A New Definition of Fascism
Every time a monstrous dictator goes on a rampage, the notion of fascism receives a lot of attention. It's understandable to see lots of people trying to define what fascism is. It is not that easy to do, because in the first place there aren't that many examples that everyone would agree upon to be fascism, and because it can be hard to differentiate a fascist from a sadistic would-be ruler or a garden variety murderous thug.
So, here's my attempt. Fascism, in its Italian and German forms (the classic examples, I think we can all agree) is largely a consequence of the devastation of World War I, a war which had another great effect: the end of monarchy as a force in a large part of the world's civilizations. The Czars fell, as did the Kaisers in Germany, the Italian monarchy and the Hapsburgs in Vienna. And the monarchs that remained, in England, and the Nordic countries, were largely reduced to tourist attractions; a good job if you can get it, but hardly likely to earn you a position in history alongside Sargon the Great or Julius Caesar.
Monarchs, as we all know, based their right to rule largely on some sort of mandate from God. Seems like a pack of nonsense that would even make Donald Trump blush*, but it worked for thousands of years. And then it didn't. Dynasties replaced dynasties over the millennia, and somehow their subjects were always manipulated into believing that these guys had a divine right to their palaces and huge yachts, and also had a right to periodically send large portions of their people to be slaughtered in struggles against other dynasties, to which they were often closely related. And you thought Thanksgiving with your wingnut uncle was bad.
But if World War I had one actual benefit, it was that it seemed to finally open the eyes of a large part of the world's population to that specific stupidity.
So, what was a would-be conqueror to do? It fell perhaps more than anyone else to Benito Mussolini and his associates to come up with an answer, being as how Mussolini was pretty much the first new, large scale, European leader to emerge after World War I. And what Mussolini did was resurrect a myth of the greatness of the Italian people, based on the power of the then long-gone Roman empire. This was a myth of national superiority, which gave the descendants of ancient Romans the right to once again rule over the descendants of the inferior civilizations that Rome once ruled.
It worked for a while
And it is this myth of national superiority that characterized Nazi ideology, and is the justification behind Putin's aggressions. In fact, we see some form of malignant nationalism behind almost every dictator's claims.
Well, I suspect that all the talk about Fascism as a political movement or an ideology is, in the end, nothing but rubbish. All Fascism really amounts to is a new myth which would-be absolute rulers have crafted to replace the old myths of divine right. It is, in the end, simply a fantasy, a tale to fool the rubes into going along with the desires of the latest strong man. In most cases, sad to say for the Fascists, this myth has dissolved in the mist within a very few years. Mussolini ended up hanging by his feet, Hitler ended up with a self-inflicted bullet to the head, and (dare I predict) Putin, with his incompetent performance, seems to be headed to an early demise too. Kings of olden days managed to blindfold their subjects into believing their nonsense, for centuries, but Fascists just haven't been that lucky. And that is because, I think, in the end, Fascism is a pretty thin disguise for nothing but sociopathic hunger for power. It has no other reality, and we should not dignify it by pretending it does.
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*well, maybe not. Here's something I see repeated fairly often by right wingers:
"Trump was born to complete the task that Jesus started. He knew the time would come to answer his calling to stand up and step in at this time in human history."
Oh well, stupidity knows no bounds.
Comments
The more observant people have also noticed that every time it comes to a real war, fascist regimes get their corrupt asses kicked by democracies.
It was probably inevitable that American fundies would mix religion into their version of fascism (a little divine right of kings creeping back in?). But interpreting Donald Trump as a successor to Jesus requires a depth of hypocrisy staggering even by religious standards. It's no wonder the younger generation is abandoning Christianity in droves.
The characteristics include domination of media, saturation of propaganda, extreme nationalism, demonization of opposition and scapegoating, including merciless "law and order" for others, but none for the powerful.
US Holocaust Museum lists the early warning signs of fascism:
1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
4. Rampant sexism
5. Controlled mass media
6. Obsession with national security
7. Religion and government intertwined
8. Corporate power protected
9. Labor power suppressed
10. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
11. Obsession with crime and punishment
12. Rampant cronyism and corruption
We can argue specifics and variations, but there is a bottom line to tyranny and fascism. Orwell wrote an article that gets to the essence.
From George Orwell’s “What is Fascism?”
TRIBUNE
1944
“By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.”