Definition of "Fascist"

Factual Questions
1

There’s a Great Debates thread dealing with Godwin’s Law in which, for about the 20th time in the past couple of years, the term Fascist has come up and been bandied about.

Now, the strict definition of the term is “member of, or relating to, the party which controlled the government of Italy between 1922 and 1943.”

The abuse of the term as a meaning-free pejorative is, “any person of vaguely right-wing tendencies who advocates more government control than I am willing to support, with reference to a particular aspect of life.”

But beyond that, can one set any general definition of what the term legitimately means, so that one might argue intelligently about whether Admiral Horthy’s government in Hungary, or the administration of Croatia during World War II, was or was not Fascist in nature, without diluting the term to meaninglessness by applying it to Maoist China or the incumbent U.S. president’s policies?

I’m posting this in GQ to try to get factual feedback on the nature of Fascism as an ideology and how it was applied in practice in places where it was adopted by the historical governments, as opposed to argumentation. Please do me the honor of attempting to answer in the same vein.

2

http://dictionary.langenberg.com/

3

Fascism is an eclectic authoritarian political philosophy characterized by:

  1. extreme nationalism and militarism
  2. a charismatic leader
  3. use of violence, esp. of paramilitary shock troops
  4. imperialist expansion
  5. mass propaganda
  6. censorship and control of the media
  7. corporate economy
  8. anti-Communism
  9. anti-liberalism and anti-feminism
  10. anti-parliamentarianism
  11. racism and anti-Semetism
  12. emphasis on machismo, on youth and on action
  13. synthesis of opposites such as revolution and reaction, nationalism and socialism
    “Down with Intelligence! Long Live Death!” - Spanish Fascist slogan
4

I characterize fascism as “when patriotism goes negative”.

5

While silenus’s list is good, I’d like to point out something. They’re hardly all required. The Japanese in WWII are often considered fascist, and the japanbese scholar communityitself often admits this.

Well, certainly not Tojo. And maybe not Franco.

Probably not. Certainly the early fascism was highly socialist in character. It only later co-opted corporations because it was the easiest way to power.

Good to point out that Antisemitism, but let’s remember that it wasn’t important in Italy or Spain, and was hardly noticed in Japan.

6

Notice how many of those 13 items could also apply to Stalinist Russia, or today’s North Korea.

7

While silenus’s list is good, I’d like to point out something. They’re hardly all required. The Japanese in WWII are often considered fascist, and the japanbese scholar communityitself often admits this.

Well, certainly not Tojo. And maybe not Franco.

Probably not. Certainly the early fascism was highly socialist in character. It only later co-opted corporations because it was the easiest way to power.

Good to point out that Antisemitism, but let’s remember that it wasn’t important in Italy or Spain, and was hardly noticed in Japan.

Good list all-in all, though.

8

Sorry! Duplicate post!

9

The list is one that I give my AP students, and is usually accompanied with a detailed lecture that hits a number of **smiling bandit’s ** points. I was trying to spare Polycarp the pain.

I also can’t believe I mis-spelled “anti-Semitism!”

Walloon, the list could apply to any number of current countries, but Poly wanted us to refrain from mentioning the Bush Administration. :smiley:

10

Thanks for an interesting thread, y’all. Next time somebody throws this particular ‘f’ word at me, I may cite silenus’s excellent list.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been called a fascist, I could make the trains run on time.

11

I would actually use a smaller list (removed points italicized) than that of silenus, but I would keep a couple of the points that smiling bandit questioned:

  1. extreme nationalism and militarism
  2. a charismatic leader
  3. use of violence, esp. of paramilitary shock troops
  4. imperialist expansion
  5. mass propaganda
  6. censorship and control of the media
  7. corporate economy
    (8. anti-Communism)
  8. anti-liberalism - - - - - - - - - - (and anti-feminism)
  9. anti-parliamentarianism
  10. racism - - - - - - - - - - - - - (and anti-Semetism)
  11. emphasis on machismo, on youth and on action
    (13. synthesis of opposites such as revolution and reaction, nationalism and socialism)

Franco was, indeed held up as The Leader and, while his cult was not as great as Mussolini’s or Hitler’s, it was an active aspect of Spanish politics. Tojo was not a charisatic leader, but Japan had the cult of the Emperor to carry them along.

By the time that Fascism arose, Europe, much more than the U.S., had already embraced a number of socialist principles so that many socialist aspects of society were simply the substrate on which any government was built.
The “corporate economy” (which might be better identified with other phrases) was very much a part of the Italian and German experience and played a role in Spain, as well. Whether it carried over to the Eastern European experiments is open to debate, but it should be recalled that few of those nations had an economy that was sufficiently industrialized to make that sort of economy easily visible to the outside world.

Racism took different forms, but an appeal to the pure race of the people who made up the country was prevalent in all the Fascist states. I would not include anti-semitism, as it was basically a German phenomenon (although it was embraced by other European Fascist states who eventually aligned themselves with Germany).

Anti-feminism was only true in the sense of overall anti-liberal policies. I do not recall a specific campaign in any country that targeted feminism, although clearly their policies would have been counter to the feminism that arose in the period following WWII.

I would not argue strongly against the “synthesis of opposities,” but that seems to be an observation about the philosophies on which principal Fascist states (Germany and Italy) were built rather than a characteristic that could be used to distinguish or identify any Fascist state. Several of the smaller Fascist countries pretty much adopted the rhetoric of the earlier, more successful states without developing a genuine home-grown philosophy of their own.

Similarly, anti-Communism was more of a matter of various power groups in Europe facing off without necessarily having an inherent philosophical opposition. If we are including Japan among Fascist states, then anti-Communism drops to a position of a prevalent characteristic without being a defining characteristic.

12

Anti-feminism is true in a roundabout way. At least in Germany, there wasn’t any clear and specific action against feminism, but there were certainly anti-feminist policies. Women were encouraged to be devoted to their husbands, obedient, and most of all they were encouraged to have as many children as possible. Evidence for the former two can be found, say, in contemporary propaganda art, where women were usually depicted in domestic settings. Evidence for the latter can be found in the Cross of Honor of the German Mother awarded to women who had a certain number of children. All this goes against the feminist ideas of women working outside the home, being politically active and sexually liberated, and being able to choose the size of their families.

Although some of the points might be taken to include this, there should be something about fascist states being against pluralism and anti-democracy in the sense that elections are eliminated or are completely rigged (e.g. only one choice, or a mock choice where the intended Leader gets 98% of the vote and the people who cast the other 2% of the ballots disappear). Few of the points on the list really apply to the Bush administration, and certainly the fact that the Democratic Party still exists and got almost half the votes in the last presidential election indicates that the Bush administration isn’t really fascist. But, as has been mentioned in a different thread, the US does use the Roman fasces, the bundle of sticks tied around an axe from which the word ‘fascist’ is derived, as a symbol of power. This has more to do with an affinity for classical Rome (during the Republic) than with fascism, and the use of the symbol long predates fascism.

pinkfreud: Mussolini didn’t really make the trains run on time; I’ve heard they were still often late. AFAIK the trains in Germany had always run on time, and Hitler couldn’t take credit for that.

13

I know. I was trying to make a little joke. Apparently it was so small as to be imperceptible. :stuck_out_tongue:

14

Why? Japan joined the Anti-Comintern and outlawed the Communist Party (actually, the Communist party had been outlawed before the Japanese militarists came to power, but the fascist government stepped up enforcement of the law).

15

Pretty much for that reason. Unlike the Italians, Spaniards, and Germans, the Japanese never made an attackon Comunism a central tenet of their system. It was more of a “include the Communists with anyone else that we need to suppress” position. To the extent tha Japanese rhetoric blasted Communism, it was in preparation for its ultimate attempt to take Siberia away from the Soviet Union (had the “Northern Policy” champions won the internal struggle over whether to conquer Northeast or Southeast Asia).

Note that I leave anti-Communism as a prevalent characterisitic. I just don’t see it as a defining characteristic in Japan.

16

The key question, of course, is “What is the threshold of fascism?” There has only been one Fascist State in history, but there have benn several that were fascist. How many of the characteristics must be present for the label “fascist” to be applicable? This is going to tend towards GD instead of GQ, but it is an important question.

17

I’d also add that fascism is populist, with a disdain for elites and experts, and a belief in the divine destiny of the ordinary working-class citizenry. I know people have this image of Nazis as boot-clicking Prussian aristocrats, but fascism was a working class movement, not an elite movement.

Also fascist movments have the goal of total transformation of society. Fasism has an ideological component. Your standard third-world dictatorships aren’t fascist since the leaders only care about plundering the country, enriching themselves and maintaining power, they have no real goals beyond personal power and wealth.

Fascism didn’t take over in secret, there were large numbers of people who desired fascism and thought it would improve their countries.

18

Would you consider the dictator of Venezuela a fascist? I ask because here in Mexico there’s a political/legal scandal whereby someone who I think is a fascist is definitely very, very, populist, with a disdain for elites and experts, and a belief in the divine destiny of the ordinary working-class citizenry, working class, non-elite movement.

19

Oh, I mentioned Venezuela because this creep is often compared with the other creep.

20

No one understood fascism better than