GOV3217
Modern Political Ideologies
Lecture 12
Fascism
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All course materials, including anything accessible
on Moodle, should not be circulated without the
instructor’s permission.
All materials are solely for academic purposes.
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1. Review of the previous lecture
2. The history of fascism
3. Core themes of fascism
4. Types of fascism
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As an ideology, populism is shaped by two key stances:
▪ adulation of ‘the people’
▪ outright condemnation of the elite or establishment.
The central image of populism is therefore of a society divided into two
homogeneous and antagonistic groups: the ‘pure’ people and the
‘corrupt’ elite.
From the populist perspective, the people – typically conceived
selectively as the ‘real people’ or the ‘true people’ – constitute the only
source of moral worth in politics, their wishes and instincts providing the
sole legitimate guide to political action. Populists thus embrace a monist
stance that is firmly opposed to pluralism, and puts it at odds with
liberalism in general and liberal democracy in particular (Heywood, 2021,
p. 169).
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Populist democracy
Populism has a complicated relationship with
democracy.
Populism has been portrayed as an essentially
democratic force, based on the claim that, in
common with democracy, populism endorses the
principles of popular sovereignty and majority rule.
Some, indeed, argue that populism operates as a
corrective to democracy, insofar as it gives a voice
to people or groups who feel that they are
marginalized or ignored within the existing
democratic process. Populists, therefore, commonly
proclaim that the established democratic system is
failing to live up to the democratic ideal.
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Populist democracy (cont’d)
But populism has also been projected as a threat to democracy and even
as “a pathological political phenomenon” (Heywood, 2021, p. 175).
Populism is at odds with all forms of representative democracy.
▪ Representative democracy (RD) entails that “the people” have different
interests, and hence they need to vote for different representatives.
▪ RD understands that there needs to be a division of labour: some politicians
will specialize in dealing with complex and time-consuming political affairs.
▪ RD implies that the will of the people is not easy to discover. It is a result of
careful and difficult parliamentary debates, in which different sides’ opinions
are being exposed to the public.
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Populist democracy (cont’d)
“It is, nevertheless, difficult to deny that there are deep
tensions between populism and the dominant, liberal or
representative model of democracy. This is because the
populist assertion that the instincts and wishes of the people
constitute the sole legitimate guide to political action
implies that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of
the popular will. In holding that liberal democracy is largely a
sham, populist thinking on this matter parallels the modern
elitist critique of democracy” (Heywood, 2021, p. 176).
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Populist democracy (cont’d)
According to Fareed Zakaria (1997), populist democracy has
four features (Heywood, 2021, pp. 176-177):
1. A system of regular elections that are sufficiently free and fair to contribute,
albeit within limits, to the maintenance of legitimacy.
2. The political process is typically characterized by personalized leadership, a
strong state, weak opposition, and emaciated checks and balances.
3. Political and civil rights are selectively suppressed, especially in relation to
the media, although no attempt is made to control every aspect of human
life.
4. A disposition towards majoritarianism is reflected in a general intolerance of
pluralism and, maybe, hostility towards ethnic, cultural or religious
minorities.
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The ideological complexion of right-wing populism is
reflected in a fusion between key features of generic
populism – such as anti-elitism, monism and moralism – and
the socially conservative belief that, being composed of a
fragile network of relationships, society urgently needs to be
bolstered or upheld.
Left-wing populists typically conceive the people, not in
ethnic terms, but in class terms. One of the implications of
this is that left-wing populists tend to prioritize socio-
economic concerns such as poverty, inequality and job
security, over socio-cultural concerns (Heywood, 2021)
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Comparing right-wing and left-wing populism… (Heywood, 2021, p. 182)
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Populism and its critics
Muller (2016) has raised a number of critiques
against populism.
Ontological critique: can “the people” be easily
conceptualized?
Anti-pluralism: Pluralism is the defining feature
of modern societies. Can populism handle it?
Anti-deliberation: if “the people’s” interests
could be easily understood, what is the need for
deliberation?
Anti-democratic: civil and political rights are
generally undermined, but those are the core
foundations of liberal constitutional democracy.
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Conclusion
How do populists understand the idea of the
people?
What are the relationships between populism and
democracy?
What are the populist critiques of liberal
understanding of politics?
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The term ‘fascism’ derives from the
Italian word fasces, meaning a bundle
of rods with an axe-blade protruding
that signified the authority of
magistrates in Imperial Rome.
By the 1890s, the word fascia was being
used in Italy to refer to a political group
or band, usually of revolutionary
socialists (Heywood, 2021, p. 148).
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The term “fascism” (fascismo) only
gained clear ideological meaning until
Mussolini (1883-1945), who was the
Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to
1943, employed the term to describe
the paramilitary armed squads he
formed during and after WWI.
The March on Rome (1922) in Italy was
the event through which Mussolini’s
fascist party ascended to power.
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A core defining feature of fascism is a rejection of “liberal
modernity”.
Liberal modernity refers to the “horizon”, which means the
way how individuals understand themselves since the
Enlightenment.
Liberal modernity stresses that individuals come first, and
they have certain inalienable rights.
Two passages showing several core features of liberal
modernity.
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In Modern Social Imaginaries, Charles Taylor (2004, pp. 3-4)
suggests that:
“Starting in the seventeenth century … [t]he picture of society is
that of individuals who come together to form a political entity
against a certain preexisting moral background and with certain
ends in view. The moral background is one of natural rights; these
people already have certain moral obligations toward each other.
The ends sought are certain common benefits, of which security
is the most important.
The underlying idea of moral order stresses the rights and
obligations we have as individuals in regard to each other, even
prior to or outside of the political bond. Political obligations are
seen as an extension or application of these more fundamental
moral ties. Political authority itself is legitimate only because it
was consented to by individuals (the original contract),
and this contract creates binding obligations in virtue of the
preexisting principle that promises ought to be kept.”
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In A Theory of Justice (1999, p.3), John Rawls claims
that:
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as
truth is of systems of thought. A theory however
elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if
it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter
how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or
abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses
an inviolability founded on justice that even the
welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this
reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for
some is made right by a greater good shared by
others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed
on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of
advantages enjoyed by many.”
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Under fascism, the individual is nothing. Individual identity must be
entirely absorbed into the community or social group.
The fascist ideal is that of the ‘new man’, a hero, motivated by duty,
honour and self-sacrifice, prepared to dedicate his life to the glory of his
nation or race (Heywood, 2021, p. 148). (e.g., Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea
of the “übermensch”)
In many ways, fascism constitutes a revolt against the ideas and values
that dominated Western political thought from the French Revolution
onwards; in the words of the Italian fascists’ slogan: ‘1789 is Dead’. Values
such as rationalism, progress, freedom and equality were thus
overturned in the name of struggle, leadership, power, heroism and war
(ibid).
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Although the major ideas and doctrines of fascism can be traced back to the
nineteenth century, they were fused together and shaped by World War I and its
aftermath, in particular by a potent mixture of war and revolution.
Fascism emerged most dramatically in Italy and Germany. In Italy, a Fascist Party
was formed in 1919, its leader, Benito Mussolini, was appointed prime minister in
1922 against the backdrop of the March on Rome, and by 1926 a one-party
fascist state had been established. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party,
known as the Nazis, was also formed in 1919 and, under the leadership of Adolf
Hitler, it consciously adopted the style of Mussolini’s Fascists. Hitler was
appointed German chancellor in 1933 and in little over a year had turned
Germany into a Nazi dictatorship.
During the same period, democracy collapsed or was overthrown in much of
Europe, often being supplanted by right-wing, authoritarian or openly fascist
regimes, especially in Eastern Europe. Regimes that bear some relationship to
fascism have also developed outside Europe, notably in the 1930s in Imperial
Japan and in Argentina under Juan Domingo Perón (Heywood, 2021, p. 149).
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There are many debates surrounding whether fascism is a
coherent political ideology.
“Perhaps the best we can hope to do is to identify a
collection of themes that, when taken together, constitute
fascism’s structural core” (Heywood, 2021, p. 150). These
include:
1. Anti-rationalism
2. The concept of struggle
3. Natural elitism
4. Ultranationalism
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Anti-rationalism
Anti-rationalism and the growth of counter-
Enlightenment in the pre-/post-WWI context.
The Enlightenment, based on the ideas of universal
reason, natural goodness and inevitable progress, was
committed to liberating humankind from the darkness
of irrationalism and superstition. In the late nineteenth
century, however, thinkers had started to highlight the
limits of human reason and draw attention to other,
perhaps more powerful, drives and impulses.
Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that human beings are
motivated by powerful emotions, their ‘will’ rather
than the rational mind, and in particular by what he
called the ‘will to power’ (Heywood, 2021, p. 152).
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Anti-rationalism (cont’d)
Although anti-rationalism does not necessarily have a right-wing or proto-fascist
character, fascism gave political expression to the most radical and extreme
forms of counter-Enlightenment thinking. Anti-rationalism has influenced
fascism in a number of ways.
Anti-intellectualism: despise abstract thinking and revere action. (e.g.,
Mussolini’s slogans – “Action not Talk”). Intellectual life was devalued and
despised.
Destructive character: clear about what they oppose but not what they support
(e.g., “undoing” modernity and Enlightenment).
Nihilism: by abandoning the standard of universal reason, fascism has placed its
faith entirely in history, culture and the idea of organic community.
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Struggle
The ideas that the UK biologist Charles Darwin
(1809–82) developed in On the Origin of Species
([1859] 1972), popularly known as the theory of
‘natural selection’ (the survival of the fittest), had
a profound effect not only on the natural sciences,
but also, by the end of the nineteenth century, on
social and political thought.
The notion that human existence is based on
biologically impelled competition or struggle was
particularly attractive in the period of intensifying
international rivalry that eventually led to war in
1914 (Social Darwinism).
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Struggle (cont’d)
Social Darwinism had considerable impacts on facisms.
Fascism regards struggle as the natural and inevitable condition of both social
and international life. Accordingly, only competition and conflict guarantee
human progress and ensure that the fittest and strongest will prosper. (e.g.,
Hitler in 1944: “Victory is to the strong and the weak must go to the wall”)
(Heywood, 2021, p. 153).
Eugenics resulting from Social Darwinism. Eugenics refers to the theory or
practice of selective breeding, achieved either by promoting procreation among
‘fit’ members of a species or by preventing procreation by the ‘unfit’.
Fascism’s conception of life as an “unending struggle” → restless and
expansionist character (ibid).
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Natural elitism
Fascism rejects equality as understood in liberal modernity. It embraces elitism
and patriarchy. For fascism, elitism is natural and desirable.
Fascism holds that “[h]uman beings are born with radically different abilities and
attributes, a fact that emerges as those with the rare quality of leadership rise,
through struggle, above those capable only of following” (Heywood, 2021, p.
154).
Such a pessimistic view of the capabilities of ordinary people puts fascism starkly
at odds with the ideas of liberal democracy.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch, the ‘over-man’ or ‘superman’, a
supremely gifted or powerful individual. Most fully developed in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra ([1884] 1961), Nietzsche portrayed the ‘superman’ as an individual
who rises above the ‘herd instinct’ of conventional morality and lives according to
his own will and desires (ibid).
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Ultranationalism
Fascism embraced an extreme version of chauvinistic and
expansionist nationalism.
This tradition regarded nations not as equal and
interdependent entities, but as rivals in a struggle for
dominance.
Fascist nationalism did not preach respect for distinctive
cultures or national traditions, but asserted the superiority of
one nation over all others (e.g., Aryanism of Nazi Germany)
(Heywood, 2021, p. 157).
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“Italian fascism …was based primarily on the supremacy of the fascist state over the
individual, and on submission to the will of Mussolini. It was therefore a voluntaristic form of
fascism, in that, at least in theory, it could embrace all people regardless of race, colour or,
indeed, country of birth. When Mussolini passed anti-Semitic laws after 1937, he did so largely
to placate Hitler and the Germans, rather than for any ideological purpose. Nevertheless,
fascism has often coincided with, and bred from, racist ideas. Indeed, some argue that its
emphasis on militant nationalism means that all forms of fascism are either hospitable to
racism or harbour implicit or explicit racist doctrines (Griffin, 1993). Nowhere has this link
between race and fascism been so evident as in Nazi Germany, where official ideology at
times amounted to little more than hysterical, pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism” (ibid, p. 161).
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What is fascism?
What was the influence of Social Darwinism
on the emergence of fascist thoughts?
In what way is fascism a reaction against
liberal modernity?
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