This is part one of a reply to Todd Archer and others (see below). Please do not circulate this. It is intended for LBO only. I don't mind if it appears in the archive, but it is a draft, so--> Copyright 2002, Chip Berlet. Copying and crossposting expressly forbidden.
I am trying to stay in my posting limit per day by combining answers.
Figuring Out Fascism
Draft 2/18/02 for LBO
by Chip Berlet Political Research Associates
Fascism is a distinctive revolutionary form of right–wing populism. Fascism glorifies national, racial, or cultural unity and collective rebirth while seeking to purge imagined enemies. It attacks both revolutionary movements and liberal pluralism in favor of militarized, totalitarian mass politics. Fascism appears as both a mass movement and a form of state power.
Fascism first crystallized in Europe in response to the Bolshevik Revolution and the devastation of World War I, and then spread to other parts of the world. Between WWI and WWII in Europe there were three distinct forms of fascism, Italian economic corporatist fascism (the original fascism), German racial nationalist Nazism, and clerical fascism exemplified by religious/nationalist movements in the Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia, among others. All three forms are resurgent worldwide, but in new adaptive forms. At the same time, neofascist and para–fascist movements interact with and influence the strategies and actions of conservative, religious fundamentalist, reactionary, nationalist, and supremacist movements. Since WWII, neofascists have reinterpreted fascist ideology and strategy in various ways to fit new circumstances.
Griffin, an influential scholar of generic fascism, argues that “fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence.”
As a form of right-wing populism, fascism shares with right-wing populism a tendency to scapegoat demonized enemies, often in the form of complex conspiracist theories that are ultimately simple dualist propositions of "Us" v. "Them."
There are other common components of fascism, including an exclusionary form of ethnonationalism that narrowly defines who the real “people” or Volk are; the idea of the primary importance of the homogenous whole (Integralism); and the diminution of the importance of the individual in a society ruled by leaders who metaphysically represent the will of the people (Organicism).
These factors create a drive for totalitarian control in fascist movements and states. Totalitarian movements and governments insist on intruding into and controlling every aspect of a person’s life—public or private—political, social, or cultural. Totalitarianism is a term that still has analytical value despite its frequent misuse....
Conspiracism is a core element of fascism, but so are apocalypticism and millennialism . Conspiracist movements throughout US history develop narratives based on false allegations about Freemasons or their Illuminati brethren, and narratives based on false allegations about Jewish cabals. But to get to the roots of the apocalyptic narrative in Western culture, one must read the Bible’s book of Revelation. Fascism, rooted in Western culture, is influenced by apocalyptic and millennialist paradigms drawn from Biblical prophesy in the Book of Revelation. Wistrich also traces the apocalyptic paradigm of Nazism and writes of the millennial roots of their plans for a thousand year Reich.
Apocalypticism is the belief in an approaching confrontation, cataclysmic event, or transformation of epochal proportions, about which a select few have forewarning so they can make appropriate preparations. One version of apocalyptic beliefs involves the idea of a final showdown struggle between absolute good and absolute evil. Apocalypticism can fuel a sense that time is running out, resulting in violent confrontations or acts of terrorism. People or groups that are demonized in apocalyptic visions are easy to scapegoat. Millennialism is a form of apocalyptism based on marking either the end of a thousand year period, or signalling its beginning, or both. Two major forms of millennialist response are passive waiting versus activist intervention. More generic Millenarian movements are apocalyptic, but not tied to a thousand-year prophecy.
Clerical fascism is the least studied form of fascism. We can see examples of clerical fascism in the contemporary United States. Aryan Nations is a U.S. fascist movement built around the theology of Christian Identity, Aryan Nations—plural—wants to establish many racially-pure “Aryan” nations around the world. It is nationalist in desire and yet internationalist in scope. Some of its followers have engaged in violence and terrorism. Armstrong refers to Christian Identity as fascist, and sees a potential for fascism in Christian Reconstructionism. As Armstrong observes, the system of dominion envisaged by Christian Reconstructionist theologians R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North “is totalitarian. There is no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom.”
Global theocratic Islamic fundamentalism has its roots in the theological/political theories of Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66). The result is a form of Islamic fundamentalism that is very repressive. Mawdudi argued that his ideal Islamic State “would be totalitarian, because it subjected everything to the rule of God. . .” notes Armstrong. In the most extreme case, this type of social totalitarianism based on theology has been called a new form of clerical fascism—similar to WWII European clerical fascist movements such as the Romanian Iron Guard and the Croatian Ustashi. This is a disputed view. Although the concept of clerical fascism is used widely in analyzing certain forms of fascism, is it fair to apply it to certain forms of theocratic Islamic fundamentalism? Armstrong mentions there are some similarities worth noting. Walter Laqueur discusses its usefulness as a concept at length in Fascism: Past, Present, Future.
A number of academics, however, disagree with the use of the term fascism in this context. Griffin believes it stretches the term fascist too far to apply the term ‘fascism’ to “so-called fundamentalist or terroristic forms of traditional religion (i.e. scripture or sacred text based with a strong sense of orthodoxy or orthodoxies rooted in traditional institutions and teachings).” He does, however, concede that the United States has seen the emergence of hybrids of political religion and fascism in such phenomena as the Nation of Islam and Christian Identity, and that bin Laden's al Qaeda network may represent such a hybrid. He is unhappy with the term ‘clerical fascism,’ though, since he says that “in this case we are rather dealing with a variety of ‘fascistized clericalism.’”
According to Fenn, fascism is a virulent form of apocalyptic belief rooted in resistance to the transformation of economic and social relations:
Fenn: “Fascist tendencies are most likely to flourish wherever vestiges of a traditional community, bound together by ties of race and kinship, persist in a society largely dominated by large–scale organizations, by an industrial class system, and by a complex division of labor. Under these conditions the traditional community itself becomes threatened; its members all the more readily dread and demonize the larger society.”
Other analysts suggest that this is only one of several possible variations of the conditions in which fascism can flourish.
But where does fascist state power come from? Is it a top down creation of capitalist elites, or does it arise from a mass movement of the middle class, or is it a fusion of the two? Many analysts now agree that that for state fascism, there must be an autonomous middle class mass movement, a crisis, and a decision by one faction of ruling elites to build a coalition with the mass movement to stave off the crisis resulting in their being toppled.
Fascism parasitizes other ideologies, includes many internal tensions and contradictions, and has chameleon–like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize. In addition, fascism as a social movement often acts dramatically different from fascism once it holds state power. When holding state power, fascism tends to be rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian, and elitist.
As a social movement fascism employs populist appeals against the current regime and promises a dramatic and quick transformation of the status quo. Right–wing populism can act as both a precursor and a building block of fascism, with anti–elitist conspiracism and ethnocentric scapegoating as shared elements.
The dynamic of right–wing populism interacting with and facilitating state fascism in interwar Germany was chronicled by Peter Fritzsche in "Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany." Fritzsche showed that distressed middle–class populists in Weimar launched bitter attacks against both the government and big business. This populist surge was later exploited by the Nazis which parasitized the forms and themes of the populists and moved their constituencies far to the right through ideological appeals involving demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracism.
Fritzsche: "The Nazis expressed the populist yearnings of middle–class constituents and at the same time advocated a strong and resolutely anti–Marxist mobilization....Against 'unnaturally' divisive parties and querulous organized interest groups, National Socialists cast themselves as representatives of the commonweal, of an allegedly betrayed and neglected German public....[b]reaking social barriers of status and caste, and celebrating at least rhetorically the populist ideal of the people’s community..."
This populist rhetoric of the Nazis, focused the pre–existing “resentments of ordinary middle–class Germans against the bourgeois ‘establishment’ and against economic and political privilege, and by promising the resolution of these resentments in a forward–looking, technologically capable volkisch ‘utopia,’” according to Fritzsche.
Fritzsche observed that “German fascism would have been inconceivable without the profound transformation” of mainstream electoral politics in the 1920’s “which saw the dissolution of traditional party allegiances.” He also argued that the Nazis, while an electorally–focused movement, had more in common rhetorically and stylistically with middle class reform movements than backwards looking reactionary movements. So the Nazis as a movement appeared to provide for radical social change while actually moving its constituency to the right.
As Umberto Eco explains, however, the populist rhetoric of fascism is selective and illusive:
Eco: "...individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is a theatrical fiction....There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People....Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell...Fascism.”
-Chip Berlet
Copyright 2002, Chip Berlet. Copying and crossposting expressly forbidden.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Todd Archer
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 7:31 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: Bonapartism, Fascism & our new order
>
>
> How about giving us a little bit of the new scholarship,
> Chip, to start the
> ball rolling. I, for one, would like to see it.
>
> I have to agree with Chip, though, that, at the present time,
> calling what's
> happening in the U.S. "fascism" is incorrect. Whether or not
> it actually
> will lead into fascism proper is another matter. >