Lingua Franca #4: Fascism

OF ALL THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

“Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’
 
“One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.
 
“It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years.”
 
-- George Orwell, “ What is Fascism? ”, 1944
 
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LINGUA FRANCA #4: FASCISM
 
Our general guidelines for the Lingua Franca  series are clear enough: we explore the current-day usage of a word, trying to disentangle the meaning of the word, and use the specific example to identify the more general pattern.
 
We use this understanding to clarify our thinking of how words map to concepts – or fail to map to concepts. In the process, ideally we become clearer and more lucid thinkers and reasoners.
 
Fascism presents some unique challenges, but none of them insurmountable. Notably, looking at the tools we explored last chapter in Lingua Franca #3: Revolutionary , we can it’s one of the most negative valence words in the English language. It’s a little strange in that it’s both a pejorative – a single-word insult expressing strong negative valence – and it maps to a specific set of political ideologies that have shown themselves to be rather dangerous.
 
In this chapter, we’ll look at the historical etymology of fascism from Roman times – it came, no kidding, from the image of an axe wrapped in a bundle of sticks – and how that evolved into a specific and highly destructive political ideology in the 1900’s, before becoming a rather broadly applied pejorative in the years following World War II.
 
Finally, we’ll look at what is and is appropriate to be designated as actual fascism  as separate from the general pejorative; in the process, perhaps, we can become clearer thinkers – able to identify genuine danger as separate from mere signaling of dislike.
 
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THE ROMAN FASCES
 
Wikipedia: Fasces  –
 
“Fasces is a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe with its blade emerging. The fasces had its origin in the Etruscan civilization, and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a magistrate's power and jurisdiction. The image has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial or collective power. […]
 
“While the swastika – also a symbol with a long previous history – was deeply stigmatized by its association with Nazi Germany, the Fasces did not undergo a similar process because of association with Italian Fascism; its use remains acceptable in various legitimate contexts.”
 
The fasces was a symbol of the coercive power of government wrapped in popular support  – long before modern 20th century political fascism, it was considered a symbol of both unity and humility.
 
The theory went that a single branch of a tree is easily broken – even an axe handle. But if you bundled a bunch of sticks and lashed them together, the bundle could not be broken.
 
Likewise, the fasces showed that even individual power could be surmounted – the power of an individual, lone axe (representing violence and the coercive power of the state) was only safe if wrapped in unity within the collective power of the state’s citizens.
 
There’s an immense amount of images of fasces in countries that became democratic before 20th century political fascism reared its ugly head – it was on the American Mercury Dime until 1945, a fasces without the axe head is in the Oval Office, the official seal of the United States Senate has a fasces on it, a fasces decorates both the United States Supreme Court and is on the seal of the United States Tax Court.
 
The fasces, likewise, appears on official government emblems in Spain, France, various parts of Scandinavia, Belgium, and a variety of Latin American countries.
 
Long before Mussolini, the fasces was a symbol of unity – and to a large extent, humility.
 
***
 
ITALIAN ORIGINS OF MODERN FASCISM
 
The term “fascism” in English came from the Italian “fascisimo” – a term largely attributed to Benito Mussolini. It blended democracy, socialism, and nationalism for a period of 7-10 years, three of which were with Mussolini as legitimately elected Prime Minister.
 
Wikipedia: Benito Mussolini  –
 
“In 1912 Mussolini was the leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Prior to 1914, he was a keen supporter of the Socialist International, starting the series of meetings in Switzerland that organised the communist revolutions and insurrections that swept through Europe from 1917. Mussolini was expelled from the PSI for withdrawing his support for the party's stance on neutrality in World War I. He served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on nationalism instead of socialism, and later founded the fascist movement.”
 
Wikipedia: Fascism: Etymology  –
 
“The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Mussolini's own account, the Fascist Revolutionary Party (Partito Fascista Rivoluzionario or PFR) was founded in Italy in 1915. In 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) two years later.”
 
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THE OPPORTUNIST: HITLER
 
Germany was in an odd position in 1919 – the government and military were in ruins, but the physical landscape in Germany itself was actually not so bleak or desolate. All of the heavy fighting and heaviest damage in the West had been on French and Belgian soil – a part of the reason the French insisted on such large war reparations.
 
You probably know some of Hitler’s early story – from Austria, something of a loser, homeless, a bohemian artist with no special talent at art. Then, during the World War in 1914, Hitler joins a German regiment.
 
Apparently he served bravely – which, actually, doesn’t surprise me. Every time in history there’s a major war, there’s a few people who were a total mess on the outside, who just seem to thrive under the more rigid structure of military discipline. Hitler was, apparently, one of them.
 
Hitler was convalescing in the hospital – he’d been caught in a mustard gas attack – when the news of the German surrender came in, shocking many of the front-line soldiers who thought the war was going much better than it was for the Germans.
 
Wikipedia  –
 
““Hitler later wrote, "When I was confined to bed, the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great. I knew immediately that it would be realized." However, it is unlikely that he committed himself to a career in politics at that point in time. ”
 
That’s my assessment as well – this is almost certainly later propaganda. Hitler would have been 29 years old at the time, and had just been through the only period of his life where he was successful – from youth to age 25, he’d had a bad life. Army service had seemed to suit him, and now there would be no army – Germany was defeated.
 
Which brings us to a fact that’s much less well-known than it ought to be –
 
Hitler’s first job out of the army, in 1919, was as an intelligence agent sent to spy on radical socialist groups like the German Workers’ Party.
 
Of course, much to the world’s detriment, he would wind up being recruited – “going native,” I think is what it’s called colloquially by spy services. He was sent to spy on fanatics – he wound up being converted to the fanatics’ party.
 
***
 
THE OPPORTUNIST: MUSSOLINI
 
Mussolini followed a path different on the surface, but very similar in some of its undercurrents – he was a prominent member of the Socialist International, and the general principle during World War I was pacifism and staying aloof from the war. (Indeed, the Bolshevik slogan that carried the day during the Russian Revolution was “Peace, bread, and land” – and I do actually believe the majority of Russian Revolutionaries were mostly genuinely sincere in their anti-war stances.)
 
The socialist movement in Italy was broadly against the war, and  Mussolini began on that footing before changing his mind  –
 
“Mussolini initially held official support for the party's decision and, in an August 1914 article, Mussolini wrote "Down with the War. We remain neutral." He saw the war as an opportunity, both for his own ambitions as well as those of socialists and Italians. He was influenced by anti-Austrian Italian nationalist sentiments, believing that the war offered Italians in Austria-Hungary the chance to liberate themselves from rule of the Habsburgs. He eventually decided to declare support for the war by appealing to the need for socialists to overthrow the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary who he claimed had consistently repressed socialism.”
 
Of course, if you’ve forgotten – the Italians were on the Allied side in World War I; that is, they were fighting the Germans and Austrians; Hitler and Mussolini were on opposite sides during World War I.
 
For advocating for war against the party line, Mussolini was expelled from the Italian Socialist Party:
 
“As Mussolini's support for the intervention solidified, he came into conflict with socialists who opposed the war. He attacked the opponents of the war and claimed that those proletarians who supported pacifism were out of step with the proletarians who had joined the rising interventionist vanguard that was preparing Italy for a revolutionary war. He began to criticize the Italian Socialist Party and socialism itself for having failed to recognize the national problems that had led to the outbreak of the war. He was expelled from the party for his support of intervention.”
 
From there, you can see Mussolini making his way over, gradually, to what would become fascism –
 
“After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines.”
 
But of course, he was still very much in the socialist camp – at least, his funding came from socialist sources. Gradually, he began a program that looks like to me – a modern amateur historian – as making somewhat vague statements as to his intentions, and allowing whoever was listening to interpret them as they felt like.
 
To socialists, he was a socialist. To a nationalist, he was a nationalist. To a conservative, he was a conservative. Even, to a large extent, to liberals he attempted to appear a liberal.
 
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ORWELL: WHAT’S A FASCIST?
 
The question of “What is fascism?” is still relevant in 2017; it’s still a major failure case in politics that people are rightfully worried about. But it’s notoriously hard to pin down what a fascist is .
 
From Orwell’s essay in 1944 –
 
“… when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:
 
“Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist.  […]
 
“Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. […] 
 
“Communists: A considerable school of thought […] refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. […]

“Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky's own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. [Editor’s note: this allegation was false.] […]
 
“Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;
 
“War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.
 
“Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory.  […]
 
“Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.”
 
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SO, WHY IS EVERYONE A FASCIST IN THEIR RIVALS’ EYES?
 
As we mentioned during Lingua Franca #1: Condescension , Orwell was as committed of an antifascist as anyone you could meet – he actually fought with the Trotskyist socialists in Spain against Spanish fascism, and was wounded by a fascist sniper in combat.
 
Some years later, during the closing moments of World War II, he notes that anyone and everyone gets called a fascist by their enemies – everyone from war resistors to supporters of the war, people in the appeasement camp and the anti-appeasement camp, and everyone in between.
 
We can see a few reasons why this might be true –
 
First, the word fascist became a pejorative , a sign of strong dislike, a word very negative in valence, a way to say “booooo” to any movement you disliked and disapproved of.
 
Second, fascism became anti-prestigious , and there is a general human tendency to like to associate with high prestige and dislike being associated with low prestige. Fascism had militant and aggressive qualities, and lost , which is most surely a dreadful combination that guarantees hatred and scorn.
 
Third, what is fascism  was rather vague… clearly enough there was Italian fascism and German fascism, and clearly enough they had some things in common, but they also had many differences between them. It was unclear what were the essential elements  that would lead to all the bad points of fascism, and what were just random elements in a particular fascist regime. As such, the word could largely be applied to anyone.
 
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OPPORTUNISM, RESENTMENT, DEMOS, AND FASCISM
 
There are many elements that commonly are conceived as being essential parts of fascism – nationalism, racial supremacy, revanchism (the desire to regain lost territory), aggressive militarism, a strange sort of “societally unified class warfare,” anti-clericalism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, anti-liberalism, authoritarianism, romanticism, mass propaganda, anti-cosmopolitanism, and a fear of “decadence” – however decadence might be defined.
 
From that list, you can observe right away that almost no group fits none  of those descriptions. If you think anti-clericalism and class warfare along racial lines are the defining features of fascism, you could apply it to Russian Communism. If you think anti-Semitism and anti-liberalism are the defining features of fascism, you could apply it to the Catholic Church. If you thought authoritarianism of any sort was the defining feature, you could apply it to any dictatorship. If you thought any sort of militarism was the defining feature of fascism, you could apply it to any country that goes to war or any party that advocates war at any time.
 
As far as I can tell, there are three features that always appear in fascism. They might not be the defining features  – which can be debated, and is in fact debated constantly to this day – but there are three that I see always present.
 
1. Resentment: Fascism has, at its core, a sense of hatred in it. It needs to point at people ruining society – who this is varies depending on which fascist society you’re talking about – but fascism needs enemies, and it born out of a specific type of resentment and hatred.
 
2. Opportunism: I see no evidence of any of the fascist leaders of the twentieth century taking a long philosophical view of fascism, but rather adopting positions opportunistically. Hitler taking a job as an intelligence agent after the war, only to see a radical party gaining power and joining it. Mussolini being willing to appear as all things to all people, and only forming his own party after being kicked out of the Italian Socialist Party. Francisco Franco, in Spain, taking up the fascist position from a previous conservative and monarchist perspective to curry favor and receive arms and funding from Germany and Italy.
 
And a final, third point that might be the most controversial – the origin in mass politics along the lines of democracy.
 
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FASCISM AND DEMOS
 
It’s rather important to note that both Mussolini and Hitler were more-or-less legitimately democratically elected, before amending the constitutions of their country to ban other political parties, passing states of emergency to grant extraordinary powers, and otherwise transforming into dictatorships.
 
But again – they were elected. Both Mussolini and Hitler advocated for democracy until elected, and then and only then did they suspend democracy – and largely with the approval of their constituencies, having laid the ground with mass propaganda to pave the way for those actions.
 
The Italian Fascist Manifesto of 1919  –

“The Manifesto was presented on 6 June 1919 in the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded); proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate. The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of their profits. It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive. ”
 
You see, thus, early fascist positions advocating for democracy – democracy is only dispensed with once the fascist party takes undisputed power.
 
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OUR FOURTH LESSON FROM LINGUA FRANCA
 
Our fourth lesson from Lingua Franca  is that when there is a word that has strong negative connotations to it, but with ambiguous meaning , people will strive to harness that word and apply it to their rivals.
 
Fascism is still relevant in 2017, because it is a failure case of democracy. The majority of the most destructive fascist movements started as democratic parties, praised democracy, and only abandoned democracy when it suited their purposes.
 
But due to the ambiguous and opportunistic nature of political fascism, you could attempt to apply the label to almost any group that shared some of its characteristics.
 
Orwell, emphasis added –
 
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
 
“Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others.  Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
 
“But Fascism is also a political and economic system.  Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword. ”
 
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CONCLUSION: THINKING AND PERSUASION
 
Honestly, this chapter could have been longer and more thorough, but researching and investigating the beginning of large-scale political crimes gets tiresome; we’ll visit next with much more pleasant figures, Laozi and Wittgenstein.
 
And yet, it is  an important topic. Orwell noted that,
 
“Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. ”
 
A much-abused word, indeed. And he advises –
 
“All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.” ”
 
But we should make a final note – in Lingua Franca , we are speaking from the perspective of what Orwell calls circumspection ; we are trying to think better.
 
“Fascist” is still a viable pejorative. It’s an insult and a rebuke that, when it sticks, stigmatizes various forms of mass politics, resentment, rallies, nationalism, militarism, and so forth.
 
As such, from a persuasive  angle, it will remain a battleground for the foreseeable future – and perhaps it should ; we should ever and always look to think clearly , but – sadly – this is often different from adopting certain language when trying to persuade .
 
Once again, I’ll state that the word fascism  is less important than the general concept – when there is a “bad thing that arises from not fully known causality,” various groups will try to pin that “bad thing” on their rivals – whether their rivals be pacifists or militarists, the devoutly religious or atheists, whether they be revolutionary or conservative, or anywhere in between.
 
On a historical level, it’s worth sooner-or-later researching the rise of Hitler and Mussolini to power; particularly Mussolini, who had a longer and more winding political career, and who is much less known than Hitler across the Western world outside of Italy.
 
But over and above that, you should distinguish to yourself cleanly the difference between attempting to persuade – that is, assign a lot of bad causality to a rival group – and when you are attempting to think clearly.
 
Fascism remains a failure case that could happen again, and working against that is indeed working for society – but what is fascism?
 
Simple definitions help in propaganda and persuasion, but clear circumspection and thinking is what makes you a better thinker.
 
Not just for this one word, but all words – whenever there is anything  good or bad with a mix of causality driving it, the more persuasive route is to assign it very simply to one word, and claim it for oneself if it is prestigious and positive, or ascribe it to a rival if it is unprestigious and negative.
 
Well, such is the way of persuasion, and has been for a long time – but in one’s private learnings and studies, it would do well to think clearly and delineate all the causes of things.
 
“It’s complicated” has never been very persuasive in public, but can at times be a source of wisdom in private.