Fascism

Fascism refers to a set of movements and political ideologies that emerged after World War I, first in Italy. Fascism also refers to sufficiently similar movements in other countries, notably German National-Socialism or Nazism. Fascist movements were nationalist, authoritarian, anti-egalitarian, anticommunist, and antidemocratic mass movements that also adopted corporatism in economics, a cult of violence as a cure for decadence, the leadership principle, and the use of uniforms and paramilitary formations in politics.

GENDER POLITICS OF FASCISM

Fascist movements blended modernizing with traditional and reactionary elements. On questions of gender, it was most often the traditional and reactionary strands that came to the fore, at least in theory if not always in practice. Fascism sought to exploit the mass mobilization and industrialization of modernity without the accompanying push for emancipation. Aggressive opposition to feminism and women's rights were ideologically ideal. The demands of national mobilization for war, however, pulled in the other direction. Yet fascist regimes, like that of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) in Italy and Adolph Hitler (1889–1945) in Germany, were less successful at exploiting female labor than either the communist Soviet Union or the liberal democratic Great Britain and United States.

The radical rightists that provided much of the intellectual basis for fascism, like the followers of Georges Sorel (1847–1922) in France and Italy, or radical Italian nationalists (later fascists) like Giovanni Papini (1881–1956), touted an antifeminism heavily colored with misogyny. Even the futurists, like Emilio Marinetti (1876–1944) known for his "scorn for women" (De Grazia 1992, p. 25), who represented the most modernizing aspects of fascist ideology, had no place for women's rights. Instead their cult of speed, machinery, noise, and war had a strong hypermasculinist tendency.

ITALIAN FASCISM

Not surprisingly, Mussolini's regime (1922–1945) sought to strengthen the family and traditional sex roles. Its pronatalist policies (somewhat illogical in a country that regularly had to export population) led to policies and institutions to support women and children, promoting motherhood and discouraging female work outside the home. Some of these social welfare measures were similar to steps taken in non-fascist countries. Others bore the imprint of Italian Fascism, like the (openly homophobic) tax on bachelors, which grew greater as the unmarried man grew older (and exempted those in military service). Family allowances were provided for large families; and especially prolific women (twelve or more children) were paraded in special public rituals as the regime sought to promote the female ideal of the pretty, nubile, peasant girl as a counter to the Hollywood starlet or selfish bourgeois woman. Other public rituals mobilized women in parades of uniformed gymnasts or in ceremonies during which women sacrificed their gold wedding bands for the nation. Given the compromises (as with the Church) and contradictions of Italian fascist governance, the effects of these policies on marriage and fertility patterns were modest.

NAZISM: RACISM AND REPRODUCTION

Italian Fascism came to power in a society in which women had not yet achieved the vote (Fascists both blocked women's suffrage and rendered it irrelevant). Nazism rose in the ultra-democratic Weimar Republic which gave women full political rights. Seeking women's votes meant downplaying misogyny and stressing how Nazi policies would address traditional women's concerns (like public morality or getting their unemployed husbands back to work). Hitler consistently did better among female than male voters, though in this German women echoed a general tendency in that country as well as elsewhere in Europe for women to vote more to the right (and have greater religious participation) than their husbands and fathers.

In power from 1933 to 1945, the Nazi government was pro-natalist and pro-family (and it also drew these policies from earlier, Völkisch, currents) but Hitler's eugenicist and exterminationist racism resulted in different applications. (Racism in Fascist Italy was a late and imitative phenomenon.) In Nazi Germany, the male/female gender dichotomy was bisected by the racialist one of Aryan/non-Aryan—in practice the latter meant Jews, Gypsies (Roma and Sinta), and non-Europeans. Men and women were also divided into the valuable or life worthy versus the life-unworthy, which included both those deemed asocial or criminal and those with hereditary mental or physical diseases or conditions. Combining the eugenicist with the racist models (non-Aryans were automatically unhealthy), Nazi natality policy sought to promote healthy Aryan births while discouraging all others. Promoting the birth-rate, in general, while restricting reproduction among many was an inherently difficult policy. Nazi policies also reflected the contradictions between those who sought a more biological approach (derided as zoo-politics by its opponents) and those who favored traditional family values, in line with the teachings of the Catholic and Lutheran churches.

The 1935 Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People sought to ban marriages of the unfit (including those with unfit relatives), by requiring a Certificate of Suitability of Marriage, though this was not always enforced in practice. Merely unfit couples could sometimes marry if they produced a guarantee (e.g., through sterilization) that they would not reproduce. Often a medical examination for a potential marriage could lead to forced sterilization. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 extended the marriage (and sex) ban to racially mixed couples. Similarly abortion was prohibited for Aryans but encouraged for Jewish women. The availability of contraception was also systematically reduced. Institutionalized handicapped individuals were methodically killed due to a combination of economic and eugenicist concerns, though this policy was cut back in Germany after the Catholic Church vigorously objected.

A series of social welfare measures were meant to encourage large families: from subsidies (including loans and tax breaks), visits by social workers, and education for expectant and new-mothers to public honors including awarding military-style medals for prolific mothers. The definition of asocial (for purposes of either denial of marriage or sending to a concentration camp) tended for males to reflect criminal activity. For women, it usually meant sexual profligacy, reinforcing traditional sexual double standards. Though Nazis insisted that woman's place was in the home, Hitler was not above using female talent (like the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) when it served his purposes.

The more radically Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) sought to promote racially healthy children whatever the marriage status of the mother. To this end, the SS opened retreats where racially valuable single-women could have their children. In a few cases, SS men could assist in conception. Finally, during the war, unwed mothers could retroactively legalize their marriages with dead soldier-fathers. Plans were even afoot to encourage bigamy after the war to make up for the loss of males.

HOMOSEXUALITY

The close male bonding in Nazi organizations could easily slide into homosexuality. Ernst Röhm, leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi storm troopers or brown shirts, was generally considered to be at the center of a homosexual clique. Hitler exploited this reputation when he destroyed Röhm and the leadership of the SA in 1934 for completely political reasons. The bureaucratically competing police agencies of the Nazi state actively repressed male homosexuality while largely ignoring (technically illegal) lesbian activity. Though differing psychosexual fears and attractions may have played a role, the stated reason was the allegedly more passive role of women in sex and the belief that lesbians might become mothers. Male homosexuals were subject to arrest and deportation to concentration camps where they wore the particularly dishonoring pink triangle badge. At the camps, homosexuals could be worked to death, executed, or sometimes forcefully re-educated through sex with women in the camp brothel (among such women were lesbians, sent to the brothels as punishment).

If Nazi pro-natalism had only limited success, its policy of extermination was devastatingly effective. The reproductive logic of Nazi racism was also responsible for what, to many Europeans, was a horrific innovation: the systematic murder of Jewish and Gypsy women and children along with their menfolk. Families arriving at extermination camps were separated, the men from the women and children, since breaking up the family group made the prisoners easier to control.

FASCISM AS A SEXUALIZED POLITICS

Fascists always touted their virility. But there is much that is classically feminine in the Fascist emphasis on uniforms, on organized display, and on an aestheticizing of politics. Some have seen this as an indication of a redirected sexual energy, linked to Fascism's cult of the irrational. Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) gave this theory its fullest formulation, including an analysis of the swastika as an ancient sex symbol representing two intertwined bodies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Grazia, Victoria. 1992. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Koonz, Claudia. 1987. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Passmore, Kevin, ed. 2003. Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919–45. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism, ed. Mary Higgins and Chester Raphael, trans. Mary Higgins. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Stephenson, Jill. 2001. Women in Nazi Germany. New York: Longman.

                                              Allen Douglas