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

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6 we subordinate everything else. For us the nation is not just territory, but something spiritual. There are States which have had immense territories and which have left no trace in human history. It is not just a question of size, because there have been minute, microscopic States in history which have bequeathed memorable, immortal specimens of art and philosophy. The greatness of the nation is the totality of all these qualities, of all these conditions. A nation is great when it translates into reality the force of its spirit 9 What makes this statement symptomatic not merely of Italian Fascism but of fascism in general (‘generic fascism’) is that it relates directly to the fact that the Fascist state attempted to mobilize the people as a whole through mass organizations, a constant stream of propaganda, and elaborate political ritual to enlist them emotionally in the epic transformation of their country into a dynamic, modern, productive military power. Moreover, even if it had to be seen as collaborating with traditional ruling elites, the civil service, the monarchy, the armed forces, and the Catholic Church, it did so in a spirit far removed from that of conservative reaction: in a revolutionary spirit, in fact. The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, which opened in Milan in 1932 and was seen by nearly four million visitors, was designed not as a publicity stunt, but to create a dramatic sense for the visitor who walked through the rooms that with the advent of Fascism Italy and all its inhabitants had literally entered a new historical era. 10 Further implications of the ideal types
Another consequence to be drawn from the ideal types we have used is that, when seeking to establish which inter-war movements or regimes were fascist, our attention should focus not on external features, such as the leader cult, anti-socialism, aggressive foreign policy, or militarism, which can be displayed by many radical right formations. Instead the central criterion used is the core ideology and the policies adopted to turn it into reality, and whether they had a thrust that was ultimately reactionary in that it wanted to restore the social structures and values of the past, or rivalled communism in being innovative and revolutionary in wanting a new type of society. Inter-war fascism did not want to retain a traditional social structure in a modernized form, let alone literally return to a premodern idyll. Nor did it merely pay lip-service to the notion of mass-mobilization. Rather, even if it was forced to secure the collusion of conservative forces on tactical grounds to ease the transition from the old society, it aspired to create a new type of state, one based on the energies which flowed from a rejuvenated national community bound together by patriotic fervour. If a number of other inter-war movements other than Italian Fascism can also be classified as fascist it is because, while the peculiar historical circumstances in which each one arose made it unique, they all shared a structurally identical myth of national renewal through mass- mobilization and proposed radical policies to achieve it. They included Nazism, Falangism, the British Union of Fascists, the Romanian Iron Guard, and Brazilian Integral Action. However, other movements often associated with fascism, such as the Irish Blue Shirts and the Rexists of inter-war Belgium, can be seen on closer inspection to have lacked the innovative radicalism or anti-traditionalism implicit in the rebirth myth needed to qualify as fascist. Moreover, a number of authoritarian regimes often lumped together with Fascist Italy 7
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Page 11 and 12: The fact that the fascist revolutio
Page 13 and 14: ideologue put it as early as 1925:
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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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