By Chip Berlet
September, 1992
This article is adapted from the author's preface to Russ Bellant's
book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, co-published
by South End Press and Political Research Associates.
"Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary... does
not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal."
--Benito Mussolini
We have all heard of the Nazis--but our image is usually a caricature of a brutal
goose-stepping soldier wearing a uniform emblazoned with a swastika. Most people
in the U.S. are aware that the U.S. and its allies fought a war against the Nazis,
but there is much more to know if one is to learn the important lessons of our
recent history.
Technically, the word NAZI was the acronym for the National Socialist German
Worker's Party. It was a fascist movement that had its roots in the European
nationalist and socialist movements, and that developed a grotesque biologically-determinant
view of so-called "Aryan" supremacy. (Here we use "national socialism" to refer
to the early Nazi movement before Hitler came to power, sometimes termed the "Brownshirt" phase,
and the term "Nazi" to refer to the movement after it had consolidated around
ideological fascism.)
The seeds of fascism, however, were planted in Italy. "Fascism is reaction," said
Mussolini, but reaction to what? The reactionary movement following World War
I was based on a rejection of the social theories that formed the basis of
the 1789 French Revolution, and whose early formulations in this country had
a major influence on our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill
of Rights.
It was Rousseau who is best known for crystallizing these modern social theories
in The Social Contract. The progeny of these theories are sometimes
called Modernism or Modernity because they challenged social theories generally
accepted since the days of Machiavelli. The response to the French Revolution
and Rousseau, by Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and others, poured into an intellectual
stew which served up Marxism, socialism, national socialism, fascism, modern
liberalism, modern conservatism, communism, and a variety of forms of capitalist
participatory democracy.
Fascists particularly loathed the social theories of the French Revolution
and its slogan: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
- Liberty from oppressive government intervention in the daily lives of
its citizens, from illicit searches and seizures, from enforced religious
values, from intimidation and arrest for dissenters; and liberty to cast
a vote in a system in which the ; majority ruled but the minority retained
certain inalienable rights.
- Equality in the sense of civic equality, egalitarianism, the notion that
while people differ, they all should stand equal in the eyes of the law.
- Fraternity in the sense of the brotherhood of mankind. That all women
and men, the old and the young, the infirm and the healthy, the rich and
the poor, share a spark of humanity that must be cherished on a level above
that of the law, and that binds us all together in a manner that continuously
re-affirms and celebrates life.
This is what fascism as an ideology was reacting against--and its support came
primarily from desperate people anxious and angry over their perception that
their social and economic position was sinking and frustrated with the constant
risk of chaos, uncertainty and inefficiency implicit in a modern democracy based
on these principles. Fascism is the antithesis of democracy. We fought a war
against it not half a century ago; millions perished as victims of fascism and
champions of liberty.
"One of the great lies of this century is that in the 1930's Generalissimo
Franco in Spain was primarily a nationalist engaged in stopping the Reds. Franco
was, of course, a fascist who was aided by Mussolini and Hitler."
"The history of this period is a press forgery. Falsified news manipulates
public opinion. Democracy needs facts.
--George Seldes
Hartland Four Corners, Vermont,
March 5, 1988
Fascism was forged in the crucible of post-World War I nationalism in Europe.
The national aspirations of many European peoples--nations without states, peoples
arbitrarily assigned to political entities with little regard for custom or culture--had
been crushed after World War I. The humiliation imposed by the victors in the
Great War, coupled with the hardship of the economic Depression, created bitterness
and anger. That anger frequently found its outlet in an ideology that asserted
not just the importance of the nation, but its unquestionable primacy and central
predestined role
in history.
In identifying "goodness" and "superiority" with "us," there was a tendency
to identify "evil" with "them." This process involves scapegoating and dehumanization.
It was then an easy step to blame all societal problems on "them," and presuppose
a conspiracy of these evildoers which had emasculated and humiliated the idealized
core group of the nation. To solve society's problems one need only unmask
the conspirators and eliminate them.
In Europe, Jews were the handy group to scapegoat as "them." Anti-Jewish conspiracy
theories and discrimination against Jews were not a new phenomenon, but most
academic studies of the period note an increased anti-Jewish fervor in Europe,
especially in the late 1800's. In France this anti-Jewish bias was most publicly
expressed in the case of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer of Jewish
background, who in 1894 was falsely accused of treason, convicted (through
the use of forged papers as evidence) and imprisoned on Devil's Island. Zola
led a noble struggle which freed Dreyfus and exposed the role of anti-Jewish
bigotry in shaping French society and betraying the principles on which France
was building its democracy.
Not all European nationalist movements were necessarily fascist, although
many were. In some countries much of the Catholic hierarchy embraced fascist
nationalism as a way to counter the encroachment of secular influences on societies
where previously the church had sole control over societal values and mores.
This was especially true in Slovakia and Croatia, where the Clerical Fascist
movements were strong, and to a lesser extent in Poland and Hungary. Yet even
in these countries individual Catholic leaders and laity spoke out against
bigotry as the shadow of fascism crept across Europe. And in every country
of Europe there were ordinary citizens who took extraordinary risks to shelter
the victims of the Holocaust. So religion and nationality cannot be valid indicators
of fascist sentiment. And the Nazis not only came for the Jews, as the famous
quote reminds us, but for the communists and the trade union leaders, and indeed
the Gypsies, the dissidents and the homosexuals. Nazism and fascism are more
complex than popular belief. What, then, is the nature of fascism?
Italy was the birthplace of fascist ideology. Mussolini, a former socialist
journalist, organized the first fascist movement in 1919 at Milan. In 1922
Mussolini led a march on Rome, was given a government post by the king, and
began transforming the Italian political system into a fascist state. In 1938
he forced the last vestige of democracy, the Council of Deputies, to vote themselves
out of existence, leaving Mussolini dictator of fascist Italy.
Yet there were Italian fascists who resisted scapegoating and dehumanization
even during World War II. Not far from the area where Austrian Prime Minister
Kurt Waldheim is accused of assisting in the transport of Jews to the death
camps, one Italian General, Mario Roatta, who had pledged equality of treatment
to civilians, refused to obey the German military order to round up Jews. Roatta
said such an activity was "incompatible with the honor of the Italian Army."
Franco's fascist movement in Spain claimed state power in 1936, although it
took three years, the assistance of the Italian fascists and help from the
secretly reconstituted German Air Force finally to crush those who fought for
democracy. Picasso's famous painting depicts the carnage wrought
in a Spanish village by the bombs dropped by the forerunner of the Luftwaffe which
all too soon would be working on an even larger canvas. Yet Franco's fascist
Spain never adopted the obsession with race and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories
that were hallmarks of Hitler's Nazi movement in Germany.
Other fascist movements in Europe were more explicitly racialist, promoting
the slogan still used today by some neo-Nazi movements: "Nation is Race." The
Nazi racialist version of fascism was developed by Adolph Hitler who with six
others formed the Nazi party during 1919 and 1920. Imprisoned after the unsuccessful
1923 Beer Hall putsch in Munich, Hitler dictated his opus, Mein Kampf to
his secretary, Rudolph Hess. ;
Mein Kampf (My Battle) sets out a plan for creating in Germany through
national socialism a racially pure Volkish state. To succeed, said Hitler, "Aryan" Germany
had to resist two forces: the external threat posed by the French with their
bloodlines "negrified" through "contamination by Negro blood," and the internal
threat posed by "the Marxist shock troops of international Jewish stock exchange
capital." Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg in January 1933
and by year's end had consolidated his power as a fascist dictator and begun
a campaign for racialist nationalism that eventually led to the Holocaust.
This obsession with a racialism not only afflicted the German Nazis, but also
several eastern European nationalist and fascist movements including those
in Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine.
Anti-Jewish bigotry was rampant in all of these racialist movements, as was
the idea of a link between Jewish financiers and Marxists. Even today the tiny
Anti-communist Confederation of Polish Freedom Fighters in the U.S.A. uses
the slogan "Communism is Jewish."
"Reactionary concepts plus revolutionary emotion result in Fascist
mentality."
--Wilhelm Reich
One element shared by all fascist movements, racialist or not, is the apparent
lack of consistent political principle behind the ideology--political opportunism
in the most basic sense. One virtually unique aspect of fascism is its ruthless
drive to attain and hold state power. On that road to power, fascists are willing
to abandon any principle to adopt an issue more in vogue and more likely to gain
converts.
Hitler, for his part, committed his act of abandonment bloodily and dramatically.
When the industrialist power brokers offered control of Germany to Hitler,
they knew he was supported by national socialist ideologues who held views
incompatible with their idea of profitable enterprise. Hitler solved the problem
in the "Night of the Long Knives," during which he had the leadership of the
national socialist wing of his constituency murdered in their sleep.
What distinguishes Nazism from generic fascism is its obsession with racial
theories of superiority, and some would say, its roots in the socialist theory
of proletarian revolution.
Fascism and Nazism as ideologies involve, to varying degrees, some of the
following hallmarks:
- Nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense of historic mission.
- Aggressive militarism even to the extent of glorifying war as good for
the national or individual spirit.
- Use of violence or threats of violence to impose views on others (fascism
and Nazism both employed street violence and state violence at different
moments in their development).
- Authoritarian reliance on a leader or elite not constitutionally responsible
to an electorate.
- Cult of personality around a charismatic leader.
- Reaction against the values of Modernism, usually with emotional attacks
against both liberalism and communism.
- Exhortations for the homogeneous masses of common folk (Volkish in German,
Populist in the U.S.) to join voluntarily in a heroic mission--often metaphysical
and romanticized in character.
- Dehumanization and scapegoating of the enemy--seeing the enemy as an inferior
or subhuman force, perhaps involved in a conspiracy that justifies eradicating
them.
- The self image of being a superior form of social organization beyond
socialism, capitalism and democracy.
- Elements of national socialist ideological roots, for example, ostensible
support for the industrial working class or farmers; but ultimately, the
forging of an alliance with an elite sector of society.
- Abandonment of any consistent ideology in a drive for state power.
It is vitally important to understand that fascism and Nazism are not biologically
or culturally determinant. Fascism does not attach to the gene structure of any
specific group or nationality. Nazism was not the ultimate expression of the
German people. Fascism did not end with World War II.
After Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, the geopolitical landscape of
Europe was once again drastically altered. In a few short months, some of our
former fascist enemies became our allies in the fight to stop the spread of
communism. The record of this transformation has been laid out in a series
of books. U.S. recruitment of the Nazi spy apparatus has been chronicled in
books ranging from The General was a Spy by Hohne & Zolling, to
the recent Blowback by Simpson. The laundering of Nazi scientists into
our space program is chronicled in The Paperclip Conspiracy by Bowers.
The global activities of, and ongoing fascist role within, the World Anti-Communist
League were described in Inside the League by Anderson and Anderson.
Bellant's bibliography cites many other examples of detailed and accurate reporting
of these disturbing realities.
But if so much is already known of this period, why does journalist and historian
George Seldes call the history of Europe between roughly 1920 and 1950 a "press
forgery"? Because most people are completely unfamiliar with this material,
and because so much of the popular historical record either ignores or contradicts
the facts of European nationalism, Nazi collaborationism, and our government's
reliance on these enemies of democracy to further our Cold War foreign policy
objectives.
This widely-accepted, albeit misleading, historical record has been shaped
by filtered media reports and self-serving academic revisionism rooted in an
ideological preference for those European nationalist forces which opposed
socialism and communism. Since sectors of those nationalist anti-communist
forces allied themselves with political fascism, but later became our allies
against communism, apologia for collaborationists became the rule, not
the exception.
Soon, as war memories dimmed and newspaper accounts of collaboration faded,
the fascists and their allies re-emerged cloaked in a new mantle of respectability.
Portrayed as anti-communist freedom fighters, their backgrounds blurred by
time and artful circumlocution, they stepped forward to continue their political
organizing with goals unchanged and slogans slightly repackaged to suit domestic
sensibilities.
To fight communism after World War II, our government forged a tactical alliance
with what was perceived to be the lesser of two evils--and as with many such
bargains, there has been a high price to pay.
"The great masses of people. . .will more easily fall victims to
a big lie than to a small one."
--Adolph Hitler
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