The Fascist Virus: Defeat

[Cain]

Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.
Benito Mussolini

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America.
Henry A. Wallace

Defeat in WWII was a bitter pill for fascists to swallow.  One of the central teachings of the fascist belief system is that every other system is weak and cowardly.  Liberalism and conservatism and especially Bolshevism were the effete, decadent products of a slave caste mired in a Jewish international conspiracy, designed to keep the powerful Aryan race down with its "morality" and "equality" and "freedom".

Yet, it was liberal democracies and the USSR who crushed Nazi Germany, Fascist Spain and the Shōwa Nationalist movement in the Japan, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Ustaše and other fascist groups in Europe.  According to fascist doctrine, this was impossible.  And now, with Fascism considered public, global enemy number one by the Communist bloc and the liberal democracies, they were in a bad way.

Or so it seemed, at first.

However, a new war was brewing.  The massive expansion and military growth of the USSR, and American commitment to the devastated and near bankrupt European powers, put those two countries on a collision course.  While both the US and Soviet armies had gone about sensibly grabbing scientists and weapons plans - should the war ever actually happen - elements within the US intelligence community went a step further:  they recruited Nazis as part of their anti-Communist drive.  Such a grouping would include Gehlen Org, a private intelligence operation ran by Reinhard Gehlen that was aimed against the Soviet Union.  At the end of the war, he hid Nazi files on the USSR and embellished them in order to gain employment with the OSS/CIA.  He also hired other Nazis to work within his organisation, forcing western intelligence operations to turn a blind eye to their many, numerous crimes (such as the murder of 140,000 Jews).  And, as it turned out, Nazis made "terrible spies", so it wasn't even worth it from the perspective of utility.

Of course, the Western powers could only work with the Nazis and Fascists they had actually captured.  Many had fled at the end of the war, using loot and their many varied international contacts.  These rat-lines mostly led to Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, though some went to Egypt and Syria.  Fascist leaders like Peron could use the expertise, military or otherwise, of fleeing war criminals, and scientists who could offer their skills to the enemies of the Reich - countries hostile to Israel, for example.

The most infamous of these rat-lines was ODESSA, made famous by Frederick Forsyth's thriller The Odessa File.  According to former OSS officers and German anti-fascists, the plan had been to disperse committed Nazis overseas and create an international, invisible Fourth Reich.  Though other sources suggest this gives too much credit to ODESSA as an organisation, and that it was a largely chaotic mess, it is known that the Roman Catholic Bishop, Alois Hudal, was a key figure in getting people out of Germany and Austria. 

Here there is something of a split in fascist history, which needs to be understood to grasp the development of the ideology and its reach since WWII.  Those fascists who had taken part in the war and had either fled, or ended up working for one of the various Western European intelligence services, should be considered 1st Generation Fascists, or F1.  Because, as you've no doubt realised, I am ignoring something rather important - the spontaneous fascist movements that sprung up in Western Europe and the USA after the war, which had no connection to the first generation fascists except ideological affinity.  These we should consider the F2 grouping.  The importance will become rather more obvious later, but for now its enough to say that the F1 grouping were something of an elite - war criminals, former generals, spies, soldiers - people with connections and skills and considerable resources.  The F2 grouping, on the other hand, was usually recruited from the outcasts and dregs of society, people who didn't want to fit in and so picked an ideology most likely to shock and anger the society they hated.

Foremost among these was George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.  A former Naval officer and advertiser, Rockwell came to have a hatred for Communism and its "pimping sister" liberalism, which led him into the McCarthyite paranoid world of conspiracy theories.  While working on the campaign to get General MacArthur elected President, an older women working on the campaign convinced him the smears against MacArthur and McCarthy were part of a Jewish conspiracy to bring the men down.  Rockwell leaped head first into this fantasy world, finding apparent proof for the Jewish conspiracy where ever he looked.  In 1951, he bought a copy of Mein Kampf from a bookstore, and upon reading it, converted himself into a fully fledged fascist.

At first trying to infiltrate respectable right-wing organizations (and failing) Rockwell gathered extremists and racists around him and launched the party in 1959.  As the civil rights movement gained momentum, so did Rockwell, attracting those who feared black equality might be reached.  Rockwell began training storm troopers, who would attack rallies and cooperate with groups like the KKK in acts of terrorism.  Meeting with British Nazi Colin Jordan in 1962, they also established an international organization, the World Union of National Socialists, which coordinated otherwise disparate groups in America, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and parts of South America.

So the groundwork was laid both for a F1 international revival and an F2 international revival, which is interesting when one considers the lack of overlap between the two groups.  Especially of interest is the role that the first generation fascists would come to play in Europe's anti-communist strategy  - something I will discuss in the next installment.

[Thurnez Isa]

 

Im going to withhold comment till the next installment

[Template]

Oooh.

[navkat]

I'd like to pose a few points:

1. The actual definition of fascism appears to be debatable among historical, philosophic and political scholars.
2. It seems like every single thing I read re: post WWII fascism has a different perspective on the actual events OF the first and second WWs and their effect on modern fascism.
3. "Fascism" was embraced by the American left throughout much of the 20s and 30s and Mussolini was actually lauded HERE IN AMERICA as a beloved Charismatic hero with the brains, balls and benevolence to cut through the bullshit and create real model of hope and change for Italy, as well as for the rest of the world. Hollywood made movies about him. Poets wrote shining speeches and letters glorifying his policies. Cole Porter wrote a song lyric about him. American movie stars had crushes on him. It wasn't until he started invading countries that his approval rating went down.
4. Hitler and Benito Mussolini were BOTH intent on creating a secular (anti-theistic even), "classless" society where all citizens were equal and equally provided for. Public health, labour regulations, education, wealth redistribution, even women's sufferage were the "religion of the state." Aristocracy, greed and free-market capitalism were deplorable in the fascist vision of a transcendant society.

Neo-nazim in America may have co-opted some of the madman genocide thinking originating from Hitler, but Fascism as a political Ideology is largely a Liberal concept. To call American neo-nazim a fascist institution is like saying PeTA terrorism is an integral part of Democrat doctrine.

All oranges are fruits but not all fruits are oranges.

Well-written though. I still think your posts are brilliant and refreshingly challenging. I await your next thought-provoking installment with enthusiasm.

[Cain]

1.  Not so much as you would think.  The vast majority of historians who specialize in the period agree that Fascism was anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism and anti-Communist, nationalist, revolutionary, racist, sexist and expansionist.  The debate mostly comes from political hacks with partisan agendas to pursue (cf, Jonah Goldberg).  Ironically, many of those who claim fascism as a left wing phenomenon claim left-right distinctions are useless just before claiming this.

2.  OK.

3.  You're missing massive amounts of context here.  After WWI, there was a massive influx of Italian immigration and many of these Italians considered themselves liberal or socialist in origin.  They actually didn't care much for Mussolini and considered him an autocrat who was undermining the Italian democracy and rule of law.  However, immigration laws in the 20s were passed to limit the amount of Italian immigration.  This law suggested that Italian-Americans were an unwanted minority group, and caused many of them to turn to Fascist Italian nationalism as a source of ethnic pride and camaraderie.

Also, within Italy, Fascists deliberately targeted the left on numerous occasions. The talented Marxist philosopher and leader of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci, was arrested and kept in a small dirty cell, which caused his health to suffer until he died, at the age of 46.  In the north, fascism portrayed itself as the alternative to workers' revolution; in the south, fascist armed gangs broke the back of  the peasants' campaign for land.  In the summer of 1922, fascist gangs seized the city halls in Milan and Livorno and occupied the Genoa docks in order to break the unions. There were waves of repression against trade unionists in 1921, 1923 and 1924. In 1925, all remaining independent trade unions were closed down. Wage rates were decided by the company and workers lost any right of representation. Between 1927 and 1932, according to official statistics, nominal wages were cut by 50 per cent. In 1935, the government placed all workers connected directly or indirectly with war production under military discipline. All other workers were subject to the decisions of the Labour Court. Strikers were punished with imprisonment.

The class which benefited most from fascist rule was the upper class, especially nobles and business owners. They gained from the privatisation of the insurance sector, the telephone service, the match monopoly and the municipal power companies. The capital tax was abolished, as was inheritance tax, the tax on war profits and the taxes on managers and directors.  Mussolini received large sums of money from the Milan business community and also from the great landowners in 1919, when he founded his party. 

There were official attacks on Jews from 1934 and the state adopted Nazi-style race laws in 1938. Between 8,500 and 15,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.  From 1930, the regime had plans to expand its empire in Ethiopia and Tunisia. These plans were justified in explicitly racist language. Blacks and Arabs were considered non-human. The war in Abyssinia from October 1935 was defended using racism – it was claimed that the Ethiopians were incapable of ruling themselves. The war was also conducted in a racist way: because the fascist state considered that the indigenous people were less than human, it butchered them with poison gas like animals.

Doesn't sound like a very left wing or liberal program to me.  Similar happened in Nazi Germany too, though right now I don't have the time to grab the exact dates and figures.  Believe me though, when I say I know this subject inside out.

4.  Wrong.  Hitler tolerated religion insofar as it did not overshadow him.  He didn't like Christianity much despite his support among certain Protestants (not to mention the cowardice of the Catholic Party in standing up to him) but he tolerated Nazi forays into Odinism and occult belief systems.  Mussolini famously allied himself with the Vatican when he signed the Lateran Treaty, giving them full sovereignty and recognition as an independent nation.  Oh and big lump sums of money.  In return, the Vatican kept its mouth shut and didn't get involved in Italian politics, ever.

Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

[navkat]

1.  Not so much as you would think.  The vast majority of historians who specialize in the period agree that Fascism was anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism and anti-Communist, nationalist, revolutionary, racist, sexist and expansionist.  The debate mostly comes from political hacks with partisan agendas to pursue (cf, Jonah Goldberg).  Ironically, many of those who claim fascism as a left wing phenomenon claim left-right distinctions are useless just before claiming this.

2.  OK.

3.  You're missing massive amounts of context here.  After WWI, there was a massive influx of Italian immigration and many of these Italians considered themselves liberal or socialist in origin.  They actually didn't care much for Mussolini and considered him an autocrat who was undermining the Italian democracy and rule of law.  However, immigration laws in the 20s were passed to limit the amount of Italian immigration.  This law suggested that Italian-Americans were an unwanted minority group, and caused many of them to turn to Fascist Italian nationalism as a source of ethnic pride and camaraderie.

Also, within Italy, Fascists deliberately targeted the left on numerous occasions. The talented Marxist philosopher and leader of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci, was arrested and kept in a small dirty cell, which caused his health to suffer until he died, at the age of 46.  In the north, fascism portrayed itself as the alternative to workers' revolution; in the south, fascist armed gangs broke the back of  the peasants' campaign for land.  In the summer of 1922, fascist gangs seized the city halls in Milan and Livorno and occupied the Genoa docks in order to break the unions. There were waves of repression against trade unionists in 1921, 1923 and 1924. In 1925, all remaining independent trade unions were closed down. Wage rates were decided by the company and workers lost any right of representation. Between 1927 and 1932, according to official statistics, nominal wages were cut by 50 per cent. In 1935, the government placed all workers connected directly or indirectly with war production under military discipline. All other workers were subject to the decisions of the Labour Court. Strikers were punished with imprisonment.

The class which benefited most from fascist rule was the upper class, especially nobles and business owners. They gained from the privatisation of the insurance sector, the telephone service, the match monopoly and the municipal power companies. The capital tax was abolished, as was inheritance tax, the tax on war profits and the taxes on managers and directors.  Mussolini received large sums of money from the Milan business community and also from the great landowners in 1919, when he founded his party. 

There were official attacks on Jews from 1934 and the state adopted Nazi-style race laws in 1938. Between 8,500 and 15,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.  From 1930, the regime had plans to expand its empire in Ethiopia and Tunisia. These plans were justified in explicitly racist language. Blacks and Arabs were considered non-human. The war in Abyssinia from October 1935 was defended using racism – it was claimed that the Ethiopians were incapable of ruling themselves. The war was also conducted in a racist way: because the fascist state considered that the indigenous people were less than human, it butchered them with poison gas like animals.

Doesn't sound like a very left wing or liberal program to me.  Similar happened in Nazi Germany too, though right now I don't have the time to grab the exact dates and figures.  Believe me though, when I say I know this subject inside out.

4.  Wrong.  Hitler tolerated religion insofar as it did not overshadow him.  He didn't like Christianity much despite his support among certain Protestants (not to mention the cowardice of the Catholic Party in standing up to him) but he tolerated Nazi forays into Odinism and occult belief systems.  Mussolini famously allied himself with the Vatican when he signed the Lateran Treaty, giving them full sovereignty and recognition as an independent nation.  Oh and big lump sums of money.  In return, the Vatican kept its mouth shut and didn't get involved in Italian politics, ever.

Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

I'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

Don't make me laugh.

what an awful life you must lead...   

also for the OP.

I'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

Cain (in ma limited experience) seems to "win" historical/political arguments at least 90% of the time.  But that shouldn't stop you arguing, 'cause the rest of us get to learn more awesome shit!

woop!

x

edd

[navkat]

Don't make me laugh.

what an awful life you must lead...   

also for the OP.

I'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

Cain (in ma limited experience) seems to "win" historical/political arguments at least 90% of the time.  But that shouldn't stop you arguing, 'cause the rest of us get to learn more awesome shit!

woop!

x

edd

I really like your good-natured attitude.

I'm jenn. I'm pd.com's rebellious little sister who uses this place as a flophouse. I frequently show up out of the blue (sometimes drunk), regale everyone with stories and shit about what I've been up to, give hugs and crash on the sofa, promising to look for a job in the morning.

Chances are, at some point, I get into it with one of the hard-working, regularly-contributing family members who live here year-round. I either leave in tears bitching about how "so-and-so's an asshole and NOW I remember why I left!" or else I get bored and stir-crazy and run off again for a few months with some guy I just met--or this new band I just joined who are going on tour in Canada.

Eventually I'll miss you guys and I'll come back with hugs and kisses and stories for everyone. People occasionally get sick of my bullshit but on some level, most people accept that I'm still family and still welcome here. I think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"


 

[Cain]

I'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

If you're going to argue based on wingnut talking points with no historical or factual basis, then yes, it probably is better you shut up now.

Cain,
not going to be guilted into feeling sorry for setting you straight.

[Cain]

I think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"

Oh, was that meant to shake me up?

You might wanna try a little harder.  I'm not feeling especially shaken.  Annoyed, in the way a evolutionary scientist might feel annoyed when confronting rehashed Young Creationist argument #1461, but little else.

[navkat]

I think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"

Oh, was that meant to shake me up?

You might wanna try a little harder.  I'm not feeling especially shaken.  Annoyed, in the way a evolutionary scientist might feel annoyed when confronting rehashed Young Creationist argument #1461, but little else.

No it wasn't.

Asshole.

[Cain]

Oh, you wound me so with your words!

Look, sometimes, when you're uninformed on a subject, your opinion doesn't matter.  I don't make judgement calls on atom smashers and people who haven't studied Fascist ideology shouldn't make presumptions based off ideological screeds.

Now, if you had responded "huh, thats interesting" or "wait, but my sources here say..." then we could have a discussion.  But instead, you tried to guilt me for bringing up facts showing you to be incorrect, and as far as I can see, that means you don't want a discussion at all (and want to imply I am the intolerant elitist asshole, a meme that seems to be more and more common on PD.com these days).

Now, you could still prove me wrong.  But we'd actually have to talk, compare evidence and sources.  Do you want to do that?  Or do you just want to assert your beliefs, then back down when I present a different analysis?

[navkat]

I'm still trying to figure out what part of my first post elicited this response.
I don't see it so apparently I FAIL at that too.

[Cain]

Because it was patently wrong.   To the point they are cliches to anyone who knows the subject in any depth.  So I showed you where it was wrong, by providing dates and events and figures which showed what you asserted in your post to be incorrect, facts you could check for yourself if you didn't believe me.

I'm feeling a need for that smashing your head against a brick wall smiley about now...

[Scribbly]

I'm still trying to figure out what part of my first post elicited this response.
I don't see it so apparently I FAIL at that too.

Basically. I think your post looked... aggressive. As though you were basically just trying to assert that Cain's original work is wrong, it might not have been what you intended, but it is what it looked like to me.

I found the OP pretty damn impressive. I don't pretend to have read anywhere near as widely on Fascism as Cain has- it's not my field. But, I did touch on Fascism briefly- mostly from a theoretical perspective with little in the way of historical backing to it. I can just echo his point that your first statement- that the definition of Fascism varies from scholar to scholar- is pretty misguided. Fascism as studied politically is characterized by certain elements which make it as distinct as other political ideologies, and they definitely aren't what most would consider liberal values. Racism and sexism are common elements to Fascist thought.

And you haven't actually apologized. I mean. Cain actually took the time to refute your original points with evidence and explanation. You then started going off at him. He's laid his cards on the table, and you've just gotten angry at him for having a wide spread of resources from which to draw evidence for his arguments, when those arguments don't align with yours.

That's how this thread reads to me, anyway.