The name ‘Fascism’ derives from the fasces of ancient Rome: a bundle of rods and an axe tied together and carried by the Lictors before Roman magistrates as a symbol of their authority. But as a word ‘Fascism’ tells us little or nothing about the political creed or creeds which bore its name in the middle years of the twentieth century. It is also a word surrounded by ambiguity. For example, was German National Socialism the same as Fascism and vice versa? (Hitler, after all, never called himself a Fascist.) What did the Spanish Falange or Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists have in common with Mussolini’s blackshirts? Was there such a thing as ‘clerico-fascism’ in Austria and Portugal? Where do the Romanian Iron Guard fit into all this? The questions surrounding the nature of Fascism are many and controversial. Yet some meaningful conclusions can be drawn concerning such things as the Fascist concept of the state, the importance of myth, ritual and ‘civic religion’, the cult of the leader, their concepts of the sort of society they wanted to create after their enemies had been defeated and, linked to those concepts, the forming of the ‘new Fascist man’ – homo fascistus.
This course will concentrate on discussing those characteristics common to most overtly Fascist or National Socialist movements in Europe between 1919 and 1945. It is not intended to provide a narrative of European history between those dates, rather it is intended to use the historical narrative to illustrate the process of interpretation. We will look at the origins of Fascism in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War and attempt an overview of the essential characteristics of the principle movements. From there we will look at how Fascism manifested itself through ‘political theatre’ and explore the concept of ‘civic religion’ and its importance to our understanding of the inner dynamic of these movements. This will provide the background to a consideration of the extent to which the German SS came closest to the ideal of the Fascist ‘new man’. Finally, we will close with a discussion of the state of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi movements in Europe since 1945 and the legacies which Fascism may have bequeathed to the modern world.
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