The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
The word “fascism” has an interesting linguistic background. It comes from a Latin word fascio, which means “bundle.”
The symbol of fascism is a large hatchet-head emerging up from a tightly-tied thick circle of long, straight sticks. The hatchet by itself could not effectively be used as a weapon against anything or anyone, because a hatchet with no handle is hardly a hatchet.
However, if the hatchet is one strong piece of iron or steel with a short, slender metal handle, and many long wooden rods are tightly bound together and are bound to the short metal handle, the hatchet can be wielded effectively as an axe against animals or people. The metal in the makeshift axe is strong enough and the strength of the handle, with all those wooden rods working in unison, can overcome any type of resistance.
Fascism occurs when a gifted leader convinces a group of disaffected people to rally around his leadership. A few people cannot make big things happen, but many people, united by the leader, can become an overpowering force in a nation or society. All that is necessary is for many individual slender sticks (people) to form the bundle (fascio) who, together, become a powerful weapon (axe) in the hands of The Leader. In the twentieth century, various fascist leaders were known as El Lider, El Caudillo, Der Fuehrer, or Il Duce.
Wikipedia, the world’s instantly available Internet encyclopedia, defines fascism as a form of “radical, authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and control of industry and commerce.”
Twentieth century fascism originated in Italy in the Twenties under Benito Mussolini, who called himself Il Duce. Italy was knocked flat by World War I. It was in a desperate situation. Many Italians felt they had been badly treated by the Allies, and the economy was faltering. They readily united behind a take-charge type of man.
Mussolini convinced the most desperate Italians that he could re-establish another Roman Empire in the twentieth century. He would give Italy spazio vitale (living space) which had been taken from them by the Peace of Versailles. Il Duce appealed to Italian nationalism, and he persuaded the Italians who followed him that he could bring Italy back to its classical greatness.
Economically, fascism represented state-controlled capitalism. Employers and employees would work together for the good of the people and of the state. Politically, fascism opposed liberalism and liberal thought. It was also anti-Marxist, because Marxism represented absolutely the wrong kind of autocratic government. Fascism was believed to be the right brand of autocracy with a single leader as the central political feature.
In Spain in the 1930s, Francisco Franco, El Lider or El Caudillo, created the same kind of nationalistic movement. He told the Spanish he could resurrect the sixteenth-century Spanish Empire which conquered much of the New World.
However, it was in Germany where fascism reached its zenith under Adolf Hitler, Der Fuehrer. The Treaty of Versailles punished Germany the most severely for initiating World War I. The German state and economy were deliberately eviscerated. Hitler came along in the Twenties and Thirties, appealing particularly to uneducated lower class Germans who felt oppressed by everyone, especially by Jews and other non-Aryans. A pure Aryan race would inhabit the Fatherland, and all immigrants and foreigners would be expelled.
Fascism always emerges because of grievances seized upon by a strongman-type leader. Like Mussolini, Hitler also insisted that Germans needed and deserved Lebensraum, “Living Space.” He would create another Thousand-Year Reich, like the thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire, which was a German-dominated union of church and state in central Europe from the time of Charlemagne to Napoleon.
Every fascist movement in Europe had the backing of some of the intellectuals in the countries where fascism was deeply rooted. However, many thoughtful academics opposed Nazism. Fascism’s primary appeal was to lower-class workers who believed themselves to be victims of forces which had targeted them for the national scrap heap. Therefore the leaders of these movements all looked back to what they believed were the glory years of their nations, promising their followers to restore those past splendors. Make Germany or Italy or Spain great again, they said.
There was a common pattern in the vocal appeal of the twentieth century fascist leaders. In their speeches to the masses, they spoke very quickly, loudly and excitedly. Whenever thunderous applause erupted, they would pause and drink in the adulation. In particular, Mussolini exhibited a striking folded-arms smugness, with his head tilted back and his lips pursed, basking in the enthusiasm of the enthralled throngs. That type of visible response evokes comparisons to a twenty-first century world figure with fascistic tendencies. Donald Trump frequently has the same self-satisfied smirk at his carefully planned rallies that Il Duce displayed before his spellbound fans.
The European fascism of the 1920s and 30s led inevitably to the horrors of World War II in the 1940s. Cunning leaders cannot permanently get their willing followers excessively stirred up without some kind of social, political, and/or military upheaval.
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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the growing influence of the European Union in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a wave of what is now called populism has slowly emerged, especially in Europe. It began to manifest opposition to the liberal democracies which sprang up once the Iron Curtain fell.
With the wars in the Middle East and North Africa, millions of refugees have flooded into Europe in the past decade. This mass movement of foreigners has alarmed many lower-paid, lower class citizens of several European nations. They claim the immigrants have taken their jobs and the social benefits they believe properly belong to them.
Populist unrest has swollen in Russia, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and Holland. The governments of Russia, Greece, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Poland are now controlled by overtly populist leaders. The heads of state in Russia, Hungary and Poland have demonstrated an increasingly authoritarian streak, reminiscent of twentieth-century European fascism.
Contemporary populism and the fascism of the last century sprang up out of widespread social unrest. Usually lower-class advocates of populism do not closely follow politics, but their leaders do. However, people-in-the-street-populists feel deliberately ignored by the political process. Dissatisfaction, disaffection, distrust, mistrust, and fear of the future are the spawning ground out of which smooth-talking, and/or unscrupulous, charismatic anti-democratic manipulators emerge to construct their hastily or carefully conceived movements.
“Populism” can be a misleading word. It comes from a Latin root which simply means “people.” But populism, “people-ism,” by its very nature never includes everyone; it always involves only a particular portion of the people.
Furthermore, populism always opposes whatever are the prevailing politics or policies of any nation or group of nations. It arises from negative, not positive, energy. Current European populism opposes the internationalism of the EU in favor of the nationalistic impulses of individual sovereign states. Populists naturally try to build big tents to expand their base, but a “big tent” is never their objective per se. Their hidden modus operandi is not to include, but rather to exclude.
Populism never appears in a vacuum. There are always some legitimate grievances which cause its emergence. If those grievances are not sufficiently addressed by the people who control political power, the populist impulse is certain to grow.
In its early stages, populism is not a threat. Only if the issues it raises are not addressed, or are believed to be insufficiently addressed, might populism become a threat. Many populist movements succeed in causing governments to change policies in ways the populist mindset approves. When that happens, the movements usually dissipate. However, if the leaders of the populist movements do not believe enough improvements have been made, they may seek to take power, either by ballots or by bullets.
When and how populists attempt to take power may determine whether they are legitimate or illegitimate. If they win at the ballot box, as the Nazis did in 1933 (although decidedly in a minority position), it may seem to be legitimate. If they seize or further consolidate power by a military coup, violence, or subterfuge, it is quite another matter.
Populism invariably becomes a threat to national security when many of its proponents begin to wear uniforms. In its early stages, populism does not insist on uniformity, because it is too weak to do that. As it advances, however, it begins to require more and more uniformity; hence, subconsciously perhaps, the growing frequency of the sightings of the uniforms.
Populism does not always become militaristic as it grows, but often it does. Because populism is grounded on people who are painfully aware of their own systemic weakness, it tends to acquire military strength of arms as soon as practicable.
In general, twenty-first century populism has not attained the unchallenged power that fascism attained in several European countries in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Thus we do not yet see populist leaders dressed as high-ranking military officers.
It could happen, though. Populism may or may not be a threat to any nation’s stability, but militarized populists are always a threat to every nation in which they appear.
Are we beginning to see a populist menace in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, just as a fascist menace began to appear at roughly the same period of time in the twentieth century? Are the visceral nationalist, racist, anti-immigrant views of the populists of contemporary Europe and America a re-play of events which ultimately resulted in the bloodiest war in world history?
If the middle and upper classes ignore the fears and complaints of the lower and working classes too long, populism is virtually inevitable. Social and economic inequities and injustices cannot continually widen without some sort of historical correction.
When the governing political parties in any nation or group of nations become so divided they can no longer govern effectively, tyrannical populists may step in to take charge. When that happens, it almost always results in a great, if unpredictable, cataclysm.
John Miller is the pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwallshhi.org.