British Fascism

Fascism as revolutionary

Griffin (2006b: 261) maintains that fascism is a revolutionary ideology. To substantiate such a claim, he offers an ad populum argument: he is not the only person convinced that this is the case, pointing again to the ‘new consensus’ in fascist studies: “a growing area of agreement concerning the value of seeing fascism as an extreme form of (not necessarily eugenically racist or antisemitic) ultra-nationalism bent on a cultural and anthropological revolution.” As Durham (2006: 301) observes, Griffin clearly rejects the assumption “that a revolution must entail a far-reaching challenge to capitalist property relations”, instead arguing that it is “enough to argue that fascism’s call for the creation of a new man, a new woman and a new order envisaged a revolutionary transformation of the cultures in which it has arisen.” However, Durham continues, if we consider fascist views on sex and gender, then the picture becomes more complex—revealing that fascism has both culturally revolutionary and culturally reactionary features. “For many fascists, the new woman would be above all a wife and mother […] But, as distinct from other forms of rightism, she would also be mobilised in mass and often uniformed women’s movements” (Durham 2006: 301). On this point, Soucy (2006: 214) would also agree:

Even if one bases one’s definition of fascism on ‘the primacy of culture’ rather than on the primacy of economics, the cultural appeals which Fascism and Nazism made to their major constituencies in Italy and Germany were often far more conservative than revolutionary. […] In a meeting with church officials in 1933 Hitler justified his policies by citing Catholic traditions. Conservative too was Nazi propaganda on behalf of certain ‘traditional’ values, including some associated in the 1920s and 30s with bourgeois respectability (hard work, plain living, sexual repression, traditional gender roles, etc).

Kershaw (2008: 57) is even more categorical: “Hitler did view himself as a revolutionary, but his revolution was strictly and exclusively racial, a revolution of annihilation.”

On weighing up this balance of revolutionary and reactionary elements in fascism, Griffin (2006b: 264) writes: “I have no doubt that in the interwar period many were drawn to fascism for non-revolutionary, genuinely reactionary motives such as fear of communism or economic chaos […] I would argue, however, that they remained at heart fellow travellers rather than ‘true’ fascists. By contrast the fascist policies that affected the working classes, the Church, women, and (in Germany) art all had a revolutionary rationale in their own terms, no matter how ‘reactionary’ they were in terms of conflicting ideologies”. This passage is key, for how it deals with Griffin’s hermeneutics of fascist ideology: Fascists claim that they are revolutionary, or at least that their policies “had a revolutionary rationale”. Other analysts disagree, arguing that these same features—the features that fascists claim to be revolutionary—are in fact reactionary. But, “no matter how ‘reactionary’” the opponents of fascism argued that these policies were, Griffin concludes that their readings of fascist policy should not be given primacy, because fascist policies are revolutionary “in their own terms”. In other words, fascist policies are revolutionary because the fascists say they are revolutionary.

Aside from an overwhelming sense of ‘painting the roses red’, this privileging of fascist justificatory and self-descriptive schemas reveals a slippage in Griffin’s work between two analytic positions: “(a) that palingenetic ultra-nationalism is the core of the definition of fascism and (b) that it is the core of actual fascist movements” (Passmore 2006: 352). If we are to opt for (b), and rely on the self-descriptions of fascists to determine what may or may not be regarded as ‘fascist’, then why do we need a heuristic model at all? If we are to opt for a heuristic definition—and, for sake of argument, let’s say it is the definition in (a)—then we cannot take the statements of (potential) fascist movements as the sine qua non for establishing fascist credentials. As Passmore (2006: 353) continues “Griffin is well aware that only the first usage is appropriate if the concept is to be used heuristically”, otherwise he risks essentialising fascism:

For Griffin, conservatives in fascist movements “remained at heart fellow travellers rather than ‘true’ fascists.” The quote marks around ‘true’ reveal unease, but there is no clearer example of essentialization than in the expression “at heart”. To defend his theory Griffin asserts privileged insight into the true motives of fascists. Again, Marxists are just as able to argue that revolutionaries in fascism were “ultimately” fellow travellers or dreamers who were sooner or later eliminated from movements and regimes. (Passmore, 2006: 354)

There is, however, a more problematic corollary to emphasising the “cultural and anthropological revolution” professed in fascist ideological myth: backgrounding the politically illiberal facts on the ground, the alliances between conservative forces and silence on fascism’s “distinctively brutal violence and paramilitarism” (Mann 2004: 12). On this point, De Grand (2006: 96) reminds us that any ‘cultural revolution’ achieved by the Fascist or Nazi regimes “was derived from the violent suppression of alternatives more than from positive policies. […] Griffin blurs all of this in an ideological fog”. For example, Griffin describes “Mussolini’s fascio di combattimento and the squads as ‘a remarkable alliance between the avant-garde artistic and cultural milieu with revolutionary syndicalists and national socialists.’ [Griffin 2002: 33] The participation of the landowners and the Nationalist right, castor oil and savage beatings of socialist union organizers conveniently disappear from view” (De Grand 2006: 96). In the next paragraph of this same article Griffin (2002: 33) argues:

The transformation of the NSDAP from a marginalised party gaining 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928, to a mass movement which won over 37.4 per cent (13,745,800 votes) in July 1932, was no simple matter of mass manipulation. It involved a complex process by which Nazism, thanks to the propaganda machine and sophisticated theatrical politics of a party which identified itself explicitly with the prospect of a revolutionary new order and the comprehensive palingenesis of Germany symbolised in the Swastika, finally became the core of a genuine mass charismatic community.