Fascism, by Wikipedia

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Fascism, by Wikipedia

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Part 1 of 3

FASCISM
by Wikipedia

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February 13, 2015

For the original version of the ideology developed in Italy, see Italian Fascism. For the book edited by Roger Griffin, see Fascism (book).

Fascism (/fæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism[1][2] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. Influenced by national syndicalism, fascism originated in Italy during World War I, combining more typically right-wing positions with elements of left-wing politics,[3] in opposition to liberalism, Marxism, and traditional conservatism. Although fascism is often placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum, several academics have said that the description is inadequate.[4][5]

Fascists have identified World War I as having been a revolution that brought revolutionary changes in the nature of war, society, the state, and technology, as the advent of total war and total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant whereby a "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved to the military in some manner during the war.[6][7] The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines or provide economic production and logistics to support those on the front lines, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[6][7] Fascists view World War I as having made liberal democracy obsolete and regard total mobilization of society led by a totalitarian single-party state as necessary for a nation to be prepared for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties, such a totalitarian state is led by a strong leader as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[8] Fascism rejects assertions of violence automatically being negative in nature and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[9][10][11][12]

Fascism borrowed theories and terminology from socialism but replaced socialism's focus on class conflict with a focus on conflict between nations and races.[13] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky to secure national self-sufficiency and independence through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[14] Following World War II, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The terms neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideological similarities to, or roots in, 20th century fascist movements. [15]

Etymology

The Italian term fascismo derives from fascio meaning a bundle of hay, ultimately from the Latin word fasces.[16] This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates and at first applied mainly to organisations on the Left. Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan in 1919 which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) in 1921. The Fascists came to associate the name with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio,[17] which consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around an axe,[18] an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate[19] carried by his lictors which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command.[20][21]

The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[22] Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements: for example the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke.[23]

Definitions

Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism.[24] Each form of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow.[25][26]

One common definition of fascism focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership.[27][28][29] According to many scholars, fascism — especially once in power — has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far right.[30]

Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism".[31] Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence".[32] Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.[33]

Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."[34]

Position in the political spectrum

Fascism is commonly described as far right on the political spectrum,[35][36] although some writers have found placing fascism on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult.[37][38][39][40][41]

Fascism was influenced by both left and right, conservative and anti-conservative, national and supranational, rational and anti-rational.[39] A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things.[40][41] Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views.

Fascism is considered by certain scholars to be right-wing because of its social conservatism and authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.[42][43] Roderick Stackelberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the right, explaining that "the more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be."[44]

Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.[45][46] A major element of fascism that has been deemed as clearly far right is its goal to promote the right of claimed superior people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior elements.[47]

Benito Mussolini in 1919 described fascism as a movement that would strike "against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left".[48][49] Later the Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism, stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century."[50][51] Mussolini stated that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue to fascists: "Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words."[52]

Ten Steps to Creating Evil Traps for Good People

Let's outline some of the procedures in this research paradigm that seduced many ordinary citizens to engage in this apparently harmful behavior. In doing so, I want to draw parallels to compliance strategies used by "influence professionals" in real-world settings, such as salespeople, cult recruiters, and our national leaders (see Cialdini, 2001).

Among the influence principles to be extracted from Milgram’s paradigm for getting ordinary people to do things they originally believe they would not are the following ten:

1) Offering an Ideology so that a big lie provides justification for any means to be used to achieve the seemingly desirable, essential goal. Presenting an acceptable justification, or rationale, for engaging in the undesirable action, such as wanting to help people improve their memory by judicious use of punishment strategies. In experiments it is known as the “cover story” because it is a cover-up for the procedures that follow which might not make sense on their own. The real world equivalent is known as an “ideology.” Most nations rely on the same ideology of “threats to national security” before going to war or suppressing dissident political opposition. It is a convenient familiar ideological theme that fascist governments and military juntas have used to destroy socialist or communist opposition. When citizens fear that their national security is being threatened they are willing to surrender their basic freedoms when the government offers them that exchange. In the United States, the fear of the threat to national security posed by terrorists has led too many citizens to accept torture of prisoners as a necessary tactic for securing information that could prevent further attacks. That reasoning contributed to the background of the abuses by the American guards at Abu Ghraib prison. See the provocative analysis by Susan Fiske and her colleagues on why ordinary people torture enemy prisoners (Fiske, Harris, & Cuddy, 2004).

The fact that the prisoners were part of a group encountered as enemies would only exaggerate the tendency to feel spontaneous prejudice against outgroups. In this context, oppression and discrimination are synonymous. One of the most basic principles of social psychology is that people prefer their own group (8) and attribute bad behavior to outgroups (9). Prejudice especially festers if people see the outgroup as threatening cherished values (10–12). This would have certainly applied to the guards viewing their prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but it also applies in more “normal” situations. A recent sample of U.S. citizens on average viewed Muslims and Arabs as not sharing their interests and stereotyped them as not especially sincere, honest, friendly, or warm (13–15).

Even more potent predictors of discrimination are the emotional prejudices (“hot” affective feelings such as disgust or contempt) that operate in parallel with cognitive processes (16–18). Such emotional reactions appear rapidly, even in neuroimaging of brain activations to outgroups (19, 20). But even they can be affected by social context. Categorization of people as interchangeable members of an outgroup promotes an amygdala response characteristic of vigilance and alarm and an insula response characteristic of disgust or arousal, depending on social context; these effects dissipate when the same people are encountered as unique individuals (21, 22).

According to our survey data (13, 14), the contemptible, disgusting kind of outgroup— low-status opponents—elicits a mix of active and passive harm: attacking and fighting, as well as excluding and demeaning. This certainly describes the Abu Ghraib abuse of captured enemies. It also fits our national sample of Americans (14) who reported that allegedly contemptible outgroups such as homeless people, welfare recipients, Turks, and Arabs often are attacked or excluded (14).

Given an environment conducive to aggression and prisoners deemed disgusting and subhuman (23), well-established principles of conformity to peers (24, 25) and obedience to authority (26) may account for the widespread nature of the abuse.

-- Why Ordinary People Torture Enemy Prisoners, by Susan T. Fiske, Lasana T. Harris, Amy J.C. Cuddy


2) Arranging some form of contractual obligation, verbal or written, to enact the behavior.

3) Giving participants meaningful roles to play (teacher, student) that carry with them previously learned positive values and response scripts.

4) Presenting basic rules to be followed, that seem to make sense prior to their actual use, but then can be arbitrarily used to justify mindless compliance. Make the rules vague and change them as necessary.

5) Altering the semantics of the act, the actor, and the action, (from hurting victims to helping learners by punishing them)—replace reality with desirable rhetoric.

6) Creating opportunities for diffusion of responsibility for negative outcomes; others will be responsible, or it won’t be evident that the actor will be held liable.

7) Starting the path toward the ultimate evil act with a small, insignificant first step (only 15 volts).

8) Having successively increasing steps on the pathway be gradual, so that they are hardly noticed as being different from one’s most recent prior action. (By increasing each level of aggression in gradual steps of only 30 volts, no new level of harm seemed like a noticeable difference to the Milgram participants.)

9) Changing the nature of the influence authority from initially “Just” and reasonable to “Unjust” and demanding, even irrational, elicits initial compliance and later confusion, but continued obedience.

10) Making the "exit costs" high, and making the process of exiting difficult by allowing usual forms of verbal dissent (that make people feel good about themselves), while insisting on behavioral compliance (“I know you are not that kind of person, just keep doing as I tell you.”)

Such procedures are utilized across varied influence situations where those in authority want others to do their bidding, but know that few would engage in the "end game" final solution without first being properly prepared psychologically to do the "unthinkable."

-- The Psychology of Power and Evil: All Power to the Person? To the Situation? To the System?, by Philip G. Zimbardo


The accommodation of the political right into the Italian Fascist movement in the early 1920s led to the creation of internal factions. The "Fascist left" included Michele Bianchi, Giuseppe Bottai, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Sergio Panunzio and Edmondo Rossoni, who were committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance the interests of workers and the common people.[53] The "Fascist right" included members of the paramilitary Squadristi and former members of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI).[53] The Squadristi wanted to establish Fascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought an authoritarian corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy, while retaining the existing elites.[53] Upon accommodating the political right, there arose a group of monarchist Fascists who sought to use Fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.[53]

After King Victor Emmanuel III forced Mussolini to resign as head of government and placed him under arrest in 1943, Mussolini was rescued by German forces. While continuing to rely on Germany for support, Mussolini and the remaining loyal Fascists founded the Italian Social Republic with Mussolini as head of state. Mussolini sought to re-radicalize Italian Fascism, declaring that the Fascist state had been overthrown because Italian Fascism had been subverted by Italian conservatives and the bourgeoisie.[54] Then the new Fascist government proposed the creation of workers' councils and profit-sharing in industry, although the German authorities, who effectively controlled northern Italy at this point, ignored these measures and did not seek to enforce them.[54]

A number of post-WWII fascist movements described themselves as a "third position" outside the traditional political spectrum.[55]

Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "basically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile".[56]

Fascist as an insult

Following the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word,[57] often referring to widely varying movements across the political spectrum.[58] George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".[58] Richard Griffiths said in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[26] "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-war organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".[59]

Contrary to the popular use of the term, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an insult. Marxist interpretations of the term have, for example, been applied in relation to Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh.[60] Herbert Matthews, of the New York Times asked "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?"[61] J. Edgar Hoover wrote extensively of "Red Fascism".[62] Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split, and likewise, the Soviets used the term to identify Chinese Marxists[63] and social democracy (coining a new term of social fascism).

History

Fin de siècle era and the fusion of Maurrasism with Sorelianism (1880–1914)

The ideological roots of fascism have been traced back to the 1880s, and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time.[64][65] The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and democracy.[66] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism.[67] The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.[66] The fin-de-siècle intellectual school considered the individual to be only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of individuals.[66] They condemned the rationalistic individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.[66]

In our civilization the chasm that stretches between mind and heart yawns deep and wide and, as the mind flies on from discovery to discovery in the realms of science, the gulf becomes ever deeper and wider and the heart is left further and further behind. The mind loudly demands and will be satisfied with nothing less than a materially demonstrable explanation of man and his fellow-creatures that make up the phenomenal world. The heart feels instinctively that there is something greater, and it yearns for that which it feels is a higher truth than can be grasped by the mind alone. The human soul would fain soar upon ethereal pinions of intuition; would fain lave in the eternal fount of spiritual light and love; but modern scientific views have shorn its wings and it sits fettered and mute, unsatisfied longings gnawing at its tendrils as the vulture of Prometheus' liver.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel


The fin-de-siècle outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments, including Darwinian biology; Wagnerian aesthetics; Arthur de Gobineau's racialism; Gustave Le Bon's psychology; and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henri Bergson.[68] Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest.[68] Social Darwinism challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment.[68] Social Darwinism's emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for nationalism.[69] New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice, and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason.[68] Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy and modern collectivism; his concept of the übermensch; and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the fin-de-siècle generation.[70] Bergson's claim of the existence of an "élan vital" or vital instinct centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.[71]

Gaetano Mosca in his work The Ruling Class (1896) developed the theory that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" will dominate and rule over the "disorganized majority".[72][73] Mosca claims that there are only two classes in society, "the governing" (the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized majority).[74] He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority makes it irresistible to any individual of the disorganized majority.[74]

The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's concept of propaganda of the deed, which stressed the importance of direct action as the primary means of politics, including revolutionary violence, became popular amongst fascists who admired the concept and adopted it as a part of fascism.[75]

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Georges Sorel

French nationalist and reactionary monarchist Charles Maurras influenced fascism.[76] Maurras promoted what he called integral nationalism, which called for the organic unity of a nation, Maurras insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal collective subject.[76] He claimed that a powerful monarch was a personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's people.[76] Maurras' integral nationalism was idealized by fascists, but modified into a modernized revolutionary form that was devoid of Maurras' monarchism.[76]

French revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel promoted the legitimacy of political violence in his work Reflections on Violence (1908) and other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a general strike.[77] In Reflections on Violence, Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion.[78] Also, in his work The Illusions of Progress, Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy".[79] By 1909 after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French patriotism with their views – advocating anti-republican Christian French patriots as ideal revolutionaries.[80] Initially Sorel had officially been a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of Benedetto Croce that "socialism is dead" because of the "decomposition of Marxism".[81] Sorel became a supporter of reactionary Maurrassian nationalism beginning in 1909 that influenced his works.[81] Maurras held interest in merging his nationalist ideals with Sorelian syndicalism as a means to confront democracy.[82] Maurras stated "a socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a beautiful hand".[83]

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Enrico Corradini

The fusion of Maurassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[84] Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.[84] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "plutocratic" French and British.[85] Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".[85] The ANI held ties and influence among conservatives, Catholics, and the business community.[85] Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism, and pacifism, and the promotion of heroism, vitalism, and violence.[86] The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong state and imperialism, claiming that humans are naturally predatory and that nations were in a constant struggle, in which only the strongest could survive.[87]

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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian modernist author of the Futurist Manifesto (1909) and later the co-author of the Fascist Manifesto (1919)

Futurism that was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who founded the Futurist Manifesto (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive".[88]

Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.[89] Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men, saying that in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books, and he advocated segregation of the genders on this matter, in that womanly sensibility must not enter men's education whom Marinetti claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic".[90]

World War I and aftermath (1914–1929)

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Benito Mussolini in 1917, as a soldier in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria that he led. Mussolini promoted the Italian intervention in the war as a revolutionary nationalist action to liberate Italian-claimed lands from Austria-Hungary.

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war on the grounds of internationalism, but a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported intervention against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes needed to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism.[91] Corradini presented the same need for Italy as a "proletarian nation" to defeat a reactionary Germany from a nationalist perspective.[92] The origins of Italian Fascism resulted from this split, first with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti forming a pro-interventionist fasci called the Fasci of International Action in October 1914.[91] Benito Mussolini upon being expelled from his position as chief editor of the PSI's newspaper Avanti! for his pro-Entente stance, joined the interventionist cause in a separate fasci.[93] The term "Fascism" was first used in 1915 by members of Mussolini's movement, the Fasci of Revolutionary Action.[94]

Mussolini accused conventional socialists of being dogmatic and in December 1914 criticized the PSI for their association with Marxism that Mussolini declared had become obsolete.[95] Mussolini made a list of socialist figures ranging from the most admirable socialist figures, like Mazzini, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Charles Fourier, and Henri de Saint-Simon; while placing the least admirable socialists at the bottom, including Karl Marx.[95] The first meeting of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held on 24 January 1915.[96] At the meeting Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems – including national borders – of Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended".[96] Amidst discussion on the question of irredentism, Mussolini noted from the proceedings of the members that "the difficult question of irredentism was posed and resolved in the ambit of ideals of socialism and liberty which do not however exclude the safeguarding of a positive national interest".[96] Its attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and it was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.[97] Antagonism between interventionists, including Fascists, and anti-interventionist socialists resulted in violence.[98]

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German soldiers being cheered in Lubeck during their advance to the front lines in 1914 during World War I. The concept of the "Spirit of 1914" by Johann Plenge identified the outbreak of war as forging national solidarity of Germans.

Similar political ideas arose in Germany after the outbreak of the war. German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).[99] According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism[/url]were being rejected in favor of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law, and order.[99] Plenge believed that racial solidarity (volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.[99] He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".[100] This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.[100] This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism because of the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.[100] Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.[101]

Fascists viewed World War I as bringing revolutionary changes in the nature of war, society, the state, and technology, as the advent of total war and mass mobilization had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant, as civilians had become a critical part in economic production for the war effort, and thus arose a "military citizenship" in which all citizens were involved to the military in some manner during the war.[6][7] World War I had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines or provide economic production and logistics to support those on the front lines, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[6][7] Fascists viewed technological developments of weaponry and the state's total mobilization of its population in the war as symbolizing the beginning of a new era fusing state power with mass politics, technology, and particularly the mobilizing myth that they contended had triumphed over the myth of progress and the era of liberalism.[6]

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Members of Italy's Arditi corps in 1918 holding daggers, a symbol of their group. The Arditi were founded in 1917 as groups of soldiers trained for: dangerous missions, refusal to surrender, and to be willing to fight to the death. The Arditi's black uniform and use of the fez, were adopted by the Italian Fascist movement in homage to the Arditi.

A major event that greatly influenced the development of fascism was the October Revolution of 1917, in which Bolshevik communists led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia.[102] In 1917, Mussolini, as leader of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action, praised the October Revolution, but later he became unimpressed with Lenin, regarding him as merely a new version of Tsar Nicholas.[103] After World War I fascists have commonly campaigned on anti-Marxist agendas.[102] Bolshevism and fascism both advocated a revolutionary ideology, believed in the necessity of a vanguard elite, had disdain for bourgeois values, and had totalitarian ambitions.[102] In practice, fascism and Bolshevism have commonly emphasized revolutionary action, proletarian nation theories, single-party states, and party-armies.[102]

"Despite the fact that Stalin deliberately helped bring Hitler and the Nazis to power, despite the Nazi-Communist alliance of 1939-41 under the Hitler-Stalin Pact, despite Mussolini's close ties to Moscow, despite the deep affinity between Nazi-fascists and communists demonstrated repeatedly in many countries by mass exchanges of membership between political organizations of the two persuasions, the average American still sees communism and Nazism-fascism as polar opposites.

--Project Democracy's Program -- The Fascist Corporate State, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro-interventionist Fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The Fascists presented themselves as anti-Marxists and as opposed to the Marxists.[104] Benito Mussolini consolidated control over the Fascist movement in 1919 with the founding of the Fasci italiani di combattimento, whose opposition to socialism he declared:

We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism. Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program, and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative. If its views had prevailed, our survival in the world of today would be impossible.[105]


In 1919, Alceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti created The Manifesto of the Italian Fasci of Combat (a.k.a. the Fascist Manifesto).[106] The Manifesto was presented on June 6, 1919 in the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded[107]); proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate.[108] The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of their profits.[109] It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive.[110]

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Residents of Fiume cheer the arrival of Gabriele d'Annunzio and his blackshirt-wearing nationalist raiders. D'Annunzio and Fascist Alceste De Ambris developed the quasi-fascist Italian Regency of Carnaro, a city-state in Fiume, from 1919 to 1920. D'Annunzio's actions in Fiume inspired the Italian Fascist movement.

The next events that influenced the Fascists in Italy was the raid of Fiume by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio and the founding of the Charter of Carnaro in 1920.[111] D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed the Charter, which advocated national-syndicalist corporatist productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views.[112] Many Fascists saw the Charter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a Fascist Italy.[113] This behaviour of aggression towards Yugoslavia and South Slavs was pursued by Italian Fascists with their persecution of South Slavs – especially Slovenes and Croats.

In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy; 1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Years".[114] Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.[115]

Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I.[113] The Fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness and believed in the rule of elites.[116] The Fascists assisted the anti-socialist campaign by allying with the other parties and the conservative right in a mutual effort to destroy the Italian Socialist Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above national identity.[116]

Fascism sought to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda;– abandoning its previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism, adopting policies in support of free enterprise, and accepting the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy.[117] To appeal to Italian conservatives, Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including promotion policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce limiting the woman's role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state.[118] Though Fascism adopted a number of positions designed to appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists sought to maintain Fascism's revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying "Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary."[119] The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.[120]

Prior to Fascism's accommodation of the political right, Fascism was a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members.[121] After Fascism's accommodation of the political right, the Fascist movement's membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921.[122]

Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from one of attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist leadership figures to one of violent occupation of cities. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded to take over several northern Italian cities.[123] The Fascists attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic unions in Cremona and imposed forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Trent and Bolzano.[123] After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome.[123]

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Benito Mussolini with three of the four quadrumvirs during the March on Rome: from left to right: unknown, de Bono, Mussolini, Balbo and de Vecchi

On 24 October 1922, the Fascist party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and to converge on three points around Rome.[123] The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances.[124] King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy perceived the risk of bloodshed in Rome in response to attempting to disperse the Fascists to be too high.[125] Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, and Mussolini arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment.[125] Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as "March on Rome", as a "seizure" of power because of Fascists' heroic exploits.[123]

Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government, because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.[126] Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.[126] Initially, little drastic change in government policy had occurred and repressive police actions were limited.[126]

The Fascists began their attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote.[127] Through considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the Fascists.[127] In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteoti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.[127] The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession.[128] On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but he insisted that he had done nothing wrong. He proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament.[128] From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced, and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.[129]

In 1929, the Fascist regime gained the political support and blessing of the Roman Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the nineteenth century.[130]

The Fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidioni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions.[131] The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs, and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes.[131] In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves but instead by appointed Fascist party members.[131]

In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included an attack on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention, and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was achieved through diplomatic means by 1927.[132] In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya.[133] This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps, and the forced starvation of thousands of people.[133] Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.[134][135]

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Nazis in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch.

The March on Rome brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who, less than a month after the March, had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.[136] The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin" modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923.[137]
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Re: Fascism, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:51 pm

Part 2 of 3

International impact of the Great Depression and the buildup to World War II

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Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right).

The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression brought about an international surge of social unrest. According to historian Philip Morgan, "the onset of the Great Depression...was the greatest stimulus yet to the diffusion and expansion of fascism outside Italy".[138]

In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the NSDAP, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar Republic, and the establishment of the fascist regime, Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany, and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised, and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.

Fascist movements grew in strength elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the country; created an eight-hour work day, a forty-eight hour work week in industry, and sought to entrench a corporatist economy; and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors.[139] The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government, and an Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca.[140] During the 6 February 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far right movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government resulting in major political violence.[141] A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Yugoslavia.[142]

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Integralists marching in Brazil.

In the Americas, the Brazilian Integralists led by Plínio Salgado, claimed as many as 200,000 members although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937.[143] In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile's parliament and attempted a coup d'état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.[144]

During the Great Depression, Mussolini promoted active state intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary "supercapitalism" that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure because of its alleged decadence, its support for unlimited consumerism and its intention to create the "standardization of humankind".[145] Fascist Italy created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), a giant state-owned firm and holding company that provided state funding to failing private enterprises.[146] The IRI was made a permanent institution in Fascist Italy in 1937, pursued Fascist policies to create national autarky, and had the power to take over private firms to maximize war production.[146] In the late 1930s, Italy enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency restrictions, and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to balance payments.[147] Italy's policy of autarky failed to achieve effective economic autonomy.[147] Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality imported iron.[148]

World War II (1939-1945)

In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany both Mussolini and Hitler pursued territorial expansionist and interventionist foreign policy agendas from the 1930s through the 1940s culminating in World War II. Mussolini called for irredentist Italian claims to be reclaimed, establishing Italian domination of the Mediterranean Sea and securing Italian access to the Atlantic Ocean, and the creation of Italian spazio vitale ("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea regions.[149] Hitler called for irredentist German claims to be reclaimed along with the creation of German lebensraum ("living space") in Eastern Europe, including territories held by the Soviet Union, that would be colonized by Germans.[150]

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Emaciated male inmate at the Italian Rab concentration camp.

From 1935 to 1939 Germany and Italy escalated their demands for territorial claims and greater influence in world affairs. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 resulting in condemnation by the League of Nations and widespread diplomatic isolation. In 1936 Germany remilitarized the industrial Rhineland; the region had been ordered demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 Germany annexed Austria and Italy assisted Germany in resolving the diplomatic crisis between Germany versus Britain and France over claims on Czechoslovakia by arranging the Munich Agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland and was perceived at the time to have averted a European war. These hopes faded when Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by ordering the invasion and partition of Czechoslovakia between Germany and a client state of Slovakia in 1939. At the same time from 1938 to 1939, Italy was demanding territorial and colonial concessions from France and Britain.[151] In 1939, Germany prepared for war with Poland, but attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland through diplomatic means.[152] The Polish government did not trust Hitler's promises and refused to accept Germany's demands.[152]

The invasion of Poland by Germany was deemed unacceptable by Britain, France and their allies, resulting in their mutual declaration of war against Germany that was deemed the aggressor in the war in Poland, resulting in the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis. Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity to carry out a long war with France or the United Kingdom and waited until France was on the verge of imminent collapse and surrender from the German invasion before declaring war on France and the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940, on the assumption that the war would be short-lived following France's collapse.[153] Mussolini believed that following a brief entry of Italy into war with France, followed by the imminent French surrender, Italy could gain some territorial concessions from France and then concentrate its forces on a major offensive in Egypt where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.[154] Plans by Germany to invade the UK in 1940 failed after Germany lost the aerial warfare campaign in the Battle of Britain. In 1941 the Axis campaign spread to the Soviet Union after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Axis forces at the height of their power controlled almost all of continental Europe. The war became prolonged — contrary to Mussolini's plans — resulting in Italy losing battles on multiple fronts and requiring German assistance.

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Corpses of victims of the German Buchenwald concentration camp.

During World War II, the Axis Powers in Europe, led by Nazi Germany, participated in the extermination of millions of Poles, Jews, Gypsies and others in the genocide known as the Holocaust.

After 1942, Axis forces began to falter. By 1943, after Italy faced multiple military failures, the complete reliance and subordination of Italy to Germany, the Allied invasion of Italy, and the corresponding international humiliation, Mussolini was removed as head of government and arrested on the order of King Victor Emmanuel III, who proceeded to dismantle the Fascist state and declared Italy's switching of allegiance to the Allied side. Mussolini was rescued from arrest by German forces and led the German client state, the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany faced multiple losses and steady Soviet and Western Allied offensives from 1943 to 1945.

On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian communist partisans. On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Shortly afterwards, Germany surrendered and the Nazi regime was systematically dismantled by the occupying Allied powers. An International Military Tribunal was subsequently convened in Nuremberg. Beginning in November 1945 and lasting through 1949, numerous Nazi political, military and economic leaders were tried and convicted of war crimes, with many of the worst offenders receiving the death penalty.

Post-World-War II (1945–present)

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Francisco Franco, the fascist Caudillo of Spain from 1939 to 1975.

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Juan Perón, President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974. Perón admired Italian Fascism and modelled his economic policies on those pursued by Fascist Italy.

The victory of the Allies over the Axis powers in World War II led to the collapse of many fascist regimes in Europe. The Nuremberg Trials convicted several Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity involving the Holocaust. There remained, however, several movements and governments that were ideologically related to fascism.

Francisco Franco's Falangist single-party state in Spain was officially neutral during World War II and survived the collapse of the Axis Powers. Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War, and Franco had sent volunteers to fight on the side of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. After World War II and a period of international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with Western powers in the Cold War, until Franco's death in 1975 and the transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.

Peronism, associated with the regime of Juan Perón in Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, was strongly influenced by fascism.[155] Between 1939 and 1941, prior to rising to power, Perón had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism and modelled his economic policies on Italian Fascist policies.[155]

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Giorgio Almirante, leader of the Italian Social Movement from 1969-1987.

The term neo-fascism refers to fascist movements after World War II. In Italy, the Italian Social Movement, led by Giorgio Almirante, was a major neo-fascist movement that transformed into a self-described "post-fascist" movement called the National Alliance (AN), which has been an ally of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia for a decade. In 2008, AN joined Forza Italia in Berlusconi's new party The People of Freedom. In 2012 a group of politicians split from The People of Freedom, refounding the party with the name Brothers of Italy. In Germany, various neo-Nazi movements have been formed and banned under Germany's constitutional law that forbids Nazism. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is widely believed to be a neo-Nazi party, although the party does not publicly self-identify as such.

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Golden Dawn demonstration in Greece in 2012.

After the onset of the Great Recession and economic crisis in Greece, a movement known as the Golden Dawn, widely believed to be a neo-Nazi party, soared in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's parliament, espousing a staunch hostility to minority immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees. In 2013, after the murder of an anti-fascist musician by a person with links to the Golden Dawn, the Greek government ordered the arrest of the Golden Dawn's leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other Golden Dawn members on charges related to being associated with a criminal organization.

Tenets

Nationalism


Ethnic nationalism is the main foundation of fascism.[156] The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people.[157] Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.[34][158][159][160][161] European fascist movements typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being inferior to Europeans.[162] Beyond this, fascists in Europe have not held a unified set of racial views.[162] Historically, most fascists promoted imperialism, although there have been several fascist movements that were uninterested in the pursuit of new imperial ambitions.[162]

Totalitarianism

Fascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state.[163] The Doctrine of Fascism states, "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people."[164] In The Legal Basis of the Total State, [Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart".[165]

Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production of educational and media materials.[166][167] Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and to teach students to be obedient to the state.[168]

Fascism opposes liberal democracy. It rejects multi-party systems and supports a single party state. However it has claimed to be supportive of a variant of democracy. Benito Mussolini in an interview with the British newspaper the Sunday Pictorial stated: "Fascism is a method, not an end; an autocracy on the road to democracy".[169] Italian Fascist theorist and policymaker Giovanni Gentile in the Doctrine of Fascism described fascism as an authoritarian democracy.[170] Gentile explicitly rejected the conventional form of democracy, parliamentary democracy for being based on majority rule and thus an inherent assumption of the equality of citizens, while fascism rejects the concept of universal egalitarianism.[171]

Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the sums of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation. Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality.

-- The Doctrine of Fascism, by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile


Economy

Fascism presented itself as a viable alternative to the two other major existing economic systems -- liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism.[172] Italian Fascism regarded itself as an heir to the Sorelian syndicalist socialism but outside of fascism it regarded socialism in general to have succumbed to the anti-national and materialist tendencies of Marxism, and opposed such socialism.[173]

Fascist governments advocated resolution of domestic class conflict within a nation in order to secure national solidarity.[13] This would be done through the state mediating relations between the classes (contrary to the views of liberal capitalists).[174] While fascism was opposed to domestic class conflict, it was held that bourgeois-proletarian conflict existed primarily in national conflict between proletarian nations versus bourgeois nations.[175] Fascism condemned what it viewed as widespread character traits that it associated as the typical bourgeois mentality that it opposed, such as materialism, crassness, cowardice, inability to comprehend the heroic ideal of the fascist "warrior"; and associations with liberalism, individualism, and parliamentarianism.[176] In 1918, Mussolini defined what he viewed as the proletarian character, defining proletarian as being one and the same with producers, a productivist perspective that associated all people deemed productive, including entrepreneurs, technicians, workers, and soldiers as being proletarian.[177] He acknowledged the historical existence of both bourgeois and proletarian producers, but declared the need for bourgeois producers to merge with proletarian producers.[177]

While fascism denounced the mainstream internationalist and Marxist socialisms, it claimed to economically represent a type of nationalist productivist socialism that while condemning parasitical capitalism, was willing to accommodate productivist capitalism within it.[178] This was derived from Henri de Saint Simon, whose ideas inspired the creation of utopian socialism and influenced other ideologies, that stressed solidarity rather than class war and whose conception of productive people in the economy included both productive workers and productive bosses to challenge the influence of the aristocracy and unproductive financial speculators.[179] Saint Simon's vision combined the traditionalist right-wing criticisms of the French Revolution combined with a left-wing belief in the need for association or collaboration of productive people in society.[179] Whereas Marxism condemned capitalism as a system of exploitative property relations, fascism saw the nature of the control of credit and money in the contemporary capitalist system as abusive.[178] Unlike Marxism, fascism did not see class conflict between the Marxist-defined proletariat and the bourgeoisie as a given or as an engine of historical materialism.[178] Instead, it viewed workers and productive capitalists in common as productive people who were in conflict with parasitic elements in society including: corrupt political parties, corrupt financial capital, and feeble people.[178] Fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler spoke of the need for the creation of a new managerial elite to be led by engineers and captains of industry that was free from parasitic leadership of industries.[178] Hitler stated that the Nazi Party supported bodenständigen Kapitalismus (productive capitalism) that was based upon profit earned from one's own labour, but condemned unproductive capitalism or loan capitalism which derived profit from speculation.[180]

Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production.[181] Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector, and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state.[182] Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive, but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.[182]

While fascism accepted the importance of material wealth and power, it condemned materialism, which it identified as being present in both communism and capitalism, and criticized materialism for lacking acknowledgement of the role of the spirit.[183] In particular, fascists criticized capitalism not because of its competitive nature nor its support of private property which fascists supported; but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged bourgeois decadence, and alleged indifference to the nation.[184] Fascism denounced Marxism for its advocacy of materialist internationalist class identity, which fascists regarded as an attack upon the emotional and spiritual bonds of the nation and a threat to the achievement of genuine national solidarity.[185]

The greatest apprehension of occult scientists is materialism, which if carried too far, not only prevents progress but will destroy all the seven vehicles of the virgin spirit, leaving it naked. Such an one will then have to commence at the very beginning of the new evolution. All the work it has done since the dawn of the Saturn Period will have been utterly wasted. For this reason, the present period is to our humanity, the most critical of all. Therefore occult scientists speak of the Sixteen Races, of which the Germano-Anglo-Saxon is one, as "the sixteen possibilities for destruction." May the reader safely pass them all, for their grip is worse than the retardation in the next Revolution.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel


Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.[186]

In discussing the spread of fascism beyond Italy, historian Philip Morgan states:

Since the Depression was a crisis of laissez-faire capitalism and its political counterpart, parliamentary democracy, fascism could pose as the 'third-way' alternative between capitalism and Bolshevism, the model of a new European 'civilization'. As Mussolini typically put it in early 1934, "from 1929 ... fascism has become a universal phenomenon ... The dominant forces of the 19th century, democracy, socialism, liberalism have been exhausted ... the new political and economic forms of the twentieth-century are fascist' (Mussolini 1935: 32).[138]


Fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as a whole, but they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons. Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They instead promoted social Darwinist views.[187][188]

This is Why An Octopus Is More Awesome Than Your Mom, by Matt Inman of The Oatmeal

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I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you think your mother, or perhaps mothers in general, are pretty goddamn awesome. They scrub things, cook pot roast, and produce shrieking little babies which grow up to be astronauts and prime ministers. When you got sucker-punched at recess, she was there for you. When you accidentally peed your pants on the first day of school, she wiped away the tears.

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When the cat ate your favorite hamster and then barfed it onto your favorite pair of pajamas, she was your shoulder to cry on. Mothers sacrifice their own happiness for the betterment of their offspring. Like most universally liked things, however, there’s always a better underdog. Enter the octopus. Comparing moms to an octopus would be like pitting an army of savages against one well-oiled gatling gun sitting atop a hill. The mothers would charge the hill, hurling rocks and sticks; they’d roar righteous, compassionate battle cries of warriors who believe they are fighting for the betterment of humanity. They’d truly fight from the heart.

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Meanwhile the gatling gun would rotate in a precise semicircle and mow them down like dogs.

Birth: Mothers love to complain about child birth. We’ve all heard it: “I went into labor and it lasted 36 hours!” or “When I farted out my last baby it hurt like a sonofabitch.” When an octopus mother gives birth, she blasts out nearly 200,000 babies and then hangs onto them within her tentacles.

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If food becomes low, she’ll scoop them up like nachos and eat a few thousand in order to survive. I bet your mom never carried a few hundred thousand infants in her arms and ate a few when she wanted a snack, now did she?

Size: Some octopuses differ in size so greatly that the father will never grow to be be larger than an acorn, meanwhile the mother will mature to be the size of a human being (150 lbs or so). This disparity in size would be like marrying a woman who grows to be the size of a dump truck. Impressive, huh? You bet your ass it is.

Furthermore, when an octopus mother finally sets her spawn free, she doesn’t hang around and become a mommy blogger who bitches all day about nothing. Instead, she’ll wander off in her weakened state and get devoured by a large predator. The idea here being that once you perpetuate your own genes, you don’t have fuckall left to do so you should just let yourself become food for the rest of the animal kingdom. This is a sentiment I fully endorse, and if our moms really wanted to impress us they’d take to the hills and fight it out with mountain lions after our first birthday.

Leisure: An octopus doesn’t sit around like an undersea lawn ornament, lazily watching repeats of Maury Povich or “nesting.” Octopuses are clever as hell and will entertain themselves by tormenting other sea creatures. This includes juggling crabs, throwing objects, and smashing things. One particularly bored octopus in a German aquarium was reported to squirt water out of his tank at an overhead lamp. The burnout caused a short-circuit throughout the entire aquarium which disrupted the pumps and endangered the lives of all the other animals. Other octopuses have been found to use old coconut shells to build little houses for themselves on the ocean floor, so while the moms of today are busy cleaning vomit off the seats of cheap minivans, octopuses are setting up undersea battle stations so they can one day win the war against all the other useless assclowns floating around in the ocean.

Cleverness: Unlike fish, which are dumb as shit, octopuses are insanely smart. They have both short and long-term memory, and in lab experiments they can be taught to differentiate shapes and patterns. They have also been seen to observe other octopuses and learn from their behavior.

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So theoretically, if a dolphin bum-rushed an octopus he’d not only remember it, he’d stalk the dolphin and take a giant octo-dump in his mouth while he slept. Would your mother ever exact revenge on a dolphin by crapping in its gaping, blue jaws? I didn’t think so.

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Offense: Suppose you asked your mom to take down a caribou. Were she an octopus, she’d become nearly invisible and slide up next to it. Once she was within a few feet of it, she’d spray out a massive cloud of black ink. This ink would create a screen that she could conceal herself behind, and once close, she’d blast herself forward and encompass the caribou in a death grip, her motion and strength propelled by two of the three hearts used to pump blood in her body. Upon gripping the caribou, her arms would have taste buds so she would actually know the flavor of the caribou long before it reached her mouth. These arms would also deliver a paralyzing venom which would render the caribou unable to move but fully aware of its surroundings. Once paralyzed, she’d use her radula, which is sort of like a tongue equipped with miniature teeth, to drill into the caribou and suck out all the delicious innards.

Defense: If you’re an undersea predator, you’d be well advised not to fuck with an octopus. First of all, they’re very difficult to spot, especially the ones capable of changing their skin color to camouflage themselves. They can not only change the color of their skin, but the texture as well; they have tiny muscles which can constrict to appear rough like a piece of coral or pointy like seaweed. If spotted, they’ll spray a cloud of ink in order to screw up a predator’s sense of smell or temporarily confuse them while they make their getaway. They have no rigid skeleton, so their flexible bodies can squeeze through tiny spaces to evade capture. If caught, most octopus tentacles are venomous to predators, so even touching them can cause injury.

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There are also types of octopus which will tear off the tentacles of a Portuguese man-of-war (one of the most toxic, dangerous creatures on earth). Being immune to the deadly sting of the man-of-war, an octopus will then wield the stingers as weapons against other predators.

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If, by chance, a predator actually manages to get hold of an octopus, the octopus is capable of letting a limb tear off in order to escape – a limb which will regenerate later on. If your mom could defend herself like an octopus, she’d evade being defeated by a mountain lion simply by letting him rip off her arms, at which point she’d flee into the forest and grow new ones. If the “discard a body part” tactic doesn’t work, the octopus has a razor-sharp beak which it can bite down with. I find it fitting that the only rigid part of an octopus’ body is the part it uses to shank other sea creatures.

In Conclusion: On one hand, we’ve got someone who blares the Hakuna Matata in the car and shops for breast pumps. On the other, we’ve got a murderous, smart creature capable of the most despicably awesome acts in the animal kingdom. It can become invisible, re-grow damaged limbs, shrink to impossible sizes, solve complex problems, blind predators, paralyze prey, and generally fuck with every other creature you saw in The Little Mermaid. I’d say the victor is fairly obvious.

Note: In order to thwart a bunch of emails, I’d like to point out that octopuses, octopi, and octopodes are all acceptable ways to pluralize octopus.

______________________________________________________________________________________

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After the Creeping Octopus Satellite Launch, What Next for the National Reconnaissance Office?

by Jim Cook

December 8th, 2013

The National Reconnaissance Office — “a joint Department of Defense-Intelligence Community organization responsible for developing, launching, and operating America’s intelligence satellites” — has launched NROL 39, its latest payload of classified spy satellites. For every launch, it develops a unique badge and motto. This time around, the badge incorporates an angry, creeping octopus:

NROL-39 Angry, Creeping Octopus: Nothing is Beyond Our Reach

“Nothing is Beyond Our Reach.” That’s serious, not a parody. Apparently, the folks in the Homeland Security Design Office haven’t learned from the Office of Information Awareness fiasco to hide how they really feel about their job and where the rest of us sit in relation.

If that’s the way it’s going to be, that’s the way it’s going to be, and we might as well hop on the bandwagon. To help my country in its quest to unconstitutionally track our every movement and activity listen in on our phone sex defeat the imaginary terrorists, I’d like to offer the following suggestions for the badges and mottos of future launches.

NROL-40: Stampeding Elephant with a Hard Drive between its Eyes. Motto: “We Never Forget.”
NROL-41: Parrotfish. Motto: “We Chew It, We Poo It. Ain’t Life a Beach?”
NROL-42: Mosquito. Motto: “Suck First, Poison Later.”
NROL-43: Rabid Squirrel. Motto: “Yeah, We’re Nuts.”


Action

Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics.[11][189] Fascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism identifies as being an "endless struggle".[190]

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this "war" -- the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) -- should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired's Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US's national security editor) described the most significant exchange:

"Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today -- atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America's Thirty Years War."

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war -- justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism -- that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

In January, former Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson delivered a highly-touted speech suggesting that the war on terror will eventually end; he advocated that outcome, arguing:

'War' must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the 'new normal.'"

In response, I wrote that the "war on terror" cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of "terrorism"), and (2) the nation's most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for "at least" another 10-20 years?

-- Washington Gets Explicit: It's "War on Terror" is Permanent, by Glenn Greenwald


The basis of fascism's support of violent action in politics is connected to social Darwinism.[190] Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies.[191] They say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.[192]

Age and gender roles

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Members of the Piccole Italiane, an organization for girls within the National Fascist Party in Italy.

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Members of the League of German Girls, an organization for girls within the Nazi Party in Germany.

Fascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and in a spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to action.[193] The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called Giovinezza ("The Youth").[193] Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people that will affect society.[194]

Italian Fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding sexuality.[195] Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered deviant sexual behaviour.[195] It condemned pornography, most forms of birth control and contraceptive devices (with the exception of the condom), homosexuality, and prostitution as deviant sexual behaviour, although enforcement of laws opposed to such practices was erratic and authorities often turned a blind eye.[195] Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth, declared homosexuality to be a social disease, and pursued an aggressive campaign to reduce prostitution of young women.[195]

Mussolini perceived women's primary role to be childbearers, while men were warriors, once saying, "war is to man what maternity is to the woman".[196] In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families, and initiated policies designed to reduce the number of women employed.[197] Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation", and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation.[198] In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".[199]

The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep house.[200] This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour.[201]

The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy pure German, Aryan fetuses remained strictly forbidden.[202] For non-Aryans, abortion was often compulsory. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.[203] In 1935 Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders.[202] The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not yet viable,[204][205] and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.[206][207]

The Nazis said that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted, and undermined masculinity because it did not produce children.[208] They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority.[209] Open homosexuals were interned in Nazi concentration camps.[210]

Palingenesis and modernism

Fascism emphasizes both palingenesis and modernism.[211] In particular, fascism's nationalism has been identified as having a palingenetic character.[156] Fascism promotes the regeneration of the nation and purging it of decadence.[211] Fascism accepts forms of modernism that it deems promotes national regeneration while rejecting forms of modernism that are regarded as antithetical to national regeneration.[212] Fascism aestheticized modern technology and its association with speed, power, and violence.[213] Fascism admired advances in the economy in the early 20th century, particularly Fordism and scientific management.[214] Fascist modernism has been recognized to be inspired or developed by various figures such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Knut Hamsun, Ezra Pound, and Wyndham Lewis.[215]

In Italy, such modernist influence was exemplified by Marinetti who advocated a palingenetic modernist society that condemned liberal-bourgeois values of tradition and psychology, while promoting a technological-martial religion of national renewal that emphasized militant nationalism.[216] In Germany, it was exemplified by Jünger who was influenced by his observation of the technological warfare during World War I, and claimed that a new social class had been created that he described as the "warrior-worker".[217] Jünger like Marinetti emphasized the revolutionary capacities of technology, and emphasized an "organic construction" between human and machine as a liberating and regenerative force in that challenged liberal democracy, conceptions of individual autonomy, bourgeois nihilism, and decadence.[217] He conceived of a society based on a totalitarian concept of "total mobilization" of such disciplined warrior-workers.[217]
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Re: Fascism, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:52 pm

Part 3 of 3

Criticism of fascism

Fascism has been widely criticized and condemned in popular culture since the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II.

Fascism as anti-democratic and as a form of tyranny

One of the most common and strongest criticisms of fascism is that it is a tyranny in practice.[218]

Fascism is commonly regarded as deliberately and entirely non-democratic and anti-democratic.[219][220][221] Scholar on democracy, Anthony Arblaster has recorded fascists' policy claim about the ideology supporting a form of democracy, but Arblaster regards the claim as a deliberate lie and empty rhetoric, claiming that fascism never intended to put such claims of democracy into practice, and thus he categorizes fascism as non-democratic and anti-democratic in practice.[171]

Some scholars have opposed this common critical view. Walter Laqueur says that fascists:

would not necessarily accept the label of 'anti-democratic'. In fact many of them argued that they were fighting for a purer and more genuine democracy in which the participation of the individual in politics would not be mediated by professional politicians, clerical influences, the availability of the mass media, but through personal, almost full-time involvement in a political movement and through identification with the leader who would represent the feelings and sentiments of the whole people.[222]


Dylan J. Riley has investigated the possibility of fascism being an authoritarian democracy, a term used by Italian Fascist theorist and policymaker Giovanni Gentile to describe fascism.[170] Gentile explicitly rejected the conventional form of democracy, parliamentary democracy for being based on majority rule and thus an inherent assumption of the equality of citizens, while fascism rejects the concept of universal egalitarianism.[171] But Gentile claimed that fascism supported what he called authoritarian democracy.[171] Riley in analysis accepts that fascism can be identified as an authoritarian democracy, and claims that in particular the fascist and quasi-fascist regimes in Italy, Spain, and Romania, replaced multi-party based democracy with corporatist representation of state-sanctioned corporate groups.[170] It was claimed that this system would unite people into interest groups to address the state that would act in the interest of the general will of the nation and thus exercise an orderly form of popular rule.[170] Riley notes that fascists argued that this authoritarian democracy is capable of representing the different interests of society that advise the state and the state acts in the interest of the nation.[223] Riley also notes that in contrast, fascists denounced liberal democracy for not being a true democracy but in fact being un-democratic because from the fascist perspective, elections and parliaments are unable to represent the interests of the nation because it lumps together individuals who have little in common into geographical districts to vote for an array of parties to represent them that results in little unanimity in terms of interests, projects, or intentions, and that liberal democracy's multi-party elections merely serve as a means to legitimize elite rule without addressing the interests of the general will of the nation.[223]

Unprincipled opportunism

Some critics of Italian fascism have said that much of the ideology was merely a by-product of unprincipled opportunism by Mussolini, and that he changed his political stances merely to bolster his personal ambitions while he disguised them as being purposeful to the public.[224] Richard Washburn Child, the American ambassador to Italy who worked with Mussolini and became a friend and admirer of him, defended Mussolini's opportunistic behaviour, writing: "Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for the reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believed that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and programmes."[225] Child quoted Mussolini as saying, "The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow. The machine first of all must run!".[225]

Some have criticized Mussolini's actions during the outbreak of World War I as opportunist for seeming to suddenly abandon Marxist egalitarian internationalism for non-egalitarian nationalism. Critics have noted that upon Mussolini endorsing Italy's intervention in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, he and the new fascist movement received financial support from foreign sources, such as Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies,[226] as well as the British Security Service MI5.[227] Some, including Mussolini's socialist opponents at the time, have noted that regardless of the financial support he accepted for his pro-interventionist stance, Mussolini was free to write whatever he wished in his newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, without prior sanctioning from his financial backers.[228] Furthermore, the major source of financial support that Mussolini and the fascist movement received in World War I was from France, and is widely believed to have been French socialists who supported the French government's war against Germany and who sent support to Italian socialists who wanted Italian intervention on France's side.[229]

Mussolini's transformation away from Marxism into what eventually became fascism began prior to World War I, as Mussolini had grown increasingly pessimistic about Marxism and egalitarianism while becoming increasingly supportive of figures who opposed egalitarianism, such as Friedrich Nietzsche.[230] By 1902, Mussolini was studying Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and Vilfredo Pareto.[231] Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action, general strikes and neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion impressed Mussolini deeply.[232] His use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views.[230] Prior to World War I, Mussolini's writings over time indicated that he had abandoned the Marxism and egalitarianism that he had previously supported, in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism.[230] In 1908, Mussolini wrote a short essay called "Philosophy of Strength" based on his Nietzschean influence, in which Mussolini openly spoke fondly of the ramifications of an impending war in Europe in challenging both religion and nihilism: "a new kind of free spirit will come, strengthened by the war, ... a spirit equipped with a kind of sublime perversity, ... a new free spirit will triumph over God and over Nothing."[89]

It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.

But the spirit of the depths stepped up to me and said: "What you speak is. The greatness is, the intoxication is, the undignified, sick, paltry dailiness is. It runs in all the streets, lives in all the houses, and rules the day of all humanity. Even the eternal stars are commonplace. It is the great mistress and the one essence of God. One laughs about it, and laughter, too, is. Do you believe, man of this time, that laughter is lower than worship? Where is your measure, false measurer? The sum of life decides in laughter and in worship, not your judgment."

I must also speak the ridiculous. You coming men! You will recognize the supreme meaning by the fact that he is laughter and worship, a bloody laughter and a bloody worship. A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Those who know this laugh and worship in the same breath.

After this, however, my humanity approached me and said: "What solitude, what coldness of desolation you lay upon me when you speak such! Reflect on the destruction of being and the streams of blood from the terrible sacrifice that the depths demand."

But the spirit of the depths said: "No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back, and if you were fettered to the world of this time with iron, the call of the desert would break all chains. Truly, I prepare you for solitude."

After this, my humanity remained silent. Something happened to my spirit, however, which I must call mercy.

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.

The mercy which happened to me gave me belief, hope, and sufficient daring, not to resist further the spirit of the depths, but to utter his word. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs.

It happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving alone for a journey, that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands.

This vision lasted for two hours, it confused me and made me ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed then the vision returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke: "Look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this." I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it held me fast. It left me exhausted and confused. And I thought my mind had gone crazy.

From then on the anxiety toward the terrible event that stood directly before us kept coming back. Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.

In the year 1914 in the month of June, at the beginning and end of the month, and at the beginning of July, I had the same dream three times: I was in a foreign land, and suddenly, overnight and right in the middle of summer, a terrible cold descended from space. All seas and rivers were locked in ice, every green living thing had frozen.

The second dream was thoroughly similar to this. But the third dream at the beginning of July went as follows:

I was in a remote English land. It was necessary that I return to my homeland with a fast ship as speedily as possible. I reached home quickly. In my homeland I found that in the middle of summer a terrible cold had fallen from space, which had turned every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitless tree, whose leaves had turned into sweet grapes full of healing juice through the working of the frost. I picked some grapes and gave them to a great waiting throng.

In reality, now, it was so: At the time when the great war broke out between the peoples of Europe, I found myself in Scotland, compelled by the war to choose the fastest ship and the shortest route home. I encountered the colossal cold that froze everything, I met up with the flood, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree whose leaves the frost had transformed into a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do not know what I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating drink which left on your tongues an aftertaste of blood....

Therefore the spirit foretold to me that the cold of outer space will spread across the earth. With this he showed me in an image that the God will step between men and drive every individual with the whip of icy cold to the warmth of his own monastic hearth. ...

And thus I went out in that night (it was the second night of the year 1914), and anxious expectation filled me. I went out to embrace the future. The path was wide and what was to come was awful. It was the enormous dying, a sea of blood. From it the new sun arose, awful and a reversal of that which we call day. We have seized the darkness and its sun will shine above us, bloody and burning like a great downfall.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung


Ideological dishonesty

Fascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest.

Major examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian Fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism.[233][234] Fascist Italy's official foreign policy positions were known to commonly utilize rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions, although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister, the country engaged in realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole.[235] Italian Fascism's stance towards German Nazism fluctuated from support from the late 1920s to 1934 involving praising Hitler's rise to power and meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss by Nazis in Austria; and again back to support after 1936 when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.

After antagonism exploded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini and Italian Fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories, particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism.[234] Mussolini himself responded to Nordicists' claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy, by claiming that while Germanic tribes such as the Lombards took control of Italy after the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers of about 8,000 and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin language within fifty years.[236] Italian Fascism was influenced by the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon Nordicists' claims, and taking pride in comparing the age and sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical revival in the Renaissance, to that of Nordic societies that Italian nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in comparison.[233] At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian Fascists over race, Mussolini claimed that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau.[237] After German-Italian relations reduced in tension during the late 1930s, Italian Fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with German Nazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.[234]

Mussolini declared in 1938 that Italian Fascism had always been Antisemitic, upon Italy's adoption of Antisemitic laws.[234] In fact, Italian Fascism did not endorse Antisemitism until the late 1930s when Mussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany whose power and influence were growing in Europe, prior to that period there had been notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian Fascist officials, including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's mistress.[234] Also, contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a small number of Italian Fascists were staunchly antisemitic such as Roberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi while others, such as Italo Balbo who came from Ferrara, which had one of Italy's largest Jewish communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed them.[234] Fascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian Fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as Mussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks, and claiming that eight percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.[238]

References

Notes


1. Turner, Henry Ashby, Reappraisals of Fascism. New Viewpoints, 1975. p. 162. States fascism's "goals of radical and authoritarian nationalism".
2. Larsen, Stein Ugelvik, Bernt Hagtvet and Jan Petter Myklebust, Who were the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism, p. 424, "organized form of integrative radical nationalist authoritarianism"
3. Tobias Abse (1982). Syndicalism and the Origins of Italian Fascism. The Historical Journal, 25, pp 247-258. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00009961.
4. Roger Griffin. Fascism. Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995. pp. 8, 307.
5. Aristotle A. Kallis. The fascism reader. New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2003. p. 71
6. Blamires, Cyprian, World Fascism: a Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006) p. 140–141, 670.
7. Michael Mann. Fascists. Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 65.
8. John Horne. State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War. P. 237-239.
9. Grčić, Joseph. Ethics and Political Theory (Lanham, Maryland: University of America, Inc, 2000) p. 120
10. Griffin, Roger and Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Fascism and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) p. 185.
11. Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. p. 106.
12. Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012. p. 935.
13. Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism (New York: St. Martins Press, 1991) pp. 222–223.
14. Blamires, Cyprian, World Fascism: a Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006) p. 188–189.
15. "Neofascismo" (in Italian). Enciclopedia Italiana. 31 October 2014.
16. "Definition of FASCISM". Merriam-Webster. April 27, 2013.
17. Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy University of California Press (2000), p.95
18. Oklahoma Wesleyan University; Peter Johnston (April 12, 2013). "The Rule of Law: Symbols of Power". okwu.edu.
19. Tom Watkins; Richard Stockton College of New Jersey (2013). "Policing Rome: Maintaining Order in Fact and Fiction". stockton.edu.
20. New World, Websters (2005). Webster's II New College Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Reference Books. ISBN 0-618-39601-2.
21. Payne, Stanley (1995). A History of Fascism, 1914–45. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-14874-2.
22. Doordan, Dennis P (1995). In the Shadow of the Fasces: Political Design in Fascist Italy. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-299-14874-2.
23. Parkins, Wendy (2002). Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-85973-587-8.
24. Gregor, A. James (2002). Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0855-2.
25. Payne, Stanley G (1983). Fascism, Comparison and Definition. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-08064-1.
26. Griffiths, Richard. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism. Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-2918-2.
27. Griffin, Roger and Matthew Feldman Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science pp. 420–421, 2004 Taylor and Francis.
28. Kallis, Aristotle, ed. (2003). The Fascism Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 84–85.
29. Renton, David. Fascism: Theory and Practice, p. 21, London: Pluto Press, 1999.
30. Laqueuer, 1996 p. 223; Eatwell, Fascism: A History. 1996, p. 39; Griffin, 1991, 2000, p. 185-201; Weber, [1964] 1982, p. 8; Payne (1995), Fritzsche (1990), Laclau (1977), and Reich (1970).
31. Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 27.
32. Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 201.
33. Roger Griffin, The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology, Chapter published in Alessandro Campi (ed.), Che cos'è il fascismo? Interpretazioni e prospettive di ricerche, Ideazione editrice, Roma, 2003, pp. 97–122.
34. Paxton, Robert. The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage Books. ISBN 1-4000-4094-9.
35. Eatwell, Roger: "A Spectral-Syncretic Approach to Fascism", The Fascism Reader, Routledge, 2003, p 79. Books.Google.com
36. "Fascism". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford Dictionaries Online. Retrieved 18 May 2011.
37. Turner, Stephen P., Käsler, Dirk: Sociology Responds to Fascism, Routledge. 2004, p. 222
38. Horst, Junginger, The Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism vol. 117 of Numen Book Series (BRILL, 2008) p. 273.
39. Griffin, Roger: "The Palingenetic Core of Fascism", Che cos'è il fascismo? Interpretazioni e prospettive di ricerche, Ideazione editrice, Rome, 2003 AH.Brookes.ac.uk
40. Stackelberg, Roderick Hitler's Germany, Routeledge, 1999, pp. 3–5.
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188. Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. p. 285. "Conflict is in fact the basic law of life in all social organisms, as it is of all biological ones; societies are formed, gain strength, and move forwards through conflict; the healthiest and most vital of them assert themselves against the weakest ans less well adapted through conflict; the natural evolution of nations and races takes place through conflict." Alfredo Rocco, Italian Fascist.
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204. Proctor, Robert E. (1989). Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 366. ISBN 0-674-74578-7. OCLC 20760638. This emendation allowed abortion only if the woman granted permission, and only if the fetus was not old enough to survive outside the womb. It is unclear if either of these qualifications was enforced.
205. Arnot, Margaret; Cornelie Usborne (1999). Gender and Crime in Modern Europe. New York City: Routledge. p. 241. ISBN 1-85728-745-2. OCLC 249726924.
206. Proctor, Robert E. (1989). Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 122–123. ISBN 0-674-74578-7. OCLC 20760638. Abortion, in other words, could be allowed if it was in the interest of racial hygiene ... the Nazis did allow (and in some cases even required) abortions for women deemed racially inferior ... On November 10, 1938, a Luneberg court declared abortion legal for Jews.
207. Tierney, Helen (1999). Women's studies encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 589. ISBN 0-313-31072-6. OCLC 38504469. In 1939, it was announced that Jewish women could seek abortions, but non-Jewish women could not.
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• de Rivera, José Antonio Primo. 1971. Textos de Doctrina Politica. Madrid.
• Mussolini, Benito. 1998. My Rise And Fall . Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80864-1
• Ciano, Galezzo. 2001. The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943. Simon Publications. ISBN 1-931313-74-1
• Mussolini, Benito. 2006. My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism". Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-44777-4

Secondary sources

• Blamires, Cyprian. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, US: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006.
• Costa Pinto, Antonio, ed. Rethinking the Nature of Fascism: Comparative Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 287 pages
• Evans, Richard J, The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939, The Penguin Press HC, 2005
• De Felice, Renzo. 1976. Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice. Transaction Books. ISBN 0-87855-619-2
• De Felice, Renzo. 1977. Interpretations of Fascism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-45962-8.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2005. Pour une étude scientifique du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-11-7.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2006. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-46-X.
• Ben-Am, Shlomo. 1983. Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-822596-2
• Payne, Stanley G. 1987. The Franco Regime, 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-11070-2
• Vatikiotis, Panayiotis J. 1988. Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936–1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas. Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-4869-8
• Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914–45. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-14874-2
• Costa Pinto, António. 1995. Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation. Social Science Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-968-3
• Golomb, Jacob; Wistrich, Robert S. 2002. Nietzsche, godfather of fascism?: on the uses and abuses of a philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Griffiths, Richard. 2001. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism. Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-2918-2
• Lewis, Paul H. 2002. Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-97880-X
• Payne, Stanley G. 2003. Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism. Textbook Publishers. ISBN 0-7581-3445-2
• Paxton, Robert O. 2005. The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage Books. ISBN 1-4000-3391-8
• Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.
• Nolte, Ernst The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
• Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Richman, Sheldon (2008). Fascism. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2nd ed.). Library of Economics and Liberty. ISBN 978-0865976658. OCLC 237794267.
• Seldes, George. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.
• Seldes, George. 1943, reprinted 2009. Facts and Fascism. New York: In Fact. ISBN 0-930852-43-5. p. 288.
• Sohn-Rethel, Alfred Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism, London, CSE Bks, 1978 ISBN 0-906336-00-7
• Kallis, Aristotle A., "To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 237–260.
• Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505780-5
• Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560–1991, Routledge, London.
• Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X
• Sauer, Wolfgang "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404–424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967. + -
• Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. [1989] 1994. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution., Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. + Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp. 227–250
• Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pages 227 – 250
• Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)
• Gentile, Emilio. 2005. The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918–1925: The First Complete Study of the Origins of Italian Fascism, New York: Enigma Books, ISBN 978-1-929631-18-6
• De Grand, Alexander J. Routledge, 2004. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: the 'fascist' style of rule
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Re: Fascism, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:29 pm

Part 1 of 2

Oswald Mosley
by John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com)
© September 1997 (updated August 2014).

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Oswald Mosley

Oswald Mosley, the eldest of the three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley (1874–1928), who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1915, and his wife, Maud Mosley (1874–1950), was born on 16th November 1896. According to his biographer, Robert Skidelsky: "When Mosley was five Maud Mosley obtained a judicial separation from her husband on account of the latter's infidelities and possibly also to protect Tom, as she called her eldest son, from his father's bullying. Thereafter his childhood was divided between his mother's modest house near her family home in Shropshire and the massive neo-Gothic pile of Rolleston Hall... Mosley adored his mother and his paternal grandfather, who in turn worshipped him. To his mother, a pious, fiercely loyal woman, he was a substitute for an absent husband."

At the age of nine he was sent away to West Down, a small preparatory school. Four years later he entered Winchester College. An excellent sportsman he was trained to box and fence by two ex-army NCOs. At fifteen he won the public schools' fencing championship in both foil and sabre. He was less successful with his academic work but one of his teachers recalled that he had a "wonderful imagination and could write a first-class essay".

Oswald Mosley and the First World War

In January 1914 Oswald Mosley became an officer cadet at Sandhurst, which he entered as an officer cadet. He was a high-spirited student and one night after getting drunk he fought a fellow cadet that resulted in him breaking his right ankle. On the outbreak of the First World War he was commissioned in the 16th Lancers, a cavalry regiment. However, later that year he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps, and by Christmas 1914 was flying as an observer over enemy lines.

Oswald Mosley gained his pilot's certificate, but showing off before his mother at Shoreham Airport in May 1915 he crashed his plane and broke his right ankle for a second time. He now returned to the Western Front as a soldier. The waterlogged trenches caused problems for his injured ankle and he was sent home for an operation, which saved his leg but left him with a permanent limp. In October 1916, it was decided that he was not fit enough for front-line duty and for the rest of the war did desk work.

Oswald Mosley in the House of Commons

Mosley became the youngest MP in the House of Commons after winning Harrow for the Conservative Party in the 1918 General Election. According to Jim Wilson: "Mosley had emerged from the war a dashing figure, much in demand by political hostesses, with a barely disguised contempt for what he regarded as middle-class morality; blandly describing his well-known pursuit of married women as flushing the covers." Stanley Baldwin, a fellow Tory MP, commented: "He's a cad and a wrong'un and they will find out."

In 1920 he married Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the daughter of the former Viceroy of India. Mosley had numerous affairs, including relationships with his wife's younger sister Alexandra Metcalfe (1904-1995), and with their stepmother, Grace Curzon (1879-1958). Robert Skidelsky has pointed out: "Their wedding at the Chapel Royal, St James's Street, was attended by George V and Queen Mary. Their life together started on a high note of mutual passion which was not, however, sustained. Cimmie, as she was always known, was an idealistic, emotional, not very clever woman, who idolized her husband, and wanted to be adored and cherished in return. Mosley's love for her was genuine, and fervently expressed in letters full of baby talk, written in an illegible hand. But he was incapable of fidelity, resented her minding about his love affairs, and he abused her in public for what he saw as her simplicities."

Oswald Mosley joins the Labour Party

Oswald Mosley held Harrow as an independent in the general elections of 1922 and 1923, though with declining majorities. The second of the elections led to the formation of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. On 27th March 1924 Mosley applied to join the Labour Party. He fought Ladywood, in the general election of October 1924, being narrowly defeated by the incumbent, Neville Chamberlain. He was returned to parliament as MP for Smethwick, in a by-election in December 1926.

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Oswald Mosley

In October 1927 Mosley was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. He was now one of the leading figures in the party. David Low remarked that "Mosley was young, energetic, capable and an excellent speaker." Aneurin Bevan thought he was a potential leader of the party. Jennie Lee agreed that Mosley had ability but believed he was a deeply flawed individual: "Another bright light in this 1929 Parliament was Sir Oswald Mosley. He had a fatal flaw in his character, on overwhelming arrogance and an unshakable conviction that he was born to rule."

1929 General Election

When Ramsay MacDonald formed his Labour Government after the 1929 General Election, he appointed Mosley as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In January 1930 Mosley proposed a programme that he believed would help deal with growing unemployment in Britain. Based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes he suggested stimulating foreign trade, directing industrial policy, and using public funds to promote industrial expansion.

According to David Marquand: "It made three main assertions - that the machinery of government should be drastically overhauled, that unemployment could be radically reduced by a public-works programme on the lines advocated by Keynes and the Liberal Party, and that long-term economic reconstruction required a mobilisation of national resources on a larger scale than has yet been contemplated. The existing administrative structure, Mosley argued, was hopelessly inadequate. What was needed was a new department, under the direct control of the prime minister, consisting of an executive committee of ministers and a secretariat of civil servants, assisted by a permanent staff of economists and an advisory council of outside experts."

Ramsay MacDonald passed the Mosley Memorandum to a committee consisting of Philip Snowden, Tom Shaw, Arthur Greenwood and Margaret Bondfield. The committee reported back on 1st May. Mosley's administrative proposals, the committee claimed "cut at the root of the individual responsibilities of Ministers, the special responsibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the sphere of finance, and the collective responsibility of the Cabinet to Parliament". The Snowden Report went onto argue that state action to reduce unemployment was highly dangerous. To go further than current government policy "would be to plunge the country into ruin".

MacDonald recorded in his diary what happened when Oswald Mosley heard the news about his proposals on 19th May: "Mosley came to see me... had to see me urgently: informed me he was to resign. I reasoned with him and got him to hold his decision over till we had further conversations. Went down to Cabinet Room late for meeting. Soon in difficulties. Mosley would get away from practical work into speculative experiments. Very bad impression. Thomas light, inconsistent but pushful and resourceful; others overwhelmed and Mosley on the verge of being offensively vain in himself."

Economic Crisis

At a meeting of Labour MPs took place on 21st May where Oswald Mosley outlined his proposals. This included the provision of old-age pensions at sixty, the raising of the school-leaving age and an expansion in the road programme. Arthur Henderson appealed to Mosley to withdraw his motion so that his proposals could be discussed in detail at later meetings. Mosley insisted on putting his motion to the vote and was beaten by 210 to 29.

In a debate in the House of Commons on 28th May 1930, MacDonald argued that the rise in unemployment was caused by factors outside the government's control. The public disagreed and the Labour Party suffered several by-election defeats. MacDonald wrote in his diary that the "party is showing signs of panic". He added that "Mosley is hard at work capturing the party".

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David Low commented on Mosley resigning in May, 1930

Jennie Lee pointed out: "He (Mosley) had a fatal flaw in his character, on overwhelming arrogance and an unshakable conviction that he was born to rule, drove him on to the criminal folly of donning a black shirt and surrounding himself with a band of bullyboys, and so becoming a pathetic imitation Hitler, doomed to political impotence for the rest of his life."

Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists

In 1931 Mosley founded the New Party. Supporters included John Strachey, Cyril Joad, William Joyce, Mary Richardson, John Becket and Harold Nicholson, but in the 1931 General Election none of the New Party's candidates were elected. In January 1932 Mosley met Benito Mussolini in Italy. Mosley was impressed by Mussolini's achievements and when he returned to England he disbanded the New Party and replaced it with the British Union of Fascists.

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Oswald Mosley in 1932

The British Union of Fascists was strongly anti-communist and argued for a programme of economic revival based on government spending and protectionism. Mary Richardson later commented: "I was first attracted to the Blackshirts because I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service, and the ability to serve which I had known in the suffrage movement".

Success in Worthing

Charles Bentinck Budd was elected to the Worthing Town Council as a member of the BUF in October 1933. The national press reported that Worthing was the first town in the country to elect a Fascist councillor. Worthing was now described as the "Munich of the South". Oswald Mosley announced that Budd was the BUF Administration Officer for Sussex . On Friday 1st December 1933, the BUF held its first public meeting in Worthing in the Old Town Hall. According to the author of Storm Tide: Worthing 1933-1939 (2008): "It was crowded to capacity, with the several rows of seats normally reserved for municipal dignitaries and magistrates now occupied by forbidding, youthful men arrived in black Fascist uniforms, in company with several equally young women dressed in black blouses and grey skirts."

On 4th January, 1934, Budd reported that over 150 people in Worthing had joined the British Union of Fascists. He claimed that the greatest intake had come from increasingly disaffected Conservatives. The Weekly Fascist News described the growth in membership as "phenomenal". Budd also announced that local communists had broken into his offices at 27 Marine Parade and stolen 96 BUF badges, together with cigarettes and £2.2s.8d in cash. However, soon afterwards the police arrested Cyril Mitchell of 16 Leigh Road, Broadwater. Mitchell, who admitted the offence, was in fact a young Blackshirt, who had broken into the offices after a night out in the pub. He told the police, "something came over me… I had too much beer".

The mayor of Worthing, Harry Duffield, the leader of the Conservative Party in the town, was most favourably impressed with the Blackshirts and congratulated them on the disciplined way they had marched through the streets of Worthing. He reported that employers in the town had written to him giving their support for the British Union of Fascists. They had "no objection to their employees wearing the black shirt even at work; and such public spirited action on their part was much appreciated."

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Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts.

On 26th January, 1934, William Joyce, the deputy leader of the BUF, addressed a public meeting at the Pier Pavilion. Over 900 people turned up to hear Joyce speak. In his speech he pledged to free British industry from foreigners, "be they Hebrew or any other form of alien." Joyce ended his two-hour speech with: "Reclaim what is your own in the fullness of Fascist victory!"

It was announced that Charles Bentinck Budd had arranged for Oswald Mosley and William Joyce to address a meeting at the Pavilion on 9th October, 1934. The venue was packed with fascist supporters. The meeting was disrupted when a few hecklers were ejected by hefty East End bouncers. Mosley, however, continued his speech undaunted, telling his audience that Britain's enemies would have to be deported: "We were assaulted by the vilest mob you ever saw in the streets of London - little East End Jews, straight from Poland. Are you really going to blame us for throwing them out?"

At the close of the proceedings the main body of uniformed Fascists, led by Joyce, emerged from the Pavilion on to the Esplanade. It was estimated that there were 2,000 people waiting outside. The crowd surged forward and several fights began. A ninety-six-year-old woman, Doreen Hodgkins, was struck on the head by a Blackshirt before being escorted away. When the Blackshirts retreated inside, the crowd began to chant: "Poor old Mosley's got the wind up!"

The author of Storm Tide: Worthing 1933-1939 (2008) has pointed out: "By this time all nineteen available members of the Borough's police force had been called out, and through their combined efforts a lane through the crowd was forced open from the Pavilion steps across the Esplanade to Marine Parade. But as Joyce and his re-formed black-shirted cohort passed along it they were constantly barracked and jostled; while the sudden appearance of Sir Oswald himself, together with the bodyguards of his Defence Force, led to a further outbreak of scuffles on the Esplanade as large numbers of spectators eagerly closed in upon him. One Blackshirt was knocked to the ground and there were shouts for Sir Oswald to be thrown into the sea... Despite such imprecations, however, the mood of the majority remained largely good-natured: most people, prompted by curiosity and awe, simply wanting to get a closer, more proper, look at such a famous yet notorious figure. But Sir Oswald, clearly out of countenance and feeling menaced, at once ordered his tough, battle-hardened bodyguards - all of imposing physique and, like their leader, towering over the policemen on duty - to close ranks and adopt their fighting stance which, unsurprisingly, as all were trained boxers, had been modelled on, and closely resembled, that of a prize fighter."

Chris Hare, the author of Historic Worthing (2008) has argued: "Mosley, accompanied by William Joyce, left the Pavilion and, protected by a large body of blackshirts, crossed over the road to Barnes's cafe in the Arcade. Stones and rotten vegetables were soon crashing through the windows of the cafe. Boys were observed firing peashooters at the beleaguered Fascists, while some youths were taking aim with air rifles. Meanwhile a group of young men climbed onto the roof of the Arcade and dislodged a large piece of masonry, which plummeted to earth through the arcade, landing only feet away from the Fascist leader. Things were getting too hot for the Fascists, who made a run for it, up the Arcade into Montague Street, then into South Street. Their intention was presumably to reach either their headquarters in Ann Street, or The Fountain in South Street, known as a 'Fascist pub', but they were ambushed on the corner of Warwick Street by local youths. Hearing the row, more Fascists hurried down from the Fountain to go to Mosley's aid. Fights broke out, bodies were slung against shop windows, and startled residents threw open their windows to see a seething mass of entangled bodies desperately struggling for control of the junction between South Street and Warwick Street."

Superintendent Bristow later claimed that a crowd of about 400 people attempted to stop the Blackshirts from getting to their headquarters. A series of fights took place and several people were injured. Francis Skilton, a solicitor's clerk who had left his home at 30 Normandy Road to post a letter at the Central Post Office in Chapel Road, and got caught up in the fighting. A witness, John Birts, later told the police that Skilton had been "savagely attacked by at least three Blackshirts." It was not until 11.00 p.m. that the police managed to clear the area.

Anti-Semitism

By 1934 Mosley was expressing strong anti-Semitic views and provocative marches through Jewish districts in London led to riots. The passing of the 1936 Public Order Act that made the wearing of political uniforms and private armies illegal, using threatening and abusive words a criminal offence, and gave the Home Secretary the powers to ban marches, completely undermined the activities of the BUF.

Mosley attracted members from other right-wing groups such as the British Fascisti, National Fascists and the Imperial Fascist League. By 1934 the BUF was able to establish its own drinking clubs and football teams. The BUF also gained the support of Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail. Rothermere wrote an article, Hurrah for the Blackshirts, on 22nd January, 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine". Rothermere added: "Timid alarmists all this week have been whimpering that the rapid growth in numbers of the British Blackshirts is preparing the way for a system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps. Very few of these panic-mongers have any personal knowledge of the countries that are already under Blackshirt government. The notion that a permanent reign of terror exists there has been evolved entirely from their own morbid imaginations, fed by sensational propaganda from opponents of the party now in power. As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party. Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."

According to a MI5 report in 1934 the BUF had between 35,000 and 40,000 active members. It also said that senior service officers and prominent businessmen had joined the party. The Conservative Party became concerned about losing members to the BUF. One of their MPs, Colonel Thomas Moore, wrote in the Daily Mail on 25th April 1934: "Surely there cannot be any fundamental difference of outlook between the Blackshirts and their parents, the Conservatives?"

Lord Rothermere and Oswald Mosley

The London Evening News, another newspaper owned by Lord Rothermere, found a more popular and subtle way of supporting the Blackshirts. It obtained 500 seats for a BUF rally at the Royal Albert Hall and offered them as prizes to readers who sent in the most convincing reasons why they liked the Blackshirts. Another title owned by Rothermere, The Sunday Dispatch, even sponsored a Blackshirt beauty competition to find the most attractive BUF supporter. Not enough attractive women entered and the contest was declared void.

David Low heard Mosley speak at a meeting in London: "Mosley spoke effectively at great length. Delivery excellent, matter reckless. Interruptions began, but no dissenting voice got beyond half a dozen sentences before three or four bullies almost literally jumped on him, bashed him and lugged him out. Two such incidents happened near me. An honest looking blue-eyed student type rose and shouted indignantly Hitler means war! whereupon he was given the complete treatment."

Mosley appointed William Joyce as the party full-time Propaganda Director. Joyce, along with Mosley and Mick Clarke, were the organisations three main public speakers. On 7th June, 1934, the British Union of Fascists held a large rally at Olympia. About 500 anti-fascists including Vera Brittain, Richard Sheppard and Aldous Huxley, managed to get inside the hall. When they began heckling Oswald Mosley they were attacked by 1,000 black-shirted stewards. Several of the protesters were badly beaten by the fascists.

Margaret Storm Jameson pointed out in The Daily Telegraph: "A young woman carried past me by five Blackshirts, her clothes half torn off and her mouth and nose closed by the large hand of one; her head was forced back by the pressure and she must have been in considerable pain. I mention her especially since I have seen a reference to the delicacy with which women interrupters were left to women Blackshirts. This is merely untrue... Why train decent young men to indulge in such peculiarly nasty brutality?"

The Daily Mail continued to give its support to the fascists. George Ward Price wrote about anti-fascist demonstrators at a meeting of the National Union of Fascists on 8th June, 1934: "If the Blackshirts movement had any need of justification, the Red Hooligans who savagely and systematically tried to wreck Sir Oswald Mosley's huge and magnificently successful meeting at Olympia last night would have supplied it. They got what they deserved. Olympia has been the scene of many assemblies and many great fights, but never had it offered the spectacle of so many fights mixed up with a meeting."

Collin Brooks, was a journalist who worked for Lord Rothermere at the The Sunday Dispatch. He also attended the the rally at Olympia. Brooks wrote in his diary: "He mounted to the high platform and gave the salute - a figure so high and so remote in that huge place that he looked like a doll from Marks and Spencer's penny bazaar. He then began - and alas the speakers hadn't properly tuned in and every word was mangled. Not that it mattered - for then began the Roman circus. The first interrupter raised his voice to shout some interjection.The mob of storm troopers hurled itself at him. He was battered and biffed and hashed and dragged out - while the tentative sympathisers all about him, many of whom were rolled down and trodden on, grew sick and began to think of escape. From that moment it was a shambles. Free fights all over the show. The Fascist technique is really the most brutal thing I have ever seen, which is saving something. There is no pause to hear what the interrupter is saying: there is no tap on the shoulder and a request to leave quietly: there is only the mass assault. Once a man's arms are pinioned his face is common property to all adjacent punchers." Brooks also commented that one of his "party had gone there very sympathetic to the fascists and very anti-Red". As they left the meeting he said "My God, if ifs to be a choice between the Reds and these toughs, I'm all for the Reds".

MI5 also reported to the Home Office that the rally would have a negative impact on the future of the National Union of Fascists: "It is becoming increasingly clear that at Olympia Mosley suffered a check which is likely to prove decisive. He suffered it, not at the hands of the Communists who staged the provocations and now claim the victory; but at the hands of Conservative MPs, the Conservative press and all those organs of public opinion which made him abandon the policy of using his Defence Force to overwhelm interrupters."

In July, 1934 Lord Rothermere suddenly withdrew his support for Oswald Mosley. The historian, James Pool, the author of Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power (1979), argues: "The rumor on Fleet Street was that the Daily Mail's Jewish advertisers had threatened to place their adds in a different paper if Rothermere continued the profascist campaign." Pool points out that sometime after this, Rothermere met with Hitler at the Berghof and told how the "Jews cut off his complete revenue from advertising" and compelled him to "toe the line." Hitler later recalled Rothermere telling him that it was "quite impossible at short notice to take any effective countermeasures."

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Oswald Mosley with members of the British Union of Fascists

Oswald Mosley began an affair with Diana Mitford, the daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, one of Mosley's wealthy supporters. Diana left her husband but Mosley refused to desert his wife. It was not until Cynthia Curzon died of peritonitis, that Mosley agreed to marry Diana. In October 1936, Diana and Mosley were secretly married in the house of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of only six guests at the ceremony. While in Nazi Germany Diana talked to Hitler about the possibility of establishing a pro-Nazi radio station in Britain.

Second World War

The outbreak of the Second World War further reduced support for the British Union of Fascists. On 18th December 1939, the police raided the flat of Norah Elam where they found documents suggesting that she had been taking part in secret meetings of right-wing groups. A letter from Oswald Mosley stated that "Mrs Elam had his full confidence, and was entitled to do what she thought fit in the interests of the movement on her own responsibility." On 23rd January 1940, Norah was arrested and interrogated him in order to establish whether her handling of BUF funds had been illegal or improper.

A MI5 report suggested that it was suspicious that Norah Elam had been placed in charge of BUF funds. Mosley told Special Branch detectives: "As regards the money paid to Mrs Elam we have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to conceal. When war became imminent we had to be prepared for any eventually. There might have been an air raid, our headquarters might have been smashed by a mob, I myself was expecting to be assassinated. I may tell you quite frankly that I took certain precautions. It was necessary then for us to disperse the funds in case anything should happen to headquarters or the leaders. Mrs. Elam therefore took charge of part of our funds for a short period before and after the declaration of war. There was nothing illegal or improper about this."

Oswald Mosley Imprisoned

On 22nd May 1940 the British government announced the imposition of Defence Regulation 18B. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm". The following day, Mosley was arrested. Over the next few days other prominent figures in the BUF were imprisoned. On the 30th May the BUF was dissolved and its publications were banned.

Mosley and his wife received privileged treatment while in prison. Winston Churchill granted permission for the couple to live in a small house inside Holloway Prison. They were given a small garden where they could sunbathe and grow their own vegetables. They were even allowed to employ fellow prisoners as servants.

In November 1943, Herbert Morrison controversially decided to order the Mosleys to be released from prison. There were large-scale protests and even Diana's sister, Jessica Mitford, described the decision as "a slap in the face of anti-fascists in every country and a direct betrayal of those who have died for the cause of anti-fascism."

Post-War Oswald Mosley

After the war Mosley and Diana Mosley established Euphorion Books in an attempt to publish the work of right-wing authors. In 1947 Mosley formed the Union Movement which advocated British integration in Europe and an end to commonwealth immigration. The couple left England in 1949 and after a period in Ireland settled in France where they lived close to their friends, the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson.

Mosley was unsuccessful in his two attempts to enter the House of Commons for Kensington North (1959) and Shoreditch & Finsbury (1966). As Robert Skidelsky has pointed out: "After the war Mosley started a Union Movement dedicated to creating a united Europe. But the idea had little resonance, coming from that tainted source. In the 1950s he attacked coloured immigration into Britain. He stood as Union Movement candidate for North Kensington in the general election of 1959, losing his deposit; a second intervention at Shoreditch and Finsbury in 1966 fared even worse... In his last years he suffered from Parkinson's disease."

Oswald Mosley died on 3rd December 1980.
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Re: Fascism, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:30 pm

Part 2 of 2

Primary Sources

(1) In her book My Life With Nye (1980), Jennie Lee explained her views on Oswald Mosley.

Another bright light in this 1929 Parliament was Sir Oswald Mosley. He had a fatal flaw in his character, on overwhelming arrogance and an unshakable conviction that he was born to rule, drove him on to the criminal folly of donning a black shirt and surrounding himself with a band of bullyboys, and so becoming a pathetic imitation Hitler, doomed to political impotence for the rest of his life.

(2) David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (1977)

On January 23rd, Mosley sent MacDonald a copy of a long memorandum on the economic situation, on which he had been at work for well over a month, and which has gone down to history as the "Mosley Memorandum". It made three main assertions - that the machinery of government should be drastically overhauled, that unemployment could be radically reduced by a public-works programme on the lines advocated by Keynes and the Liberal Party, and that long -term economic reconstruction required "a mobilisation of national resources on a larger scale than has yet been contemplated". The existing administrative structure, Mosley argued, was hopelessly inadequate. What was needed was a new department, under the direct control of the prime minister, consisting of an executive committee of ministers and a secretariat of civil servants, assisted by a permanent staff of economists and an advisory council of outside experts. The problems of substance, he went on, had to be looked at under two quite separate headings, which had so far been muddled up. First, there was the long-term problem of economic reconstruction, which could be solved only by systematic Government planning, designed to create new industries as well as to revitalize old ones. Second, there was the immediate problem of unemployment. This could be solved by making road-building a national responsibility, by raising a loan of £200 million and spending it on roads and other public works over the next three years, by raising the school-leaving age and by introducing earlier retirement pensions. Whatever their faults, Mosley concluded flamboyantly, his proposals "at least represent a coherent and comprehensive conception of national policy... It is for those who object to show either that present policy is effective for its purpose, or to present a reasoned alternative which offers a greater prospect of success.

(3) Ramsay MacDonald, diary entry (19th May, 1930)

Mosley came to see me... had to see me urgently: informed me he was to resign. I reasoned with him and got him to hold his decision over till we had further conversations. Went down to Cabinet Room late for meeting. Soon in difficulties. Mosley would get away from practical work into speculative experiments. Very bad impression. Thomas light, inconsistent but pushful and resourceful; others overwhelmed and Mosley on the verge of being offensively vain in himself.

(4) David Low, Autobiography (1956)

The British Fascist Party was comparatively insignificant until Mosley took over its leadership. Mosley was young, energetic, capable and an excellent speaker. Since I had met him in 1925 he had graduated from close friendship with MacDonald to a job in the second Labour Government; but he had become disgusted with the evasions over unemployment and had resigned to start a party of his own.

Unfortunately at the succeeding general election he fell ill with influenza and his party-in-embryo, deprived of his brilliant talents, was wiped out. Mosley was too ambitious to retire into obscurity. Looking around for a "vehicle" he united himself to the British Fascists, rechristened "the Blackshirts", and acquired almost automatically the encouragement of Britain's then biggest newspaper, the Daily Mail, which was more than willing to extend its admiration for the Italian original to the local imitation. That was a fateful influenza germ.

(5) Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mirror (22nd January, 1934)

Timid alarmists all this week have been whimpering that the rapid growth in numbers of the British Blackshirts is preparing the way for a system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps.

Very few of these panic-mongers have any personal knowledge of the countries that are already under Blackshirt government. The notion that a permanent reign of terror exists there has been evolved entirely from their own morbid imaginations, fed by sensational propaganda from opponents of the party now in power.

As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party.

Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W.

(6) Chris Hare, Historic Worthing (2008)

Despite local hostility, the Fascist branch in Worthing was one of the most successful in the south of England, a fact that Captain Budd was keen to stress in an interview with the press: "Fascism is the one thing that will sage this country from the trouble for which it is heading! When I was put in charge of this area was given to understand that I would find things slow in West Sussex; but now I find the people very eager and interested in our movement." In recognition of the hard work being done in Worthing for the movement, it was arranged for Mosley to hold a Fascist rally at the Pavilion in Worthing on 9 October 1934. In the meantime Captain Budd was once again grabbing the local headlines. He stormed out of the Town Hall when other councillors refused to give him the committee places he desired. And he attacked the Council fur its police of banning the Fascists from holding open-air meetings on the site of the old fish market near the pier. He protested that the Salvation Army was allowed to hold meetings there, so why not the Fascists, but was bluntly told that this privilege was only extended to religious bodies.

The night of 9 October proved to be a desperate affair, one local newspaper describing the night's events as more akin to revolutionary Spain than one would usually expect in an English town. As Mosley addressed a carefully vetted audience in the Pavilion, an angry mob gathered outside. The meeting, stage-managed to the least detail, was disrupted when a small hand of intruders let off a number of squibs, and had to be ejected by hefty East End bouncers....

After the rally, Mosley, accompanied by William Joyce, left the Pavilion and, protected by a large body of blackshirts, crossed over the road to Barnes's cafe in the Arcade. Stones and rotten vegetables were soon crashing through the windows of the cafe. Boys were observed firing peashooters at the beleaguered Fascists, while some youths were taking aim with air rifles. Meanwhile a group of young men climbed onto the roof of the Arcade and dislodged a large piece of masonry, which plummeted to earth through the arcade, landing only feet away from the Fascist leader. Things were getting too hot for the Fascists, who made a run for it, up the Arcade into Montague Street, then into South Street. Their intention was presumably to reach either their headquarters in Ann Street, or The Fountain in South Street, known as a "Fascist pub", but they were ambushed on the corner of Warwick Street by local youths. Hearing the row, more Fascists hurried down from the Fountain to go to Mosley's aid. Fights broke out, bodies were slung against shop windows, and startled residents thrcxv open their windows to see a seething mass of entangled bodies desperately struggling for control of the junction between South Street and Warwick Street. Only the arrival of a large force of police defused the situation. Several blackshirts were arrested and led away to the cheers of the crowd.

Mosley made two more public appearances in Worthing during the 1930s. On both occasions the police visited the houses of several local young men during the days before, confiscating catapults and air rifles. These meetings were, however, more low-key, and the Fascists never again tried to march en masse through the streets of the town. The antipathy felt towards the Fascists again manifested itself on 5 November 1934. During the previous days several Worthing boys and men known to be hostile to the Fascists had been waylaid at night and beaten up. Bonfire Night saw several cases of retaliation. At least one blackshirt was thrown in the sea, and others had to run the fiery gauntlet. Cars were stopped, and passengers scrutinised before being allowed to pass on. A group of nearly a thousand people gathered outside a hotel, where it was alleged a number of Fascist leaders were staying. A plentiful supply of squibs and crackers were thrown up at the windows, as the crowd howled its fury. Presently a window opened, and several buckets of cold water were showered down on the besieging party. The arrival of the police prevented an escalation of the disturbances, but not before Worthing had truly resurrected the spirit of Bonfire Nights past.

Superintendent Bristow's comment, quoted in the national press, that the Fascists were "just very nice Worthing people", caused a certain degree of embarrassment, and he retired from his post a few months later. Due to the perceived improvement in the law and order situation in the town, the police had not for some years been Issued with helmets, caps being considered quite adequate. From 1935-37 the police were reissued with helmets. Bonfire Night remained a problem, and after the war became extremely disorderly, culminating in a serious riot on the night of 5 November 1958, after which stringent measures were taken to suppress the wild excesses of the "Bonfire Boys" once and for all.

(7) Michael Payne, Storm Tide: Worthing 1933-1939 (2008)

Still anxious to speak to the people of Worthing himself where, he had become convinced, his movement had built up a strong position, and he himself would receive a warm reception, Sir Oswald announced that he would address a meeting at the Pavilion on October 9. Prior to the event, those supporters who wished to meet him, briefly but privately, were invited to apply in writing to Captain Budd, who from amongst their number selected those with the most "serious and earnest enquiries to make." Also to be admitted into his presence were representatives of both the BUF Sussex and Hampshire HQs, who would use the occasion to present their leader with a portrait of himself embossed in relief on a bronze plaque.

"Hear Moseley at the Pavilion," ran the Fascist advertisement in the local press in heralding his forthcoming appearance, below which, in an accompanying box, was depicted a simple but striking line drawing in ink of the Fascist leader. In company with a score or so members of his Defence Force, he duly arrived from London in a black lorry, the windows of which had been covered in protective wire netting; but even though the vehicle also contained several so called "ambulance" men, who were regularly on hand at rallies to treat casualties, he was hardly expecting any serious trouble. However, in looking upon Worthing as a relatively safe and peaceful haven for himself and his followers, in contrast to the Socialist cauldrons of London and the industrial cities of the Midlands and North - a town, in fact, ever more receptive to, and supportive of, his Fascist creed - he was soon to be disabused of such a misguided notion. An inkling of what might transpire during his sojourn in the Borough might have been gathered from the sensational daubing of paint on the facade of the Town Hall, during the night prior to the meeting, of the slogans: "Damn Moseley! Fight Fascism! No more War;" or from the tarspattered Georgian facade of the BUF HQ on Marine Parade and the similarly besmirched crazy paving at the home of Captain Budd.

The following evening, as the meeting inside got under way, the crowd gathering outside the Pavilion grew steadily larger, with accompanying shouts and cat-calls, the sharp explosions of firecrackers and the whooshing of rockets; while more emboldened individuals hammered continuously on the bolted doors of the auditorium and on the iron supports of the Pier beneath it. But at this stage the kerfuffle appeared more akin to high-spiritedness than violent disturbance, with even the watchful black-shirted stewards generally Ignoring the commotion. To David Bernard Trent of Park Road, the whole affair seemed to be a joke on the part of the crowd - which, he further observed, was just as well, for at 7.30 p.m. lie could discern just four policemen in attendance. Posted by Superintendent Bristow, as far as these youthful looking 'Bristow Babies' were concerned, they were faced by a peaceful gathering simply letting off a few fireworks.

Within the Pavilion itself the meeting went off in an orderly enough manner - although hearing that the event might be stormy at least one lady arrived having taken the precaution of concealing a Life Preserver in her attire - for although the house was packed the audience was largely composed of Fascist supporters, including contingents from London and all parts of Sussex. Prior to the actual start, a file of black-bloused young women had formed up in the Foyer to hail the arrival of their leader, but prudently he had entered the theatre by means of the stage door at the rear. With less foresight his mother had entered by the front entrance where she had been startled by a fire cracker being thrown at her. Finally the curtain rose to reveal Sir Oswald himself standing alone on the stage. Clad entirely in black, his great silver belt buckle gleaming, his right arm raised in the Fascist salute, lie was spellbindingly illuminated in the hushed, almost reverential atmosphere by the glare of spotlights from right, left and centre. A forest of black-sleeved arms immediately shot up to hail him, but finding himself completely blinded, the dramatic effect was immediately shattered by his opening words requesting that the centre beam be switched off...

Again the police intervened to restore order and with shouts, accusations and insults ringing in his ears Sir Oswald was enabled, in company with his mother and bodyguards, to reach Marine Parade. His immediate destination was Barnes Cafe, almost directly opposite, but before entering it he led his troops, attired in their heavy boots and riding breeches, fists clenched and elbows stuck out, in a defiantly ostentatious and provocative march around the adjacent South Street traffic island. Several tomatoes were thrown at them, but an easier target was provided by a group of Fascist women crossing Marine Parade at the same moment. One tomato struck the unfortunate Winifred Collins on her left eye, an experience which she afterwards described as "very squashy." Mary Hodges, on the other hand, was struck by the filthy and hostile language hurled at her by many of the onlookers; while her companion, Florence Spiers - herself hit on the head by a tomato - noted that the crowd was very far from being "the nice friendly one composed of old ladies and cripples" she had been led to expect.

Gathered at last in the comparative safety of the Cafe, which had been gained amid a cascade of fire crackers, nevertheless, from outside the Blackshirts continued to be subject to a barrage of taunts and threats, which included: "Come out Moseley and show yourself, or we'll come in and get you;" "Come out you dirty coward;" "Down with'em, kill'em;" together with the chant: "One, two, three, four, five, we want Moseley dead or alive." To avoid being struck by
tomatoes being thrown in at them, a number of which had already bespattered the waitresses, or wounded by pellets being fired from an air pistol by a youth of about sixteen from the Esplanade's balustrade, those inside the Cafe shut the windows: but as these began to be smashed by stones from the beach, Sir Oswald, following a hasty discussion with Joyce, ordered his second-in-command to create a diversion by leading his own fifteen or so bodyguards in a march up South Street to the branch HQ in Warwick Street.

As they left the Cafe, in company with a contingent of Fascist women and local supporters, they were indeed, as they had anticipated, immediately accompanied by a sizeable section of the crowd, which immediately broke into boos, shouted insults and chants of The Red Front. Both groups broke into a run, during which, in attempting to protect a Fascist woman, a Blackshirt, Mr. Chamberlain, was knocked violently to the ground. "Go home and wash your husband's shirt and cook his dinner," bellowed an incensed man at the equally dazed woman. On gaining the western entrance to Warwick Street, the Blackshirts found it blocked by a further, larger, and even more hostile group, many among which mockingly raised their arms in the Communist salute. Deciding to detour through Market Street, here, too, they found the roadway and pavements thronging with people, several of whom, spoiling for a fight, were only too eager to embroil themselves in brawls with the beleaguered Fascists. They were not to be disappointed, and as one hefty Blackshirt was sent sprawling into a shop doorway by punches from an equally robust "civilian," the battle of Market Street commenced. Immediately several bedroom windows were flung open as startled residents in their night attire peeped from behind curtains at the melee below in terror and amazement.

Meanwhile, just as Sir Oswald was preparing to slip away from the Cafe - before it could be further damaged and in order to quell the growing alarm of the proprietor and the several remaining women Fascists - word reached him of the dire predicament Joyce and his men were in. Darting out onto the pavement and breaking into a double, Sir Oswald and his cohort of bodyguards sped east along Marine Parade before turning left into Bedford Row and thence to the eastern entrance to Market Street where, with himself as the spearhead, they immediately charged from the rear the mob assailing Joyce's force. Caught completely off guard by this unforeseen sally - subsequently dubbed by the national press as the "Charge of the Black Brigade" - the crowd, faltering, began to break up and disperse, and within minutes the re-united and reassembled, bloodied but undaunted Blackshirts were able to turn their attention to the clearing of Warwick Street and the relief of their beleaguered HQ.

Here too the crowd was dense, numbering nearly four hundred - a situation Police Sergeant Heritage described as "very ugly" - and as the cavalcade of Blackshirts attempted to march back and forth, cries of "We'll give Moseley a hot time" and "Come on lads, get stuck into them" heralded the outbreak of further violence. Warwick Street - dubbed by the community the "Bond Street of Worthing" - was soon a seething, howling, mass of struggling bodies but in a series of powerful rushes, during which numerous people were knocked to the ground, thrown aside or sent thudding against shop windows, the hefty, disciplined Blackshirts finally began to cut swathes through, and break up, the unruly mob. But not before sustaining several casualties themselves, amongst whom was Sir Oswald, who in trying to gain the door of the HQ received a punch under his left eye and a second to the jaw; an action which spurred a gang of Brighton roughs to press toward him, only to be baulked by those Fascists gathered at the doorway hurrying to rally around their leader...

Robert Poore, meanwhile, an Italian Post Office messenger living at 26, Loder Gardens, when initially confronted himself by Black-shirtecl assailants, had pleaded with them that he "did not understand British;" to which came the sardonic reply that they did not understand Italian, a sarcasm followed by the delivery of several Weighty punches to his head. Sustaining severe facial cuts, he too was removed to hospital. Not one child was hurt, however, the police having had the foresight to order home any amongst the spectators long before any violence threatened. One boy disappointed not to have been present was nine-year-old Clifford Skeet, who had previously overheard his uncles Norman and Edin Williams, both members of the local Territorial "C" Company 4 Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, discussing at the room they shared at their mother's boarding house at 17 West Buildings how they intended to "sort the Blackshirts Out."

With the arrival of more and more police detachments drafted in from outside the Borough, by 11 p.m. the battle of Warwick Street, too, drew to a close. Now, with only sporadic boos and shouts being directed towards the Blackshirts the atmosphere among the crowd quietened - pierced only at one point by an enthusiastic cheer as Police Constables Ridge and Griffin escorted Bernard Mullens, a Chelsea Fascist, to the police station on suspicion of his having taken part in the assault on Robert Poore. There, nursing a damaged right hand himself, Mullens denied the charge, but nevertheless was remanded in custody for a week - unlike the assailant of Captain Budd who, despite the hitter's forceful demands that a charge of assault be made upon him, was merely cautioned to leave Warwick Street and return home.

At the same time a summons was issued against Sir Oswald for assaulting Jack Pritchard of 81 Ham Road, outside the Pavilion, although the Fascist leader protested that he had merely been protecting himself from a "violent rough" who had lunged forward and punched him on the left cheek bone. He had been pushed from behind, retorted Mr. Pritchard, had fallen forward, and it was then he had been thumped. To prevent a second punch he had caught hold of Sir Oswald's sleeve, but had then been the recipient of several more hefty blows from behind. He also denied the allegation levelled at him by Captain Budd that he had confided to a "certain man" that the police were using him as a "pawn in their game," or that if he had been in Sir Oswald's position himself he would have acted to protect himself in a like manner.

(8) The Western Morning News (15th November 1934)

The summons for alleged assault brought against Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, following a disturbance after a Fascist meeting here on October 9, was dismissed to-day. The magistrates reached this decision after further evidence had been called for the defence. The Bench held a consultation, and Mr. A. F. Somerset (the chairman) announced that they were agreed the charge should be dismissed.

Mr. St. John Hutchinson, who appeared for Sir Oswald, asked if he could confine to Warwick-street the remainder of the evidence on the charge of alleged riotous assembly. The Bench said that they could not dissociate one from the other. They had heard sufficient evidence to the trouble around the café.

Sir Oswald and three men were summoned for alleged riotous assembly. The other men were William Joyce, described as director of Fascist propaganda; Capt. Charles Henry Budd, described as Blackshirt officer for West Sussex area: and Bernard Mullans, stated to be a member of the movement. Mullans was also summoned for alleged assault. All men denied the charges. Joyce, in evidence, said that any suggestion that they came down to Worthing to beat up the crowd was ridiculous in the highest degree. They were menaced and insulted by people in the crowd.

Mullans stated that he told Poore that he should be ashamed for using insulting language in the presence of women. Poore hit him in eye, and he (Mullans) then hit him in the mouth. The case was adjourned till tomorrow.

(9) Collin Brooks, diary entry (6th June, 1934)

The advertised time of the great oration was eight o'clock. At 8.45 the searchlights were directed to the far end, the Blackshirts lined the centre corridor - and trumpets braved as a great mass of Union Jacks surmounted by Roman plates passed towards the platform. Everybody thought this was Mosley and stood and cheered and saluted. Only it wasn't Mosley. He came some few minutes later at the head of his chiefs of craft. In consequence the second greeting was an anti-climax. He mounted to the high platform and gave the salute - a figure so high and so remote in that huge place that he looked like a doll from Marks and Spencer's penny bazaar. He then began - and alas the speakers hadn't properly tuned in and every word was mangled. Not that it mattered - for then began the Roman circus. The first interrupter raised his voice to shout some interjection.The mob of storm troopers hurled itself at him. He was battered and biffed and hashed and dragged out - while the tentative sympathisers all about him, many of whom were rolled down and trodden on, grew sick and began to think of escape. From that moment it was a shambles. Free fights all over the show. The Fascist technique is really the most brutal thing I have ever seen, which is saving something. There is no pause to hear what the interrupter is saying: there is no tap on the shoulder and a request to leave quietly: there is only the mass assault. Once a man's arms are pinioned his face is common property to all adjacent punchers...

The breaking of glass off-stage added to the trepidation of old ladies and parsons in the audience who had come to support the 'patriots'. More free fights - more bashing and lashing and kickings - and a steady withdrawal of the ordinary audience. We left With Mosley still speaking and the loud speakers still preventing our hearing a word he said, and by that time the place was half empty. Outside, of course, were the one thousand police expecting more trouble, but I didn't wait to see the aftermath. One of our party had gone there very sympathetic to the fascists and very anti-Red. As we parted he said "My God, if ifs to be a choice between the Reds and these toughs, I'm all for the Reds".

(10) David Low attended one of the public meetings held by the British Union of Fascists in 1936.

Mosley spoke effectively at great length. Delivery excellent, matter reckless. Interruptions began, but no dissenting voice got beyond half a dozen sentences before three or four bullies almost literally jumped on him, bashed him and lugged him out. Two such incidents happened near me. An honest looking blue-eyed student type rose and shouted indignantly "Hitler means war!" whereupon he was given the complete treatment.

(11) Oswald Mosley, Message for British Union Members and Supporters (2nd September, 1939)

We have said a hundred times that if the life of Britain were threatened we would fight again, but I am not offering to fight in the quarrel of Jewish finance in a war from which Britain could withdraw at any moment she likes, with her Empire intact and her people safe. I am now concerned with only two simple facts. This war is no quarrel of the British people, this war is a quarrel of Jewish finance, so to our people I give myself for the winning of peace.

(12) Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960)

During his detention under the 18B regulation, moves to have him released came from all sorts of people and organizations. Some were undoubtedly genuine efforts by those who put the basic principles of British freedom first even if the matter concerned a man with an avowed policy of destroying that freedom, but the majority, I had no doubt, were the efforts of Mosley's class friends and political sympathizers.

And a few of the complaints were doubtless meant to embarrass me personally or to put a spanner in the works of a smoothly- running coalition by rousing political controversy. I noticed with amusement that some critics, who had been vociferous about the ruthless injustice of interning aliens and keeping them interned, now, showed an equally large amount of indignation about my tender-heartedness when the possibility of releasing Mosley from prison was known. It was impossible to please everyone, and in any case placating my critics was of no importance as compared with observing the law and safeguarding the nation.

The crux of the matter was Mosley's health. He had become ill with phlebitis. His doctor was allowed to examine him and he reported that continued imprisonment would jeopardize his life. I did not consider it advisable to accept this without a second opinion. The prison doctors confirmed it. The quandary was whether to free this leading fascist, a sympathizer with Hitler and Mussolini, or whether to risk having a British citizen die in prison without trial. Apart from such a blot on history going back to Magna Charta, martyrdom is a very profound source of strength. I had little doubt that some of the near-fascists in the country would have liked nothing better than that their leader should become a dead martyr. However, my task was to decide what was the right thing to do.

(13) New York Times (November, 1943)

There is little doubt that the people of Britain are worked up over Sir Oswald's release. Early morning trains arriving here from the Midlands carried large numbers of outraged Yorkshire miners representing 140,000 fellow workers. Representatives of 10,000 miners of South Wales also arrived, and a telegram signed in the name of 75,000 Sheffield war workers was sent to Mr Churchill.

(14) Jessica Mitford, letter to San Francisco Chronicle (November, 1943)

Like millions of others in the United Nations and the occupied countries, I have all my life been an opponent of the fascist ideology in whatever form it appears. Because I do not believe that family ties should be allowed to influence a person's convictions I long ago ceased to have any contact with those members of my family who have supported the fascist cause. The release of Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley is a slap in the face of anti-fascists in every country and a direct betrayal of those who have died for the cause of anti- fascism. They should be kept in jail, where they belong.

(15) Francis Beckett, The Guardian (16th August, 2003)

In recent years, there has been an appalling TV biopic portraying Mosley as a heroic figure, their affair as one of history's great love stories, and fascism as a tremendous lark. Lady Diana was interviewed by Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs and by James Naughtie on Today with a level of indulgent respect that neither of these interviewers would have summoned up for a working-class fascist. And four years ago, Jan Dalley's biography whitewashed Lady Diana and her husband.

Like Mosley's biographer Robert Skidelsky before her, Dalley fell for the central post-war Mosley lie: that anti-semitism was confined to his proletarian followers. She repeated uncritically the Mosley version that William Joyce, a leading fascist who broadcast for Hitler during the war, inspired fascist anti-semitism, and that Mosley was "unwise" to let Joyce edit his newspaper. But it was Mosley, not Joyce, who said during the Abyssinian war: "Greater even than the stink of oil is the stink of the Jew." It was Mosley who talked of German Jews as "the sweepings of continental ghettos hired by Jewish financiers". The only difference is: Mosley was rich and well-born; Joyce was proletarian and poor.

It was only after the second world war, when the Holocaust had so discredited anti-semitism that no politician could hope to benefit from it, that Mosley started to express well-bred distaste for his movement's wilder excesses, and to blame people like Joyce. By then Lady Diana was used to the idea that her wealth and social position would cushion her from the consequences of her views. During the war, hundreds of Mosleyites were interned without trial. But while humbler fascists were put in dank prisons and prison camps, and husbands and wives separated, the Mosleys were allocated a little house in the grounds of Holloway prison, where they hired other prisoners to wait on them.

(16) Audrey Gillan, The Day the East End Said "No Pasaran' to Blackshirts (30th September, 2006)

They built barricades from paving stones, timber and overturned lorries. Women threw the contents of chamber pots on to the heads of policemen and children hurled marbles under their horses and burst bags of pepper in front of their noses.

Next Wednesday marks the 70th anniversary of the day that Jews, communists, trade unionists, Labour party members, Irish Catholic dockers and the people of the East End of London united in defiance of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and refused to let them march through their streets.

Shouting the Spanish civil war slogan "No pasaran" - "They shall not pass" - more than 300,000 people turned back an army of Blackshirts. Their victory over racism and anti-Semitism on Sunday October 4 1936 became known as the Battle of Cable Street and encapsulated the British fight against a fascism that was stomping across Europe.

Mosley planned to send columns of thousands of goose-stepping men throughout the impoverished East End dressed in uniforms that mimicked those of Hitler's Nazis. His target was the large Jewish community.

The Jewish Board of Deputies advised Jews to stay away. The Jewish Chronicle warned: "Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march and from their meetings.

"Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping anti-Semitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew baiters, keep away."

The Jews did not keep away. Professor Bill Fishman, now 89, who was 15 on the day, was at Gardner's Corner in Aldgate, the entrance to the East End. "There was masses of marching people. Young people, old people, all shouting 'No Pasaran' and 'One two three four five - we want Mosley, dead or alive'," he said. "It was like a massive army gathering, coming from all the side streets. Mosley was supposed to arrive at lunchtime but the hours were passing and he hadn't come. Between 3pm and 3.30 we could see a big army of Blackshirts marching towards the confluence of Commercial Road and Whitechapel Road.

"I pushed myself forward and because I was 6ft I could see Mosley. They were surrounded by an even greater army of police. There was to be this great advance of the police force to get the fascists through. Suddenly, the horses' hooves were flying and the horses were falling down because the young kids were throwing marbles."

Thousands of policemen were sandwiched between the Blackshirts and the anti-fascists. The latter were well organised and through a mole learned that the chief of police had told Mosley that his passage into the East End could be made through Cable Street.

"I heard this loudspeaker say 'They are going to Cable Street'," said Prof Fishman. "Suddenly a barricade was erected there and they put an old lorry in the middle of the road and old mattresses. The people up the top of the flats, mainly Irish Catholic women, were throwing rubbish on to the police. We were all side by side. I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic dockers standing up to stop Mosley. I shall never forget that as long as I live, how working-class people could get together to oppose the evil of racism."

Max Levitas, now 91, was a message runner and had already been fined £10 in court for his anti-Mosley activities. Two years before Cable Street, the BUF had called a meeting in Hyde Park and in protest Mr Levitas whitewashed Nelson's column, calling people to the park to drown out the fascists. Mr Levitas went on to become a Communist councillor in Stepney.

"I feel proud that I played a major part in stopping Mosley. When we heard that the march was disbanded, there was a hue and cry and the flags were going wild. They did not pass. The chief of police decided that if the march had taken place there would be death on the road - and there would have been," he said.

"It was a victory for ordinary people against racism and anti-Semitism and it should be instilled in the minds of people today. The Battle of Cable Street is a history lesson for us all. People as people must get together and stop racism and anti-Semitism so people can lead an ordinary life and develop their own ideas and religions."

Beatty Orwell, 89, was scared and excited. "People were fighting and a friend of mine was thrown through a plate glass window."
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Re: Fascism, by Wikipedia

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Life and Times of Sir Oswald Mosley & The British Union of Fascists
by Victor Smart, John Underwood Phillips
© H.E.A.R.T. 2010
Edited by Carmelo Lisciotto
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Sir Oswald Mosley was born on the 16 November 1896 into an aristocratic family, from which he inherited his title. Oswald Mosley was educated at Winchester and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst following a well worn path for his social class.

At the age of eighteen the First World War broke out and he served in the Sixteenth Lancers in France and then in the Royal Flying Corps, the forerunner of the RAF.

His experiences during the First World War had a profound effect on him, shaping many of the views that he took into politics.

Between 1918 and 1931 Mosley was a Tory, then an Independent Tory, and then a member of the Labour Party. Oswald Mosley became the youngest MP in the House of Commons after winning the seat of Harrow for the Conservative Party in the 1918 General Election.

In 1920 he married Cynthia Curzon the daughter of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the daughter of the former Viceroy of India. Mosley however was not the dutiful husband he had numerous affairs, including relationships with his wife’s younger sister Alexandra Metcalfe and with their stepmother Grace Curzon.

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Mosley and BUF members at a rally

Mosley became disillusioned with the Conservative Party and he again became re-elected as the MP for Harrow, as an independent candidate in the 1922 General Election. Two years later Mosley joined the Independent Labour Party and in 1926 he was elected to represent Smethwick in the General Election, and in the following year he was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

After the cabinet of the second Labour Government refused to endorse his plans for national reconstruction, a task that had been allotted to him as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he resigned from office in May 1930 and founded the New Party.

Supporters of the New Party included John Strachey, William Joyce, John Becket and Harold Nicholson, but in the 1931 General Election not one of the New Party candidates were elected.

Within this timeframe the British Facisti was formed in 1923 and the Imperial Fascist League was established in 1928. The former, associated particularly with R. Lintorn Orman, did not last long, but the latter associated predominantly with Arnold S. Leese continued its existence until Leese’s death in 1948.

With the crushing defeat of the New Party in the 1931 general election, Mosley began to move toward the most infamous phase of his career. In October 1932 after a visit to Benito Mussolini in Italy during January 1932, he disbanded the New Party and formed the British Union of Fascists: commonly know by its initials the BUF.

The BUF quickly developed the appearance of a major political party, with a membership of 40,000, but by 1934 its progress was hindered by the withdrawal of respectable support such as the Rothermere press, which is covered below.

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William Joyce aka "Lord Haw-Haw"

Mosley appointed William Joyce, the infamous traitor who broadcast pro-Nazi radio broadcasts from Germany, and was known as Lord Haw-Haw, as the BUF’s full time Propaganda Director. Joyce along with Mosley and Mick Clarke were the organisations three main public speakers.

On the 7 June 1934 the BUF held a large rally at Olympia in London, about 500 anti-fascists managed to infiltrate the hall, when they began heckling they were attacked by 1,000 black-shirted stewards. Several of the protestors were badly beaten up by the black-shirts, a public outcry ensued and Lord Rothermere and his Daily Mail newspaper withdrew its support and over the next few months membership of the BUF went into decline.

By 1936, after Mosley had failed to make further political headway, considerable energy was pumped into the local politics of the East End of London, Mosley and the BUF saw the opportunity to exploit anti-Semitism for political gain. This resulted in violent clashes on the streets of the East End, this conflict was symbolised by the “Battle of Cable Street” in October 1936, in which the BUF and anti-fascist groups fought each other.

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BUF march through East London, 1939

After a series of well-supported marches through the East End of London which had attracted little opposition, Mosley decided to hold a mass rally on 4 October 1936 to mark the fourth anniversary of the founding of the party. The intention was that the BUF should assemble at Royal Mint Street at 2.30 p.m. for an inspection by Mosley. This would be followed by a march through the East End and he was due to speak at Salmon Lane, Limehouse, at 5 p.m.; Stafford Road, Bow, half an hour later; Victoria Park Square at 6 p.m. and Aske Street, Shoreditch, at 6.30 p.m.

The BUF began to assemble at 1:25 p.m. but they had been pre-empted by a group of some 500 or so communists who were already there, with the Communist 'Daily Worker' being sold in Leman and Cable Streets. By 2:15 it was estimated that there were around 2,000 communists and anti-BUF demonstrators in the Aldgate area, about half of whom had blocked the Commercial Road at Gardiner's Corner. At 3 p.m. the BUF, still in Royal Mint Street, now totaled around 2,000 including women and cadets and four bands.

At 3:30 p.m, Sir Philip Simon after receiving reports from the police of the potential for trouble decided that he did not have the resources to keep the communists and BUF apart and consequently forbade the march. He instead allowed the BUF to march West through the City and the BUF moved off at 4 p.m, ending their march at Somerset House in the Strand at 4:30 p.m.

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The "Cable Street Battle"

Meanwhile the communists in Cable Street had overturned a lorry; timber was expropriated from a builder's yard, along with bricks with which to pelt the police. Broken glass was strewn across the road to hamper and injure the police horses and the battle between the police and communists lasted for some hours, overall there were dozens of injured police and 70 arrests.

Special Branch police report of November 1936 concluded:

"The general cry was that the entire population of East London had risen against Mosley and had declared that he and his followers should not pass and that they did not pass owing to the solid front presented by the workers of East London. This statement is, however, far from reflecting accurately the state of affairs. There is abundant evidence that the BUF has been steadily gaining ground in many parts of East London and it has strong support in such districts as Stepney, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Hackney and Bow.

There can he no doubt that the unruly element in the crowd was very largely Communist-inspired. A number of well-known active communists were seen at, or near, points where actual disorder occurred. While attempts by the Communist Party to raise enthusiasm over the 'Fascist defeat' were comparative failures the BUF, during the week following the banning of their march, conducted the most successful series of meetings since the beginning of the movement.

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Bus posters advertising BUF rally at Earls court

In Stepney, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Stoke Newington and Limehouse, crowds estimated at several thousands of people (the highest being 12,000) assembled and accorded the speakers an enthusiastic reception; opposition was either non-existent or negligible and no disorder took place".

That year the Government became anxious about the threat to public order, passed the Public Order Act, which banned the wearing of uniforms in public, meant that the BUF could not wear its hallmark black shirts and the appeal of the BUF was curtailed.

In addition the economy recovered during the 1930’s and the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany did not assist the BUF’s cause, but the BUF was active until the outbreak of the Second World War and Mosley continued to attract large crowds at public meetings.

Oswald Mosley began an affair with Diana Mitford the daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, one of his wealthy supporters. Diana left her husband but Mosley refused to desert his wife. It was not until Cynthia Curzon died of peritonitis that Mosley agreed to marry Diana. In October 1936 Diana and Mosley secretly married in the house of the Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of only six guests at the ceremony.

While in Nazi Germany Diana talked to Hitler about the possibility of establishing a pro-Nazi radio station in Britain, but it never materialised. Diana and Mosley had two sons, Alexander born in 1938 and Max born in 1940 who became famous as the president of the Federation Internationale de L’Automobile (FIA).

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"Action" A BUF periodical First Published Feb 21, 1936

In his book entitled "Fascism" Mosley outlines and answers 100 questions related to his policies, beliefs and goals, some of which are illustrated here:

Why is the Movement called Fascist?

Fascism is the name by which the modern Movement has come to be known in the world. It would have been possible to avoid misrepresentation by calling our Movement by another name. But it was more honest to call it Fascism and thus to let everyone know exactly where we stood. It is up to us to defeat misrepresentation by propaganda and explanation of the real policy and method of Fascism as it will operate in Britain. In the long run straightforward dealing is not only honest but also pays best.

The alternative name for the modern Movement is the National Socialism used in Germany. But the German Movement also is known throughout the outside world as Fascist, which is the name commonly used to describe the phenomenon of the modern Movement whether in Britain, Germany or Italy...


Do you believe in the racial theories of the German Nazi Movement?

They are German and we are English, therefore our views and our methods on many subjects will be different. In this particular we possess a great Empire comprising many different races. They possess no such Empire, and their aim is a revived German race, geographically united. We believe profoundly in our own British race which has created the Empire, but we know also it would be bad for the Empire to stigmatize by law other races within it as inferior or outcast. We have created that Empire without race mixture or pollution, by reason of the British social sense and pride of race.

That is an achievement unique in history, and we can trust the British genius in this respect in the future as in the past. It should not be necessary to secure British racial purity by act of law. It should only be necessary by education and propaganda to teach the British what racial mixtures are bad. If a Briton understands that some action is bad for his race he will not do it. With the British this is a matter for the teacher rather than the legislator, but if legislation was ever necessary to preserve the race, Fascism would not hesitate to introduce it.


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A rally of the BUF

What alterations, if any, will you make in the laws governing the immigration of alien races into Great Britain?

All immigration will be stopped. Britain for the British, is our motto, and all of Britain is required for the British. Further, all foreigners who have already been naturalized will be deported unless they have proved themselves valuable citizens of Great Britain.


What is the Fascist attitude towards the Jews?

Jews must put the interests of Britain before those of Jewry, or be deported from Britain. This is not a principle of racial or religious persecution. Any well-governed nation must insist that its citizens owe allegiance to the nation, and not to co-racialists and co-religionists resident outside its borders or organized as a state within the State.

The Jews, as a whole, have chosen to organize themselves as a nation within the Nation and to set their interests before those of Great Britain. They must, like everyone else, put "Britain First" or leave Britain.


Is not this hard on the minority of Jews who put "Britain First"?

Minorities always suffer from the faults of the majority. Races, as a whole, suffer from the mistakes of the majority of the race when a mistaken policy is pursued. Such Jews would certainly not be molested, let alone persecuted. But they can no more complain of suffering from the errors of Jewry as a whole, than members of any other nation can complain of suffering for the mistakes of the majority and the blunders of its Government.


Will the Jews then be persecuted or ill-treated?

It is untrue to suggest that Jews will be persecuted under Fascism in Britain. Bullying or persecution of any kind is foreign to the British character. We shall not keep Jews here to bully them. Those who have been guilty of anti-British conduct will be deported. Those against whom no such charge rests will be treated as foreigners, but in accordance with the traditional British treatment of foreigners within these shores, will not be ill-treated or molested.

On the other hand, foreigners who have not proved themselves worthy citizens of Britain will be deported.


Will they be allowed the right of citizenship or permitted to be officials or M.P.'s in the Fascist State?

As stated above, the Jews have deliberately maintained themselves as a foreign community in Britain, setting their racial interests above the national interest. As such, therefore, they will be treated, and none can complain of treatment which accords with their own actions. We do not permit foreigners to be M.P.'s or officials, or afforded the full rights of British citizenship, and Jews will not be afforded these privileges. Anyone in the service of the State under Fascism must be entirely British.


Will Jews, who are deported, be able to take their money with them?

They will be able to take anything they have honestly earned.


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Diana Mosley

The outbreak of the Second World War with Nazi Germany soon resulted in the restriction of the BUF activity, although it never disappeared completely. On the 21 May 1940 leading members of the BUF, including Mosley and key members of his organisation such as Neil Francis Hawkins and Alexander Raven Thomson, were interned under Regulation 18B(1A), which permitted the government to detain persons who had associations with enemy powers, Arnold S. Leese was among the other fascist internees. Mosley and his wife lived in a small house in Holloway prison, with a small garden.

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Neil Francis-Hawkins

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Alexander Raven Thomson

Oswald Mosley was released from internment in November 1943, but the BUF was no more, after the war Mosley reconstructed his political organisation as the Union Movement and attempted to launch a National Party of Europe, but both failed and this resulted in Mosley’s decision to leave Britain and live in Ireland.

Mosley briefly returned to England in order to fight the 1959 General Election at Kensington North, a year following the Notting Hill race riots and concerns over immigration was a central theme to Mosley’s campaign. He contested the 1966 General Election at Shoreditch and Finsbury but he fared even worse than in 1959.

Mosley set about reconstructing the past on his terms. In his autobiography, “My Life” which was published in 1968, he denied that he had ever been an anti-Semite.

Sir Oswald Mosley died in his Orsay, near Paris home on the 3 December 1980 from natural causes.

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Sources:

Wiener Library
Spatacus Schoolnet.co.uk
Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust
Oswald Mosley Biography
"Facism" by Oswald Mosley
Haw-Haw: the tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce, Nigel Farndale, Macmillan, London, 2005
Rules of the Game, Beyond the Pale, Nicholas Mosley
Oswald Mosley Website "Friends of Oswald Mosley"
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