Fascism and ideology

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Fascism

A Fascist propaganda poster featuring Benito Mussolini, the Duce of Italy

The history of fascist ideology is long and draws on many sources. Fascists took
inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and
their emphasis on rule by an elite minority. Fascism has also been connected to the
ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Fascism styled itself
as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. The concept of a
"high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core
to Nazi racial views. From the same era, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the
absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced Fascist thinking. The French
Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back
against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal
democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand Fascism drew heavily on the
revolutionary ideal of nationalism. Common themes among fascist movements
include: nationalism (including racial
nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, militarism, masculinity, and quasi-religion. Other
aspects of fascism such as its "myth of decadence", anti‐egalitarianism
and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas. These fundamental aspects
however, can be expressed through a concept known as "Palingenetic ultranationalism",
a theory proposed by Roger Griffin, that fascism is a synthesis of totalitarianism and
ultranationalism sacralized through a myth of national rebirth and regeneration.
Its relationship with other ideologies of its day was complex, often at once adversarial
and focused on co-opting their more popular aspects. Fascism supported private
property rights – except for the groups it persecuted – and the profit
motive of capitalism, but sought to eliminate the autonomy of large-scale capitalism by
bolstering private power with the state. They shared many of the goals of
the conservatives of their day and often allied themselves with them by drawing recruits
from disaffected conservative ranks, but presented themselves as holding a
more modern ideology, with less focus on things like traditional religion. Fascism
opposed class conflict and the egalitarian and international character of
mainstream socialism, but sometimes sought to establish itself as an
alternative "national socialism". It strongly opposed liberalism, communism, anarchism,
and democratic socialism.

Ideological origins[edit]
Early influences (495 BC–1880 AD)[edit]

Depiction of a Greek Hoplite warrior; ancient Sparta has been considered an inspiration for fascist and quasi-
fascist movements, such as Nazism and quasi-fascist Metaxism

Early influences that shaped the ideology of fascism have been dated back to Ancient
Greece. The political culture of ancient Greece and specifically the ancient Greek city
state of Sparta under Lycurgus, with its emphasis on militarism and racial purity, were
admired by the Nazis.[1][2] Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler emphasized that Germany should
adhere to Hellenic values and culture – particularly that of ancient Sparta.[1] He rebuked
potential criticism of Hellenic values being non-German by emphasizing the
common Aryan race connection with ancient Greeks, saying in Mein Kampf: "One must
not allow the differences of the individual races to tear up the greater racial
community".[3]
Hitler went on to say in Mein Kampf: "The struggle that rages today involves very great
aims: a culture fights for its existence, which combines millenniums and
embraces Hellenism and Germanity together".[3] The Spartans were emulated by the
quasi-fascist regime of Ioannis Metaxas who called for Greeks to wholly commit
themselves to the nation with self-control as the Spartans had done.[4] Supporters of
the 4th of August Regime in the 1930s to 1940s justified the dictatorship of Metaxas on
the basis that the "First Greek Civilization" involved an Athenian dictatorship led
by Pericles who had brought ancient Greece to greatness.[4] The Greek
philosopher Plato supported many similar political positions to fascism.[5] In The
Republic (c. 380 BC),[6] Plato emphasizes the need for a philosopher king in an ideal
state.[6] Plato believed the ideal state would be ruled by an elite class of rulers known as
"Guardians" and rejected the idea of social equality.[5] Plato believed in an authoritarian
state.[5] Plato held Athenian democracy in contempt by saying: "The laws of democracy
remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals".[5] Like
fascism, Plato emphasized that individuals must adhere to laws and perform duties
while declining to grant individuals rights to limit or reject state interference in their
lives.[5] Like fascism, Plato also claimed that an ideal state would have state-run
education that was designed to promote able rulers and warriors.[5] Like many fascist
ideologues, Plato advocated for a state-sponsored eugenics program to be carried out in
order to improve the Guardian class in his Republic through selective breeding.[7] Italian
Fascist Il Duce Benito Mussolini had a strong attachment to the works of Plato.
[8]
 However, there are significant differences between Plato's ideals and fascism.[5] Unlike
fascism, Plato never promoted expansionism and he was opposed to offensive war.[5]

Bust of Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic (49 BC–44 BC)

Italian Fascists identified their ideology as being connected to the legacy of ancient
Rome and particularly the Roman Empire: they idolized Julius Caesar and Augustus.
[9]
 Italian Fascism viewed the modern state of Italy as the heir of the Roman Empire and
emphasized the need for renovation of Italian culture to "return to Roman values".
[10]
 Italian Fascists identified the Roman Empire as being an ideal organic and stable
society in contrast to contemporary individualist liberal society that they saw as being
chaotic in comparison.[10] Julius Caesar was considered a role model by fascists because
he led a revolution that overthrew an old order to establish a new order based on a
dictatorship in which he wielded absolute power.[9] Mussolini emphasized the need for
dictatorship, activist leadership style and a leader cult like that of Julius Caesar that
involved "the will to fix a unifying and balanced centre and a common will to action".
[11]
 Italian Fascists also idolized Augustus as the champion who built the Roman Empire.
[9]
 The fasces – a symbol of Roman authority – was the symbol of the Italian Fascists and
was additionally adopted by many other national fascist movements formed in
emulation of Italian Fascism.[12] While a number of Nazis rejected Roman civilization
because they saw it as incompatible with Aryan Germanic culture and they also
believed that Aryan Germanic culture was outside Roman culture, Adolf
Hitler personally admired ancient Rome.[12] Hitler focused on ancient Rome during its
rise to dominance and at the height of its power as a model to follow, and he deeply
admired the Roman Empire for its ability to forge a strong and unified civilization. In
private conversations, Hitler blamed the fall of the Roman Empire on the Roman
adoption of Christianity because he claimed that Christianity authorized the racial
intermixing that weakened Rome and led to its destruction.[11]

Leviathan (1651), the book written by Thomas Hobbes that advocates absolute monarchy

There were a number of influences on fascism from the Renaissance era in

Europe. Niccolò Machiavelli is known to have influenced Italian Fascism, particularly
through his promotion of the absolute authority of the state.[6] Machiavelli rejected all
existing traditional and metaphysical assumptions of the time—especially those
associated with the Middle Ages—and asserted as an Italian patriot that Italy needed a
strong and all-powerful state led by a vigorous and ruthless leader who would conquer
and unify Italy.[13] Mussolini saw himself as a modern-day Machiavellian and wrote an
introduction to his honorary doctoral thesis for the University of Bologna—"Prelude to
Machiavelli".[14] Mussolini professed that Machiavelli's "pessimism about human nature
was eternal in its acuity. Individuals simply could not be relied on voluntarily to 'obey
the law, pay their taxes and serve in war'. No well-ordered society could want the
people to be sovereign".[15] Most dictators of the 20th century mimicked Mussolini's
admiration for Machiavelli and "Stalin... saw himself as the embodiment of
Machiavellian virtù".[16]
English political theorist Thomas Hobbes in his work Leviathan (1651) created the
ideology of absolutism that advocated an all-powerful absolute monarchy to maintain
order within a state.[6] Absolutism was an influence on fascism.[6] Absolutism based its
legitimacy on the precedents of Roman law including the centralized Roman state and
the manifestation of Roman law in the Catholic Church.[17] Though fascism supported the
absolute power of the state, it opposed the idea of absolute power being in the hands of
a monarch and opposed the feudalism that was associated with absolute monarchies.[18]

Portrait of Johann Gottfried Herder, the creator of the concept of nationalism

During the Enlightenment, a number of ideological influences arose that would shape
the development of fascism. The development of the study of universal histories
by Johann Gottfried Herder resulted in Herder's analysis of the development of nations.
Herder developed the term Nationalismus ("nationalism") to describe this cultural
phenomenon. At this time nationalism did not refer to the political ideology of
nationalism that was later developed during the French Revolution.[19] Herder also
developed the theory that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Aryan people based on
language studies. Herder argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections
with the ancient Indians and ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples
possessing a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint and science.
[20]
 Contemporaries of Herder used the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction
between what they deemed "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic"
Semitic culture and this anti-Semitic variant view of Europeans' Aryan roots formed the
basis of Nazi racial views.[20] Another major influence on fascism came from the political
theories of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.[6] Hegel promoted the absolute authority of
the state[6] and said "nothing short of the state is the actualization of freedom" and that
the "state is the march of God on earth".[13]
The French Revolution and its political legacy had a major influence upon the
development of fascism. Fascists view the French Revolution as a largely negative
event that resulted in the entrenchment of liberal ideas such as liberal
democracy, anticlericalism and rationalism.[18] Opponents of the French Revolution
initially were conservatives and reactionaries, but the Revolution was also later
criticized by Marxists for its bourgeois character, and by racist nationalists who opposed
its universalist principles.[18] Racist nationalists in particular condemned the French
Revolution for granting social equality to "inferior races" such as Jews.[18] Mussolini
condemned the French Revolution for developing liberalism, scientific socialism and
liberal democracy, but also acknowledged that fascism extracted and used all the
elements that had preserved those ideologies' vitality and that fascism had no desire to
restore the conditions that precipitated the French Revolution.[18] Though fascism
opposed core parts of the Revolution, fascists supported other aspects of it, Mussolini
declared his support for the Revolution's demolishment of remnants of the Middle Ages
such as tolls and compulsory labour upon citizens and he noted that the French
Revolution did have benefits in that it had been a cause of the whole French nation and
not merely a political party.[18] Most importantly, the French Revolution was responsible
for the entrenchment of nationalism as a political ideology – both in its development in
France as French nationalism and in the creation of nationalist movements particularly
in Germany with the development of German nationalism by Johann Gottlieb Fichte as
a political response to the development of French nationalism.[19] The Nazis accused the
French Revolution of being dominated by Jews and Freemasons and were deeply
disturbed by the Revolution's intention to completely break France away from its past
history in what the Nazis claimed was a repudiation of history that they asserted to be a
trait of the Enlightenment.[18] Though the Nazis were highly critical of the Revolution,
Hitler in Mein Kampf said that the French Revolution is a model for how to achieve
change that he claims was caused by the rhetorical strength of demagogues.
[21]
 Furthermore, the Nazis idealized the levée en masse (mass mobilization of soldiers)
that was developed by French Revolutionary armies and the Nazis sought to use the
system for their paramilitary movement.[21]
Fin de siècle era and the fusion of nationalism with Sorelianism
(1880–1914)[edit]

Fin de siècle

The ideological roots of fascism have been traced to the 1880s and in particular the fin
de siècle theme of that time.[22][23] The theme was based on revolt
against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and liberal democracy.
[22]
 The fin-de-siècle generation
supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism.[24] The fin-de-siècle mi
ndset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.
[22]
 The fin-de-siècle intellectual school of the 1890s – including Gabriele
d'Annunzio and Enrico Corradini in Italy; Maurice Barrès, Edouard
Drumont and Georges Sorel in France; and Paul de Lagarde, Julius
Langbehn and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck in Germany – saw social and political
collectivity as more important than individualism and rationalism. They considered the
individual as only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an
atomized numerical sum of individuals.[22] They condemned the rationalistic
individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.
[22]
 They saw modern society as one of mediocrity, materialism, instability, and
corruption.[22] They denounced big-city urban society as being merely based on instinct
and animality and without heroism.[22]
The fin-de-siècle outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments,
including Darwinian biology; Wagnerian aesthetics; Arthur de
Gobineau's racialism; Gustave Le Bon's psychology; and the philosophies of Friedrich
Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henri Bergson.[22] Social Darwinism, which gained
widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life and viewed
the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest.
[22]
 Social Darwinism challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as
the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race
and environment.[22] Social Darwinism's emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of
organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for nationalism.[25] New
theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour
being governed by rational choice, and instead claimed that emotion was more
influential in political issues than reason.[22] Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead"
coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy and
modern collectivism; his concept of the übermensch; and his advocacy of the will to
power as a primordial instinct were major influences upon many of the fin-de-
siècle generation.[26] Bergson's claim of the existence of an "élan vital" or vital instinct
centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism,
thus challenged Marxism.[27]
With the advent of the Darwinian theory of evolution came claims of evolution possibly
leading to decadence.[28] Proponents of decadence theories claimed that contemporary
Western society's decadence was the result of modern life, including urbanization,
sedentary lifestyle, the survival of the least fit and modern culture's emphasis on
egalitarianism, individualistic anomie, and nonconformity.[28] The main work that gave
rise to decadence theories was the work Degeneration (1892) by Max Nordau that was
popular in Europe, the ideas of decadence helped the cause of nationalists who
presented nationalism as a cure for decadence.[28]
Gaetano Mosca in his work The Ruling Class (1896) developed the theory that claims
that in all societies, an "organized minority" will dominate and rule over the
"disorganized majority".[29][30] Mosca claims that there are only two classes in society,
"the governing" (the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized
majority).[31] He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority makes it
irresistible to any individual of the disorganized majority.[31] Mosca developed this
theory in 1896 in which he argued that the problem of the supremacy of civilian power
in society is solved in part by the presence and social structural design of militaries.
[31]
 He claims that the social structure of the military is ideal because it includes diverse
social elements that balance each other out and more importantly is its inclusion of an
officer class as a "power elite".[31] Mosca presented the social structure and methods of
governance by the military as a valid model of development for civil society.[31] Mosca's
theories are known to have significantly influenced Mussolini's notion of the political
process and fascism.[30]
Related to Mosca's theory of domination of society by an organized minority over a
disorganized majority was Robert Michels' theory of the iron law of oligarchy, created
in 1911,[29] which was a major attack on the basis of contemporary democracy.[32] Michels
argues that oligarchy is inevitable as an "iron law" within any organization as part of the
"tactical and technical necessities" of organization and on the topic of democracy,
Michels stated: "It is organization which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over
the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators.
Who says organization, says oligarchy".[32] He claims: "Historical evolution mocks all
the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy".[32] He
states that the official goal of contemporary democracy of eliminating elite rule was
impossible, that democracy is a façade which legitimizes the rule of a particular elite
and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.[32] Michels had
previously been a social democrat, but became drawn to the ideas of Georges
Sorel, Édouard Berth, Arturo Labriola and Enrico Leone and came to strongly oppose
the parliamentarian, legalistic and bureaucratic socialism of social democracy.[33] As
early as 1904, he began to advocate in favor of patriotism and national interests.[34] Later
he began to support activist, voluntarist, and anti-parliamentarian concepts, and in 1911
he took a position in favor of the Italian war effort in Libya and started moving
towards Italian nationalism.[35] Michels eventually became a supporter of fascism upon
Mussolini's rise to power in 1922, viewing fascism's goal to destroy liberal democracy
in a sympathetic manner.[36]

Maurice Barrès

Maurice Barrès, a French politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who
influenced the later fascist movement, claimed that true democracy was authoritarian
democracy while rejecting liberal democracy as a fraud.[37] Barrès claimed that
authoritarian democracy involved a spiritual connection between a leader of a nation
and the nation's people, and that true freedom did not arise from individual rights nor
parliamentary restraints, but through "heroic leadership" and "national power".[37] He
emphasized the need for hero worship and charismatic leadership in national society.
[38]
 Barrès was a founding member of the League for the French Fatherland in 1889, and
later coined the term "socialist nationalism" to describe his views during an electoral
campaign in 1898.[38] He emphasized class collaboration, the role of intuition and
emotion in politics alongside racial Antisemitism, and "he tried to combine the search
for energy and a vital style of life with national rootedness and a sort of Darwinian
racism."[38] Later in life he returned to cultural traditionalism and parliamentary
conservatism, but his ideas contributed to the development of an extremist form of
nationalism in pre-1914 France.[38] Other French nationalist intellectuals of the early 20th
century also wished to "obliterate the class struggle in ideological terms," ending the
threat of communism by persuading working people to identify with their nation rather
than their class.[39]
The rise of support for anarchism in this period of time was important in influencing the
politics of fascism.[40] The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's concept of propaganda of the
deed, which stressed the importance of direct action as the primary means of politics—
including revolutionary violence, became popular amongst fascists who admired the
concept and adopted it as a part of fascism.[40]

Georges Sorel

One of the key persons who greatly influenced fascism was the French
intellectual Georges Sorel, who "must be considered one of the least classifiable
political thinkers of the twentieth century" and supported a variety of different
ideologies throughout his life, including conservatism, socialism, revolutionary
syndicalism and nationalism.[41] Sorel also contributed to the fusion of anarchism and
syndicalism together into anarcho-syndicalism.[42] He promoted the legitimacy
of political violence in his work Reflections on Violence (1908), during a period in his
life when he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution which would
overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a general strike.[43] In Reflections on
Violence, Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion.[44] Also in his
work The Illusions of Progress, Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying
"nothing is more aristocratic than democracy".[45] By 1909, after the failure of a
syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters abandoned the radical left
and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and
French patriotism with their views – advocating anti-republican Christian French
patriots as ideal revolutionaries.[46] In the early 1900s Sorel had officially been
a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 he announced his abandonment of socialism, and
in 1914 he claimed – following an aphorism of Benedetto Croce – that "socialism is
dead" due to the "decomposition of Marxism".[47] Sorel became a supporter of
reactionary Maurrassian integral nationalism beginning in 1909, and this greatly
influenced his works.[47]
Sorel's political allegiances were constantly shifting, influencing a variety of people
across the political spectrum from Benito Mussolini to Benedetto Croce to Georg
Lukács, and both sympathizers and critics of Sorel considered his political thought to be
a collection of separate ideas with no coherence and no common thread linking them.
[48]
 In this, Sorelianism is considered to be a precursor to fascism, as fascist thought also
drew from disparate sources and did not form a single coherent ideological system.
[49]
 Sorel described himself as "a self-taught man exhibiting to other people the
notebooks which have served for my own instruction", and stated that his goal was to be
original in all of his writings and that his apparent lack of coherence was due to an
unwillingness to write down anything that had already been said elsewhere by someone
else.[48] The academic intellectual establishment did not take him seriously,[50] but
Mussolini applauded Sorel by declaring: "What I am, I owe to Sorel".[51]
Charles Maurras was a French right-wing monarchist and nationalist who held interest
in merging his nationalist ideals with Sorelian syndicalism as a means to
confront liberal democracy.[52] This fusion of nationalism from the
political right with Sorelian syndicalism from the left took place around the outbreak
of World War I.[53] Sorelian syndicalism, unlike other ideologies on the left, held an
elitist view that the morality of the working class needed to be raised.[54] The Sorelian
concept of the positive nature of social war and its insistence on a moral revolution led
some syndicalists to believe that war was the ultimate manifestation of social change
and moral revolution.[54]
The fusion of Maurrassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism influenced radical
Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[55] Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-
syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a
revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.
[55]
 Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to
pursue imperialism to challenge the "plutocratic" French and British.[56] Corradini's
views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist
Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by
corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".
[56]
 The ANI held ties and influence among conservatives, Catholics, and the business
community.[56] Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection
of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism and pacifism and
the promotion of heroism, vitalism and violence.[57]

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, author of the Futurist Manifesto (1908) and later the co-author of the Fascist
Manifesto (1919)

Radical nationalism in Italy—support for expansionism and cultural revolution to create

a "New Man" and a "New State"—began to grow in 1912 during the Italian conquest
of Libya and was supported by Italian Futurists and members of the ANI.[58] Futurism
was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led
by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the author of the Futurist Manifesto (1908), that
championed the causes of modernism, action and political violence as necessary
elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti
rejected conventional democracy for being based on majority rule and egalitarianism,
while promoting a new form of democracy, that he described in his work "The Futurist
Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the
directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us
number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the
number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive".[59] The ANI
claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world and
advocated a strong state and imperialism, claiming that humans are naturally predatory
and that nations were in a constant struggle, in which only the strongest nations could
survive.[60]
Until 1914, Italian nationalists and revolutionary syndicalists with nationalist leanings
remained apart. Such syndicalists opposed the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 as an affair of
financial interests and not the nation, but World War I was seen by both Italian
nationalists and syndicalists as a national affair.[61]
World War I and aftermath (1914–1922)[edit]
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became
severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party opposed the war
on the grounds of proletarian internationalism, but a number of Italian revolutionary
syndicalists supported intervention in the war on the grounds that it could serve to
mobilize the masses against the status quo and that the national question had to be
resolved before the social one.[62] Corradini presented the need for Italy as a "proletarian
nation" to defeat a reactionary Germany from a nationalist perspective.[63] Angelo
Oliviero Olivetti formed the Revolutionary Fascio for International Action in October
1914, to support Italy's entry into the war.[62] At the same time, Benito Mussolini joined
the interventionist cause.[64] At first, these interventionist groups were composed of
disaffected syndicalists who had concluded that their attempts to promote social change
through a general strike had been a failure, and became interested in the transformative
potential of militarism and war.[65] They would help to form the Fascist movement
several years later.
This early interventionist movement was very small, and did not have an integrated set
of policies. Its attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and it was regularly
harassed by government authorities and socialists.[66] Antagonism between
interventionists and socialists resulted in violence.[66] Attacks on interventionists were so
violent that even democratic socialists who opposed the war, such as Anna Kuliscioff,
said that the Italian Socialist Party had gone too far in its campaign to silence supporters
of the war.[66]
Benito Mussolini became prominent within the early pro-war movement thanks to his
newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, which he founded in November 1914 to support the
interventionist cause. The newspaper received funding from the governments of Allied
powers that wanted Italy to join them in the war, particularly France and Britain.[67] Il
Popolo d'Italia was also funded in part by Italian industrialists who hoped to gain
financially from the war, including Fiat, other arms manufacturers, and agrarian
interests.[67] Mussolini did not have any clear agenda in the beginning other than support
for Italy's entry into the war, and sought to appeal to diverse groups of readers. These
ranged from dissident socialists who opposed the Socialist Party's anti-war stance, to
democratic idealists who believed the war would overthrow autocratic monarchies
across Europe, to Italian patriots who wanted to recover ethnic Italian territories from
Austria, to imperialists who dreamed of a new Roman Empire.[68]
By early 1915, Mussolini had moved towards the nationalist position. He began arguing
that Italy should conquer Trieste and Fiume, and expand its northeastern border to the
Alps, following the ideals of Mazzini who called for a patriotic war to "secure Italy's
natural frontiers of language and race".[69] Mussolini also advocated waging a war of
conquest in the Balkans and the Middle East, and his supporters began to call
themselves fascisti.[68] He also started advocating for a "positive attitude" towards
capitalism and capitalists, as part of his transition towards supporting class
collaboration and an "Italy first" position.[70]
Italy finally entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915. Mussolini later took credit
for having allegedly forced the government to declare war on Austria, although his
influence on events was minimal.[71] He enrolled into the Royal Italian Army in
September 1915 and fought in the war until 1917, when he was wounded during a
training exercise and discharged.[72] Italy's use of daredevil elite shock troops known as
the Arditi, beginning in 1917, was an important influence on the early Fascist
movement.[73] The Arditi were soldiers who were specifically trained for a life of
violence and wore unique blackshirt uniforms and fezzes.[73] The Arditi formed a national
organization in November 1918, the Associazione fra gli Arditi d'Italia, which by mid-
1919 had about twenty thousand young men within it.[73] Mussolini appealed to
the Arditi, and the Fascist Squadristi movement that developed after the war was based
upon the Arditi.[73]

Russian Bolsheviks shortly after the October Revolution of 1917. Fascists politically benefited from fear of
communist revolution by promising themselves as a radical alternative that would forcibly stop communist
class revolution and resolve class differences.

A major event that greatly influenced the development of fascism was the October
Revolution of 1917, in which Bolshevik communists led by Vladimir Lenin seized
power in Russia. The revolution in Russia gave rise to a fear of communism among the
elites and among society at large in several European countries, and fascist movements
gained support by presenting themselves as a radical anti-communist political force.
[74]
 Anti-communism was also an expression of fascist anti-universalism, as communism
insisted on international working class unity while fascism insisted on national interests.
[75]
 In addition, fascist anti-communism was linked to anti-Semitism and even anti-
capitalism, because many fascists believed that communism and capitalism were both
Jewish creations meant to undermine nation-states. The Nazis advocated the conspiracy
theory that Jewish communists were working together with Jewish finance capital
against Germany.[75] After World War I, fascists have commonly campaigned on anti-
Marxist agendas.[74]
Mussolini's immediate reaction to the Russian Revolution was contradictory. He
admired Lenin's boldness in seizing power by force and was envious of the success of
the Bolsheviks, while at the same time attacking them in his paper for restricting free
speech and creating "a tyranny worse than that of the tsars."[76] At this time, between
1917 and 1919, Mussolini and the early Fascist movement presented themselves as
opponents of censorship and champions of free thought and speech, calling these
"among the highest expressions of human civilization."[77] Mussolini wrote that "we are
libertarians above all" and claimed that the Fascists were committed to "loving liberty
for everyone, even for our enemies."[77]
Mussolini consolidated control over the Fascist movement in 1919 with the founding of
the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan. For a brief time in 1919, this early fascist
movement tried to position itself as a radical populist alternative to the socialists,
offering its own version of a revolutionary transformation of society. In a speech
delivered in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro in March 1919, Mussolini set forward the
proposals of the new movement, combining ideas from nationalism, Sorelian
syndicalism, the idealism of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and the theories
of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto.[78] Mussolini declared his opposition to
Bolshevism because "Bolshevism has ruined the economic life of Russia" and because
he claimed that Bolshevism was incompatible with Western civilization; he said that
"we declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has
opposed nationalism", that "we intend to be an active minority, to attract the proletariat
away from the official Socialist party" and that "we go halfway toward meeting the
workers"; and he declared that "we favor national syndicalism and reject state
intervention whenever it aims at throttling the creation of wealth."[79]
In these early post-war years, the Italian Fascist movement tried to become a broad
political umbrella that could include all people of all classes and political positions,
united only by a desire to save Italy from the Marxist threat and to ensure the expansion
of Italian territories in the post-war peace settlements. [80] Il Popolo d'Italia wrote in
March 1919 that "We allow ourselves the luxury of being aristocrats and democrats,
conservatives and progressives, reactionaries and revolutionaries, legalists and
antilegalists."[81]
Later in 1919, Alceste De Ambris and futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti created The Manifesto of the Italian Fasci of Combat (also known as
the Fascist Manifesto).[82] The Manifesto was presented on 6 June 1919 in the Fascist
newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. The Manifesto supported the creation of universal
suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with
all opposition parties banned or disbanded);[83] proportional representation on a regional
basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of
experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold
legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation,
public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate.[84] The
Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum
wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour
unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the
transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the
retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the
property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics and revision of military
contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of war profits made by the armaments
industry.[85] It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve
defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry and a foreign policy
designed to be peaceful but also competitive.[86] Nevertheless, Mussolini also demanded
the expansion of Italian territories, particularly by annexing Dalmatia (which he claimed
could be accomplished by peaceful means), and insisted that "the state must confine
itself to directing the civil and political life of the nation," which meant taking the
government out of business and transferring large segments of the economy from public
to private control.[87] The intention was to appeal to a working class electorate while also
maintaining the support of business interests, even if this meant making contradictory
promises.[88]
With this manifesto, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento campaigned in the Italian
elections of November 1919, mostly attempting to take votes away from the socialists.
The results were disastrous. The fascists received less than 5000 votes in their political
heartland of Milan, compared to 190,000 for the socialists, and not a single fascist
candidate was elected to any office.[89] Mussolini's political career seemed to be over.
This crippling electoral defeat was largely due to fascism's lack of ideological
credibility, as the fascist movement was a mixture of many different ideas and
tendencies. It contained monarchists, republicans, syndicalists and conservatives, and
some candidates supported the Vatican while others wanted to expel the Pope from
Italy.[90] In response to the failure of his electoral strategy, Mussolini shifted his political
movement to the right, seeking to form an alliance with the conservatives. Soon,
agrarian conflicts in the region of Emilia and in the Po Valley provided an opportunity
to launch a series of violent attacks against the socialists, and thus to win credibility
with the conservatives and establish fascism as a paramilitary movement rather than an
electoral one.[90]
With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro-interventionist
Fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The
Fascists presented themselves as anti-Marxists and as opposed to the Marxists.
[91]
 Mussolini tried to build his popular support especially among war veterans and
patriots by enthusiastically supporting Gabriele D'Annunzio, the leader of the
annexationist faction in post-war Italy, who demanded the annexation of large territories
as part of the peace settlement in the aftermath of the war.[92] For D'Annunzio and other
nationalists, the city of Fiume in Dalmatia (present-day Croatia) had "suddenly become
the symbol of everything sacred."[92] Fiume was a city with an ethnic Italian majority,
while the countryside around it was largely ethnic Croatian. Italy demanded the
annexation of Fiume and the region around it as a reward for its contribution to the
Allied war effort, but the Allies – and US president Woodrow Wilson in particular –
intended to give the region to the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia).[93]
Residents of Fiume cheer the arrival of Gabriele D'Annunzio and his blackshirt-wearing nationalist raiders, as
D'Annunzio and Fascist Alceste De Ambris developed the proto-fascist Italian Regency of Carnaro (a city-state
centered on Fiume) from 1919 to 1920. These actions by D'Annunzio in Fiume inspired the Italian Fascist
movement

As such, the next events that influenced the Fascists were the raid of Fiume by Italian
nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio and the founding of the Charter of Carnaro in 1920.
[94]
 D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed the Charter, which advocated national-
syndicalist corporatist productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views.[95] Many
Fascists saw the Charter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a Fascist Italy.[96] This
behaviour of aggression towards Yugoslavia and South Slavs was pursued by Italian
Fascists with their persecution of South Slavs – especially Slovenes and Croats.
In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy, where
1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Years".[97] Mussolini first supported the strikes,
but when this did not help him to gain any additional supporters, he abruptly reversed
his position and began to oppose them, seeking financial support from big business and
landowners.[98] The donations he received from industrial and agrarian interest groups
were unusually large, as they were very concerned about working class unrest and eager
to support any political force that stood against it.[98] Together with many smaller
donations that he received from the public as part of a fund drive to support
D'Annunzio, this helped to build up the Fascist movement and transform it from a small
group based around Milan to a national political force.[98] Mussolini organized his own
militia, known as the "blackshirts," which started a campaign of violence against
Communists, Socialists, trade unions and co-operatives under the pretense of "saving
the country from bolshevism" and preserving order and internal peace in Italy.[98][99] Some
of the blackshirts also engaged in armed attacks against the Church, "where several
priests were assassinated and churches burned by the Fascists".[100]
At the same time, Mussolini continued to present himself as the champion of Italian
national interests and territorial expansion in the Balkans. In the autumn of 1920,
Fascist blackshirts in the Italian city of Trieste (located not far from Fiume, and
inhabited by Italians as well as Slavs) engaged in street violence and vandalism against
Slavs. Mussolini visited the city to support them and was greeted by an enthusiastic
crowd – the first time in his political career that he achieved such broad popular support.
[76]
 He also focused his rhetoric on attacks against the liberal government of Giovanni
Giolitti, who had withdrawn Italian troops from Albania and did not press the Allies to
allow Italy to annex Dalmatia. This helped to draw disaffected former soldiers into the
Fascist ranks.[101]
Fascists identified their primary opponents as the socialists on the left who had opposed
intervention in World War I.[96] The Fascists and the rest of the Italian political right held
common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness and
believed in the rule of elites.[102] The Fascists assisted the anti-socialist campaign by
allying with the other parties and the conservative right in a mutual effort to destroy the
Italian Socialist Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above
national identity.[102]
In 1921, the radical wing of the Italian Socialist Party broke away to form
the Communist Party of Italy. This changed the political landscape, as the remaining
Socialist Party – diminished in numbers, but still the largest party in parliament –
became more moderate and was therefore seen as a potential coalition partner for
Giolitti's government. Such an alliance would have secured a large majority in
parliament, ending the political deadlock and making effective government possible.
[101]
 To prevent this from happening, Mussolini offered to ally his Fascists with Giolitti
instead, and Giolitti accepted, under the assumption that the small Fascist movement
would make fewer demands and would be easier to keep in check than the much larger
Socialists.[103]
Mussolini and the Fascists thus joined a coalition formed of conservatives, nationalists
and liberals, which stood against the left-wing parties (the socialists and the
communists) in the Italian general election of 1921. As part of this coalition, the
Fascists – who had previously claimed to be neither left nor right – identified
themselves for the first time as the "extreme right", and presented themselves as the
most radical right-wing members of the coalition.[104] Mussolini talked about
"imperialism" and "national expansion" as his main goals, and called for Italian
domination of the Mediterranean Sea basin.[104] The elections of that year were
characterized by Fascist street violence and intimidation, which they used to suppress
the socialists and communists and to prevent their supporters from voting, while the
police and courts (under the control of Giolitti's government) turned a blind eye and
allowed the violence to continue without legal consequences.[104] About a hundred people
were killed, and some areas of Italy came fully under the control of fascist squads,
which did not allow known socialist supporters to vote or hold meetings.[104] In spite of
this, the Socialist Party still won the largest share of the vote and 122 seats in
parliament, followed by the Catholic popolari with 107 seats. The Fascists only picked
up 7 percent of the vote and 35 seats in parliament, but this was a large improvement
compared to their results only two years earlier, when they had won no seats at
all. [104] Mussolini took these electoral gains as an indication that his right-wing strategy
paid off, and decided that the Fascists would sit on the extreme right side of the
amphitheatre where parliament met. He also used his first speech in parliament to take a
"reactionary" stance, arguing against collectivization and nationalization, and calling for
the post office and the railways to be given to private enterprise.[105]
Prior to Fascism's accommodation of the political right, Fascism was a small, urban,
northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members.[106] After Fascism's
accommodation of the political right, the Fascist movement's membership soared to
approximately 250,000 by 1921.[107]
The other lesson drawn by Mussolini from the events of 1921 was about the
effectiveness of open violence and paramilitary groups. The Fascists used violence even
in parliament, for example by directly assaulting the communist deputy Misiano and
throwing him out of the building on the pretext of having been a deserter during the
war. They also openly threatened socialists with their guns in the chamber.[105] They were
able to do this with impunity, while the government took no action against them, hoping
not to offend Fascist voters.[105] Across the country, local branches of the National Fascist
Party embraced the principle of squadrismo and organized paramilitary "squads"
modeled after the arditi from the war.[108] Mussolini claimed that he had "400,000 armed
and disciplined men at his command" and did not hide his intentions of seizing power
by force.[109]
Rise to power and initial international spread of fascism (1922–1929)
[edit]
Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy by switching from
attacks on socialist offices and the homes of socialist leadership figures to the violent
occupation of cities. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and
proceeded to take over several cities,
including Bologna, Bolzano, Cremona, Ferrara, Fiume and Trent.[110] The Fascists
attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic unions in Cremona and imposed
forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Trent and Bolzano.
[110]
 After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome.[110]

Benito Mussolini (center in a suit with fists against the body) along with other Fascist leader figures
and Blackshirts during the March on Rome

On 24 October 1922, the Fascist Party held its annual congress in Naples, where
Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and to
converge on three points around Rome.[110] The march would be led by four prominent
Fascist leaders representing its different factions: Italo Balbo, a Blackshirt leader;
General Emilio De Bono; Michele Bianchi, an ex syndicalist; and Cesare Maria De
Vecchi, a monarchist Fascist.[110] Mussolini himself remained in Milan to await the
results of the actions.[110] The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices
and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition,
was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances.[111] The Italian
government had been in a steady state of turmoil, with many governments being created
and then being defeated.[111] The Italian government initially took action to prevent the
Fascists from entering Rome, but King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy perceived the risk
of bloodshed in Rome in response to attempting to disperse the Fascists to be too high.
[112]
 Some political organizations, such as the conservative Italian Nationalist Association,
"assured King Victor Emmanuel that their own Sempre Pronti militia was ready to fight
the Blackshirts" if they entered Rome, but their offer was never accepted.[113] Victor
Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy and Mussolini
arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment.[112] Fascist propaganda
aggrandized this event, known as "March on Rome", as a "seizure" of power due to
Fascists' heroic exploits.[110]
Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition
government because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.[114] The
coalition government included a cabinet led by Mussolini and thirteen other ministers,
only three of whom were Fascists, while others included representatives from the army
and the navy, two Catholic Popolari members, two democratic liberals, one conservative
liberal, one social democrat, one Nationalist member and the philosopher Giovanni
Gentile.[114] Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued economically
liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani from
the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.
[114]
 Initially little drastic change in government policy occurred, and repressive police
actions against communists and d'Annunzian rebels were limited.[114] At the same time,
Mussolini consolidated his control over the National Fascist Party by creating a
governing executive for the party, the Grand Council of Fascism, whose agenda he
controlled.[114] In addition, the squadristi blackshirt militia was transformed into the state-
run MVSN, led by regular army officers.[114] Militant squadristi were initially highly
dissatisfied with Mussolini's government and demanded a "Fascist revolution".[114]
In this period, to appease the King of Italy, Mussolini formed a close political alliance
between the Italian Fascists and Italy's conservative faction in Parliament, which was
led by Luigi Federzoni, a conservative monarchist and nationalist who was a member of
the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI).[115] The ANI joined the National Fascist Party
in 1923.[116] Because of the merger of the Nationalists with the Fascists, tensions existed
between the conservative nationalist and revolutionary syndicalist factions of the
movement.[117] The conservative and syndicalist factions of the Fascist movement sought
to reconcile their differences, secure unity and promote fascism by taking on the views
of each other.[117] Conservative nationalist Fascists promoted fascism as a revolutionary
movement to appease the revolutionary syndicalists, while to appease conservative
nationalists, the revolutionary syndicalists declared they wanted to secure social
stability and ensure economic productivity.[117] This sentiment included most syndicalist
Fascists, particularly Edmondo Rossoni, who as secretary-general of the General
Confederation of Fascist Syndical Corporations sought "labor's autonomy and class
consciousness".[118]
The Fascists began their attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law,
which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an
election that received 25% or more of the vote.[119] The Acerbo Law was passed in spite
of numerous abstentions from the vote.[119] In the 1924 election, the Fascists, along with
moderates and conservatives, formed a coalition candidate list, and through
considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won with 66% of the vote,
allowing it to receive 403 seats, most of which went to the Fascists.[119] In the aftermath
of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party
deputy Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.[119] The liberals and
the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as
the Aventine Secession.[120] On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-
dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what
happened, but he insisted that he had done nothing wrong and proclaimed himself
dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility for the government and announcing the
dismissal of parliament.[120] From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in
power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced
and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King. Efforts to
increase Fascist influence over Italian society accelerated beginning in 1926, with
Fascists taking positions in local administration and 30% of all prefects being
administered by appointed Fascists by 1929.[121] In 1929, the Fascist regime gained the
political support and blessing of the Roman Catholic Church after the regime signed a
concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy
recognition as a sovereign state (Vatican City) and financial compensation for the
seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the 19th century.[122] Though Fascist
propaganda had begun to speak of the new regime as an all-encompassing "totalitarian"
state beginning in 1925, the Fascist Party and regime never gained total control over
Italy's institutions. King Victor Emmanuel III remained head of state, the armed forces
and the judicial system retained considerable autonomy from the Fascist state, Fascist
militias were under military control and initially, the economy had relative autonomy as
well. [123]
Between 1922 and 1925, Fascism sought to accommodate the Italian Liberal Party,
conservatives, and nationalists under Italy's coalition government, where major
alterations to its political agenda were made—alterations such as abandoning its
previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism—and adopting policies
of economic liberalism under Alberto De Stefani, a Center Party member who was
Italy's Minister of Finance until dismissed by Mussolini after the imposition of a single-
party dictatorship in 1925.[124] The Fascist regime also accepted the Roman Catholic
Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy.[125] To appeal to Italian conservatives,
Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including the promotion of
policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce, limiting the
woman's role to that of a mother. In an effort to expand Italy's population to facilitate
Mussolini's future plans to control the Mediterranean region, the Fascists banned
literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both
crimes against the state.[126] Though Fascism adopted a number of positions designed to
appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists also sought to maintain Fascism's revolutionary
character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying that "Fascism would like to be
conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary".[127] The Fascists supported
revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both
conservatives and syndicalists.[128]
The Fascist regime began to create a corporatist economic system in 1925 with the
creation of the Palazzo Vidioni Pact, in which the Italian employers'
association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the
sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade
unions.[129] The Fascist regime created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the
Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned all independent trade unions,
banned workers' strikes and lock-outs, and in 1927 issued the Charter of Labour, which
established workers' rights and duties and created labor tribunals to arbitrate employer-
employee disputes.[129] In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence
and were largely controlled by the regime, while employee organizations were rarely
led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members. [129]
In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included an attack
on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to
wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war
by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention, and
making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy (which was achieved through diplomatic
means by 1927).[130] In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy
abandoned the previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders.
Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the
right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in
Libya.[131] This resulted in an aggressive military campaign against the Libyans,
including mass killings, the use of concentration camps, and the forced starvation of
thousands of people.[131] Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly
expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya,
from land that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.[132][133]
Nazis in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch

The March on Rome brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the
Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who less than a month after the March had begun to
model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.[134] The Nazis, led by
Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin"
modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in
Munich in November 1923, where the Nazis briefly captured Bavarian Minister-
President Gustav Ritter von Kahr and announced the creation of a new German
government to be led by a triumvirate of von Kahr, Hitler, and Ludendorff.[135] The Beer
Hall Putsch was crushed by Bavarian police, and Hitler and other leading Nazis were
arrested and detained until 1925.

Another early admirer of Italian Fascism was Gyula Gömbös, leader of the Hungarian

National Defence Association (known by its acronym MOVE), one of several groups
that were known in Hungary as the "right radicals." Gömbös described himself as a
"national socialist" and championed radical land reform and "Christian capital" in
opposition to "Jewish capital." He also advocated a revanchist foreign policy and in
1923 stated the need for a "march on Budapest".[136] Yugoslavia briefly had a significant
fascist movement, the ORJUNA, which supported Yugoslavism, advocated the creation
of a corporatist economy, opposed democracy and took part in violent attacks on
communists, though it was opposed to the Italian government due to Yugoslav border
disputes with Italy.[137] ARJUNA was dissolved in 1929 when the King of
Yugoslavia banned political parties and created a royal dictatorship, though ARJUNA
supported the King's decision.[137] Amid a political crisis in Spain involving increased
strike activity and rising support for anarchism, Spanish army commander Miguel
Primo de Rivera engaged in a successful coup against the Spanish government in 1923
and installed himself as a dictator as head of a conservative military junta that
dismantled the established party system of government.[138] Upon achieving power, Primo
de Rivera sought to resolve the economic crisis by presenting himself as a compromise
arbitrator figure between workers and bosses and his regime created a corporatist
economic system based on the Italian Fascist model.[138] In Lithuania in 1926, Antanas
Smetona rose to power and founded a fascist regime under his Lithuanian Nationalist
Union.[139]
International surge of fascism and World War II (1929–1945) [edit]
Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right)

The events of the Great Depression resulted in an international surge of fascism and the

creation of several fascist regimes and regimes that adopted fascist policies. The most
important[according to whom?] new fascist regime was Nazi Germany, under the leadership
of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal
democracy was dissolved in Germany and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with
expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s, the Nazis
implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised, and
persecuted Jews and other racial minority groups. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose
to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and visited Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany to consolidate good relations with the two regimes. He attempted to entrench
his Party of National Unity throughout the country, created a youth organization and a
political militia with sixty thousand members, promoted social reforms such as a 48-
hour workweek in industry, and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors.
[140]
 The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933,
gaining representation in the Romanian government and an Iron Guard member
assassinated prime minister Ion Duca. The Iron Guard had little in the way of a concrete
program and placed more emphasis on ideas of religious and spiritual revival.[141] During
the 6 February 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since
the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far-right
movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government resulting in major
political violence.[142] A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from
fascism were also formed during the Great Depression, including
in Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia.[143]
Integralists marching in Brazil

Fascism also expanded its influence outside Europe, especially in East Asia, the Middle
East and South America. In China, Wang Jingwei's Kai-Tsu p'ai (Reorganization)
faction of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) supported Nazism in the late
1930s.[144][145] In Japan, a Nazi movement called the Tōhōkai was formed by Seigō
Nakano. The Al-Muthanna Club of Iraq was a pan-Arab movement that supported
Nazism and exercised its influence in the Iraqi government through cabinet
minister Saib Shawkat who formed a paramilitary youth movement.[146] In South
America, several mostly short-lived fascist governments and prominent fascist
movements were formed during this period. Argentine President General José Félix
Uriburu proposed that Argentina be reorganized along corporatist and fascist lines.
[147]
 Peruvian president Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro founded the Revolutionary Union in
1931 as the state party for his dictatorship. Later, the Revolutionary Union was taken
over by Raúl Ferrero Rebagliati, who sought to mobilize mass support for the
group's nationalism in a manner akin to fascism and even started a paramilitary
Blackshirts arm as a copy of the Italian group, but the Union lost heavily in the 1936
elections and faded into obscurity.[148] In Paraguay in 1940, Paraguayan President
General Higinio Morínigo began his rule as a dictator with the support of pro-fascist
military officers, appealed to the masses, exiled opposition leaders and only abandoned
his pro-fascist policies after the end of World War II.[137] The Brazilian Integralists led
by Plínio Salgado, claimed as many as 200,000 members although following coup
attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937.[149] In
the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile's parliament
and attempted a coup d'état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.[150]
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany pursued territorial expansionist
and interventionist foreign policy agendas from the 1930s through the 1940s,
culminating in World War II. Mussolini supported irredentist Italian claims over
neighboring territories, establishing Italian domination of the Mediterranean Sea,
securing Italian access to the Atlantic Ocean, and the creation of Italian spazio
vitale ("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea regions.[151] Hitler supported
irredentist German claims overall territories inhabited by ethnic Germans, along with
the creation of German Lebensraum ("living space") in Eastern Europe, including
territories held by the Soviet Union, that would be colonized by Germans.[152]
Corpses of victims of the German Buchenwald concentration camp

From 1935 to 1939, Germany and Italy escalated their demands for territorial gains and
greater influence in world affairs. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, resulting in
condemnation by the League of Nations and widespread diplomatic isolation. In 1936,
Germany remilitarized the industrial Rhineland, a region that had been ordered
demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and
the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The next year, Czechoslovakia was
partitioned between Germany and a client state of Slovakia. At the same time, from
1938 to 1939, Italy was demanding territorial and colonial concessions from France and
Britain in the Mediterranean.[153] In 1939, Germany prepared for war with Poland, but
also attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland through diplomatic means.
Germany demanded that Poland accept the annexation of the Free City of Danzig to
Germany and authorize the construction of automobile highways from Germany
through the Polish Corridor into Danzig and East Prussia, promising a twenty-five-year
non-aggression pact in exchange.[154] The Polish government did not trust Hitler's
promises and refused to accept German demands.[154] Following a strategic alliance
between Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939, the two powers invaded
Poland in September of that year.
In response, the United Kingdom, France, and their allies declared war against
Germany, resulting in the outbreak of World War II. Germany and the Soviet Union
partitioned Poland between them in late 1939 followed by the successful German
offensive in Scandinavia and continental Western Europe in 1940. On 10 June 1940,
Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis. Mussolini was aware that
Italy did not have the military capacity to carry out a long war with France or Britain
and waited until France was on the verge of imminent collapse before declaring war, on
the assumption that the war would be short-lived.[155] Mussolini believed that Italy could
gain some territorial concessions from France and then concentrate its forces on a major
offensive in Egypt.[155] Plans by Germany to invade the United Kingdom in 1940 failed
after Germany lost the aerial warfare campaign in the Battle of Britain. The war became
prolonged contrary to Mussolini's plans, resulting in Italy losing battles on multiple
fronts and requiring German assistance. In 1941, the Axis campaign spread to the Soviet
Union after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Axis forces at the height of their
power controlled almost all of continental Europe, including the occupation of large
portions of the Soviet Union. By 1942, Fascist Italy occupied and
annexed Dalmatia from Yugoslavia, Corsica and Nice from France and controlled other
territories. During World War II, the Axis Powers in Europe led by Nazi Germany
participated in the extermination of millions of Jews and others in the genocide known
as the Holocaust.
After 1942, Axis forces began to falter. By 1943, after Italy faced multiple military
failures, complete reliance and subordination to Germany and an Allied invasion,
Mussolini was removed as head of government and arrested by the order of King Victor
Emmanuel III. The king proceeded to dismantle the Fascist state and joined the Allies.
Mussolini was rescued from arrest by German forces and led the German client state,
the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany faced multiple losses and
steady Soviet and Western Allied offensives from 1943 to 1945.

Emaciated male inmate at the Italian Rab concentration camp

On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian communist partisans.
On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin between
collapsing German forces and Soviet armed forces. Shortly afterward, Germany
surrendered and the Nazi regime was dismantled and key Nazi members were arrested
to stand trial for crimes against humanity including the Holocaust.
Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia requested the extradition of 1,200 Italian war
criminals, but these people never saw anything like the Nuremberg trials since the
British government, with the beginning of Cold War, saw in Pietro Badoglio a
guarantee of an anti-communist post-war Italy.[156] The repression of memory led to
historical revisionism[157] in Italy and in 2003 the Italian media published Silvio
Berlusconi's statement that Benito Mussolini only "used to send people on vacation",
[158]
 denying the existence of Italian concentration camps such as Rab concentration
camp.[159]
Fascism, neofascism and postfascism after World War II (1945–
2008)[edit]

Juan Perón, President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, admired Italian Fascism and modelled
his economic policies on those pursued by Fascist Italy

In the aftermath of World War II, the victory of the Allies over the Axis powers led to
the collapse of multiple fascist regimes in Europe. The Nuremberg Trials convicted
multiple Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity including the Holocaust. However,
there remained multiple ideologies and governments that were ideologically related to
fascism.
Francisco Franco's quasi-fascist Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially neutral
during World War II and survived the collapse of the Axis Powers. Franco's rise to
power had been directly assisted by the militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
during the Spanish Civil War and had sent volunteers to fight on the side of Nazi
Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. After World War II and a
period of international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with Western
powers during the early years of the Cold War until Franco's death in 1975 and the
transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.
Peronism, which is associated with the regime of Juan Peron in Argentina from 1946 to
1955 and 1973 to 1974, was strongly influenced by fascism.[160] Prior to rising to power,
from 1939 to 1941 Peron had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism and
modelled his economic policies on Italian Fascist economic policies.[160]
The South African government of Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist Daniel
François Malan was closely associated with pro-fascist and pro-Nazi politics.[161] In 1937,
Malan's Purified National Party, the South African Fascists and the Blackshirts agreed
to form a coalition for the South African election.[161] Malan had fiercely opposed South
Africa's participation on the Allied side in World War II.[162] Malan's government
founded apartheid, the system of racial segregation of whites and non-whites in South
Africa.[161] The most extreme Afrikaner fascist movement is the neo-Nazi white
supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) that at one point was recorded in
1991 to have 50,000 supporters with rising support.[163] The AWB grew in support in
response to efforts to dismantle apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s and its
paramilitary wing the Storm Falcons threatened violence against people it considered
"trouble makers".[163]

Ba'ath Party founder Michel Aflaq (left) with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (right) in 1988, as both of

Ba'athism's key ideologists Michel Aflaq and Zaki al-Arsuzi were directly inspired by Fascism and Nazism

Another ideology strongly influenced by fascism is Ba'athism.[164] Ba'athism is a

revolutionary Arab nationalist ideology that seeks the unification of all claimed Arab
lands into a single Arab state.[164] Zaki al-Arsuzi, one of the principal founders of
Ba'athism, was strongly influenced by and supportive of Fascism and Nazism.[165] Several
close associates of Ba'athism's key ideologist Michel Aflaq have admitted that Aflaq
had been directly inspired by certain fascist and Nazi theorists.[164] Ba'athist regimes in
power in Iraq and Syria have held strong similarities to fascism, they are radical
authoritarian nationalist one-party states.[164] Due to Ba'athism's anti-Western stances it
preferred the Soviet Union in the Cold War and admired and adopted certain Soviet
organizational structures for their governments, but the Ba'athist regimes have
persecuted communists.[164] Like fascist regimes, Ba'athism became heavily militarized in
power.[164] Ba'athist movements governed Iraq in 1963 and again from 1968 to 2003 and
in Syria from 1963 to the present. Ba'athist heads of state such as Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein created personality
cults around themselves portraying themselves as the nationalist saviours of the Arab
world.[164]
Ba'athist Iraq under Saddam Hussein pursued ethnic cleansing or the liquidation of
minorities, pursued expansionist wars against Iran and Kuwait and gradually replaced
pan-Arabism with an Iraqi nationalism that emphasized Iraq's connection to the glories
of ancient Mesopotamian empires, including Babylonia.[166] Historian of fascism Stanley
Payne has said about Saddam Hussein's regime: "There will probably never again be a
reproduction of the Third Reich, but Saddam Hussein has come closer than any other
dictator since 1945".[166]
In the 1990s, Payne claimed that the Hindu nationalist movement Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) holds strong resemblances to fascism, including its use of
paramilitaries and its irredentist claims calling for the creation of a Greater India.
[167]
 Cyprian Blamires in World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia describes the
ideology of the RSS as "fascism with Sanskrit characters" – a unique Indian variant of
fascism.[168] Blamires notes that there is evidence that the RSS held direct contact with
Italy's Fascist regime and admired European fascism,[168] a view with some support
from A. James Gregor.[169] However, these views have met wide criticism,[169][170]
[171]
 especially from academics specializing Indian politics. Paul Brass, expert on Hindu-
Muslim violence, notes that there are many problems with accepting this point of view
and identified four reasons that it is difficult to define the Sangh as fascist. Firstly, most
scholars of the field do not subscribe to the view the RSS is fascist, notably among
them Christophe Jaffrelot,[170] A. James Gregor[169] and Chetan Bhatt.[172] The other reasons
include an absence of charismatic leadership, a desire on the part of the RSS to
differentiate itself from European fascism, major cultural differences between the RSS
and European fascists and factionalism within the Sangh Parivar.[170] Stanley
Payne claims that it also has substantial differences with fascism such as its emphasis
on traditional religion as the basis of identity.[173]
Contemporary fascism (2008-present)[edit]
Since the Great Recession of 2008 fascism has seen an international surge in popularity.
Often linked to anti-globalization and euroskepticism. The American election of Donald
Trump in 2016 emboldened the alt right. Neofascism often campaigns in indirect ways
linked to conspiracy theories like pizzagate and q-anon and seeks to question the
legitimacy of elections over directly arguing against Democracy.
Islamophobia was a major component of neofascism as it is linked to the war on
terror and the European refugee crisis, and fears of demographic changes
The Great Replacement theory and white genocide are both common ideological tenets
in the modern age
With the coronavirus pandemic fascism became associated with protests against
lockdowns and vaccine mandates

Fascism's relationship with other political and

economic ideologies[edit]
Mussolini saw fascism as opposing socialism and left-wing ideologies: "If it is admitted
that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and
Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism,
Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected
that this century may be that of authority, a century of the 'Right,' a Fascist century."[174]
Capitalism[edit]
Fascism had a complex relationship with capitalism, both supporting and opposing
different aspects of it at different times and in different countries. In general, fascists
held an instrumental view of capitalism, regarding it as a tool that may be useful or not,
depending on circumstances.[175][176] Fascists aimed to promote what they considered the
national interests of their countries; they supported the right to own private property and
the profit motive because they believed that they were beneficial to the economic
development of a nation, but they opposed laissez-faire policies, international finance,
and international trade.[177] They commonly sought to eliminate the autonomy of large-
scale capitalism to the state.[178]
There were both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist elements in fascist thought. Fascist
opposition to capitalism was based on the
perceived decadence, hedonism and cosmopolitanism of the wealthy, in contrast to the
idealized discipline, patriotism and moral virtue of the members of the middle classes.
[179]
 Fascist support for capitalism was based on the idea that economic competition was
good for the nation, as well as social Darwinist beliefs that the economic success of the
wealthy proved their superiority and the idea that interfering with natural selection in
the economy would burden the nation by preserving weak individuals.[180][181][182] These two
ways of thinking about capitalism – viewing it as a positive force which promotes
economic efficiency and is necessary for the prosperity of the nation but also viewing it
as a negative force which promotes decadence and disloyalty to the nation – remained in
uneasy coexistence within most fascist movements.[183] The economic policies of fascist
governments, meanwhile, were generally not based on ideological commitments one
way or the other, instead being dictated by pragmatic concerns with building a strong
national economy, promoting autarky, and the need to prepare for and to wage war.[184][185]
[186][187]

The earliest version of a fascist movement, the small groups led by Benito Mussolini in
Italy from 1915 to 1920, formed a radical pro-war movement which focused on Italian
territorial expansion and aimed to unite people from across the political spectrum in
service to this goal.[188] As such, this movement did not take a clear stance either for or
against capitalism, as that would have divided its supporters.[189] Many of its leaders,
including Mussolini himself, had come from the anti-capitalist revolutionary syndicalist
tradition and were known for their anti-capitalist rhetoric. However, a significant part of
the movement's funding came from pro-war business interests and major landowners.[190]
[67]
 Mussolini at this stage tried to maintain a balance, by still claiming to be a social
revolutionary while also cultivating a "positive attitude" towards capitalism and
capitalists.[70] The small fascist movement that was led by Mussolini in Milan in 1919
bore almost no resemblance with the Italian Fascism of ten years later,[77] as it put
forward an ambitious anti-capitalist program calling for redistributing land to the
peasants, a progressive tax on capital, greater inheritance taxes and the confiscation of
excessive war profits, while also proclaiming its opposition to "any kind of dictatorship
or arbitrary power" and demanding an independent judiciary, universal suffrage, and
complete freedom of speech.[191] Yet Mussolini at the same time promised to eliminate
state intervention in business and to transfer large segments of the economy from public
to private control,[87] and the fascists met in a hall provided by Milanese businessmen.
[77]
 These contradictions were regarded by Mussolini as a virtue of the fascist movement,
which, at this early stage, intended to appeal to everyone.[188]
Starting in 1921, Italian Fascism shifted from presenting itself as a broad-based
expansionist movement, to claiming to represent the extreme right of Italian politics.
[104]
 This was accompanied by a shift in its attitude towards capitalism. Whereas in the
beginning it had accommodated both anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist stances, it now
took on a strongly pro-free-enterprise policy.[192] After being elected to the Italian
parliament for the first time, the Fascists took a stand against economic collectivization
and nationalization, and advocated for the privatization of postal and railway services.
[105]
 Mussolini appealed to conservative liberals to support a future fascist seizure of
power by arguing that "capitalism would flourish best if Italy discarded democracy and
accepted dictatorship as necessary in order to crush socialism and make government
effective."[108] He also promised that the fascists would reduce taxes and balance the
budget,[193] repudiated his socialist past and affirmed his faith in economic liberalism.[194]
In 1922, following the March on Rome, the National Fascist Party came to power and
Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. From that time until the advent of the Great
Depression in 1929, the Italian Fascists pursued a generally free-market and pro-
capitalist economic policy, in collaboration with traditional Italian business elites.[195]
[196]
 Near the beginning of his tenure as prime minister, in 1923, Mussolini declared that
"the [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will
abandon all intervention in private economy."[197] Mussolini's
government privatized former government monopolies (such as the telephone system),
repealed previous legislation that had been introduced by the Socialists (such as
the inheritance tax), and balanced the budget.[198] Alfredo Rocco, the Fascist Minister of
Justice at the time, wrote in 1926 that:
Fascism maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves the social
purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to individual initiative the task of economic
development both as to production and as to distribution; that in the economic world
individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best social results with
the least effort.[199]
Mussolini attracted the wealthy in the 1920s by praising free enterprise, by talking about
reducing the bureaucracy and abolishing unemployment relief, and by supporting
increased inequality in society.[200] He advocated economic liberalization, asserted that
the state should keep out of the economy and even said that government intervention in
general was "absolutely ruinous to the development of the economy."[201] At the same
time, however, he also tried to maintain some of fascism's early appeal to people of all
classes by insisting that he was not against the workers, and sometimes by outright
contradicting himself and saying different things to different audiences.[200] Many of the
wealthy Italian industrialists and landlords backed Mussolini because he provided
stability (especially compared to the Giolitti era), and because under Mussolini's
government there were "few strikes, plenty of tax concessions for the well-to-do, an end
to rent controls and generally high profits for business."[202]
The Italian Fascist outlook towards capitalism changed after 1929, with the onset of
the Great Depression which dealt a heavy blow to the Italian economy. Prices fell,
production slowed, and unemployment more than tripled in the first four years of the
Depression.[203] In response, the Fascist government abandoned economic liberalism and
turned to state intervention in the economy. Mussolini developed a theory which held
that capitalism had degenerated over time, and that the capitalism of his era was facing a
crisis because it had departed too far from its original roots. According to Mussolini, the
original form was heroic capitalism or dynamic capitalism (1830–1870), which gave
way to static capitalism (1870–1914), which then transformed into decadent capitalism
or "supercapitalism", starting in 1914.[204] Mussolini denounced this supercapitalism as a
failure due to its alleged decadence, support for unlimited consumerism and intention to
create the "standardization of humankind".[205][206] He claimed that supercapitalism had
resulted in the collapse of the capitalist system in the Great Depression,[207] but that the
industrial developments of earlier types of capitalism were valuable and that private
property should be supported as long as it was productive.[205] Fascists also argued that,
without intervention, supercapitalism "would ultimately decay and open the way for a
Marxist revolution as labour-capital relations broke down".[208] They presented their new
economic program as a way to avoid this result.
The idea of corporatism, which had already been part of Fascist rhetoric for some time,
rose to prominence as a solution that would preserve private enterprise and property
while allowing the state to intervene in the economy when private enterprise failed.
[207]
 Corporatism was promoted as reconciling the interests of capital and labour.
[209]
 Mussolini argued that this fascist corporatism would preserve those elements of
capitalism that were deemed beneficial, such as private enterprise, and combine them
with state supervision.[207] At this time he also said that he rejected the typical capitalist
elements of economic individualism and laissez-faire.[207] Mussolini claimed that in
supercapitalism "a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead
weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more
necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously".
[210]
 Due to the inability of businesses to operate properly when facing economic
difficulties, Mussolini claimed that this proved that state intervention into the economy
was necessary to stabilize the economy.[210]
Statements from Italian Fascist leaders in the 1930s tended to be critical of economic
liberalism and laissez-faire, while promoting corporatism as the basis for a new
economic model.[211] Mussolini said in an interview in October 1933 that he "want[ed] to
establish the corporative regime,"[211] and in a speech on 14 November 1933 he declared:
To-day we can affirm that the capitalistic method of production is out of date. So is the
doctrine of laissez-faire, the theoretical basis of capitalism… To-day we are taking a
new and decisive step in the path of revolution. A revolution, to be great, must be a
social revolution.[212]
A year later, in 1934, Italian Agriculture Minister Giacomo Acerbo claimed that Fascist
corporatism was the best way to defend private property in the context of the Great
Depression:
While nearly everywhere else private property was bearing the major burdens and
suffering from the hardest blows of the depression, in Italy, thanks to the actions of this
Fascist government, private property not only has been saved, but has also been
strengthened.[213]
In the late 1930s, Fascist Italy tried to achieve autarky (national economic self-
sufficiency), and for this purpose the government promoted manufacturing cartels and
introduced significant tariff barriers, currency restrictions and regulations of the
economy to attempt to balance payments with Italy's trade partners.[214] The attempt to
achieve effective economic autonomy was not successful, but minimizing international
trade remained an official goal of Italian Fascism.[214]
German Nazism, like Italian Fascism, also incorporated both pro-capitalist and anti-
capitalist views. The main difference was that Nazism interpreted everything through
a racial lens.[215] Thus, Nazi views on capitalism were shaped by the question of which
race the capitalists belonged to. Jewish capitalists (especially bankers) were considered
to be mortal enemies of Germany and part of a global conspiracy that also
included Jewish communists.[75] On the other hand, ethnic German capitalists were
regarded as potential allies by the Nazis.[216][217]
From the beginning of the Nazi movement, and especially from the late 1920s onward,
the Nazi Party took the stance that it was not opposed to private property or capitalism
as such, but only to its excesses and the domination of the German economy by
"foreign" capitalists (including German Jews).[218] There were a range of economic views
within the early Nazi Party, ranging from the Strasserite wing which championed
extensive state intervention, to the Völkisch conservatives who promoted a program of
conservative corporatism, to the economic right-wing within Nazism, who hoped to
avoid corporatism because it was viewed as too restrictive for big business. [219] In the
end, the approach that prevailed after the Nazis came to power was a pragmatic one, in
which there would be no new economic system, but rather a continuation of "the long
German tradition of authoritarian statist economics, which dated well back into the
nineteenth century."[220]
Like Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims
of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the
German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality
imported iron.[221] The Nazis were economic nationalists who "favoured protective tariffs,
foreign debt reduction, and import substitution to remove what they regarded as
debilitating dependence on the world economy."[222]
The purpose of the economy, according to the Nazi worldview, was to "provide the
material springboard for military conquest."[176] As such, the Nazis aimed to place the
focus of the German economy on a drive for empire and conquest, and they found and
promoted businessmen who were willing to cooperate with their goals.[223] They opposed
free-market economics and instead promoted a state-driven economy that would
guarantee high profits to friendly private companies in exchange for their support,
which was a model adopted by many other political movements and governments in the
1930s, including the governments of Britain and France.[224] Private capitalism was not
directly challenged, but it was subordinated to the military and foreign policy goals of
the state, in a way that reduced the decision-making power of industrial managers but
did not interfere with the pursuit of private profit.[225] Leading German business interests
supported the goals of the Nazi government and its war effort in exchange for
advantageous contracts, subsidies, and the suppression of the trade union movement.
[226]
 Avraham Barkai concludes that, because "the individual firm still operated according
to the principle of maximum profit," the Nazi German economy was therefore "a
capitalist economy in which capitalists, like all other citizens, were not free even though
they enjoyed a privileged status, had a limited measure of freedom in their activities,
and were able to accumulate huge profits as long as they accepted the primacy of
politics."[227]
Other fascist movements mirrored the general outlook of the Italian Fascists and
German Nazis. The Spanish Falange called for respect for private property and was
founded with support from Spanish landowners and industrialists.[228] However, the
Falange distinguished between "private property", which it supported, and "capitalism",
which it opposed.[229] The Falangist program of 1937 recognized "private property as a
legitimate means for achieving individual, family and social goals,"[230] but Falangist
leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said in 1935: "We reject the capitalist system,
which disregards the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property and transforms
the workers into shapeless masses prone to misery and despair."[231] After his death and
the rise of Francisco Franco, the rhetoric changed, and Falangist leader Raimundo
Fernández-Cuesta declared the movement's ideology to be compatible with capitalism.
[232]
 In Hungary, the Arrow Cross Party held anti-feudal, anti-capitalist and anti-socialist
beliefs, supporting land reform and militarism and drawing most of its support from the
ranks of the army.[233] [234] The Romanian Iron Guard espoused anti-capitalist, anti-banking
and anti-bourgeois rhetoric, combined with anti-communism and a religious form
of anti-Semitism.[235][236] The Iron Guard saw both capitalism and communism as being
Jewish creations that served to divide the nation, and accused Jews of being "the
enemies of the Christian nation."[237]
Conservatism[edit]
Conservatives and fascists in Europe have held similar positions on many issues,
including anti-communism and support of national pride.[238] Conservatives and fascists
both reject the liberal and Marxist emphasis on linear progressive evolution in history.
[239]
 Fascism's emphasis on order, discipline, hierarchy, military virtues and preservation
of private property appealed to conservatives.[238] The fascist promotion of "healthy",
"uncontaminated" elements of national tradition such as chivalric culture and glorifying
a nation's historical golden age has similarities with conservative aims.[240] Fascists also
made pragmatic tactical alliances with traditional conservative forces to achieve and
maintain power.[240] Even at the height of their influence and popularity, fascist
movements were never able to seize power entirely by themselves, and relied on
alliances with conservative parties to come to power.[241][242][243]
Many of fascism's recruits were disaffected right-wing conservatives who were
dissatisfied with the traditional right's inability to achieve national unity and its inability
to respond to socialism, feminism, economic crisis and international difficulties.[244] With
traditional conservative parties in Europe severely weakened in the aftermath of World
War I, there was a political vacuum on the right which fascism filled.[245] Fascists
gathered support from landlords, business owners, army officers, and other conservative
individuals and groups, by successfully presenting themselves as the last line of defense
against land reform, social welfare measures, demilitarization, higher wages, and
the socialization of the means of production.[246]
However, unlike conservatism, fascism specifically presents itself as a modern ideology
that is willing to break free from the moral and political constraints of traditional
society.[247] The conservative authoritarian right is distinguished from fascism in that such
conservatives tended to use traditional religion as the basis for their philosophical
views, while fascists based their views on vitalism, nonrationalism, or secular neo-
idealism.[248] Fascists often drew upon religious imagery, but used it as a symbol for the
nation and replaced spirituality with secular nationalism. Even in the most religious of
the fascist movements, the Romanian Iron Guard, "Christ was stripped of genuine
otherworldly mystery and was reduced to a metaphor for national
redemption."[249] Fascists claimed to support the traditional religions of their countries,
but did not regard religion as a source of important moral principles, seeing it only as an
aspect of national culture and a source of national identity and pride.[250] Furthermore,
while conservatives in interwar Europe generally wished to return to the pre-1914 status
quo, fascists did not. Fascism combined an idealization of the past with an enthusiasm
for modern technology. Nazi Germany "celebrated Aryan values and the glories of the
Germanic knights while also taking pride in its newly created motorway
system."[251] Fascists looked to the spirit of the past to inspire a new era of national
greatness and set out to "forge a mythic link between the present generation and a
glorious stage in the past", but they did not seek to directly copy or restore past
societies.[252]
Another difference with traditional conservatism lies in the fact that fascism had radical
aspirations for reshaping society. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote that "Fascists were
not conservative in any very meaningful sense… The Fascists, in a meaningful sense,
were revolutionaries".[253] Fascists sought to destroy existing elites through revolutionary
action to replace them with a new elite selected on the principle of the survival of the
fittest, and thus they "rejected existing aristocracies in favor of their own new
aristocracy."[254] Yet at the same time, some fascist leaders claimed to be counter-
revolutionary, and fascism saw itself as being opposed to all previous revolutions from
the French Revolution onward, blaming them for liberalism, socialism, and decadence.
[255]
 In his book Fascism (1997), Mark Neocleous sums up these paradoxical tendencies
by referring to fascism as "a prime example of reactionary modernism" as well as "the
culmination of the conservative revolutionary tradition."[256]
While conservatives made alliances with fascists in countries where the conservatives
felt themselves under threat and therefore in need of such an alliance, this did not
happen in places where the conservatives were securely in power. Several authoritarian
conservative regimes across Europe suppressed fascist parties in the 1930s and 40s.[257]
Liberalism[edit]
Fascism is strongly opposed to the individualism found in classical liberalism. Fascists
accuse liberalism of de-spiritualizing human beings and transforming them into
materialistic beings whose highest ideal is moneymaking.[258] In particular, fascism
opposes liberalism for its materialism, rationalism, individualism and utilitarianism.
[259]
 Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national
divisiveness.[258] Mussolini criticized classical liberalism for its individualistic nature,
writing: "Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; ... It is opposed
to classical Liberalism ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular
individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual."[260] However,
Fascists and Nazis support a type of hierarchical individualism in the form of Social
Darwinism because they believe it promotes "superior individuals" and weeds out "the
weak".[261] They also accuse both Marxism and democracy, with their emphasis on
equality, of destroying individuality in favor of the "dead weight" of the masses.[262]
One issue where Fascism is in accord with liberalism is in its support of private
property rights and the existence of a market economy.[259] Although Fascism sought to
"destroy the existing political order", it had tentatively adopted the economic elements
of liberalism, but "completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual
and moral heritage of modernity".[259] Fascism espoused antimaterialism, which meant
that it rejected the "rationalistic, individualistic and utilitarian heritage" that defined the
liberal-centric Age of Enlightenment.[259] Nevertheless, between the two pillars of fascist
economic policy – national syndicalism and productionism – it was the latter that was
given more importance,[263] so the goal of creating a less materialist society was generally
not accomplished.[264]
Fascists saw contemporary politics as a life or death struggle of their nations against
Marxism, and they believed that liberalism weakened their nations in this struggle and
left them defenseless.[265] While the socialist left was seen by the fascists as their main
enemy, liberals were seen as the enemy's accomplices, "incompetent guardians of the
nation against the class warfare waged by the socialists."[265]
Social welfare and public works[edit]
Fascists opposed social welfare for those they regarded as weak and decadent, but
supported state assistance for those they regarded as strong and pure. As such, fascist
movements criticized the welfare policies of the democratic governments they opposed,
but eventually adopted welfare policies of their own to gain popular support.[266] The
Nazis condemned indiscriminate social welfare and charity, whether run by the state or
by private entities, because they saw it as "supporting many people who were racially
inferior."[267] After coming to power, they adopted a type of selective welfare system that
would only help those who were biologically and racially valuable.[267] Italian Fascism
had changing attitudes towards welfare, taking a stance against unemployment benefits
upon coming to power in 1922,[202] but later arguing that improving the well-being of the
labor force could serve the national interest by increasing productive potential, and
adopting welfare measures on this basis.[268]
From 1925 to 1939, the Italian Fascist government "embarked upon an elaborate
program" of social welfare provision, supplemented by private charity from wealthy
industrialists "in the spirit of Fascist class collaboration."[269] This program included food
supplementary assistance, infant care, maternity assistance, family allowances per child
to encourage higher birth rates, paid vacations, public housing, and insurance for
unemployment, occupational diseases, old age and disability.[270] Many of these were
continuations of programs already begun under the parliamentary system that fascism
had replaced, and they were similar to programs instituted by democratic governments
across Europe and North America in the same time period.[271] Social welfare under
democratic governments was sometimes more generous, but given that Italy was a
poorer country, its efforts were more ambitious, and its legislation "compared favorably
with the more advanced European nations and in some respects was more
progressive."[271]
Out of a "determination to make Italy the powerful, modern state of his imagination,"
Mussolini also began a broad campaign of public works after 1925, such that "bridges,
canals, and roads were built, hospitals and schools, railway stations and orphanages;
swamps were drained and land reclaimed, forests were planted and universities were
endowed".[272] The Mussolini administration "devoted 400 million lire of public monies"
for school construction between 1922 and 1942, compared to only 60 million lire
between 1862 and 1922.[273] Extensive archaeological works were also financed, with the
intention of highlighting the legacy of the Roman Empire, and clearing ancient
monuments of "everything that has grown up round them during the centuries of
decadence."[272]
In Germany, the Nazi Party condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic,
together with private charity and philanthropy, as being "evils that had to be eliminated
if the German race was to be strengthened and its weakest elements weeded out in the
process of natural selection."[267] Once in power, the Nazis drew sharp distinctions
between those undeserving and those deserving of assistance, and strove to direct all
public and private aid towards the latter.[274] They argued that this approach represented
"racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.[275]
An organization called National Socialist People's Welfare (Nationalsozialistische
Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) was given the task of taking over the functions of social welfare
institutions and "coordinating" the private charities, which had previously been run
mainly by the churches and by the labour movement.[276] Hitler instructed NSV
chairman Erich Hilgenfeldt to "see to the disbanding of all private welfare institutions,"
in an effort to direct who was to receive social benefits. Welfare benefits were abruptly
withdrawn from Jews, Communists, many Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses, and
others that were considered enemies of the Nazi regime, at first without any legal
justification.[276]
The NSV officially defined its mandate very broadly. For instance, one of the NSV
branches, the Office of Institutional and Special Welfare, was responsible "for
travellers' aid at railway stations; relief for ex-convicts; 'support' for re-migrants from
abroad; assistance for the physically disabled, hard-of-hearing, deaf, mute, and blind;
relief for the elderly, homeless and alcoholics; and the fight against illicit drugs and
epidemics".[277] But the NSV also explicitly stated that all such benefits would only be
available to "racially superior" persons.[277] NSV administrators were able to mount an
effort towards the "cleansing of their cities of 'asocials'," who were deemed unworthy of
receiving assistance for various reasons.[278]
The NSV limited its assistance to those who were "racially sound, capable of and
willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce," and excluded
non-Aryans, the "work-shy", "asocials" and the "hereditarily ill."[274] The agency
successfully "projected a powerful image of caring and support" for "those who were
judged to have got into difficulties through no fault of their own," as over 17 million
Germans had obtained assistance from the NSV by 1939.[274] However, the organization
also resorted to intrusive questioning and monitoring to judge who was worthy of
support, and for this reason it was "feared and disliked among society's poorest."[279]
Socialism and communism[edit]
Fascism is historically strongly opposed to socialism and communism, due to their
support of class revolution as well as "decadent" values,
including internationalism, egalitarianism,
horizontal collectivism, materialism and cosmopolitanism.[280] Fascists have thus
commonly campaigned with anti-communist agendas.[75] Fascists saw themselves as
building a new aristocracy, a "warrior race or nation", based on purity of blood, heroism
and virility.[281] They strongly opposed ideas of universal human equality and
advocated hierarchy in its place, adhering to "the Aristotelian conviction, amplified by
the modern elite theorists, that the human race is divided by nature into sheep and
shepherds."[282] Fascists believed in the survival of the fittest, and argued that society
should be led by an elite of "the fittest, the strongest, the most heroic, the most
productive, and, even more than that, those most fervently possessed with the national
idea."[282]
Marxism and fascism oppose each other primarily because Marxism "called on the
workers of the world to unite across national borders in a global battle against their
oppressors, treating nation-states and national pride as tools in the arsenal of bourgeois
propaganda",[208] while fascism, on the contrary, exalted the interests of the nation or race
as the highest good, and rejected all ideas of universal human interests standing above
the nation or race.[208] Within the nation, Marxism calls for class struggle by the working
class against the ruling class, while fascism calls for collaboration between the
classes to achieve national rejuvenation.[283] Fascism proposes a type of society in which
different classes continue to exist, but the rich and poor both serve the national interest
and do not oppose each other.[284]
Following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the creation of the Soviet Union, fear
of and opposition to communism became a major aspect of European politics in the
1920s and 1930s. Fascists were able to take advantage of this and presented themselves
as the political force most capable of defeating communism.[285] This was a major factor
in enabling fascists to make alliances with the old establishment and to come to power
in Italy and Germany, in spite of fascism's own radical agenda, because of the shared
anti-Marxism of fascists and conservatives.[75] The Nazis in particular came to power "on
the back of a powerfully anticommunist program and in an atmosphere of widespread
fear of a Bolshevik revolution at home,"[238] and their first concentration camps in 1933
were meant for holding socialist and communist political prisoners.[286] Both Fascist Italy
and Nazi Germany also suppressed independent working-class organizations.[230]
Fascism opposed the internationalist character of mainstream socialism, but in doing so,
it sometimes defined itself as a new, nationalist form of socialism, an alternative to the
mainstream form of socialism which it regarded as its bitter enemy.[287] Hitler at times
attempted to redefine the word socialism, such as saying: "Socialism! That is an
unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have
something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism".[288] In 1930, Hitler
said: "Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is
anti-property; true Socialism is not".[289] The name that Hitler later wished he had used to
describe his political party was "social revolutionary".[290]
Mainstream socialists have typically rejected and opposed fascism in turn.[287] Many
communists regarded fascism as a tool of the ruling-class to destroy the working-class,
regarding it as "the open but indirect dictatorship of capital."[291] Nikita
Khrushchev sardonically remarked: "In modern times the word Socialism has become
very fashionable, and it has also been used very loosely. Even Hitler used to babble
about Socialism, and he worked the word into the name of his Nazi [National Socialist]
party. The whole world knows what sort of Socialism Hitler had in mind".[292]
However, the agency and genuine belief of fascists was recognised by some communist
writers, like Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti and Otto Bauer, who instead believed
fascism to be a genuine mass movement that arose as a consequence of the specific
socio-economic conditions of the societies it arose in.[293] Despite the mutual antagonism
that would later develop between the two, the attitude of communists towards early
fascism was more ambivalent than it might appear from the writings of individual
communist theorists. In the early days, Fascism was sometimes perceived as less of a
mortal rival to revolutionary Marxism than as a heresy from it. Mussolini's government
was one of the first in Western Europe to diplomatically recognise the USSR, doing so
in 1924. On 20 June 1923, Karl Radek gave a speech before the Comintern in which he
proposed a common front with the Nazis in Germany. However, the two radicalisms
were mutually exclusive and they later become profound enemies.[293]
While fascism is opposed to Bolshevism, both Bolshevism and fascism promote
the one-party state and the use of political party militias.[75] Fascists and communists also
agree on the need for violent revolution to forge a new era, and they hold common
positions in their opposition to liberalism, capitalism, individualism
and parliamentarism.[208]
Fascism denounces democratic socialism as a failure.[294] Fascists see themselves as
supporting a moral and spiritual renewal based on a warlike spirit of violence and
heroism, and they condemn democratic socialism for advocating "humanistic
lachrimosity" such as natural rights, justice, and equality.[295] Fascists also oppose
democratic socialism for its support of reformism and the parliamentary system that
fascism rejects.[296]
Italian Fascism had ideological connections with revolutionary syndicalism, in
particular Sorelian syndicalism.[297] Benito Mussolini mentioned revolutionary
syndicalist Georges Sorel—along with Hubert Lagardelle and his journal Le
Mouvement socialiste, which advocated a technocratic vision of society—as major
influences on fascism.[298] According to Zeev Sternhell, World War I caused Italian
revolutionary syndicalism to develop into a national syndicalism reuniting all social
classes, which later transitioned into Italian Fascism, such that "most syndicalist leaders
were among the founders of the Fascist movement" and "many even held key posts" in
the Italian Fascist regime by the mid-1920s.[295]
The Sorelian emphasis on the need for a revolution based upon action of intuition, a cult
of energy and vitality, activism, heroism and the use of myth was used by fascists.
[297]
 Many prominent fascist figures were formerly associated with revolutionary
syndicalism, including Mussolini, Arturo Labriola, Robert Michels, Sergio
Panunzio and Paolo Orano.[299]

See also[edit]
 Clerical fascism
 Definitions of fascism
 "The Doctrine of Fascism"
 Economics of fascism
 Falangism
 Fascio
 Fascism
 Fascist socialization
 Fascist symbolism
 Fascist Syndicalism
 Fascist Manifesto
 Ideology of the Committee of Union and Progress
 Kemalism
 Nazism
 Neo-fascism
 Neo-Nazism
 Producerism
 Squadrismo
 Yellow socialism

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Economy (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 101-114
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General bibliography[edit]
 Antliff, Mark (2007). Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and
Culture in France, 1909–1939. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822390473.
 Bendersky, Joseph W. (2014). A Concise History of Nazi Germany. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 9781442222694.
 Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul (2006). World Fascism: A Historical
Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1576079409.
 Borsella, Cristogianni (2007).  Fascist Italy: A Concise Historical Narrative.
Branden Books. ISBN 978-0828321556.
 De Felice, Renzo (1977). Interpretations of Fascism. Translated by Everett, Brenda
Huff. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-45962-5.
 Edwards, Catharine, ed. (1999). Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in
European Culture, 1789-1945. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 9780521591973.
 Gregor, Anthony James (1979). Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship.
Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691052861.
 Halperin, W. William (1964).  Mussolini and Italian Fascism. Princeton, NJ: D.
Van Nostrand Company. ISBN 0442000677.
 Hughes, Henry Stuart (1953). The United States and Italy. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
 Eatwell, Roger (1996). Fascism: A History. New York: Allen
Lane. ISBN 9780713991475.
 Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939. New York, NY:
Penguin Press. ISBN 0713996498.
 Laqueur, Walter (1978).  Fascism: A Reader's Guide  : Analyses, Interpretations,
Bibliography. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520036420.
 Mann, Michael (2004). Fascists. New York: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0521538556.
 Overy, Richard (1994). War and Economy in the Third Reich. Oxford University
Press. ISBN 978-0198202905.
 Overy, Richard (2004). The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. W. W.
Norton & Company.  ISBN  978-0393020304.
 Paxton, Robert O. (2004). The Anatomy of Fascism. New York, NY: Random
House. ISBN 1400040949.
 Payne, Stanley G (1996). A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299148737.
 Payne, Stanley (1999). Fascism in Spain: 1923-1977. Madison, Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299165647.
 Salvemini, Gaetano (1936). Under the Axe of Fascism. V. Gollancz, Limited.
 Smith, Denis Mack (1983). Mussolini. New York, NY: Vintage
Books.  ISBN  0394716582.
 Sternhell, Zeev (1986). Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691006291.
 Weiss, John (1967). The Fascist Tradition: Radical right-wing extremism in
modern Europe. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper &
Row.  ISBN  0060469951.
 Wiskemann, Elizabeth. "The Origins of Fascism" History Today (Dec 1967) Vol. 17
Issue 12, pp 812–818. online; covers 1908 to 1925.
 Woodley, Daniel (2010). Fascism and Political Theory. New York, NY:
Routledge. ISBN 978-0415473545.
Bibliography on fascist ideology[edit]
 De Felice, Renzo Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, An
Interview with Michael Ledeen, New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Books,
1976 ISBN 978-0-87855-190-3.
 Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996.
 Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David
Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560–1991,
Routledge, London.
 Baker, David, "The Political Economy of Fascism: Myth or Reality, or Myth and
Reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pages 227 – 250
 Schapiro, J. Salwyn. 1949. Liberalism and The Challenge of Fascism, Social
Forces in England and France (1815–1870). New York: McGraw-Hill.
 Dimitri Kitsikis.Ζάν-Ζὰκ Ῥουσσῶ καὶ ἐπιστημονικὸς φασισμός [Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and scientific fascism]. Athens, Exodos, 2O21,151 pages, ISBN 978-618-
85028-5-7
 Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism,
Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press.
 Sternhell, Zeev; Sznajder, Mario; Asheri, Maia (1994). The Birth of Fascist
Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution. Translated by Maisei,
David. Princeton University Press.
 Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political
Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-
0-19-505780-5
 Gentile, Emilio. 2002. Fascismo. Storia ed interpretazione . Roma-Bari: Giuseppe
Laterza & Figli.
Bibliography on international fascism[edit]
 Coogan, Kevin (1999). Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the
Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia.
 Griffin, Roger (1991). The Nature of Fascism. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-
0312071325.
 Ledeen, Michael (1972). Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the
Fascist International, 1928-1936. New York: Fertig.
 Paxton, Robert O (2004). The Anatomy of Fascism. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-
4000-4094-0.
 Weber, Eugen (1982) [1964]. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the
Twentieth Century. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. (Contains
chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)

Further reading[edit]
 Seldes, George. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and
Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.
 Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux.
 Gentile, Emilo (2003). The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and
Fascism. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-97692-7.
 Black, Edwin. 2001. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi
Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation Crown. ISBN 978-0-609-
60799-2

External links[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations
related to: Fascism and
ideology

 The Doctrine of Fascism signed by Benito Mussolini (complete text)

 Authorized translation of Mussolini’s "The Political and Social Doctrine of
Fascism" (1933)
 The Political Economy of Fascism – From Dave Renton's anti-fascist website
 Fascism and Zionism – From The Hagshama Department – World Zionist
Organization
 Fascism Part I – Understanding Fascism and Anti-Semitism
 Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt – Umberto Eco's list of
14 characteristics of Fascism, originally published 1995.
 Site of an Italian fascist party Italian and German languages
 Site dedicated to the period of fascism in Greece (1936–1941)
 Text of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
 Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler by Jacques R. Pauwels

Restoring Nietzsche to a Nietzschean context—examining the definitive

element that animates his work.

What is it that makes Nietzsche Nietzsche? In The Shortest Shadow, Alenka

Zupančič counters the currently fashionable appropriation of Nietzsche as a
philosopher who was "ahead of his time" but whose time has finally come—
the rather patronizing reduction of his often extraordinary statements to mere
opinions that we can "share." Zupančič argues that the definitive
Nietzschean quality is his very unfashionableness, his being out of the
mainstream of his or any time.
To restore Nietzsche to a context in which the thought "lives on its own
credit," Zupančič examines two aspects of his philosophy. First, in
"Nietzsche as Metapsychologist," she revisits the principal Nietzschean
themes—his declaration of the death of God (which had a twofold meaning,
"God is dead" and "Christianity survived the death of God"), the ascetic
ideal, and nihilism—as ideas that are very much present in our hedonist
postmodern condition. Then, in the second part of the book, she considers
Nietzsche's figure of the Noon and its consequences for his notion of the
truth. Nietzsche describes the Noon not as the moment when all shadows
disappear but as the moment of "the shortest shadow"—not the unity of all
things embraced by the sun, but the moment of splitting, when "one turns
into two." Zupančič argues that this notion of the Two as the minimal and
irreducible difference within the same animates all of Nietzsche's work,
generating its permanent and inherent tension.

Review
"Alenka Zupancic has given us a strikingly new reading of Nietzsche. Against the
postmodernist domestication of Nietzsche's philosophy, Zupancic restores the shock of
Nietzsche's style and thought, reading him alongside Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou as a
revolutionary 'philosopher of the event.'"--Christoph Cox, Associate Professor of
Philosophy, Hampshire College

"Alenka Zupancic is one of those rare writers whose capacity for decision is equal to her
intelligence....Read these essays and you will see what kind of a spiritual explosion a
writing bomb can produce in the hands of a true pyrotechnist."--Alain Badiou

"You have heard it said that 'we are not yet thinking.' Alenka Zupancic gives us proof to the
contrary in this exhilarating book. By pulling from Nietzsche's texts a powerful new
concept--that of Noon--she decisively vacates the claim that Nietszche was the champion
of a relativism necessitated by the death of God. Arguing, rather, that skeptical relativism
resurrects God for the modern world, she reevaluates completely Nietzsche's contribution
to thought. It is impossible to overstate the significance of "The Shortest Shadow"'s
philosophical achievement."--Joan Copjec, author of "Imagine There's No Woman"

& quot; Alenka Zupancic has given us a strikingly new reading of Nietzsche. Against the
postmodernist domestication of Nietzsche's philosophy, Zupancic restores the shock of
Nietzsche's style and thought, reading him alongside Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou as a
revolutionary 'philosopher of the event.'& quot; -- Christoph Cox, Associate Professor of
Philosophy, Hampshire College

& quot; Alenka Zupancic is one of those rare writers whose capacity for decision is equal to
her intelligence....Read these essays and you will see what kind of a spiritual explosion a
writing bomb can produce in the hands of a true pyrotechnist.& quot; -- Alain Badiou

& quot; You have heard it said that 'we are not yet thinking.' Alenka Zupancic gives us proof
to the contrary in this exhilarating book. By pulling from Nietzsche's texts a powerful new
concept--that of Noon--she decisively vacates the claim that Nietszche was the champion
of a relativism necessitated by the death of God. Arguing, rather, that skeptical relativism
resurrects God for the modern world, she reevaluates completely Nietzsche's contribution
to thought. It is impossible to overstate the significance of The Shortest Shadow 's
philosophical achievement.& quot; -- Joan Copjec, author of Imagine There's No Woman
" Alenka Zupancic has given us a strikingly new reading of Nietzsche. Against the
postmodernist domestication of Nietzsche's philosophy, Zupancic restores the shock of
Nietzsche's style and thought, reading him alongside Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou as a
revolutionary 'philosopher of the event.'" --Christoph Cox, Associate Professor of
Philosophy, Hampshire College

" Alenka Zupancic is one of those rare writers whose capacity for decision is equal to her
intelligence....Read these essays and you will see what kind of a spiritual explosion a
writing bomb can produce in the hands of a true pyrotechnist." --Alain Badiou

" You have heard it said that 'we are not yet thinking.' Alenka Zupancic gives us proof to the
contrary in this exhilarating book. By pulling from Nietzsche's texts a powerful new
concept--that of Noon--she decisively vacates the claim that Nietszche was the champion
of a relativism necessitated by the death of God. Arguing, rather, that skeptical relativism
resurrects God for the modern world, she reevaluates completely Nietzsche's contribution
to thought. It is impossible to overstate the significance of "The Shortest Shadow"'s
philosophical achievement." --Joan Copjec, author of "Imagine There's No Woman"

--Christoph Cox, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Hampshire College

--Joan Copjec, author of "Imagine There's No Woman"

Review
Alenka Zupancic is one of those rare writers whose capacity for decision is equal to her
intelligence...Read these essays and you will see what kind of a spiritual explosion a writing
bomb can produce in the hands of a true pyrotechnist.

―Alain Badiou
Read more

Product details
 Publisher :  The MIT Press (September 26, 2003)
 Language :  English
 Paperback :  202 pages
 ISBN-10 :  0262740265

Top reviews from the United States

Alaric
3.0 out of 5 stars Who (the hell) is on first? (Lacan's Noontide)

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2008

Verified Purchase

Zupancic's done what has been long been in need of doing--exposition and analysis of
Nietzsche's Noontide. Brilliant, terrorizing de-facto emasculations by fashionable
apparatchiks of the international academic slave guild, --all written by a woman, and an
attractive one at that (see rear cover); no small rarity given tendencies toward drawing
conlusions on FN from knee-jerk bourgeois paroxysms "Oh no! He said to stay in the
kitchen? Women can write stupid suburban novels too! We shall bury the Overman!"

In any case, if you are not big on continental thought and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the
serving portions are roughly as follows: 1/4 Nietzsche, 3/4 Lacan, with Zizek barnstorming
like a psychotic cross be-dressed Viking and quoting Vertigo et. al, and Noontide as
fulcrum and catalyst. Diamond if you please, Gems if you don't.

Nin Chan

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, A Post-Post-Structuralist Nietzsche!

Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2010

Yes, this is THE book that breaks with the liberal-deconstructionist appropriation of
Nietzsche, an appropriation that I will not hesitate to say has been as disastrous for thought
as that of the Nazis. Gone is the ludic Nietzsche of multiplicitous language games and
perspectives, all of which are ultimately equivalent to one another, the Nietzsche of 'truth
effects' produced through the duplicitous snares of language, metaphorical figuration and
the logic of grammar, the sneering knave who counteracts the debilitating pathos of
metaphysics with the no-less pathetic bathos of reflexive self-deprecation, the fatalistic
ironist who celebrates the evacuation of metaphysical truth through the limitless
proliferation of delirious simulacra. If Nietzsche had simply remained on this side of the
frontier, wouldn't he have remained within the ambit of a Kantianism that he strove to break
with in definitive fashion? Wouldn't this be 'human, all-too-human', situating thought behind
an insurpassable horizon of illusion and semblance? Does Nietzsche's supreme
philosophical gesture amount to nothing more than a heroism of alienation, a tragic
assumption that we are forever ensconced within the mire of metaphysics, a fate that we
can achieve some minimal distance from by use of ironical puns, meta-critical
qualifications, writing words 'sous rature' etc.? Where is the dimension of the Real in
Nietzsche? Is it a noumenon radically distinct from phenomenal reality? How does
Nietzsche manage to think contingency, chance and the New, the event that gives the lie to
ontological closure?

Zupancic, reading Nietzsche with Lacan, gives us a Nietzsche of a radical immanence, one
that is much closer to Hegel than we'd like to think. Zupancic' Nietzsche is an unflinching
rationalist decisively opposed to every form of obscurantist mysticism, as well as a
philosopher committed to the question of truth in an age dominated by the University
Discourse of verifiable knowledge. She illuminates the shared concerns of Badiou,
Nietzsche and Lacan, illustrating the ways in which a critical re-appraisal of Nietzsche can
help us understand the 'aleatory materialism' (Alberto Toscano's remarkable description of
Badiou's system) that is required today.

Central to Zupancic' book, which should be read alongside Badiou's 'Logics of Worlds' and
Meillasoux' "After Finitude', is her demolition of the dyad that counterposes Appearance to
Truth, replacing it with the axiom that truth is precisely appearance qua appearance. Or:
"Nietzsche's bet on appearance is not a bet on appearance AGAINST truth; it is a bet on
truth as inherent to appearance....The object is no longer external to the image or
representation (so that the image could be compared to it), but inherent to it: it is the very
relation of, say, a painting to itself. In other words, representation represents that which is
created in the very act of representtion." The last 10 pages of the book, which clearly
outline Nietzsche's conception of the contingency of necessity/the necessity of contingency
(the impersonal neutrality of life/the innocence of chance that we find in Deleuze's classic
account) are some of the most stirring passages that I have read in recent memory.

To read this book is to encounter Nietzsche as PHILOSOPHER once more, vanquishing ,

once and for all, the image of Nietzsche as artist manque, Nietzsche as a smart alecky
litterateur.

Lost Lacanian

5.0 out of 5 stars Zupancic Strikes Back

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2004

Once again Zupancic shows the depth of her knowledge of Lacanian theory and philosophy
in general. Not only does she move the reader in and through Lacanian theory vis-a-vis
Nietzsche, but she also developes Lacanian concepts themselves. If you are expecting a
long and sustained study of Nieztsche's entire body of work through the lens of Lacan,
then, this is not the book for you. Rather, Zupancic focuses in on a couple of Nietzschean
concepts in order to give them a new look. She also unfolds some of Alain Badiou's ideas--
particularly, the Event--in relation to Nietzsche and Lacan (she also studies with Badiou in
Paris), which is very informative. This book is short and sweet, and by using art and
comedy to unfold the ideas it is also entertaining. For me, the highlight of this book is the
appendix, which is a reprint of an article she wrote on love and comedy, which is helpful for
understanding drive and desire in Lacan. Indeed, Zupancic is the next Lacanian superstar!

Pen Name?

5.0 out of 5 stars Get into Nietzsche again for the first time

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2004

This is an exciting study, that will be striking in its insights even to those who thought that
they got Nietzsche long ago. What Zupancic's book brings out for me is the feeling of
reading Nietzsche for the first time... while its not that her insights are shockingly new, its
more that they seem shockingly not new at all, that she is alas bringing out the "real"
Nietzschean insights that you maybe felt but never articulated. This book also makes nice
use and comparison of the works of Weber, Lacan and Badiou among others, but in much
more enlightening ways than a lot of other recent scholarship.
And its readable without having a PhD background in the stuff.

See all reviews

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

1.0 out of 5 stars Cheap print by Amazon, not original edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2021

Verified Purchase

I have great respect to the writer and to several of her writings, and very keen on her work.
However- this book is printed cheaply by amazon and it is not the original edition, and I will
be sending it back. If this was made clear in any way I wouldn’t have purchased it here, I’ll
find the correct edition elsewhere

JB

5.0 out of 5 stars New light

Reviewed in Canada on February 3, 2019

Verified Purchase

Sheds new - and powerful - light on underestimated aspects of Nietzsche's work. Will
surely give it a second read to grab the full richness of the text.

Nietzsche, Interrupted
A review of Alenka Zupancic, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's
Philosophy of the Two
 Steven Michels

 
It is appropriate that the MIT Press begins
its Short Circuits Series with a book on
Nietzsche. (The other inaugural book is
Slavoj Zizek's The Puppet and the Dwarf: The
Perverse Core of Christianity.) As series
editor Slavoj Zizek explains, to short
circuit is to "cross wires that do not
usually touch." It is not deconstruction in
that it does not (necessarily) seek to
connect the text to any historical movement
or cultural process. Manipulating a text from
within, as it were, is the surest way for it
to reveal its true nature. This is the method
employed, Zizek claims, by Marx, in his
studies of capitalism, and Nietzsche, in his
critique of morality.

The book, consistent with its subtitle, is

comprised primarily of two halves. The
lengthy Introduction begins by noting the
discrepancy between Nietzsche's style of writing and the style used by
those who write on him. Scholars all too frequently disregard
Nietzsche's bombastic ad hominem attacks or treat them as mere
opinions, Zupancic claims; and in the process, a great harm is done to
understanding the "event Nietzsche" (4). Zupancic seems unaware or
unconcerned that Nietzsche is responsible for inspiring the very trend
she argues against. Nietzsche, we recall, (re)defined philosophy as
the love of one's own particular truths, and his "philosophers of the
future" are characterized by their ability to create values. Treating
philosophic truths as opinions is a testament to Nietzsche's success,
not to the failing of the academy to come to terms with Nietzsche's
philosophy.

Nietzsche is an event, writes Zupancic, insofar as philosophy is the

"process of truth" in which "the Real" is revealed through declaration
and the duality, or redoubling, that distinguishes the event from its
pronouncement (9). How, we might ask, would this work with an emotion
such as love? "The Real here is the very ground on which we
stand when we are declaring it," she contends, "and this is what
redoubles the declaration of love at its core" (12).

It is not his rejection of ontology or embrace of "multiplicity" –

what some have called perspectivism – that distinguishes Nietzsche
from other philosophers; rather, it is his invention of the "figure of
the Two." This element introduces a temporality or "time loop" into
Nietzsche's notion of truth. That truth is temporal means that truth
"becomes what it is" (13). The image of "Dionysus and the Crucified,"
a central theme in many of Nietzsche's writings, epitomizes duality,
temporality, and becoming; and Nietzsche himself is the point where
these two events coincide.

Her own creativity notwithstanding, Zupancic misses Nietzsche's

repeated statements where he equates himself with Dionysus. In the
penultimate aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche claims to be
"the last disciple and initiate" of the philosopher-god Dionysus; and
in his other writings, Nietzsche refers to himself as "The Antichrist"
and depicts Christianity as a religion hostile to philosophy and
truth. By emphasizing the concept of "the Two," Zupancic does great
harm to the positive elements of Nietzsche's philosophy, including his
embrace of Dionysus and Greek high culture.

Moreover, Zupancic glosses over the radicalism of Nietzsche's

epistemology. Focusing on the duality of event and declaration – or
even a "double declaration" (19) – might reveal a hitherto
underappreciated aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy, but it does so by
ignoring the goal Nietzsche set for his philosophy. Zupancic is
correct that, through the act of declaration, truth is inherently
connected to the will; but she is too inattentive the nature and
purpose of the declaration. Much of Nietzsche's writings, especially
his later works, take the matter of rank and order seriously.
Nietzsche is no teleologist; there is no decisive goal or single aim
in his writings. But a process that lacks any goals is one that he
would reject.

Zupancic's analysis of Nietzsche turns then to the doctrine of eternal

return. For Zupancic, eternity is not an endless circle, but "those
rare moments when this circularity appears, becomes tangible for us in
the encounter of two temporalities – the encounter that distinguishes
the event as such" (21). While this is a perfectly defendable
interpretation of Nietzsche, it does not seem to be consistent with
Zupancic's emphasis on becoming. If circularity is not constant, then
becoming cannot be either. Here, Zupancic introduces, albeit
inadvertently, an element of being and temporality into her otherwise
atemporal account of Nietzsche.

This is also evident in her emphasis on "the Noon," the subject of the
second half of the book. The book takes its title from the Nietzsche's
depiction of midday, where the sun casts no shadow and things cast
shadows only upon themselves. "The ‘great midday' is conceived by
Nietzsche as a kind of ultimate perspective," Zupancic writes. "Its
singularity resides in the fact that it is not a point of view, but
the point of the gaze" (23). Yet Nietzsche preferred the image of
midday to emphasize the illusive and temporal nature of truth. The
section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra called "At Noon," for example,
depicts the title character napping, hardly at the height of his
philosophic or creative prowess. What for Nietzsche is only a moment,
Zupancic makes into an eternity.

The first half of the book also deals with "Nietzsche the
metapsychologist." Its purpose is to illustrate the extent to which
Nietzsche identified the discontent at the heart of Western culture.
Zupancic focuses on asceticism and the rise of slave morality, and how
each is connected with Nietzsche's challenge to liberalism.
Asceticism, Zupancic contends, is Christianity after the death of god.
By the death of god, Nietzsche means a symbolic death, Zupancic
explains; the actual death of god was the event that made possible
Christianity.

The author goes to great lengths to illustrate the two-fold nature of

Nietzsche's pronouncement on the death of god: god is dead, yes; but
"Christianity survived the death of god." A further clarification of
this thesis would add "so far." Christianity may have survived the
death of god, but its time is up. As she does with her notion of
duality and declaration, Zupancic misses the greater implications of
Nietzsche's philosophy.
Zupancic makes the same mistake in her, rather material, understanding
of asceticism. She presents a Nietzsche overly concerned with
enjoyment and comfort. Zupancic exaggerates the likely egoism of the
ascetic – going so far as to liken it to Freud's superego – and
overlooks the fact that Nietzsche saw the ascetic primarily as a
barrier to instinct and a proper appreciation of human nature. For
Nietzsche, asceticism had little to do with "the pleasure principle,"
and everything to do with the harm that it did to the philosophic
process. (It is for this reason that Nietzsche suggests solitude to
replace asceticism as a means to philosophy.) The author is right to
distinguish this element in Nietzsche's philosophy, but she should
call it what Nietzsche calls it: the will to power. Zupancic stumbles
onto this realization during her treatment of Nietzsche's typology of
nihilism, but she fails to appreciate how it affects her study. We
might also wonder whether Zupancic's Nietzsche too closely resembles
the "Last Man" that Nietzsche found so nauseating.

One of the more original pronouncements in The Shortest Shadow is

Zupancic's contention that master morality remains, for the most part,
uncorrupted by the change in morality. The victory of slave morality
does not "in the least subvert or abolish the topography of mastery,"
she writes (45). While Zupancic is correct – nowhere does Nietzsche
indicate a change in the nature of mastery – she once again misses the
larger implications of Nietzsche's project: an appeal to masters and
would-be masters. Slave morality may be perfect in the modern world,
but Nietzsche's aim is to restore master morality as a just form of
rule.

Nietzsche's intention would be clearer to Zupancic had she not

followed Alain Badiou in seeing jenseits – the "beyond" in Beyond Good
and Evil – as neither a synthesis nor a transcendence. Instead, they
both view it is a sort of midpoint. Although this would explain why
noon is a recurring image and theme throughout Nietzsche's work, it
misconstrues Nietzsche's critique of Christianity and what it has
meant for life. Nietzschean morality, properly understood, is not a
midpoint between good and evil, but a radical revaluation, where good
becomes bad and evil becomes good.

Zupancic's repeated neglect of the positive elements in Nietzsche's

writings leads to absurd conclusions concerning life. As she writes,
"Life is creative neutrality, taking place in the middle, between
disjunctive synthesis and conjunctive analysis" (87). To confound her
error, the author introduces a sort of egalitarianism into this
creativity. "To be powerful is integrally to affirm the equality of
Being," she writes. "To be weak is to mutilate its neutrality" (88).
Life is creativity, but Nietzschean creativity is a divine act that
can neither be neutral in its aim nor equal in its value.

The book concludes with an odd addendum, entitled "On Love as Comedy,"
in which, save for the explanatory introduction, Nietzsche does not
appear. Instead, Zupancic discusses these themes, by way of Kant,
Hitler, and the Marx Brothers. The pages, the author admits, were
written originally for a project wholly unrelated to her book on
Nietzsche. It is included, Zupancic contends, because it illustrates
the primary thesis of her book: truth is multi-faceted.

While initially promising, Zupancic's methodology is unnecessarily

distracting in its omission. At no point does she explain the
 particulars of her short circuit. What two elements of Nietzsche has
she crossed? What hitherto truth has been revealed by this process?
The actual methodology of the book is inspired by Jacques Lacan's
appropriation of Freud, and it seems quite fitting that someone would
turn a psychoanalytical lens against the very man Freud found so
inspirational.

Yet we have to wonder Nietzsche himself would have rejected Lacanian

psychoanalysis. Nietzsche's view of life, as the will to power,
inspired Freud's notion of the ego, which Lacan rejected as illusory
and false. For Lacan, the Freudian project of bringing forth the
unconscious is a fanciful goal; instead, it is the unconscious that
should be primary. Nietzsche himself would have agreed with the thesis
of this book, but would have disagreed with the tacit assumption that
the self and the consciousness conclude in a product so aimless and,
therefore, lifeless.

The Shortest Shadow is a curious book in that it professes a

methodology it does not utilize and concludes with an essay where the
subject fails to appear. It is, however, genuinely imaginative and
insightful and quite remarkable in its style.

Social Darwinism
Peter Bowler

 LAST REVIEWED: 02 SEPTEMBER 2020

 LAST MODIFIED: 26 MAY 2016

 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756384-0166

Introduction
Social Darwinism is a complex and controversial topic, a package of ideologies supposedly inspired by
biological evolutionism that is of interest to scholars of both the life and the social sciences. In principle it
includes any political system inspired by the view that human nature and social activity are driven by our
biological nature, especially as defined by the process of evolution. The complexity of the topic derives
from the fact that the term social Darwinism has been applied to a number of different (and to some extent
incompatible) ideologies. The key feature is supposed to be the influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of
evolution by natural selection, in which the “struggle for existence” determines the “survival of the fittest,”
thereby ensuring that the species adapts to new conditions—although it is widely assumed that the
process also guarantees progress toward higher levels of complexity. The classic image is of the
proponents of unrestrained free-enterprise capitalism justifying their policy by appealing to the “survival of
the fittest.” But the term has also been applied to justifications of militarism and imperialism (national or
racial struggle) and to the eugenics movement’s efforts to replace natural selection with a process of
artificial selection by restricting the reproduction of the “unfit.” The term has also been applied to more or
less any claim that human nature is fixed by hereditary factors, especially those linked to social class or
race. The topic is contentious because social Darwinism is almost always used in a pejorative sense—the
opponents of these ideologies use it to define positions they reject, and this becomes particularly sensitive
when applied to areas such as Nazi racial policies and the Holocaust. Most forms of social Darwinism are
associated with right-wing ideologies, despite the fact that scholars can point to many left-wing writers who
were also inspired by Darwin. The problem of interpretation is compounded by the fact that historians of
both the biological and the social sciences are involved, bringing very different interpretive frameworks to
bear. Scholars interested in the social world tend to equate social Darwinism with any ideology based on
 the struggle for existence, whether or not there is evidence of inspiration from biological Darwinism.
Historians of science may be well aware that the term refers to a much wider range of ideologies than
those inspired directly by Darwin, but they do expect the analysis to respect the fact that other biological
ideas and, indeed, other evolutionary mechanisms were involved.

General Overviews
There are few wide-ranging studies of social Darwinism, in part because so many different ideologies have
been associated with the movement, but also because the national contexts in which these ideologies
developed are very different. Disagreement exists even over the meaning of the term social Darwinism,
often reflecting the varying backgrounds from which scholars approach the subject. Historians of the social
sciences have tended to equate social Darwinism with more or less any ideology promoting the view that
struggle and competition (at whatever level) are the motors of progress. Historians of the life sciences are
generally more aware of the complexity of the biological debates, which provided the models on which the
social policies were based and stress that the Darwinian theory of natural selection was by no means the
only source of inspiration for ideologies of social progress based on the “struggle for existence.” Of the few
general overviews available, Bowler 1993 provides the perspective from the life sciences, while Hawkins
1997 is written by a historian of the social sciences. Alexander and Numbers 2010 is a wide-ranging
collection of essays on the relationship between biology and ideology, beginning in the pre-Darwinian
period and continuing to recent debates. Tort 1992 also offers a wider perspective, but one generated from
outside the English-speaking world.

 Alexander, Denis R., and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. 2010. Biology and ideology from Descartes to
Dawkins. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
A collection of essays that includes material on the origins of race science, Darwin’s social views, the idea
of progress, eugenics, the role of Marxism, and 20th-century developments.
 Bowler, Peter J. 1993. Biology and social thought, 1850–1914. Berkeley: Office for the History of
Science and Technology, Univ. of California.
A survey of the early development of links between evolution and ideology noting the impact of both
Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolutionary theories and showing how anthropologists and archaeologists
developed a model of human progress independently of developments in evolutionary biology.
 Hawkins, Mike. 1997. Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860–1945. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558481
The most comprehensive overview, based on a clear recognition of the problems generated by equating
social Darwinism with capitalism. Written from the perspective of the social sciences, and thus tends to
equate any ideology based on struggle with social Darwinism irrespective of the actual evolutionary
models employed.
 Tort, Patrick, ed. 1992. Darwinisme et société: Colloque international, 4–6 juin 1991, Paris. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.