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What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features

by Matthew N. Lyons

I am skeptical of efforts to produce a "definition" of fascism. As a dynamic historical current, fascism has taken many different forms, and has evolved dramatically in some ways. To understand what fascism has encompassed as a movement and a system of rule, we have to look at its historical context and development--as a form of counter-revolutionary politics that first arose in early twentieth-century Europe in response to rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. The following paragraphs are intented as an initial, open-ended sketch.

Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a "spiritual revolution" against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism, and seeks to purge "alien" forces and groups that threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence. Often, but not always, it promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. At the same time, fascists may embrace a form of internationalism based on either racial or ideological solidarity across national boundaries. Usually fascism espouses open male supremacy, though sometimes it may also promote female solidarity and new opportunities for women of the privileged nation or race.

Fascism's approach to politics is both populist--in that it seeks to activate "the people" as a whole against perceived oppressors or enemies--and elitist--in that it treats the people's will as embodied in a select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies widely.

Fascism is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it borrows concepts and practices from all three. Fascism rejects the principles of class struggle and workers' internationalism as threats to national or racial unity, yet it often exploits real grievances against capitalists and landowners through ethnic scapegoating or radical-sounding conspiracy theories. Fascism rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy and rights, political pluralism, and representative government, yet it advocates broad popular participation in politics and may use parliamentary channels in its drive to power. Its vision of a "new order" clashes with the conservative attachment to tradition-based institutions and hierarchies, yet fascism often romanticizes the past as inspiration for national rebirth.

Fascism has a complex relationship with established elites and the non-fascist right. It is never a mere puppet of the ruling class, but an autonomous movement with its own social base. In practice, fascism defends capitalism against instability and the left, but also pursues an agenda that sometimes clashes with capitalist interests in significant ways. There has been much cooperation, competition, and interaction between fascism and other sections of the right, producing various hybrid movements and regimes.

Matthew N. Lyons is an independent scholar and freelance writer who studies reactionary and supremacist movements. His articles have appeared in the Progressive and other periodicals. These paragraphs are adapted from Too Close for Comfort: Right Wing Populism, Scapegoating, and Fascist Potentials in US Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1996), which Lyons co-authored with Chip Berlet. © 1995, Matthew N. Lyons.
 

More on Fascism

Related articles from PRA:

Fascism: An Essay
	by Chip Berlet
White Supremacy in the U.S.
	Examines influence of fascist and Nazi groups in the United States
Lyndon LaRouche
	Why "presidential candidate" Lyndon LaRouche is a neofascist

• Terms and Concepts: Use with Caution
• Islam and Echoes of Fascism?
• Mussolini on the Corporate State
• Producerism as Repressive Populism
• Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet

Related offsite links

• The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology by Roger Griffin [PDF]
• The Nature of ‘Generic Fascism': The 'Fascist Minimum' and the 'Fascist Matrix' by Roger Eatwell
• 'Ecology' and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-right - Janet Biehl
• Fascist Ecology - The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents - Peter Staudenmaier
• THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION: Looking at Hamerquist's “Fascism & Anti-Fascism”
  by J. Sakai