Comparative Fascism in Europe

Comparative Fascism in Europe

Is it “easier” to write a fascist credo than an anti-fascist credo? Why or why not?

Fascism was an enforced State while antifascism was a chosen opposition

Defining a fascist credo is difficult because the fascists built their support and policy on negative integration. This was coupled with an alliance and hostile takeover of the political right. If the fascists were on the right, then, their most obvious enemies would be on the left. With street brawls and political assassinations, the Socialists most assuredly were an opponent of fascism. Was socialism, then, the antifascist movement? While the political fighting occurred between left and right, the fascists opposed another large group as well: the liberal establishment. The fascists eventually took violent action against liberalism as well, in the form of World War Two. Thus, fascism was against these political groups, but were those political groups antifascist in nature or in action? The answer is quite simply yes, these groups were antifascist. The common element between the antifascist groups was that joining them and being active within them was a voluntary action; this is opposed to life in fascist regimes, wherein people were forced to become fascist. In this sense, fascism was totalitarian, because it made everyone become part of the system or else wanted by the police. The freedom in the liberal system, wherein people were Catholic, democratic, socialist, communist, and so many other things, was in opposition to the very idea of that freedom being taken away. People willingly joined these groups, making an antifascist credo easier to define, because it was a choice to be antifascist.

Certainly a more complex definition of fascism is required. However, the framers of fascist thought itself, Mussolini and Hitler, never truly bothered to define fascism for their supporters or for posterity. Mussolini tried in the Enciclopaedia Italiana of 1932, published a full 10 years after Mussolini took power. Mussolini said that his “own doctrine, even in this period, had always been a doctrine of action” (Mussolini, 586). This is the most obvious facet of fascism, its love of action; it is in the name of action that no true doctrine was ever laid out (Mussolini, 587). Mussolini proceeded from there to explain fascism in negative terms, saying:

“For us fascists, the State is not merely a guardian…nor is it an organization with purely material aims…nor is it a purely political creation, divorced from all contact with the complex material reality which makes up the life of the individual and life of the people as a whole.