There is a very good reason for this.
The standard definition of Fascism at an intellectual level derives from a statement by Mussolini, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Corporate power in this instance referring to industrial capitalist economic organisations. Clearly this is not a satisfactory definition since it would include regimes like that of Stalin and George Bush, it is therefore not sufficiently able to identify the particular nature of the classic Fascist regimes of the mid twentieth century.
Another popular definition of Fascism is that coined by Mr Roger Griffin (no relation) who saw the defining characteristic of fascism as palingenetic ultranationalism which he described as the “fascist minimum” without which nothing could be identified as Fascist.
Palingentic ultranationalism might be a great linguistic construct, a good name for a rock band, but is woefully inadequate to describe the nature of Fascism. Almost any political program could be described as palingenetic which simply means “desiring the rebirth of the nation”; New Labour, New Britain is a classic palingenetic statement.
Every political movement in its wilder moments talks about a remaking of the nation. As for “ultra nationalism” any number of objections can be made to the conflation of Nationalism and Fascism. For example the imperialist nature of Fascism vs the demand for universal sell determination, the most core principal of all Nationalist thought.
So if the defining characteristic of Fascism is not the merger of corporate and state power or palingenetic ultranationalism. So what is it?
It’s not hard to identify the central characteristic of Fascist thought; it’s just that the implications of doing so are profoundly disturbing for our intellectual elite. The central identifying characteristic of Fascism is the pursuit of state power as a positive good in itself. Fascism, unlike Nationalism, does not confine the extent of the state to that of any nation.
Unlike Socialisms and Communism it does not see the state as a means to another end. For Fascists the state is the embodiment of the collective outside of any constraint and with a duty and right to seek power for its own sake.
The Fascist regimes of the mid twentieth century clearly identified the state, and not the nation, as the rightful and only object of the people’s loyalty. This is clearly symbolised by replacement of national flags with new ones representing not the nation, but the state.
Their programs invariable sought to empower the state at every opportunity, even the eugenic programs were deigned to produce a “superior” population as a resource for the state to use, not as a moral imperative. Every action of the Fascist states was justified by the empowerment of the state. Fascist states were so single minded in this pursuit of state power that they rarely even troubled to promote the ideology of Fascism itself.
Why is this simple and obvious identification of Fascism so strenuously avoided by elite intellectuals? Simple. Because that identification of Fascism as Statism gone mad equally applies to the regimes currently running the West as it does to Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and far more than it does Franco’s Spain.
The Progressive ideology of the Western elite relies on the state as its tool to remodel society, it sees the state as indispensible and it concedes no other legitimate authority than it. Margret Thatcher’s famous dictum that “there is no such thing as society” is usually seen as a claim for Individualism, in fact it is simply a statement declaring that the state is all there is. Similarly modern establishment politicians routinely deny the existence of nations, for them the state is the only object of loyalty.
We might expect that the establishment would object to their identification as Fascists by claiming Liberalism as their ideology. However it is very difficult to see how the imposition of “liberalism” at gunpoint, whereby the state constrains millions for the minor liberties of favoured victim groups, could be identified as Liberalism. An interventionist state cannot possibly sensibly be considered Liberal. Maybe they might describe themselves as Democrats. However regimes which ignore the demands of the people on every issue from immigration through to Europe through criminal justice, education and economic policy cannot possibly claim to be Democrats with a straight face.
But surely I cannot be serious? This is a semantic trick, defining Fascism as something simply so I can include the current Western regimes in the circle? In fact the Fascism of our elite goes far deeper than a simple commonality of core values with classical Fascsim.
Our elites believe that their ideology should be global in its dominance and they are prepared to use political violence on a massive scale to achieve that ends. Since the end of the Second World War the overwhelming majority of serious conflicts have been driven by this ambition, Korea, Vietnam, the two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan and even the Cold War itself were all principally motivated by an attempt to impose the values of the Western elite on nations that did not share them.
In addition to these terrible battles dozens of smaller engagements have been motivated by the same thing. On top of that litany of ideological imperialism the Western elites have used every technique available to them short of open warfare to advance their agenda of Progressive global domination. Economic warfare, proxy terrorism and the full range of espionage methods including the assassination and/or overthrow of elected heads of state have all been used shamelessly. This is pure Fascism.
The issue of Fascist attitudes towards eugenics it totemic in the popular imagination though in reality it is incidental to Fascist ideology in much the same way Internationalism is incidental to Socialism. Which is to say that a eugenic policy is not essential to the definition of Fascism.
Never the less it is a characteristic of fascist governments, which is probably why our own elites favour eugenic policies. Obviously not eugenics in the sense of breeding an Ayran master race to serve the state rather in the sense of breeding a mixed race master race to serve the state. The elite’s often asserted point that mixed race people are genetically superior is pure eugenic thinking. Their lionisation of people like Barack Obama, Lewis Hamilton, BeyoncĂ© and Tiger Woods as ideals of human genetic perfection is an exact mirror of the type of thought of the classical Fascist regimes.
Moreover just as the Fascists of the mid twentieth century didn’t mind breaking a few eggs to make their master race omelette neither do our current elite. The policy of displacement genocide enacted by our elites against indigenous populations was a standard Fascist technique summed up in the Lebensraum policy, which as a point of fact called for the deportation of Untermenschen rather than their extermination until circumstances demanded the later. Once again we can find no substantial difference between classical Fascism and the attitudes of our own elite in either theory or practice.
In education policy we see the same Fascist attitudes, the idea that education should be designed to develop critical faculties is often asserted by Western elites. In reality their educations systems practice ideological indoctrination and openly aim to produce “good citizens” by which they mean ideological conformity with elite thought.
Any student demonstrating the ability to critique establishment ideology is more likely to end up in a re-education facility for “anti social behaviour” than they are a university.
We could go on, however the simple fact is that in almost every area it is easy to see that there is little or no substantial difference between the ideology of Western elites and classical Fascism.
Indeed even if you want to take Mussolini’s partial definition of the merger of state and corporate power as the essence of Fascism you would be hard pushed to distinguish Fascist Italy from Bailout Britain or any other Western nation in 2011. Even if we apply Griffin’s definition of Fascism as Palingenetic ultranationalism, a definition desperately connived to get our elites off the hook, then in the EU project the elites stand convicted.
Indeed if any further convincing is necessary it is only required to examine the ideas of groups like European Action, self identifying Fascists who claim direct decent from mid 20th century Fascist thinkers, whose main gripe with our elite’s policy is that they lack the style of Benito and Adolf, not the substance.
So why is it that groups like Antifa mistake the Nationalist movement for Fascism and fail to identify the real Fascism of our elites?
Partly it is the fault of Nationalists themselves who in the post war period accepted the elite’s definition of them as Fascists and who happy entertained the tiny fringe of serious Fascist as fellow travellers for decades.
Partly it is because of the elites barefaced, if not sincerely held, insistence that Fascism is the supreme evil and that they represent its diametric opposite.
Partly it is a lack of understanding or thought on what Fascism actually is in favour of a cultural definition. But mostly it because such groups aren’t interested in actually opposing Fascism, they are simply interested in playing out a socially constructed subculture.
Indeed 21st Century Nationalism is rapidly evolving away from the classic Nation-State model in the light of the post war experience. An Intellectual Renaissance is sweeping the radical right bringing with it a swathe of ideas that reject the state in favour of the nation. Nationalism is the only fully developed ideology other than Anarchism actually capable of envisioning a future without the state. So the already vast chasm between Nationalism and Fascism, in which can be found all other political ideologies, is actually getting wider and the rate of widening is accelerating.
As this century begins to unfold we can start to see the ideological battle lines being drawn, and surprise surprise they are almost exactly where they were in the mid 20th century and back at the beginning in 1789.
On one side the ultimate logical expression of Progressive thought; Fascism, on the other Nationalism surrounded by its natural ideological allies Socialism and Anarchism.
In other words the elites Vs the peoples. There has only ever been one winner in these fights, and it’s not the Nazis. Bring it on
