the politicization of the masses, which, for the first time in modern history, functioned as a pressure group and not just through episodic uprisings or short–lived riots." In fascism, says Mosse, "the age of modern mass politics had begun." The Jacobins’ sacred spaces—the Champs–de–Mars or the Tuileries—would find their amplified echoes in Forum Mussolini in Rome and in Nuremberg.
Mosse, a historian and not a philosopher, remains on a somewhat superficial level in his account of fascism as a pathology of democratic modernity—as based, in essence, on a rejection of the West’s Jewish and Christian heritage. Major scholars of fascismArendt and Ernst Nolte come immediately to mind—make no appearance in Mosse’s book; a pity, since their more philosophically informed thinking would have added needed depth to Mosse’s treatment. But his interpretation is essentially correct. National Socialism especially, as the Hungarian Catholic philosopher Aurel Kolnai wrote in 1950, sought to negate "Christian civilization as such," scripting a dark epiphany in which man "wrenched himself free from Christianity and construed the automatic workings of his fallen nature into a mirage of self–made heaven." As with all such self–made heavens, it opened the gates to a netherworld.
These four marks of the Fascist spirit—nationalism and racism, a love of violence and war, irrationalism, and revolutionary presumption—though not exhaustive, help us to understand its appeal during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly where democratic institutions were feckless and resentments bred by World War I festered.
Fascism brought with it a thick set of assumptions about the world’s past, present, and future. It was, as Raymond Aron noted during the late 1930s, a "secular religion," a complete vision of life that brooked no pluralist opposition but that, unlike Marxism, crossed class divisions. In Mosse’s similar language, fascism wrought a "sacralization of politics" that made it demonic but that also allowed it to sink its hooks deep into the soul.
What of our third question: does fascism have a future? It is fascism’s modern genesis that gives one pause in declaring its historical senescence. Although Mosse does not stress this here, fascism shared with communism an antipathy toward the bourgeoisie, which helps explain its attraction for intellectuals like the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the French novelist Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. Modern man’s revolt against anything constraining the will is a problem that confronts the democratic world, too. For all the unprecedented freedoms and decencies of liberal democratic regimes, certain tendencies within those regimes—aborting unwanted children, euthanizing the old and burdensome, a rising irrationalism—are eerily reminiscent of the mental universe of fascism in their elevation of the untrammeled human will above any constraints of nature, grace, or even reason. Nationalist movements in Europe stand perilously close to fascism at times.
Perhaps fascism represents a permanent temptation of modern politics, the seduction to leave behind the ambiguities and trade–offs of prosaic liberal democracy for a true (and truly destructive) "politics of meaning." If so, we need to be perpetually on guard against it, and George Mosse’s intelligent reflections are of much more than historical interest.
Mussolini's Fascism
There is no generally accepted definition of fascism, partly because the term has been employed more often by its enemies than supporters. It became a term of abuse used to lump together groups of right-wingers who often felt that they had little in common.
Some believe that the word fascism derives from the Italian Fasces, which were bundles of rods, often attached to an axe, carried in front of the magistrates in Ancient Rome as a symbol of authority. Others insist that it comes from Fascio, a group or club. Fasci of workers in the Sicilian sulphur mines had organised strikes in the 1890s; in 1915 Fasci were formed to campaign for Italy's entry into the war; and after the war Fasci, including Mussolini's Fasci di Combattimento or Combat Group, were set up to oppose the communists. But whatever the derivation of the term, Mussolini's Fascism had no clear-cut meaning. It was not an ideology, he said, but an anti-ideology, a (Zen-like) synthesis of every idea and its opposite: it was aristocratic and democratic, conservative and progressive, reactionary and revolutionary. 'Our doctrine is action,' said Mussolini. On another occasion, he insisted that the essence of Fascism was a 'trenchocracy' - rule not by discredited democrats but by those, like himself, who in the trenches had shed blood for their homeland.
Mussolini became Italian prime minister in 1922 and, within a few years, had assumed dictatorial powers. Soon he talked about a 'Fascist century' and even a 'Fascist Era' (in which 1922 would be Year One). He began to sponsor oppositional parties in other countries - including the Nazis in Germany, the Heimwehr in Austria, Mosley's British Union of Fascists and the Falange in Spain - and liked to see himself as head of an international movement. Yet few historians think that these efforts achieved much success. Indeed, it is a widely accepted convention that specifically Italian 'Fascism' should be distinguished from other forms of 'fascism' (without the capitalised first letter). One of the main components of fascism as a European-wide or general - or generic ('of a type') - movement was extreme nationalism, and thus there were bound to be significant differences between the forms it took in different countries. The question is, how many local variations can the concept of generic fascism support before it becomes meaningless?
Generic Fascism: The Ideological Framework
Many philosophers and historians of ideas insist that fascism is, first and foremost, an ideology. It grew up in the third quarter of the nineteenth century and particularly in the 1890s, its 'incubatory period'. Its component parts included: (1) an extreme form of nationalism which insisted that human beings were sub-divisions of a larger national whole which alone could give meaning to their lives; (2) social Darwinism, which insisted that struggle between nations was natural and inevitable; (3) the 'science' of racism, which constructed a hierarchy of races and branded some, including the Jews, as inferior; and (4) anti-positivism, the idea that human beings are motivated not by logic and reason (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment had said) but by myths, intuition and emotion (as Romantic thinkers had believed).
In addition, there were two further ideas. First, there was the notion of the heroic, all-wise leader who embodies the will of the nation. Second, there was the concept of the 'corporate state'. Capitalism pitted owner against worker, while communism, deriving from this class antagonism, insisted that workers should rise up against their exploiters. But proponents of the corporate state insisted that every industry should be governed by representatives of the owners and of the workers, under the benevolent eye of the State. Such an arrangement would be neither capitalist nor communist, but a constructive 'third way'.
The Great War created the ideal climate for the growth of these ideas, and after 1918 they flourished. According to this interpretation, fascism was essentially a matter of ideas. Admittedly, they varied from place to place, but there was a 'minimum' or 'lowest common denominator' which justifies the concept of generic fascism.
Yet several criticisms must be made. First, perhaps the ideas associated with fascism were little more than half-baked clich‚s and prejudices which do not deserve to be dignified as a political ideology. Certainly, it must be admitted, that if fascism was an ideology, then it was one of the vaguest and least coherent. Second, no two supporters of this school of thought seem to agree on the exact ingredients of the lowest common denominator. For instance, some - but not all - include the corporate state or anti-Semitism or an aggressive foreign policy or the 'leadership principle' (Führerprinzip). However, what should be grasped, above all, is that those who adopt this method of defining generic fascism are not describing any particular regime or creating any complete model to which regimes must conform before they can be called fascist. Nor are they pointing to the most historically important aspects of these groups. They are simply arguing that the ideas which certain groups had in common allow them to be called 'fascist'. Hence, generic fascism is a means of classification - or, to use the jargon, 'a taxonomic device'. It is not an all-inclusive definition of any regime or the only label that can be used.
