Fascism. A very short introduction by Kevin Passmore **
Reading dates: 16 March – 10 May 2025
This was a very strange book. It did not commit to anything, and certainly not to a definition of fascism. It takes the strange view that the only tendency worth calling fascism is the original one. But if that is so, how are we going to prevent Fascism and Nazism from happening again? Wouldn’t a few pointers be necessary to avoid this unwanted situation? Passmore is relatively good at outlining the relation between Fascism and Nazism. But the book continuously undoes itself: This happened, but we can not say so with certainty; maybe the opposite is also true.
The one I read is a second edition. It feels as so the first edition (which a DiaMat comrade read) had a definition of fascism that was perhaps criticised. So the second edition appears to back-pedal to remedy or address that. But it is so frustrating and pointless to read! Still, the discussion about fascism in our book group was very good, rich and a little heated.
This is the definition in the first edition, which I think is quite good and useful:
Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation. This is why fascism is a movement of the extreme right. Fascism is also a movement of the radical right because the defeat of socialism and feminism and the creation of the mobilized nation are held to depend upon the advent to power of a new elite acting in the name of the people, headed by a charismatic leader, and embodied in a mass, militarized party. Fascists are pushed towards conservatism by common hatred of socialism and feminism, but are prepared to override conservative interests – family, property, religion, the uni-versities, the civil service – where the interests of the nation are considered to require it. Fascist radicalism also derives from a desire to assuage discontent by accepting specific demands of the labour and women’s movements, so long as these demands accord with the national priority. Fascists seek to ensure the harmonization of workers’ and women’s interests with those of the nation by mobilizing them within special sections of the party and/or within a corporate system. Access to these organizations and to the benefits they confer upon members depends on the individual’s national, political, and/or racial characteristics. All aspects of fascist policy are suffused with ultranationalism.
1 ‘A and not A’: what is fascism?
only visible source of income was as editor of a struggling newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The Italian People), which was insufficient to maintain his wife and three children, his mistress, and his liking for fencing, duelling, and fast cars. Already a man who lived from politics, he was acquiring a taste for living in style from politics
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The Fascists rejected dogmas and ideologies.
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Fascism certainly did not lack ideology, but its nature was never certain.
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Nazism was as hard to define as Fascism and it included elements, such as radical antisemitism, that had featured much less strongly in Fascism
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the debate over fascism represents a continuation of the conflicts of the age of fascism itself
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The first influential definition was that of the Communist International in 1935, which stated that ‘Fascism in power is the open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic and most imperialistic elements of finance capitalism’.
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some historians have annexed the concept of ‘governmentality’. Developed by the great French philosopher-historian, Michel Foucault, governmentality is intended to capture the way that modern governments produce the sort of citizens that they require
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through ‘techniques of rule’ that could be witnessed in schools, workplaces, hospitals, welfare systems, courts, and so on
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Fascism was primarily an antimodern movement, resulting from the convergence of pre-industrial elites with the petty bourgeoisie and peasantry.
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Weberians also argue that the mass of the population becomes vulnerable to fascism when social change is particularly rapid, when traditional ways are eroded by ‘modernization’ or by war or economic crisis.
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fascism is ‘resistance to transcendence’
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Roger Griffin sees fascism is a form of ‘populist ultranationalism’ which aims to reconstruct the nation following a period of perceived crisis and decline—he uses the Victorian term ‘palingenetic’, meaning ‘rebirth from the ashes’, to characterize fascism. This attempted national resurrection amounts to a revolution, in that fascism compensates for the destruction of tradition through the promotion of a modernizing, utopian ideology.
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This political religion, with its rituals, canonical texts, and high priests, also aims to create a ‘new fascist man’, who lives only for fascism, not for their family or for capitalism. Fascism is therefore revolutionary.
2 Fascism before fascism?
The word ‘feminism’ was first used in France in 1872.
3 Italy: ‘making history with the fist’
the extreme violence they used against their enemies must be remembered in any discussion of the subsequent ‘consent’ of Italians to the new regime
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At the end of the year political opposition was banned, freedom of the press ceased, and election of local government ended.
4 Germany: the racial state
paramilitary terror against the left, deals with conservatives, and reassurances that parliamentary government was safe
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Nazis were more successful in ensuring that their dogma penetrated all spheres of society
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The workers’ leisure organization, the sinisterly named Strength Through Joy,
5 The diffusion of fascism
How many individuals, movements, and regimes we categorize as ‘fascist’ depends on definition. If we define fascism simply as a desire to manipulate the mass, or as dictatorship, then a great many would qualify.
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an absolute distinction between conservatism, parliamentary or dictatorial, and fascism. The former involves government by church, civil service, army, and perhaps monarchy, and it defends family and property. Fascism, in contrast, represents the advent of a new elite, drawn from the people, at the head of a mass party; it threatens the institutions that conservatives hold dear, and it has more in common with communism
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In Eastern Europe, as in the West, democracy often meant dictatorship of the majority, not toleration, and still less multiculturalism.
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fascism did best where it combined leverage in parliament with street action
6 Phoenix from the ashes?
fundamental rule of academic enquiry (and indeed of any fruitful exchange between people). To be useful, a proposition must be falsifiable—one must be able to imagine evidence that could in theory refute the statement
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They resent governments that are more inclined to tackle discrimination on grounds of gender, race, or sexual orientation than they are to deal with class inequality—doubtless governments ignore class inequality because it alone is intrinsic to capitalism.
8 Fascism, women, and gender
Fascism is quintessentially male.
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As Le Pen says, interference in the normal allocation of tasks between the genders could lead ‘men to take themselves for women, and women taking themselves for men’.
9 Fascism and class
The Nazis also retained much of Weimar’s welfare system and set up a ‘Strength Through Joy’ movement to regulate workers’ leisure.
10 Fascism and us
Fascism is a contradictory set of interrelated and contested ideologies and practices that cannot easily be categorized in terms of binary opposites such as tradition and modernity or radical and reactionary.
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Academic enquiry accepts that its insights depend on perspective, that other perspectives will be possible, and that their answers will always be superseded. This neccessary mutual criticism can only happen in a democratic environment.
