Summary §

3. Fascism and the State §

There are two types of fascism. Extreme Statism is the idea of an all powerful or totalitarian state. While Extreme Racism is believe their race or ethnicity is superior than other races.

3.1. The Totalitarian Ideal §

The totalitarian idea became popular during the Cold War era as the symbol of anti-communist view. Generic fascism is usually totalitarian in three aspects:

• The creation of a ‘fascist man’, loyal, dedicated, and obedient to the state.
• Leadership with unlimited authority.
• Monism: believing in a single value system as one source of truth.

Italy adopted this form of fascism but Nazi Germany came closer to realizing the totalitarian ideal in practice than the Mussolini regime did.

3.2. Corporatism §

Corporatism is to incorporate organized interests into the processes of government. It assumes that business and labor are bound together and can cooperate for national interests.

Corporatism was the alternative to both capitalism and socialism, taking elements from both sides.

• Capitalist’s Free Market: leading to unrestrained pursuit of profit.
• Socialist’s Central Planning: leading to class war.

There are two types of Corporatism:

3.2.1. Authoritarian Corporatism §

Authoritarian corporatism is an ideology and economic reform closely linked with the Fascist Italy that strengthen the government’s power.

• Ideology: an alternative to socialism with all class cooperating.
• Economic Reform: government’s direct political control over industry and organized labor.

3.2.2. Liberal Corporatism §

Liberal corporatism in nature is found in mature liberal democracies where companies are granted institutionalized access to policy formulation. It strengthen groups more than the government.

3.3. Modernization §

Mussolini and the Italian Fascists saw states as an agent of modernization. Although all other forms of fascism were backward-looking in highlighting the glories of the past, Italian fascism was forward-looking. Italian fascism uphold futurism, glorifying industrial life, factories, and machines while rejecting the past.

4. Fascism and Racism §

Not all fascists are racists and not all racists are fascists. Italian fascism was a voluntarist form of fascism where it could embrace people regardless of diversity. However, fascism had been built on racists ideas and emphasized militant nationalism, using the action of starting wars to achieve their goals.

4.1. The Politics of Race §

The main idea of racism is that political and social conclusions can be drawn from differences between races in the world. Although race cannot be decided or changed, it is used to reflect cultural stereotypes such as criminals, terrorists, or stupid.

Racists ideas has typically been associated with conservative nationalism, stating that a stable and successful society must be bound together by a common culture and shared value. Therefore, ‘non-whites’ were banned from entering European nations as it supposedly ‘threatens’ white cultures.

Religion also has associations with racism. In the 19th Century, the Christian peoples thought of themselves as ‘superior’ over the ‘heathens’ of Africa and Asia. The racist Ku Klux Klan also got the justification of their behavior from the bible.

Racism tries to back its claims through quasi-science such as the inescapable nature of people claimed by Nazi Germany.

4.2. Nazi Race Theories §

Anti-Semitism existed before Nazi Germany, stemming from the religious beliefs that Jews are evil because

• Jews were responsible for Jesus Christ’s death
• Jews were denying the divinity of Jesus by not converting to Christianity

In the 19th century, the Racial Theory based on pseudo-science was used for social and political issues. It defined Jews as a degraded race rather than a culture group.

The First Scientific Theory of Racism §

The first scientific theory of racism was developed by Joseph-Arthur Gobineau by ranking races into two groups:

• Aryans: are white people who are the most developed and creative.
• Jewish: are uncreative

He was pessimistic, saying that intermarriage had progressed so far that the glorious Aryans civilization had already been corrupted beyond repair.

Nazi Race Theory §

The Nazi race theory presented the Germans as the force of ‘good’ while the Jew as the force of ‘evil’ and divided the world’s races into three catagories:

• Aryans: were the master race, ‘the founder of cultures’, and are responsible for all the word’s creativtiy.
• Bearers of Culture: people, incapable of creativity, who use ideas and inventions by the Germans.
• Jews: the ‘destroyers of culture’ who conflicted against nobles and Aryans.

Genocide §

As the ‘master-race’ Nazis took on expansionism and war

• Germans were superior biologically, therefore they wanted world domination
• Germany cannot be secured as long as Jews exists, therefore 6 million Jews were persecuted and eventually killed.

4.3. Peasant Ideology §

Nazi Germany had a distinctively anti-modern philosophy, sees modern technology as decadent and corrupt.

They viewed the its own German people as:

• bound to have simple existences
• are to live close to the land

It impacted the German politics with the concept of Lebensraum, meaning only territorial expansion will enable Germans to have the proper peasant experience.

However, industrialization and urbanization had undermined the German spirit. After coming into power, Hitler started rapid industrialization, opposing the traditional Nazi peasant ideology.

• Nazism’s peasant ideology turned into rhetoric, only practice in meaning.
• Nazi Germany stayed on the peasant ideology, but Germans are shown modern technological weapons all the time.

5. Fascism in the Global Age §

Most would say that fascism all ended after World War two with the suicide of Hitler. However, After the Cold War, globalization strengthened right wing extremists to draw on fear of immigration weakening national identity.

• Yugoslavia: re-emerged with racial hatred and extreme nationalism with fascist type features
• Some form of religious fascism as ‘Islamo-fascism’

Currently, fascism does not exist on a major scale anymore:

• Far right anti-immigration groups have different roots and challenges
• Multiculturalism in Europe is so divers it’s impossible to create a pure national community
• traditional class division of fascism replaced with complex and pluralized post-industrial social formations
• Economic globalization made national borders less important and expansionism unlikely

There are still small modern fascism groups:

• underground illegal groups still have the same militant revolutionary fascist ideology of Hitler or Mussolini
• Larger parties says they were either never Fascists or to have broken off from fascist ideology
  • Neo-fascism: fascism broken from absolute leadership, totalitarianism, and overt racism

Reflection §

Further more, the chapter also taught us that fascism usually comes in the form of a totalitarian state. It creates the loyal fascist man, unlimited authority, and a single belief system. Italy fascists adopted this totalitarianism while also forward-looking by glorifying industrial life and new technology. Racists assumes that political and social conclusions can be drawn from differences between races in the world. Racism came to Nazi Germany in the form of Anti-Semitism, where Jews are degraded and murdered based on pseudo-scientific theories. This is what people in the current day remember fascism by, the extreme racism and the genocide of Jews.

Today, fascism does not exist in a large form anymore. Globalization had made the idea of a pure nation impossible. Many claims fascism is dead but some still exists in underground illegal groups. The extinction of fascism is a good thing, in my opinion. Totalitarianism and extreme racism can only lead to the suffering of people and gain for the state.