|
NEW YORK – In 2015, “fascism” once
again became the highest-octane
political epithet in general use. Of
course, the temptation to apply the
fascism label is almost overwhelming
when we confront language and
behavior that superficially
resembles that of Hitler and
Mussolini. At the moment, it is
being widely applied to cases as
disparate as Donald Trump, the Tea
Party, the National Front in France,
and radical Islamist assassins. But,
though the temptation to call such
actors “fascist” is understandable,
it should be resisted.
At its creation in the 1920s (first
in Italy and then in Germany),
fascism was a violent reaction
against a perceived excess of
individualism. Italy was scorned and
Germany was defeated in World War I,
Mussolini and Hitler claimed,
because democracy and individualism
had sapped them of national unity
and will.
So the two leaders put their
followers into uniforms and tried to
regiment their thoughts and actions.
Once in power, they tried to extend
dictatorship to every corner of
life. Even sports, under Mussolini,
were to be organized and supervised
by the state agency called il
Dopolavoro.
The fascists set themselves up (and
acquired elite support) as the only
effective barrier to the other
political movement that surged
following World War I: Communism. To
international socialism the fascists
opposed a national socialism, and
while they crushed socialist parties
and abolished independent labor
unions, they never for a moment
questioned the state’s obligation to
maintain social welfare (except for
internal enemies such as Jews, of
course).
The movement that calls itself the
Islamic State may seem to fit this
template rather well. Its followers’
wills and personal identities are
subordinated to the movement, all
the way to the ultimate
self-abnegation: suicide. But there
are fundamental differences as well.
The Islamic State is less a state
than a would-be caliphate, devoted
to the supremacy of a religion in a
way that cuts across and even
threatens existing nation-states.
Central authority remains
inconspicuous, and policy and
operational initiative is dispersed
to local cells, without the need for
a geographic core.
The fascists were nationalists,
rooted in nation-states and devoted
to the strengthening and
aggrandizement of those states. The
fascist leaders and regimes did
their best to subordinate religion
to state purposes. At most, we might
identify in the Islamic State a
sub-species of religious
totalitarianism; but it is
fundamentally distinct from
classical fascism’s centralized
secular dictatorships and glamorized
leaders.
The Tea Party is at the farthest
remove from fascism’s
state-enhancing nature. With its
opposition to all forms of public
authority and its furious rejection
of any obligation to others, it is
better called right-wing anarchism.
It is individualism run amok, a
denial of any community obligations,
the very opposite of a fascist
appeal to the supremacy of communal
obligations over individual
autonomy.
The National Front, of course, had
its roots in Vichy France, and its
founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, long
expressed contempt for the French
republican tradition. But its
emerging success nowadays under Le
Pen’s daughter, Marine, is at least
partly due to the party’s effort to
distance itself from its
street-fighting, Holocaust-denying
past.
Donald Trump is a special case
altogether. Superficially, he seems
to have borrowed a number of fascist
themes for his presidential
campaign: xenophobia, racial
prejudice, fear of national weakness
and decline, aggressiveness in
foreign policy, a readiness to
suspend the rule of law to deal with
supposed emergencies. His hectoring
tone, mastery of crowds, and the
skill with which he uses the latest
communications technologies also are
reminiscent of Mussolini and Hitler.
And yet these qualities are at most
derivative of fascist themes and
styles; the underlying ideological
substance is very different, with
the entitlements of wealth playing a
greater role than fascist regimes
generally tolerated. Trump’s embrace
of these themes and styles is most
likely a matter of tactical
expediency – a decision taken with
little or no thought about their
ugly history. Trump is evidently
altogether insensitive to the echoes
his words and oratorical style
evoke, which should not be
surprising, given his apparent
insensitivity to the impact of every
other insult that he hurls.
It is too bad that we have so far
been unable to furnish another label
with the toxic power of fascism for
these abhorrent people and
movements. We will have to make do
with more ordinary words: religious
fanaticism for the Islamic State,
reactionary anarchism for the Tea
Party, and self-indulgent
demagoguery on behalf of oligarchy
for Donald Trump. There are fringe
movements today, such as Aryan
Nations in the United States and
Golden Dawn in Greece, that draw
openly upon Nazi symbolism and
employ physical violence. The term
“fascist” is better left to them. |
