Fascism

Emerged in the interwar period, above all in Italy and Germany; tied to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Defined more by what it opposes than by what it affirms — a prototype of totalitarianism.

The anti-characteristics

anti-rational · anti-democratic · anti-liberal · anti-socialist · anti-enlightenment · anti-pluralist

Six core features

• Totalitarianism — state regulates all spheres; single-party rule; violence as a normal instrument of rule.
• Ultra-nationalism — nation is supreme; the individual has no standing outside the national collective.
• Elitism & leader principle — rejects equality; leadership belongs to a superior elite; the leader embodies the national will.
• Militarism & glorification of war — war is creative, regenerative, virile; imperial expansion is the duty of the superior nation.
• Corporatism & autarky — state mediates capital and labour; strikes and boycotts repressed; self-sufficient economy preferred.
• Irrationalism — emotion, instinct, myth, spectacle and faith over reason; mass psychology mobilised through propaganda.

Mussolini on the fascist state

“Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.” “Nothing against the State, nothing over it, nothing beyond it.” “War is to men what motherhood is to women.”

Benito Mussolini

Read clause by clause: “nothing against” denies the right of opposition — dissent becomes treason; “nothing over” removes every rival authority — church, constitution, international law, conscience; “nothing beyond” erases the private sphere. Giovanni Gentile grounded this by treating the state as the highest ethical reality in which the individual finds meaning — the individual has duties, not rights. Hannah Arendt read absolute statism as the engine of totalitarian terror; Harold Laski argued such a state shields the economic oligarchy while destroying civil liberties.

Philosophical & intellectual origins

• Plato → hierarchical, disciplined polity; polemically called “the first totalitarian” by some critics.
• Machiavelli → amoral power politics, superiority of national interest; Hobbes → absolute sovereignty; Rousseau → a coercive reading of the general will.
• Fichte & Treitschke → militant / aggressive nationalism; Herder → cultural nationalism; Charles Maurras → integral nationalism.
• Nietzsche → contempt for egalitarian and humanitarian restraint (misused by fascists); Henri Bergson → anti-rational vitalism; Georges Sorel → myth and violence (Reflections on Violence).
• Joseph de Maistre → counter-revolutionary hierarchy; Gustave Le Bon → crowd psychology, rule by spectacle; Giovanni Gentile → the ethical state, state-worship.
• Zeev Sternhell treated the late nineteenth century as fascism’s ideological seedbed; Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom) explained the flight into authoritarian leadership.

Laski — fascism as counter-revolution of capitalism

Harold Laski: fascism appears when political democracy becomes too costly for the economic oligarchy. In capitalism’s phase of contraction it crushes civil liberties while preserving private ownership; the workers lose the right to demand public ownership. The state’s claim to neutrality is false, because the recognition of property already makes it class-biased. Contrast with Soviet dictatorship, where the means of production passed to the community.

Fascism & parliamentary democracy — the ambivalence

Hostile to parliament in principle, willing to use it instrumentally. In doctrine, parliament is a “talking shop” — slow, compromising, indecisive; party competition is read as national disunity; democracy is accused of breeding mediocrity. Giovanni Gentile offered an organic unity of leader, people and state; Othmar Spann treated society as a “super-individual,” not a sum of atomistic citizens; Muammar Gaddafi (cited later) treated parliament as misrepresentation of the people.

ENTER (elections, coalitions, legal procedure) → ROOT in the system (become a normal player) → SEIZE power (March on Rome · Weimar) → HOLLOW OUT (ban opposition, suspend liberties). Robert O. Paxton — democracy used as a ladder, then kicked away. Fascism is procedurally opportunistic but substantively hostile.

Italian fascism vs German Nazism

Shared core: authoritarianism, aggressive nationalism, anti-liberalism, a cult of the leader. The differences were substantial.

Neo-fascism

• Roger Griffin (The Nature of Fascism) → palingenetic ultra-nationalism: a revolutionary myth of national rebirth from decline.
• Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism) → five stages: creation → rooting → seizure → exercise → long-term entropy.
• Contemporary forms: xenophobic populism, far-right parties (Front National, Golden Dawn), digital mobilisation; democratic entry combined with anti-democratic consolidation.

Fascist & Authoritarian Theory of State

Fascist state. Fascism glorifies the state as a total, organic entity — totalitarianism, corporatism, an organic view, national unity over individual liberty, suppression of class conflict through state-controlled organisation, strong leadership and an exclusionary identity. Benito Mussolini: the state is organic with a spiritual and moral character; the individual exists within it, not above it; society is absorbed into national unity. Corporatism — industries and trade corporations set economic policy together, replacing class struggle with state-managed cooperation.

Carl Schmitt (Political Theology, The Concept of the Political) did not explicitly endorse fascism but influenced authoritarian thought: politics rests on the friend-enemy distinction — unity formed by identifying an enemy, reinforcing exclusion and a single national identity.

Authoritarianism. Juan Linz describes it by limited political pluralism, the absence of a comprehensive guiding ideology and the absence of intensive mobilisation — a passive citizenry, rule by one leader or a small group, restricted competition, and dependence on coercion, bureaucracy or military support.

Assessment. Both reject the liberal-pluralist model: fascism absorbs the individual and society into the state, while authoritarianism limits competition without full totalitarian mobilisation. Both weaken democratic accountability and individual freedom and show the danger of state power unrestrained by rights, law and civil society.

The fascist and totalitarian State

The fascist state

• Giovanni Gentile — the fascist state is totalitarian: the nation is supreme and individual interests are subordinate; fascism stresses the organic unity of the nation. Against liberalism, it rejects individualism and parliamentary democracy for hierarchy and autocratic rule.
• Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) — the State as a tool for the Aryan race; the Volk and the leader are intimately connected, the leader embodying the will of the nation; the State secures racial survival and purity through violent, exclusionary policy.

The totalitarian state

Totalitarianism (term first used by Giovanni Gentile): the State controls all of life, politics to culture — Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Stalinism. Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski identified a six-point syndrome:

Dominant ideology · Single mass party · Control over weapons · Control over media · Terroristic policing

Control is sustained by manipulating mass hysteria through propaganda, secret police and surveillance.