# Explain fascism please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 17, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065 "2010-07-17T22:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/81 "2010-07-19T23:49:02Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > University poli sci departments acceptable? These are the first two on the first page of my Google search that mentioned it at all: > > [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7870.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7870.html) > Note the first line in the second paragraph. And it continues: > [@](#): > > _through its evolution into a separate body of thought_ and to its destruction in the Second World War. \*\* In other words, not socialism anymore. > [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > [http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/fascism](http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/fascism) > Note the “Strict regulation and control of the economy” in point 9. And of course you miss point 5: > [@](#): > > Contempt for **democratic socialism** , democratic capitalism, liberalism, and all forms of individualism as weak, degenerate, divisive and ineffective ideologies leading only to mediocrity or national suicide BTW the strict regulation and control still meant that the big capitalist industrialists got many good deals from the fascists. Mentioned already were the elimination of unions and the availability of slave labor. > [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > Good enough, or do you need more? > 😛 And before you continue, it is not climate change that is my pet item, it is history. 😃 So, it seems that **Quarz** and \*\*smiling bandit \*\*also needs a refresher of what they do teach in Europe: The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that Fascism is a: > **[Fascism | Definition, Meaning, Characteristics, Examples, & History |...](https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism)** > > Fascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and was characterized by extreme militant nationalism, hatred of communism and socialism, contempt for democracy, and belief in... > [@](#): > > Philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader, subordination of the individual will to the state’s authority, and harsh suppression of dissent. > > Martial virtues are celebrated, **while liberal and democratic values are disparaged. Fascism arose during the 1920s and ’30s partly out of fear of the rising power of the working classes; it differed from contemporary communism (as practiced under Joseph Stalin) by its protection of business and landowning elites and its preservation of class systems.** While there is discussion and the modern position is to move away from a generic definition of fascism, it is really ridiculous to say that it was also a leftist idea or a socialistic one. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/82 "2010-07-19T23:52:37Z")
In my simple and overly generic terms: Fascism is the preference of the nation (in some idealized from, usually including a shit load of xenophobia in its broadest sense) over anything else, but with a fairly clear preference for capitalism/big business and strong leaders all round (and explicitly working from the top down). In simpler terms: nation/race/us vs other nations/foreigners/them. Communism is the preference of the “worker” (in some idealized form, usually including a shit load of paranoia against businessmen & intellectuals) over the other classes. Communism as an ideology is explicitly international. Nations are irrelevant. In simpler terms: it’s the working class, everywhere vs everybody else, everywhere, until all everybody’s “equal”. Now in _practice_ there may not be that much difference, but the ideology is clearly very different. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/83 "2010-07-19T23:54:11Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That would be why Hitler led the National **Socialist** Party. And North Korea is a Democratic Republic . . . > [@Quartz](#): > > And is racism really part of fascism? Europe as a whole was pretty racist until well after WW2. Hitler hated Jews and Africans, but accepted northern Indians as the source of the Aryan race. Errmm . . . That’s still racism, **Quartz.** Just a bit more convoluted than the simple all-darkskins-are-inferior sort. Nazi racial theory was partly influenced by [Theosophy,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy) believe it or not. See [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYBsnaPZ_go) documentary on YouTube. An excellent source on fascism in general is [_Fascism: A History,_](http://www.amazon.com/Fascism-History-Roger-Eatwell/dp/071399147X) by Roger Eatwell. [Here’s](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) a fascinating review of it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/84 "2010-07-19T23:57:06Z")
[As viewed by George Orwell in 1941:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) > [@](#): > > Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and–this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism–generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. > > But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only Nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non Nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/85 "2010-07-20T00:03:16Z")
[As for the name “Fascism”, take a look here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces). It’s quite interesting, and possibly enlightening. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/86 "2010-07-20T00:07:41Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > [As for the name “Fascism”, take a look here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces). It’s quite interesting, and possibly enlightening. And you’ll see fasces [in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obama_Health_Care_Speech_to_Joint_Session_of_Congress.jpg) flanking Old Glory and the POTUS whenever he gives his State of the Union address. Of course, they were there long before Mussolini was born. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/87 "2010-07-20T03:10:28Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Political infighting is the nastiest. > > You are free to ignore history and even try to rewrite it. The rest of us will look at the facts. Which facts are you talking about? People are acting like its all easily categorized. I think fascism is populist, not communist. It is a very virulent, very right wing form of populism. Nazism wasn’t capitalist or communist. It had a command economy but it wasn’t a command economy in a “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need” sort of way, it was a “do what I tell you or I will kill you and replace you with someone who will do what I tell them” People are confusing socialism and totalitarianism in the same way that some people people confuse capitalism and democracy. > **[Nazism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism)** > > Final Solution > Pre-Machtergreifung > Post-Machtergreifung > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because if they can pile all the monsters on the other side, they can claim theirs is morally superior, of course. for the win > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > [As for the name “Fascism”, take a look here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces). It’s quite interesting, and possibly enlightening. Yes, I agree, it is a malignant form of populism. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/88 "2010-07-20T06:18:24Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > Having minored in Political Science in school, and having had professors ranging from Communist to conservative, I think it likely that I have a better idea what it means than most people. Why do you think **you** have a better grasp of it? Because you are clearly talking nonsense about it. And yes, I have been to college too, and been taught both by avowed Marxists and people who were clearly quite conservative. Anyway, how about replying to the substance of my post, if you think I’m wrong, instead of arguing ad hominem. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/89 "2010-07-20T17:05:43Z")
What a surprise to see the old lie of the Nazis being left wing trotted out once again… The German economy was never a socialized economy, even during the war. The best description of it would be a kleptocracy. Fundamental to the Nazi regime was the supremacy of private property - businessmen were left alone to profit from government contracts (and confiscated Jewish property). When the government involved itself in the economy, it involved itself as private corporations, such as those set up by the SS. There was no nationalization of the means of production, or even the commanding heights thereof. Then we see the public works programs pointed to - Hitler reduced these from von Brauning’s days, and it was von Brauning’s efforts that had done much to stabilize the German economy, resulting in declining Nazi support at the polls. The Nazi economic program, while certainly having red tinges, was never implemented, which, given the lack of restrictions on Nazi actions post takign power leads to only one possible conclusion - it was never intended to be implemented. There were elements of the Nazi party that were more socialist in some ways - in particular the Strasser brothers and their supporters. Both were expelled from the party by Hitler, and Gregor was killed in the Night of the Long Knives, and Otto fled into exile. That’s how Hitler treated the left. Given the actions of the Nazis against socialists and communists, with countless working class leaders murdered and tortured, it’s more than a little insulting for the Nazis to be called socialists by American conservatives. Conservatives and centrists in Germany were generally left alone - they prospered nicely under the Hitler regime. It was socialists and communists who along with Jews, gays, gypsies and others were sent to concentration camps. Conservatives found it very easy to cooperate and coexist with the Nazis. After all, they did nothing to oppose the rise of the fascists. It was the parties of the Left who fought the Nazis in the street and at the ballot box, and they only lost because of the betrayal by “conservatives” who saw socialism as a bigger threat. And to be honest, the conservatives were right. To their lives of privilege, socialism probably was a bigger threat. The Nazis weren’t going to take the conservatives property, or even tax them much. It was the working class (and Jews, gypsies, gays, Jehovahs Witnesses and others) who had to fear the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/90 "2010-07-20T17:22:44Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Then we see the public works programs pointed to - Hitler reduced these from von Brauning’s days, and it was von Brauning’s efforts that had done much to stabilize the German economy, resulting in declining Nazi support at the polls. To nitpick, it’s Brüning, not von Brauning. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/91 "2010-07-20T17:25:26Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Quick thought experiment: an alien pops into our solar system in mid 1941, observes the Eastern Front bloodbath for awhile, then seeks out a knowledgeable human observer/expert. He asks the expert, “Why are these two so seemingly similar political systems so intent on destroying each other? What exactly, in practice, is the big overriding difference(s) between the fascists and communists which makes them so eager to utterly annihilate each other?” It wasn’t a matter of ideological difference, really: [QUOTE=Emperor Charles V] My cousin Francis [I of France] and I are in complete agreement: he wants Vienna, and so do I. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/92 "2010-07-20T17:26:03Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > To nitpick, it’s Brüning, not von Brauning. That’s true! Damn you. Von Papen - not von Bruning… Idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/93 "2010-07-20T17:55:15Z")
Meh. Both systems select for ruthlessness, not adherence to any kind of consistent ideology. If someone in your country is a potential competitor for political or economic power (be it a plutocrat or a trade unionist), eliminate them. If there’s a neighboring country that has stuff you want (be it run by a right-wing or left-wing government), take it. Anyone can cherry-pick moments in Stalin’s or Hitler’s regimes and argue they represent left- or right-wing political actions. Big fucking deal. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/94 "2010-07-20T19:08:25Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Anyone can cherry-pick moments in Stalin’s or Hitler’s regimes and argue they represent left- or right-wing political actions. Big fucking deal. It would indeed not be a big deal if only the American Right would stop assigning the extremists of right wing ideologies also into the liberal camp. I do accept that extremists on the left have done harm. It needs to be mentioned that I’m coming here denouncing the current efforts of people like Glenn Beck that are telling people to reach for fascistic like solutions (for now) on how to deal with liberals. After all, “it is ONLY liberals who have used those solutions in the past”, therefore any call to arms and repression that conservatives would apply to liberals will never reach fascistic levels as conservatives can \*\*never \*\*be liberal/fascists. This conservative propaganda point that liberals are the fascists is tailor made to drive people into never wondering if following Beck and others could lead to real fascism. History has shown that extremism (and the eventual destruction of it caused also by that extremism) can happen when you are very effective in demonizing a group of people. > **[Projection Much? Glenn Beck Warns: 'Fascism Is On The Rise'](https://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/projection-much-glenn-beck-warns-fas)** > > \[media id=7746\] > > Just a few weeks ago, Glenn Beck was shrilly declaring that America was marching toward Communism. It was the show's featured theme. > **[Glenn And Jonah Decry 'Liberal Fascism' ... While Touting Right-wing Populism](https://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/glenn-and-jonah-decry-liberal-fascis)** > > \[media id=7417\] > > You knew Jonah Goldberg had to be somewhere on the set the other day when Glenn Beck opened his Fox program with this: > > If you believ [http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=jonah\_goldbergs\_bizarro\_history](http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=jonah_goldbergs_bizarro_history) ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/95 "2010-07-20T19:52:43Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Anyone can cherry-pick moments in Stalin’s or Hitler’s regimes and argue they represent left- or right-wing political actions. Are we doing so here? Provide analysis and back up your assertions, please. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/96 "2010-07-20T21:24:49Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > … > > (snipped) > The idea that Fascism was right-wing emerged principly on direct orders from Stalin himself, in order to discredit it and free nations around the world. While he didn’t create the argument, it simply is wrong. As in, it has no truth to it. Fascism nearly destroyed “international finance capitalism”, but it was in no way created by it. > (snipped) Wrong. 1. The “Right” and the “Left” are named for their seating placement within the Legislative Power. The term [stems from the French Revolution.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#cite_note-29) 2. The nazis saw themselves [as the antagonists of the communist movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Anti-communism) (far left) and seated themselves on the far right of the Reichstag Therefore: the nazis saw themselves as a far right movement. You can argue that they were wrong, but if you do so, it’s you who’s ret-conning their political orientation. Q.E.D. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/97 "2010-07-20T21:36:01Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Are we doing so here? Provide analysis and back up your assertions, please. My cite is this thread. It’s not like Hitler and Stalin had some strict ideological playbooks to follow - they did what they saw fit to eliminate enemies (real or imagined). Heck, if fascism is “distrust of reason” (a definition I’ve heard several times) and possibly tinged with racism (as described in this thread), you’d expect a fascist regime to be the one to eliminate Jewish scientists on a whim, only “the Doctor’s Plot” was a delusion of Stalin and there was no socialist or left-wing or any other ideological mechanism in the USSR to stop him until the moment he died. Heck, even Ayn Rand thought fascism and communism were functionally identical. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/98 "2010-07-20T21:45:03Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck, even Ayn Rand thought fascism and communism were functionally identical. What possible relevance does her opinion have here? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/99 "2010-07-20T21:59:24Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck, even Ayn Rand thought fascism and communism were functionally identical. [Jerrry Pournelle knows how to distinguish them.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/100 "2010-07-20T22:08:19Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Yes, I agree, it is a malignant form of populism. Well . . . As with most simplistic statements about fascism, this one has some truth in it but oversimplifies. [John J. Reilly writes:](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) > [@](#): > > Fascism would not have been possible without Friedrich Nietzsche. There has been no lack of anti-theistic philosophers both before and after Nietzsche, but he is almost alone in honestly facing the consequences of living in a world in which everything is permitted. Most thinkers have sought to preserve some fragment of the intellectual structure that depended from the hypothesis of the Christian God, and so they appeal to reason or history or science. Nietzsche would have none of it. If the skies are really empty, then there are no imperatives. There is, however, life, which in the case of human beings expresses itself not just as biology but as the will. Now Nietzsche, unlike Schopenhauer and unlike many of his own followers, recognized the will is itself a composite entity. It is not a primary physical force, and it is not a god. It does, however, actually exist, and its exercise is all the meaning that life can ever have. > > The proposition that the meaning of life is the exercise of the will leads to two kinds of conclusions. The most obvious, and the most popular, is the cult of cruelty. Naturally, the street-fighters who normally figure in the public activities of successful fascist parties are rarely well-read in the literature of philosophical nihilism. Nevertheless, even the nihilist violence of the German SA and the Italian “squadristi” chimes with high theory. Fascism promotes ruthlessness for the same reason that it promotes conspiracy theories: for a fascist, nothing is going to happen unless some will makes it happen. One suspects this consideration is also a factor in the usual fascist suspicion of free markets. > > The other conclusion to which an ontology of the will leads is the transformation of politics into art. Whole societies become instruments for the expression of the will of elites, or often of a single great individual. In fascist theory, this is all that politics ever was, no matter what purportedly disinterested purposes the ruling elites of the past believed they served. The difference that Nietzsche made was that this reality could become conscious. > > Fascism is not quite coincident with the great man theory of history. Since human beings are social animals, the will is to some extent a social phenomenon. Thus, reality is an intersubjective construct, a fable that people make up amongst themselves. The construct is not entirely arbitrary. Most fascists have also posited a strong racial or biological element conditioning the way that leaders and their peoples behave. Still, even in highly racialized forms of fascism, the leader stands to the people as the will stands to the individual. Politics, then, is not an arbitrary art, but an art whereby the leader makes the unconscious will of the people explicit. > > In addition to Nietzsche, the other seminal influence on fascism whom Eatwell discusses at length is Georges Sorel. Now Sorel is remembered as the chief theorist of socialist syndicalism, and like Nietzsche his thought has influenced people who are not fascist by any definition. Nevertheless, he seems to have been a primary source of the nuts-and-bolts of practical fascism, which was chiefly concerned with integrating restive populations of industrial workers into fragile national communities. (The widespread use of the word “community” to refer to classes of people who could not possibly know each other is mostly Max Weber’s fault, though to me it has long carried fascist undertones. Well, that is another story.) > > Sorel’s socialism was of the sort that combined plans for the betterment of the masses with considerable contempt for their intelligence, indeed contempt for almost everything about them as they actually existed. Sorel believed that the masses could be integrated into a social force only through slogans and myths. Sorel’s favorite myth was that of the “general strike.” Actual general strikes, in which the whole of a country’s organized labor force walked off the job at the same time, have been tried a few times, with mixed success. The myth of the general strike, however, is like the vision of Judgment Day. It is the goal in whose name organizers organize, it is the reason to pay union dues. It is an ultimate threat, like the strategic doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, that creates a world by defining its limits. It is not entirely dishonest; the leaders may believe it in a heuristic sense. Such subtleties, however, are not for the people they lead. > > Perhaps the most striking thing about the political systems of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was precisely their use of myth and symbol. (As Salvador Dali once remarked, Nazism was essentially surrealism come to power.) The widely-bought if sparsely-read “Myth of the Twentieth Century,” by the Nazi Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, seems to have used “myth” in a Sorelian sense, the myth in this case being the origin of the Aryan race in Atlantis and its leading role in later history. More generally, both the Nazi and the Italian Fascist regimes seemed to be exercises in government by grand opera. (Götterdämmerung and Don Giovanni, no doubt.) > > The myths used to organize the elites were not necessarily those provided for the masses. The Nazi leadership in particular cultivated a sort of occultism (though if figures like Julius Evola are any indication, this enthusiasm was not absent from Italy, either). The people, however, were pushed with more conventional forms of nationalist xenophobia and pulled with quite prosaic promises of economic improvement and social welfare (promises on which both regimes could in large measure deliver). This difference of integrative principles was consistent with the fascist notion of society as an organic entity. Organism implies differentiation, so it was only proper that elites and masses be organized through different means. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=6)