Fascism

Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. Similar political movements spread across Europe between World War One and World War Two and took several forms such as Nazism and Clerical fascism. Neofascism is generally used to describe post-WWII movements seen to have fascist attributes.

Nazism and Fascism

The extent and nature of the affinity between Fascism and Nazism has been the subject of much

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academic debate. Although the modern consensus sees Nazism as a type or offshoot of fascism, there are many experts who argue that Nazism was not fascist at all, either on the grounds that the differences are too great, or because they deny that fascism is generic.

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Differences

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Nazism differed from Fascism proper in the emphasis on the state's purpose in serving a racial rather than a national ideal, specifically the social engineering of culture to the ends of the greatest possible prosperity for the so-called "Master race" at the expense of all else and all others. In contrast, Mussolini's Fascism held that cultural factors existed to serve the state, and that it wasn't necessarily in the state's interest to serve or engineer any of these particulars within its sphere. The only purpose of government under fascism proper was to uphold the state as supreme above all else, and for these reasons it can be said to have been a governmental statolatry. Where Nazism spoke of "Volk", Fascism talked of "State".

Related Topics:
Social engineering - Culture - Master race - Purpose of government - Statolatry

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While Nazism was a metapolitical ideology, seeing both party and government as a means to achieve an ideal condition for certain chosen people, fascism was a squarely anti-socialist form of statism that existed as an end in and of itself. The Nazi movement, at least in its overt ideology, spoke of class-based society as the enemy, and wanted to unify the racial element above established classes. The Fascist movement, on the other hand, sought to preserve the class system and uphold it as the foundation of established and desirable culture, although this is not to say that Fascists rejected the concept of social mobility. Indeed a central tenet of the Corporate State was meritocracy. This underlying theorem made the Fascists and National Socialists in the period between the two world wars sometimes see themselves and their respective political labels as at best partially exclusive of one another, and at worst diametrically opposed to one another.

Related Topics:
Metapolitical - Statism - Social mobility - Meritocracy

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Affinities

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Nevertheless, despite these differences, Kevin Passmore (2002 p.62) observes:

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There are sufficient similarities between Fascism and Nazism to make it worthwhile applying the concept of fascism to both. In Italy and Germany a movement came to power that sought to create national unity through the repression of national enemies and the incorporation of all classes and both genders into a permanently mobilized nation.

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Hitler and Mussolini themselves recognised commonalities in their politics.

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The second part of Hitler's Mein Kampf, "The National Socialistic Movement", first published in 1926, contains this passage:

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I conceived the profoundest admiration for the great man south of the Alps, who, full of ardent love for his people, made no pacts with the enemies of Italy, but strove for their annihilation by all ways and means. What will rank Mussolini among the great men of this earth is his determination not to share Italy with the Marxists, but to destroy internationalism and save the fatherland from it. (p. 622)

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