The Anatomy of Fascism-- Robert Paxton

 

The rather nasty political phenomenon called Fascism was, Prof Paxton tells us, born officially on 23 March 1919 in Milan at a gathering convened by Benito Mussolini to ‘...declare war against socialism ...because it opposed nationalism’. Mussolini called his movement the ‘Fasci di combattimento’ – ‘fraternities of combat’ -- and this itself clarifies a great deal about the movement, highlighting a coming together, a unity, and the eager embrace of violence.

Historian and political scientist, Robert Paxton, takes us on a fascinating and frightening journey through Europe post the First World War as he studies the meteoric rise and devastating fall of the political movements created and led by Mussolini and Hitler after World War I.

Paxton does not start by defining Fascism. He prefers to work through the history, studying the crisis that enabled the emergence of the phenomenon, its working on the ground, its allies and accomplices, its interactions with society and then arrives at an understanding of its principal characteristics.

The death and destruction wreaked over much of Europe by the first World War created social and economic conditions in which there was space for the emergence of a new political animal very different from what had hitherto been seen in Europe. The Great Depression of 1930s simply added to the crisis situation and enhanced the possibilities for a strong leader to arise. Flaccid democracies with weak, corrupt and incompetent traditional ruling elites had demonstrated their inability to manage the situation. National morale and pride were in tatters, feelings of victimhood, fear and resentment were widespread and the stage was set for a charismatic leader -- male, of course -- with a message of strength, national pride, unity, regeneration and revival to ignite the popular imagination.

Charisma, which involves a ‘mysterious direct communication with the masses without any intermediation’ is powered by emotion using ‘high drama’ ‘intensely charged rhetoric’ and elaborate ‘ritual’. Fascist leaders have been masters of invoking ‘mobilizing passions’ and manipulating them expertly to gain mass support to acquire and  retain power. The emotions thus ‘mobilized’ included a strident nationalism to counterbalance the lack of confidence, and a visceral hatred of a ‘demonized’ enemy to compensate for the insecurity, resentment and sense of historical victimhood. Since the enemy is an evil entity it does not, of course, deserve any mercy. Notions of democracy, individual liberty and due process -- weak kneed and not deep-rooted creations of a culture gone soft and degenerate -- are set aside and the enemy is attacked in a systematic but incremental manner. Street violence is followed by segregation, financial attacks, expulsion and finally physical elimination. Germany passed laws in 1935 banning intermarriage with Jews and annulling Jewish citizenship; huge fines were levied on Jews for incidental damage to non-Jewish property during organized attacks by Nazi hoodlums on Jewish property -- mind boggling irony!

Professor Paxton emphasizes the fact that regardless of charisma, fascist leaders needed support of the institutions of state -- the armed forces, the police, the judiciary, civil society and corporates to function effectively. And this support was forthcoming in large measure in both Italy and Germany.

The author draws a parallel between the classical fascisms and the more modern horrors of Milosevic’s Serbia -- ‘a de-facto dictatorship with fervent mass support’ engaged in ethnic purification and in ‘avenging historical wrongs’ by mass murder of enemy men, women and children.

After a detailed examination of the history and the actual working of fascism, the author attempts a description, if not quite a definition of Fascism which is worth quoting in full.

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood, and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity in which a mass-based party of nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

The Anatomy of Fascism is a fascinating, educative and very disturbing book. It is not an easy read but it is a very satisfying one.

After the horrors of Hitler’s Germany and Milosevic’s Serbia one takes comfort from the author’s statement that ‘no fascist regime has passed on power to a successor’. Fascist leadership tends to be brittle.

Amen.

Happy reading.