Revolution from the Right: Fascism - School of Arts and Humanities ...

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14 beings are undergoing a transformation. Do you believe that an idea has ever achieved this ever before? The renewal of human beings manifests itself in the fact that this idea is actually able to transform the most intimate aspects of human lives. National Socialism has the power to free the German people, the individual German, from the damage inflicted on him which has been preventing him from performing his task. That is its ultimate, its greatest achievement. 17 To carry out the ‘renewal of man’ in a nationalist spirit involved in practice the coordination of all aspects of social, economic, political, cultural, and mental life within an authoritarian state. The elimination of liberal freedoms and socialist internationalism was thus for fascists part of a healing process. This is why the Fascists boasted about having turned Italy into a ‘totalitarian’ society 18 and ‘the total state’ was an equally positive term for the Nazis. 19 The negative connotations which these terms have acquired for political scientists when they consider the fascist (and communist) bids to retool society stem from the horrendous human costs of their ‘totalizing’ efforts. Any revolutionary myth which leads to the attempt to eradicate the pluralism of modern society in pursuit of the utopia of a ‘totally’ coordinated society must inevitably lead to a perverse travesty of that utopia. What results is a dystopia (or ‘bad’ utopia) in which the destruction and inhumanity instituted by the state are justified by reference to the ultimate goals which it is seeking to realize: the creation of a new type of state inhabited by a new type of man. However, the totalitarian implications of fascism’s attempt to realize its utopia depend on the particular characteristics of each movement. This is demonstrated by the fact that Fascist
Italy was much less authoritarian than Nazi Germany. Before it came to power Fascism, which, unlike the Nazi Party, had never developed a mass electoral following, was such a fragile force that Mussolini was forced to compromise his radicalism extensively. He had few scruples in doing so because he was prepared to chop and change particular declared beliefs to meet the demands of the moment as long as he could pursue his ultimate objective of leading the process of Italy’s transformation. Moreover, the alienation from the state and weak socialization of most Italians meant that the Fascist ideals of heroism and blind faith in the leader could not be grafted easily onto the existing political culture. This meant that huge concessions had to be made to conservative forces and that any radical transformation of Italian social life was out of the question. Furthermore, the country’s technological and material resources were poor compared to those of developed nations north of the Alps, so that the build up of the armed forces was slow and territorial ambitions had to be restrained: the main outlet for Italy’s imperialist ambitions before the Second World War was Ethiopia, a feudal African state without a modern army. Nor was Fascism more destructive or inhumane in its subjugation of Ethiopia than some nineteenth-century ‘liberal’ powers had been (e.g. Belgium) in bringing their colonies to heel. It would also be wrong to assume that Fascism developed a terror apparatus on anything like the scale of Nazism. The main enemies identified by the regime’s ideology before the passing of anti-Semitic race laws in 1938 were stridently anti-Fascist liberals and communists, who with few exceptions were either sent into internal exile in the rural South or imprisoned without recourse to torture or executions. In fact, until Fascism became embroiled in Hitler’s schemes for a new European order, it presided over less social violence than had occurred during the near civil 15
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Page 3 and 4: nationalistic state which, despite
Page 5 and 6: consequences for a wide nexus of so
Page 7 and 8: Another consequence to be drawn fro
Page 9 and 10: allowed Fascism and Nazism to compl
Page 11 and 12: The fact that the fascist revolutio
Page 13: ideologue put it as early as 1925:
Page 17 and 18: as Jehovah Witnesses, to the attemp
Page 19 and 20: calm. To a fascist stasis means, no
Page 21 and 22: While modern society may have lost
Page 23 and 24: associating them with the genius of
Page 25 and 26: passage taken from a speech by Goeb
Page 27 and 28: . Hermann Rauschning, Germany’s R
Page 29: . Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Auf

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