Essay About Interwar European Fascist Movements And Stanley Payne

FascismEssay Preview: FascismReport this essayIn order to determine whether fascism is confined to being a historical phenomenon of the 1930s and 40s or if it can exist in our contemporary times, the term fascism must first be defined. According to Stanley Payne, fascism is a “form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primary vitalist philosophy, is structured on a extreme elitism, mass mobilization and the fuhrerprinzip [leadership values], positively values violence as end as well as a means and tends to normalize war and/or the military virtues.” Payne adds that this definition might only describe “interwar European fascist movements and not to a presumed category of fascist regimes or systems.” Despite his supplementary explanation, the goals and ideology of fascism are quite clear: to regenerate and revive a “modern, self-determined, secular culture” with economic corporatism that is anti-liberal, anti-communist and hostile to cultural pluralism and social division.

Since the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, several neofascists and Rightwing Extremists have emerged. Few of these parties truly encapsulate the original ideology of fascism but still possess a postmodern form of its philosophies. However, Payne believed that fascism is an abstraction that can never exist in its pure empirical form but simply serves to provide political phenomena with a basis for analysis. Therefore, although these new parties may not posses the same precise elements of 1930s fascism, they still retain the same general notion that Payne defines, consequently establishing that fascism is not restricted to being a political phenomenon of the past but that it can change forms and can very well exist in a postmodern age.

Before the 1980s, many extreme right groups in Europe were marginalized because it maintained continuity with interwar fascism but the 1980s represented a radical break between 1930s fascism and contemporary neo-fascism. By breaking the association with interwar fascism, the neo-fascists gained electoral credibility as a legitimate form of government. The key elements of this were the denial of fascist lineage, rejection of overthrowing the democratic government, abandonment of primacy of state in national renewal yet the preservation of anti-egalitarianism, anti-pluralism and anti-liberalism. Piero Ignazi describes this form as a “post-industrial fascism.” Some examples of these post-industrial fascists were Italys Liga Norte and Austrias Freiheits Partei Цsterreich. This break in the fascist ideology was due to economical damages to self-employed and manual workers. The European neo-fascists now have more blue-collar working members rather than the middle class protesters of

.

However, the neo-fascists have a radical left and a radical right. Their goal—to replace civil government with a private, non-partisan group that will function as a private security apparatus in a decentralized, centralized system. It may well be that as a result of economic damages, left-wing fascism has had to adapt to the fact that it is being targeted by left-wing fascists—not just because of the political situation but also because it has a lot of potential problems, mainly economic. That is because of the increasing authoritarianism and fascism that has swept the continent, such as Hungary.

Roughly 100 countries—including the United States, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, the Dutch, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland—have a majority of non-government-backed fascists. This situation is a more than two-fold risk because fascism, while it did not have a monopoly on a single country, now represents a huge minority. The more large countries that they have in their fascist alliance, the higher its impact. Since fascist violence has been on a sustained scale, it is not surprising that any movement taking on anti-monarchist fascists must consider this possibility.

Milton Ritter writes: ‘It’s not like we’re always dealing with a left that has a right-wing appeal… we’re talking about a large-scale fascism that is still evolving and evolving, and in turn has a much more potent tendency to attract people to the right than the one at the end.’

The British people, for example, have had fascism for almost twenty years. The most recent wave of fascism in America occurred when it was supported by the Republican Party from both the Labour Party and the National Union of Young Republicans. The fascist Party has largely adopted the traditional forms of fascism in Europe, though now there is a new “fascist movement” in America. A fascist party that promotes a system of national self-governance that takes the lives of those under its control will be expected to do everything possible to minimize the risks posed by such a political process. This is to have the biggest impact on the world on paper, but to create the most potent form of fascist power in the world.

The British fascist party has always been far more extreme than fascism. In 1930s Britain, in its struggle against the English state, the United Kingdom Labour Party (UCL) attempted to win the elections in support of a European-style socialism that would not undermine the national democratic system and would allow Britain a form of government where the electorate would be represented by representatives from all political parties. It succeeded in winning at least 10 of the elections, but lost the next four elections. The UCL government continued to dominate Europe and eventually ran out of power.

In 1935, the United Kingdom Labour Party lost to England’s newly formed National Socialist Party (NSP), the anti-Semitic party of P.E.I. in England (PPI), which was not a democratic party but was associated with Hitler and the far right (FN). In 1934 Mussolini’s fascist, Italian fascist party, the Nationalist People’s Party of America (PNHP) won control of both houses of Parliament, but lost that power by means of the electoral college, thereby winning back the parliamentary elections but having eliminated the right to vote. The Nazis, in turn, successfully replaced the Constitution and the British government with a fascist government, a change that would take Britain from the post-war state of central control and was in fact a disaster for democracy within the UK. In Germany, Hitler was elected to the Chancellorship once again under a Hitlerianism of an entirely different sort than Mussolini. His own National Socialism was seen as a more viable solution in the interests of the interests of the people.