Fascism

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FASCISM

Fascism played a major role in twentieth-century European and world history, especially in its attempt to develop a particular nonliberal and nonhumanistic modern perspective on science and technology. Fascism, in power, was a form of rule where key societal resources were monopolized by the state in an effort to penetrate and control many aspects of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror, and technology.

Fascism also remains a highly complex and illusive political phenomenon. Classical fascism (the small f for comparative purposes) can be described in terms of a number of loosely-related early-twentieth-century political parties, movements, and regimes, especially in Germany (Adolph Hitler's National Socialism), Italy (Benito Mussolini's Fascism proper, from which the generic term fascism is derived), and Spain (Francisco Franco's more radical wing of Falangism).

All fascisms oppose communism, the values of liberal democracy, rationalism, and scientific positivism, with assertions of bellicose nationalism, and each variety of fascism has sought in its own manner and cultural context to adopt advanced military, penal (including in the Nazi variant genocidal), and communication (propaganda) technologies, while criticizing the universalism and humanism of liberal science and technology. Some suggest that a palingenetic and inherently revolutionary mythology of rebirth ultimately binds all authentic forms of generic fascism together and separates them from authoritarian and reactionary military dictatorships, and totalitarian regimes such as that of Stalin (Griffin 1993).

In spite of fascisms' ritualistic invocation of an idealized past—the Nazi Aryan myth; the Italian myth of Rome, the preoccupation with the glorious age of Elizabeth I among interwar British fascists—fascism actually emerged from a background steeped in pseudoscience and social Darwinism, and the high-tech myths of futurism, and as such can be seen as an authentically modern movement, especially in terms of its attitudes toward, and application of, science and technology.

Fascism has also persisted since the collapse and defeat of the Mussolini and Hitler regimes, in various manifestations of neo- or post-fascism, operating as a sometimes influential, but often marginalized, opposition movement within liberal democracy. Latter day fascists often deny their fascist roots, or operate clandestinely, because of the negative and reviled nature of fascism because of its well known and understood connection with the systematic process of Nazi war and genocide. Others have been partially absorbed into liberal democracy and deradiclalized.

Fascism in Italy (1922–1943)

In 1932 the fascist dictator Mussolini, with the considerable help of the neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), contributed an entry to the Encyclopedia Italiana on the definition of fascism. Italian conceptions of the work of Georg Hegel derived largely from Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), a philosopher of international repute. Mussolini asked Croce to write this doctrine of fascism for him, but Croce refused. But in Gentile's writings, Mussolini discovered a serviceable philosophical peg of neo-Hegelian idealism on which to hang his brutal, vitalistic doctrines.

The famous entry contains elements of Gentile's personal criticisms of liberal and post-enlightenment science and technology, depicting the state as the source of all ethics, individual as well as collective. A key passage reads:

The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical entity. ... which in its origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State ... safeguards and transmits the spirit of the people, elaborated down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith. The State is not only the present; it is also the past and above all the future. ... the State stands for the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which it finds expression change, but the need for it remains. ... it transmits to future generations the conquests of the mind in the fields of science, art, law, human solidarity; it leads men up from primitive tribal life to that highest manifestation of human power, imperial rule. ... Whenever respect for the State declines and the disintegrating and centrifugal tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, nations are headed for decay. (Mussolini 1932, p.26)

Aside from this perverted Hegelian notion that the state equals life itself, the entry usefully emphasizes other core themes of Italian Fascism: a firm belief in the concrete reality of life, anti-individualism, antiliberalism and liberal democratic sentiments, antisocialism, the call for action and revolution, a denial that happiness is achieved through comfort and well-being, the belief that fascism is ultimately a spiritual force, and the idea that fascist ideology was a far stronger ethical basis for existence than any mere rule of law (on this last point see the writings of Carl Schmitt).

A major strand of Italian fascist technologism emerged from the prewar futurist movement in art, founded in 1909 by the poet Filippo Marinetti. Futurism arose as part of the general modernist artistic ferment that characterized the intellectual life of Europe, and particularly France and Italy, in the period before 1914. The futurists' goal was to celebrate modern technology and to free Italian art from the psychology of the past. In 1910 Umberto Boccioni published the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters. The cult of the machine age was central to futurism and from the beginning futurist ideology was saturated with violence and aggression. The infatuation with speed, change, and modernity soon became intertwined with ultranationalism and in 1915 Marinetti published War—the Sole Hygiene of the World, placing science and technology at the service of war and brutal imperialism. What had started as the rejection of stagnation in art became an all-encompassing, authoritarian political message, in which all decadent (code for liberal and leftist) manifestations of the old Italy were to be overthrown. Under Mussolini's regime, futurism lost its radical edge and was largely confined to producing extravagant plans for buildings in the futurist style, very few of which were actually built.

But the tenor and relentless propaganda of the regime remained focused on placing the latest science, technology, and management techniques at the disposal of the Italian people—hence grand public buildings such as the Milan and Florence railway stations, the Autostrada, and electrification of the main railways network. There was also a ceaseless drive to embrace the dynamism of the second industrial revolution embodied in the Fascists' Third Rome, the exploitation of hydroelectric power, the propaganda surrounding the launch of any new Fiat vehicle, and Italo Balbo's daring flying antics in the United States. Fascist propagandists also strove tirelessly to emphasize the link between technology, science, modernization, and the regime. In addition, attempts were made to create new institutions for managing the modernization process, institutions of an authoritarian, technocratic character such as the Confederazione Generale dell'Industria Italiana and the Gruppi di Competenza. In addition, genuinely innovative institutions were created to manage the modernization process: Confederazione Generale dell'Industria Italiana, Gruppi di Competenza, Consigli Tecnici, and Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale. The highly technocratic Guiseppi Bottai, Minister of Corporations and also editor of Critica Fascista, used every opportunity to emphasize the technocratic and scientific core of the "New Italy" and its third way "Corporate State"—a process that rapidly ran out of steam when he ceased to be Minister in 1932. (For the best account of fascist modernism, see Griffin 1994.)

Germany (1933–1945)

Fascism in Germany was, in almost every aspect, the most radical and extreme manifestation of fascist ideology, putting science and technology to the most unethical of uses, including mass genocide achieved through Ford-style, efficient factory methods The German regime eventually waged a brutal, and for the period, high-tech war through the development of weapons of mass destruction and rocket-propelled delivery systems. From the road construction of the Todt Organization to the development of the V3 rocket bomb, there is no question that Nazi Germany promoted a culture of advanced technology (Griffin 1994). As Roger Griffin cogently puts it, "the Third Reich was saturated with technocratic values. ... The V3 rocket bomb could hardly have been developed by an anti-technological culture" (Griffin 1994, p.10).

Part of the reason for this was that Nazism emerged from a cultural climate imbued with the idea that the West was degenerating, a fear dating back to Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1787), and an associated sense of the urgency of the task of regeneration and rebirth. The rise of Nazism also coincided with the period of the most influential writings of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Schmitt (1888–1985). Heidegger favored a form of antimodern rule that would restore Being to its proper role in Western affairs. Mistaking the Nazis as the political basis for a rebirth of technology and humanity, he threw in his lot with Hitler's regime, and never repudiated Nazism, continuing to speak of its inner truth and greatness.

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who famously fathered a distinctly Germanic critique of decadent European society. He affirmed that a regenerative instinct for the Will to Power realized through the blond beast could destroy weak institutions and beliefs, blazing a trail for the vital, the powerful, and the creative. German interwar thinkers and public intellectuals adopted Nietzsche's Zarathustra in a bastardized and popularized form, as a symbol for a rejuvenating Kultur capable of overcoming the effects of decadent commercial and wasteful technological civilization. Nietzsche's writings influenced many of the leading German cultural pessimists, especially Ernst Junger (1895–1998) and Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) who, in turn, influenced Heidegger.

As Michael Zimmerman has argued, "Jünger claimed that the soft, decadent, and unmanly European bourgeoisie was being displaced by der Arbeiter (the Worker), a new type of humanity combining the steely hardness of modern technology with the iron will of a proto-Nietzschean blond beast. Jünger foresaw a powerful new upsurge of Will in the face of Western decrepitude" (p. 14). Adopting Junger's rhetoric of struggle and hardness, Heidegger appeared to the less sophisticated minds to be exhorting all Germans to submit to a technological Will to Power in order to overcome decline and despair (uberwinden).

But in fact he criticized the technological Will to Power and argued for its transcendence through Volk politics and Gelassenheit (detachment)—a highly misplaced hope in the case of the Nazis. Heidegger's ontological language was pitched at such a high level of linguistic and philosophical abstraction that it was impenetrable to most intellectuals, and his solution was an equally obscure and backward-looking spiritual renewal far too abstract for his Nazi masters to grasp. He was naturally predisposed toward Nazi ultranationalism through the special destiny he assigned to the German people because of their language, which he saw as the natural heir to classical Greek—a pure philosophical language, a quality that had disappeared from all other Western European languages. In addition, Heidegger's key concept of Dasein (a combination of the words being [sein] and here [da]) was based on the belief that the real is also rational, and, after 1933, the here was nazism and the obvious concrete power of National Socialism was, for him, an uncovering of authentic Being.

Heidegger's initial enthusiasm for nazism was soon reduced by the complete lack of interest the Nazis showed in his philosophy. As rector of Freiburg University in 1933, Heidegger delivered a famous address in which he announced that he had the correct philosophical understanding of National Socialism, but the Nazis did not understand him. His exclusive form of philosophical National Socialism was not based on any concept of race or imperial conquest and was, therefore, completely irrelevant to his political bosses.

Schmitt, a pupil of Max Weber, was a leading German thinker on constitutional law who wrote several seminal studies during the Weimar period and became known as the enemy of liberalism. Like Heidegger he entered the Nazi university establishment after 1933. Schmitt rejected cosmopolitan ideals and the intrinsic goodness of humankind and argued that the law was ultimately subservient to politics. Liberalism, meanwhile, offered a false universalism, which obscured the existentially paramount nature of politics and replaced it with the struggle for abstract notions of rights. Political reality ultimately transcended all legal norms for Schmitt, who supported the existential over the theoretical. Thus war lacks any normative justification, its reason lying not in ideals of justice, democracy, or economic prosperity, but in preserving the very existence of the sovereign and sacred polity when it is threatened—in this case a Germany threatened by decadent liberals, Jews, and communists.

Despite his openly Nazi ideals, Schmitt's work proved influential on later authoritarian conservatism outside Germany; Raymond Aron referred to him as a great social philosopher in the tradition of Weber. His writings continue to influence the left, as demonstrated by the content of the journal Telos, and to fascinate poststructuralists, including Chantal Mouffe (1999) and Jacques Derrida.

Spanish Falangists (1936–1975)

The Falange was a quasi-fascist political organization, which constituted the single official party in Spain between 1939 and 1975, making it the longest-lasting fascist-style regime. This minor party was founded in 1933 by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, and, with other parties, became the Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of National-Unionist Offensive.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Falangists fought on the nationalist side against the left-led Republicans. When Franco seized personal power, he united the Falange with the Carlist monarchists, forming the Movimiento Nacional—thus purging the Falange of its more radical and modernizing fascistic elements. After the war, moderate Falangist ministers had an important role in Francoism, but Franco turned increasingly to younger politicians thus allowing Spain be dominated by the technocratic wing of Falangism, whose policies arguably promoted a return to democracy.

Non-European Fascisms

Minor potential examples of generic fascism and neofacism have existed elsewhere in Europe and around the world both before and since 1945. But the only other continent that has witnessed significant concentrations of quasi-fascist parties, movement, and regimes is Latin America, principally Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile.

Between 1954 and 1989, Alfredo Stroessner's authoritarian Colorado Party made Paraguay a safe haven for Nazi war criminals such as Josef Mengele. However the most significant neofascist regime existed in Argentina under Juan Perón (president from 1946–1955 and 1973–1974) who fostered a powerful populist, authoritarian personality cult initially with the assistance of his beautiful but ill-fated wife Eva.

Islamic Fascism

Some claim that Islamic Fascism exists and is also a phenomenon of modernism (see Wistrich 2001). In this thesis it is basically a twentieth-century totalitarian movement—like fascism and communism. Islam existed before Islamic Fascism, and will exist after it.

Islamic Fascism is designed—like fascism and communism—to appeal to idealistic young people with a utopian future where the world will be cleansed. It really started with the Iranian revolution in 1979, and was formerly called Islamic fundamentalism. Other names for it include Islamofascism or Islamism. And—like fascism and communism—its only solution, according to its adherents, is the total and utter destruction of western liberal and Christian culture and philosophy. This may, of course, require a long cold war, lasting for perhaps the next two or three decades, punctuated by perhaps one or two more hot wars, but Islam will prevail.

Broader Issues for Science, Technology, and Ethics

Among other things, the rapid rise of fascism illustrates the severe problem of cultural disorder created by radical and rapid scientific and technological change in the early-twentieth century and the associated difficulty of moving from essentially premodern traditional societies to modern rationalistic, scientific, and technological societies with mass democratic systems.

By nature fascism is clearly opposed to those aspects of modernity linked with decadence, particularly cultural-pluralism, liberalism, and materialism. There are obvious examples of premodern thought within fascism—for instance the Blood and Soil movement, ideals in both Germany and Italy of regeneration of the peasantry and the restoration of the ancient bond between Germans and Italians and the land. Yet fascism is by no means entirely antimodern, as Gentile suggested:

... as a descendant of early twentieth-century modernist nationalism, fascism does not identify with anti-modernism, but in its own way ... it had a certain passion for modernity not inconsistent with its harking back to the traditions of the past ... The fascists saw themselves as the modern "Romans" ... compatible with the myth of the future and with fascism's ambition of revising modernity in order to leave its mark on the new civilization in the age of the masses. (Gentile 1993, p. 24–25)

At one level fascism clearly represented a rejection of liberal scientific positivism. But equally, as Roger Griffin (1994) argues, it contained a readiness to employ the latest scientific and technological techniques to destroy liberalism and communism and achieve its irrationalist and dystopian ends.

Many varieties of fascism also tried to replace orthodox religion with a perverted secularized and spiritualized modernism, based in part on developing and deploying the dazzling potential gains of modern science and technology and offering the chimera of an economics of plenty—a technological heaven on earth. Indeed Gentile has depicted Italian Fascism as the first and most highly developed form of modern mass political religion—offering a new ideology to fill the void left by the decline of traditional religion in Italy. Earlier cults and myths of Italian ultranationalism forged the basis of a civic religion that was then colonized and adapted by the Fascist party. As such, Italian Fascism was a vital catalyst for contemporary Italian mass politics (Gentile 1996).

Fascism clearly demonstrates the considerable negative as well as liberating functions of modern science and technology, with the state entirely taking over its promotion, direction, and end use for the deeply unethical purposes of brutal imperialist wars and, in the case of Nazi Germany, systematic mass genocide. It is, perhaps, useful to speculate on what latter-day Nazis would do with current cloning techniques and biotechnology, or with the latest weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological and nuclear based. And with regard to the miracles of modern mass communications: the frightening image of tall men in stylish black Nazi uniforms waiting at Heathrow, or JFK, talking animatedly into their exclusive SS-issue mobile phones and opening their sleek black SS laptops in a wireless-zone, to contact the web and read their encrypted emails, comes all too readily to mind.

DAVID BAKER

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