What Are the Main Features of Fascism as an Ideology - Essay Example

The term “fascism” emerged from a Latin metaphor during the early 1920s in Italy’s radicalized political climate. From the Latin word fasces, which is a bundle of rods that represented the power of the civic magistrate in the Roman Republic, the word became a reference to political organizations built on collectivistic or even communistic philosophical premises. Fascism the signifier and fascism the signified developed during this short time period in the early 20th century in response to the political climate of Europe.

Scholars trace fascism back to the fin de siecle, which is French for “the end of the century,” marking the end of popular belief systems like materialism, bourgeois society, and rational thinking. In its place, subjectivism and irrationality arose as dominant factors in propelling societies toward more extreme and centralized political systems (Payne 2005, p. 24). In the vacuum left by fin de siecle, nationalism and syndicalism grew in popularity, becoming reflected in the faces of the most dreaded leaders in the 20th century, including Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Two definitions exist for fascism that account for two very different contemporary uses of the term. The first usage, which refers to its position on a political spectrum, is the original usage, while the second usage is relatively new. On the political spectrum, commentators define fascism as a revolutionary centrist doctrine that is reactionary on social issues (opposing egalitarianism and approving of authoritarian tactics) but also radical on economic issues (opposing parliamentary liberalism and approving of national syndicalism).

This sort of general definition plays well with historical examples such as Germany’s Nazis, which took a hardline reactionary opposition to diverse people but a soft endorsement of socialism. In the more recent usage, fascism is used pejoratively more so than in an academic context. A “fascist,” on this conception, is any authoritarian political party, whether it is communist, socialist, or Marxist. The first and second usages are not always in agreement. In terms of the two-dimensional political spectrum used above to define fascism, consider now its core tenets broken down according to the different areas of political concern: social issues, economic policy, and foreign policy.

In general, fascist movements approve of social interventionism as a means of promoting the state’s interests and transforming societies for the better (Gentile 2003, p. 86). Adolf Hitler, for instance, promised to improve the Nazi state by purging it of all its non-Aryan influences; likewise, Mussolini promised to remake the Italian people through a social revolution. Each of these claims depends on the ability of the government to enact policies to bring about radical restructuring of its society.

Often, these sorts of promises are made and reinforced through indoctrination by means of propaganda and education designed to glorify fascism. One can see this clearly in both early 20th century Germany and Italy. Another consequence is anti-intellectualism, with state-authorized persecution of intellectuals and university professors. In terms of economic policies of fascists, nearly all instances of the ideology consist of imposing some limitation on the autonomy of capitalism. Italian fascists, for instance, favored a national corporatism, whereby the economy is collectively managed by employers and employees.

The degree to which individual fascist regimes nationalized or controlled private property varied greatly, with the Nazis nationalizing only some businesses and the Italians nationalizing almost as many industries as the Soviet Union (Knight 2003, p. 65). Part of the explicit desire behind many fascist economic controls was to spread the fascist ideology, making it necessary to consolidate trade unions in order to strengthen state power. Many of the anti-capitalist policies offered by the fascists were accepted and internalized by lower- and working-class individuals.

This demand for increased public control in the economy led logically to central planning by fascist governments similar to those projects undertaken by communists. Thirdly, in terms of foreign policy, fascists take the struggle of the nation to be paramount to the struggles of the class, as depicted in Marxist and communist literature. Much of fascist literature evaluates the state as a driver of social change, which leads to the thought that individuals ought to support the state as a force for good.

In fascist Nazi Germany and Italy, the capability for good on the part of the state produced the need for territorial expansion. Nazi Germany, for instance, invaded Poland out of a desire for living space for the German nation; Italy, likewise, argued against pacifism as an expression of a weak mentality. As a result, fascism produces an outwardly aggressive state that allows the nation to express its strength and warrior virtues. On a political spectrum, this tends to push fascism to the right because of its favoritism of war; in terms of pejorative use, fascism becomes associated with war-mongering due to the masculine rhetoric of early 20th century thinkers.

Today, a fascist is anyone who argues for the perhaps unnecessary use of violent force on behalf of one nation onto another. In a political ideology where the state is everything to an individual, it is no surprise that the ideology produces a hostile relationship between countries. Clear similarities exist among fascist regimes that arose and fell in close proximity to one another. However, these general sorts of characteristics hold for regimes separated by time and space from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

In Brazilian Integralism, for instance, anti-capitalist and anti-communist sentiments led to political oppositions in South America. In Japan, similar movements to the Italian nationalism as seen under Benito Mussolini arose in the form of the Imperial Way Faction and the Society of the East in the 1940s. Both of these movements attempted to revive historical notions of a Shogun leadership, similar to Mussolini’s attempts to invoke thoughts of the Roman Empire. However, neither of these South American nor Asian movements sought expansionism on the scale that Germany and Italy did in the 20th century.

References Gentile, E 2003, The struggle for modernity: Nationalism, futurism, and fascism, Praeger, New York. Knight, P 2003, Mussolini and fascism, Routledge, Oxon, England. Payne, SG 2005, A history of fascism, 1914-1945, Routledge, Oxon, England.