Fascism

Subterms

    Latest story

    75 Shares179 Views

    Fascistic Tendencies in the Muslim Brotherhood

    by

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    More stories

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Pax Romana, a Fascist Peace

      by

      During World War I, Benito Mussolini ultimately became a strong interventionist, which caused his split from Italy’s Socialist Party. He believed that only participating in a war would trigger a successful revolution at home and create the “new man.” War, however, should also establish a new realm reminiscent of the Roman Empire.

      Expansionism would become a defining goal of the foreign policy of the Fascist regime. In his “Manifesto dei Fasci italiani di combattimento” (“Fascist Manifesto”), which was published in the Italian newspaper Popolo d’Italia on June 6, 1919, the future Duce briefly talked about his foreign policy plans. He argued that Italy would have to pursue a “peaceful expansion” in order to achieve its greatness — an idea that was shared by many nationalists and fascists before the March on Rome, including Paolo Pedani, the editor-in-chief of a fascist newspaper in Livorno.

      Fascism and Peace: Incompatible or Inseparable?

      READ MORE

      Later in 1921, however, Mussolini struck a more aggressive note and did not mention the word “peace” once: “The foreign policy program of fascism is in one word: expansionism. Whenever the interests of humankind are at stake, Italy has to be present. It’s also time to quit living off the glories of the past. Finally, we have to live, fight, and work for the great future.” However, when we examine subsequent speeches by fascist officials, including Mussolini, they continued to address military imperialism and a quest for peace simultaneously. In many texts, we can find a striking incongruence between militarism and a discourse on peace.

      But what was this “peace” Mussolini and the fascists had in mind? To understand their concept of a “peaceful” world order, we must first analyze their understanding of empire.

      Pax Romana

      In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia and began its ruthless conquest of the East African country, prompting some historians to describe the use of poison gas and the aerial bombardment of civilians as genocidal warfare. Despite these war crimes, Mussolini stressed in his Proclamation of Empire in May 1936 the quintessence of peace: “This is an empire of peace, because Italy wants peace for itself and for all and decides to go to war only when forced by imperious, irrepressible necessities of life. Empire of civilization and humanity for all the people of Ethiopia. … In this supreme certainty, hold high, legionnaires, the signs, the steel and the hearts, to salute, after fifteen centuries, the reapportion of the Empire on Rome’s fatal hills.”

      In addition, archivist and intellectual Armando Lodolini did not deny the expansionary character of Rome’s imperial drive, but he stressed that duty, energy and work were at its root. Roman soldiers, according to Lodolini, were armed engineers and farmers, who conquered Africa to present it with the gift of their civilizing influence. When the Italian army fought against the partisans in the Balkans, General Mario Robotti urged his soldiers to “be once again legionaries of civilization and of the high ideals of Rome.”

      .custom-post-from {float:left; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      This belief in a “civilizing mission,” also known as romanità, was rooted in the 19th-century imperialist discourse and a conviction that the Italians were the heirs of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. Therefore, violent imperialism was justified by constant references to ancient Rome, and the ultimate aim was to imitate its mission: the Pax Romana.

      Jewish-Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano, who had to flee Fascist Italy in 1938, noted that the Pax Romana “is a simple formula for propaganda, but a difficult subject for research.” It was first proclaimed in 13 BC when Emperor Augustus and his deputy Agrippa returned from pacifying the provinces. In retrospect, the term referred to a nearly 200-year period of minimal Roman conquest and relative peacefulness. During this time, the Roman Empire reached its peak territorial expansion, and its population grew up to 70 million people. Thus, the Pax Romana perfectly fit into the Fascist rhetoric: “Peace” was not secured by some form of compromise or signed agreement (a “positive peace”) but was rather established through the sheer force and power of the Roman Empire and its army.

      Peace through force was exactly what the fascists were looking for at a time when they began to place Italy against the Western democracies and prepared for an imminent conflict. In 1933, a time when the regime was already considering the invasion in Ethiopia, the journalist Michele Campana argued in his book “L’impero fascista” that “fascism is … an armed people. No illusions. We have to prepare for the contrary. War is in the air in Europe. It has never been looming like in our days, after treaties have created the absurdity of a peace, that is not peace, with the desperate necessity to defend and arm itself. Then it will be good to obtain Victory, to dictate fascist peace.”

      Even more explicit was Benito Mussolini after he had met with Adolf Hitler in Venice in 1934. On June 26, 1934, he stated: “We have become a strong people. Our peace is thus virile, because peace avoids weak people and accompanies strong ones.”

      A Fascist Peace?

      The fascists would not only limit themselves to speeches and writings to propagate their mission to reestablish the ancient Pax Romana. Art, architecture and iconography played a key role in this propagandistic “revival.” After the successful end of the Abyssinian campaign, Mussolini ordered architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo to construct an enclosure for the restored Ara Pacis in February 1937. This altar, today a famous Roman tourist attraction, was originally built after Augustus’ announcement of the Pax Romana in 13 BC.

      On September 28, 1938, the restored Ara Pacis was inaugurated. An official newsreel by Italian state broadcaster LUCE shows the arrival of Mussolini and other fascist officials for the rededication of the Ara Pacis in its new pavilion. The event was part of the closing ceremony of the Augustan Year, the 2000-year anniversary of the emperor’s birth. Mussolini used these celebrations to cultivate a close connection with the personage of Augustus and claimed his actions were aimed at furthering the continuity of the Roman Empire.

      Next to the ruins of the mausoleum of Augustus near the river Tiber, the restored altar symbolized a key element of fascist propaganda. The concomitant effect was meant to encourage the viewer in Italy and abroad to associate Mussolini’s accomplishments with Augustus’ deeds in general and the Pax Romana in particular. After signing the Easter Agreement with Great Britain in April 1938, Il Duce inspected the construction site. The Times was quick to point out this visit as another sign of Mussolini’s peaceful intentions toward London: “Signor Mussolini, who has a strong sense of the value of a symbolic act, has had the wit to make use of the significance of the monument for the present occasion by associating its reconstruction with the latest act of his foreign policy.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Fascist Italy rejected all doctrines that postulated a form of a positive peace. Equally foreign to the spirit of fascism were all international organizations such as the League of Nations, which, according to fascists, must crumble whenever the heart of a nation is deeply stirred by idealistic or practical considerations. On the contrary, fascists celebrated a life dedicated to self-sacrifice, struggle, violence and war.

      When World War II broke out and Italy did not immediately join, Mussolini was deeply troubled by this dilemma: “The Italians,” he lamented in October 1939, “after having heard my warlike propaganda for eighteen years, cannot understand how I can become the herald of peace, now that Europe is in flames.” However, it would be misleading to reduce fascism to a mere anti-peace or anti-pacifist movement. The fascists believed in a form of “negative peace,” where war is absent because of the strength of Fascist Italy. The peace order they wanted to establish, and which would allow them to carry out their social engineering and Italianization projects, mirrored the Pax Romana of old.

      This concept allowed the fascists to address two seemingly contradictory but essential parts of their own propaganda. On the one hand was the formation of the fascist “new man” who was always prepared to fight should the need arise, always vigilant and on guard, and immune to the deceptions of treacherous bourgeois nations who preached peace only to remain in power. On the other hand, by constantly referring to the Pax Romana, the fascists invoked the Roman Empire as a justification of violent expansionism and the creation of Italian living space in the Mediterranean.

      On October 28, 1937, Pino Romualdi, a Fascist official in Parma who would later become one of the founding fathers of the Italian neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano after the war, expressed this desire for “true peace” as follows: “Even though he is always ready to fight, so is he in the same way longing for peace, but only the “true” peace in the Roman and human sense of the word.”

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Charismatic Leadership and the Far Right

      by

      Horia Sima, a central figure within the interwar Romanian fascist organization the Iron Guard, once described his leader, Corneliu Codreanu, as follows:

      “What was most impressive, on first contact with Codreanu, was his physical appearance. Nobody could pass him by without noticing him, without being attracted by his look, without asking who he was. His public appearance provoked curiosity. This young man seemed a god descended among mortals … Looking at him, you felt dazed. His face exercised an irresistible fascination. He was a ‘living manifesto’, as the Legionaries used to call him.”

      Such a description, highlighting an emotive, passionate and even irrational bond between a fascist and his leader, is a typical expression of the charismatic leader dynamic. Though this is an important phenomenon to consider, it can also sometimes be rather lazily used as an essential component of the far right and needs to be used with care.

      German Nationalism, From Revolution to Illiberalism

      READ MORE

      When surveying the emergence of terms such as charisma, charismatic leadership and so forth, it is impossible not to start with the founding sociologist Max Weber. He argued that political legitimacy came in three varieties: traditional, legal bureaucratic and charismatic. Traditional authority operates through customs providing validity to a leader’s decisions, such as with a monarchy; legal bureaucratic works through an impersonal system of rules providing authority, such as within a liberal democracy; and charisma, meaning “gift of grace,” sees authority emanating from the extraordinary nature of a leader, as understood by followers. For Sima, Codreanu clearly evoked the latter.

      Weber added some further nuances to his concept as well. In particular, he wrote of the sense of mission that a charismatic leader evokes, a cause shared by his or her followers, giving their charisma a sense of purpose. For those who do not share this mission, such leaders are unlikely to hold much charismatic appeal. The leader generates their sense of having special qualities by, effectively, becoming a living embodiment of a passionately held cause. They do this as they, somehow or other, go beyond that of others who share the same sense of mission.

      Charismatic bonds between leader and follower are not created by a leader alone but are a phenomenon that emerges from the shared, affective dimension between leaders and followers. As Ann Ruth Willner puts it: “[C]harisma is defined in terms of people’s perceptions of and responses to a leader. It is not what the leader is but what people see the leader as that counts in generating the charismatic relationship.”

      The Duce

      Charisma has been a term applied to many fascist leaders. Emilio Gentile, writing in Modern Italy in 1998, uses Weber’s approach to examine Benito Mussolini’s charisma as emanating from his political mission. He concludes that the Duce experienced periods of greater and lesser charismatic appeal: Firstly as a socialist leader before the First World War, then as a leader of a new radical nationalist movement urging Italy to enter the war, and then once again his charisma grew during the rise of the fascist movement in Italy. Charisma was not a constant, but something that could grow and wane.

      Of course, Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich has been a particular focus for charismatic leadership. John Breuilly, writing in Nations and Nationalism in 2011, states that charismatic leadership was not typical of all nationalist movements, but was common in fascists such as Codreanu, Mussolini and particularly Hitler. The interwar German conditions were unique. As he explains, in modern-day contexts, “it is the product of massive breakdowns of impersonal forms of modern authority that opens up a particular space, although there has to be someone capable of filling that space and, in Hitler’s case, a unique sequence of events leading to charismatic power.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Aristotle Kallis, writing in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions in 2006, also critically engages with Weber’s model and explains the need to differentiate between the leadership cults of movements and regimes, and their ability to foster of a genuine charismatic community. The former did not guarantee the latter, and an authentic charismatic community was only partially developed even in the Third Reich. Even here, Kallis stresses that Weber’s other forms of authority — traditional and legal — continued to hold some influence.

      Roger Eatwell developed another influential analysis of fascist charismatic leadership, building critically on Weber’s model. Writing in The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right in 2018, he argues that as well as mission and personal presence, charismatic leaders promote a Manichean division of the world to help legitimize their emotive bonds with followers. Moreover, he stresses the need to consider the role of charismatic leadership at the level of the coterie, focusing on how the phenomenon helps bind together radical political groups.

      The question regarding the continued importance of charismatic leadership in more recent populist parties has also been much discussed. Duncan McDonnell published an essay in Political Studies that explores charisma at the level of the coterie, focusing on perceptions of charisma amongst populist party members, both elected officials as well as grassroots activists. His approach urges care in applying the term, while by examining interviews with party coteries, he helpfully exemplifies how charisma needs to be studied through assessing the interactions between leaders and followers. As well as concluding that Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Switzerland’s Christoph Blocher were partial charismatic leaders, he concludes that Umberto Bossi was an archetypal charismatic leader of the Northern League — yet this meant his downfall caused the Italian party much damage as a consequence.

      Whether charismatic leadership is an essential component of populism has also been debated. Takis S. Pappas, writing in the Routledge International Handbook of Charisma, states that “populism and charismatic leadership are inescapably interrelated and should always be studied conjoinedly.” Contrastingly, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasse stress that populism is a complex, variegated phenomenon with many forms of leadership; charismatic leaders are one among various styles among populists, which can even include no leader at all. The latter point seems to echo the cautionary use of the term among historians of fascism. Notably, Roger Griffin resisted using charisma as a defining aspect of fascism in his influential model of the ideology.

      The Short Shelf Life of Charisma

      Nevertheless, some of the most striking figures in recent years in the far right have been charismatic in their style. Donald Trump, the former US president, powerfully unleashed a form of charismatic leadership as he generated an affective bond between himself as a leader and a wider following through a shared sense of mission. However, even this mission does have a shelf life and will not last forever, as his election defeat in 2020 suggests.

      I wrote a short article for The Guardian in 2019 reflecting on Trump as a charismatic leader and predicted a decline in his charismatic appeal over time. Some waning of his charisma has clearly occurred since then, although the study of charisma shows us the phenomenon can ebb and flow. Trump, after all, retains great influence within the Republican Party and continues to enjoy a widespread aura of infallibility among a largescale movement that supports his mission and sees him in emotive, superlative ways.

      As a historian, I leave it to others to predict where this may go in the next few years, but more widely, the relationship between the populist and fascist right and charismatic leaders is both complex and ongoing. For those studying this in the coming years, it is important to focus on the limits of the charisma model as well as its strengths, and it is unhelpful if used to try to explain everything. It is also crucial to consider how people project onto leaders a perception of them as charismatic. After all, charisma does not come from a leader alone — it is projected onto him or her by others. Without this atmosphere, such leaders often have little else to offer. 

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      The New Man in Fascism Past and Present

      by

      “The trenchocracy is the aristocracy of the trenches,” declared Benito Mussolini on the pages of Il Popolo d’Italia in December 1917. Reflecting on the new type of man emerging from the war, he went on: “What an immense moral force is contained in the patriotic spirit of those who come back from the front … […] More