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

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to be prepared to die so that Germany might live. The ritual dimension of fascism expresses itself most clearly in the central role played in both the Fascist and Nazi regimes by political liturgy, their ‘religious’ style of politics. 20 In practice liberal and communist regimes have had constant recourse to the political liturgy (e.g. the American primaries filled with coloured balloons or the vast Soviet May Day parades in Red Square, but inter-war fascism consciously made such rituals central to its concept of revolution. The ‘oceanic assemblies’ staged by Fascism whenever Mussolini spoke in public, the torchlight parades and mass rallies held at Nazi party congresses, the saturation of public space with the symbols of the regime (the fasces, the swastika), as well as the crucial role played by the leader cult, the urge to create monumental architecture, and the constant recourse to rhetoric and spectacle in both regimes were too conspicuous not to be noticed by commentators at the time. Thus the French Ambassador to Germany witnessed the extraordinary impact which the 1937 Nuremberg Rally had on the crowds, commenting: The atmosphere of general enthusiasm into which the old city has been plunged is amazing and quite indescribable: the peculiar frenzy which has gripped hundreds of thousands of men and women, the romantic excitement and mystic ecstasy which has overtaken them like a holy rapture. An effect is produced which many find irresistible. They return home seduced and taken in, ready to serve the cause, with no idea of the dangerous reality which is concealed beneath the deceptive pomp of the huge processions and parades. 23
While modern society may have lost its unifying beliefs and rituals, there is every indication that the human beings living in it still have not become totally secularized. In particular they tend to feel deeply threatened when familiar social systems break down, not only because of the material insecurity and hardship which face them. At this point they can be gripped by what one major expert in comparative religion has called ‘the terror of history’. 24 In such circumstances a new ideology, a new political, social or religious movement can offer a new framework to their lives which provides a diagnosis of the cause of the chaos, and restores a sense of effectiveness, belonging, and future. According to this line of analysis the acute social and political instability which affected Italy in the years immediately following the First World War and the collapse of Germany’s Weimar Republic after 1929 created conditions in which the ritual style of politics used by both Fascism and Nazism generated a sense of enthusiasm which no conventional party could inspire in its followers, and went on to play a crucial role in the regimes which they formed in creating a sense of collective euphoria and belonging. Fascism operated as a substitute religion. What converted millions to this religion was not their reason, but rather the subjective sensation of being lifted of out a chaotic, distressing period of history into a new era imbued with a sense of harmony and destiny. The irrational, mythic component so central to fascism should not be confused with anti- modernity. The apparent obsession which both regimes had with the past (the Roman Empire in the case of Fascism and the Aryan and Germanic past in the case of Nazism) stems from the desire, not to regress to the past, but to reawaken the eternal qualities of the race. Fascism was thus not anti-modern: it attempted to create an alternative modernity. Neither was it anti- 21
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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 and 14: ideologue put it as early as 1925:
Page 15 and 16: Italy was much less authoritarian t
Page 17 and 18: as Jehovah Witnesses, to the attemp
Page 19: calm. To a fascist stasis means, no
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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