The industrialized/unindustrialized paradigm used to explain the fascist revolutions relies heavily on the idea of inferior (imagined or real) feelings that an underdeveloped country or community may feel toward an industrial leader. The Italian’s felt this toward Britain in the 1920’s, and their need to rise up and see their natural strength as Italians. “From that day, the new nation reconstructed itself, because that powerful cry had by that time awakened all Italians, and animated and guided them in their arduous labor (Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, Gentile pg 19).” A sense of redemption became a part of the doctrine, and if a country were advanced industrially, then there would be little if any need to speak of things such as the need to realize a national identity, or to take part in arduous labor for the sake of lifting the nation up and allowing it’s self to recognize its true greatness.
Mussolini’s fascism is paradigmatic for revolutions in the 20th century because of many of the descriptive characteristic qualities that defines what a fascist system is. These include, but are not limited to a nondemocratic electoral system, a “charismatic” leader, a formal ideology, irredentism, and masculine protest. Almost all “totalitarian” revolutions and “neo-fascist” groups fallow these guidelines as a template for their brand of leadership. This includes “leftist” and “right-wing” revolutions. These qualities, while easy to understand, do little to explain why these fascist revolutions seem to be products of the 20th century. The dynamic characteristics of fascism have been made in a wide range of qualities and truths. Some have suggested that it is a product of class warfare, while others have explained it as race hatred and family dysfunction. The idea of race hatred being a characteristic of fascism is an idea that seems to be spurred from the face that many people associate the Nazi racism as an aspect of all fascist practices. However, the race hatred was never a part of fascist doctrine. “In fact, the official Manifesto of Fascist Racism, published in July 1938 maintained that ‘to say that human races exist is not to say apriori that there exist superior or inferior races, but only to say that there exist different human races. (Gregor, Phoenix, pg 8)’” The dynamic definition of fascism that is the most plausible is the idea that fascism happens when any group of people have a notion that they are being treated inferior in a world where they are the minority. This is the one characteristic that can be seen in every fascist themed movement from National Socialism to Marcus Garvy.
Although a definition of fascism can be reached, it is difficult to understand how well the fascist influence in the 20th century is able to predict trends of fascism that may be forming in the 21st century. The best conclusion that can be reached is that there are movements in history that are specific to the times in which they are a part of. Beyond that, the debate on what fascism is will continue well into the 21st century.
Question 2
One of the fascinating characteristics of the study of political revolution is the notion of ideological decay and pathological behavior. Stalinism and Leninism have been used as evidence to this ideological decay by the departure that these systems took from the original Communist Manifesto to the final incarnations of the system. Also, the pathological characteristics can be associated with the ideological decay by the use of violence in the system.
The first step into developing a cohesive argument on ideological decay it to define what we mean when we say ideological decay. By decay, we mean an intellectual abandonment of an ideology that not longer works for the people that are taking part in the political system. An ideology is an expressed set of principals that the people in the system prescribe to as the “guiding” force.
An excellent example of the ideological decay came about through Soviet Russia’s practices as opposed to the actual ideology of the government. In the Communist Manifesto Marx states that the family will die away because the family unit is a product of the bourgeoisie. He states, “ The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.” However, this never happened. Family units were still a part of Russia, just as much as they were a part of the rest of the world. This gives us a rather large hole in the formal ideology. The only way to fix this hole is to change the ideology.
Another example of an ideological decay is the idea of dialectal logic. This is the “science” that was a part of the communist ideology. The problem with dialectal logic is that it is impossible to have a working computer system that is based on dialectal logic. The only way that the soviets could build a scientific basis in their country would be to change the ideology in order for it to fit in the real world. This is why, by the end of the communist rule in Russia, many of their characteristics were similar to the characteristics of the fascist regime in Italy before the Second World War.
The term pathological is a term used in conjunction with generic fascism. Pathological seems to refer to the level of violence that seemed to be a part of the fascist doctrine that was not a part of the communist doctrine. This distinction creates a split in what we can consider ideological decay. The fascist regime did not have a decay, simply because they were up front in their ideology. In their doctrine, it was clear that they though that violence was necessary to establish order in the state. Gentile states, “In its impetuous ardor, Fascism has employed violence when it believed violence necessary.” Since violence was in fact part of the doctrine, the decay never happened. However, had the regime lasted longer than it did, it is very possible that the ideology would have had to change in order to survive in the changing reality of the world. The pathological decay of the “leftist” governments seems to be much more of a reality. This is because there is no mention of the use of violence as a subversive tool in the communist manifesto. The need to employ violence as a legitimate state building tool came about after it was realized that the government and the police force in Russia was not going to die away as was thought to happen after the revolution.
The notion of an ideological decay is seen with the advent of Elija Muhammad’s Black Muslims. Thanks to the “failure” of Marcus Gravy, a new order was necessary to the formation of an abnormal religious fundamentalism. This fundamentalism relied of a very different interpretation of the Koran, so although it is not a decay of fascist doctrine, and the movement itself was not fascist, an ideological decay can be seen through the specter of the Black Muslims.
Although there are many theories on what the changes were in the “fascist” regimes through the 20th century, the idea of ideological decay seems to happen in almost all of these regimes, even the ones that only slightly resemble fascist, such as the Black Muslims. The use of violence as a political tool, and the fall of grand ideological claims seem to be a hallmark of “half-baked” and “imported” fascist regimes throughout the world.
