A common critique of fascism is that it is not a real political ideology, but merely a hodgepodge of random, arbitrary, historically contingent policies. Fascism was whatever people wanted it to be.
Economically, many of the public works projects of Nazi Germany were actually drawn up in 1932 by Social Democrats. Fascism was anti-communist, but at the same time socialist. Fascism was anti-capitalist and anti-British as the war progressed, but initially, Hitler loved Britain and viewed it as a model. Mussolini was also initially allied to Britain prior to being sanctioned for his invasion of Ethiopia.
Religiously, “Austro-fascism,” Spanish Fascism, and Portuguese Fascism were extremely pro-Catholic, while fascism in Italy and Germany was hostile to the Catholic church. Himmler’s SS and Hitler’s top secretary, Martin Bormann, who determined who had access to Hitler at any given time, were both anti-Christian. On the other hand, Romanian fascists insisted that Christianity was the founding principle of fascism.
Some fascists could be described as endorsing “traditional marriage,” but Mussolini had a Jewish mistress and Hitler refused to get married to his long term partner. Fascists are supposed to be sexist, but Leni Riefenstahl was the greatest fascist filmmaker of all time.
Despite fascism being “antisemitic” on racial and blood-based grounds, Mussolini and Hitler were sympathetic to the Muslim world. Both Hitler and Mussolini promoted Bosnian and Albanian Islam in the Balkans as a counter to Yugoslavian independence. National Socialist propaganda referred to Turks as part of the European family. Nazis clearly promoted Nordicism, but at the same time preferred Italians over Slavs. Hitler opposed Zionism in Mein Kampf, but consistently collaborated with Zionist efforts to promote Jewish emigration. Mussolini worked closely with Zionist founder Ze'ev Jabotinsky, whose troops served alongside Italy in Ethiopia.
All of this is used to prove that fascism was right wing, left wing, centrist, inconsistent, radical, bourgeois, everything, or nothing. Similarly, what does democracy mean? In one sense, democracy could mean populism. Yet since 2016, there has been a flood of caution that “populism is a threat to democracy.” What exactly does democracy mean in this context? Are these terms useless and without substance? If they do have substance, what is it?
Fascist and Democratic Class Structures
Simply put, fascism and democracy are both distinguished by their class structure. Fascism is ruled by a warrior class, while democracy is ruled by a coalition between the merchant and priest class. Since the destruction of fascism in 1945, democracy has positioned itself in opposition to “authoritarianism.” No one calls themselves an authoritarian, but it is a label which democracy uses to designate a regime in which the warrior class has too much power: juntas, dictatorships, strong men, silovik, warlord, gangster, mafia. Such regimes are supported by frat bros, jocks, athletes, bodybuilders, soldiers, killers, hunters, police, cops, security forces, mercenaries, outdoorsmen, fishermen, rednecks, hillbillies, conservatives, fighters, boxers, wrestlers, jarheads, thugs, mercenaries, and vigilantes.
The common thread between all of these enemies of democracy is their relationship with the physical body and violence. A fisherman may seem innocent enough, but such activities are suspicious under the most loyal elements of the democratic regime. Fishing in ancient times distinguished hunter-gatherer populations from neolithic populations, and this ancient prejudice carries through to the modern day.
Meanwhile, democracy is represented not by the “majority” in a numerical sense, but those elements which are the most dependent on the domination of the merchant and priest class. Those dependent on priestly domination include academics, poets, theater kids, and LGBTQ folks. On the other hand, welfare users, immigrants, the disabled, bankers, financiers, and money lenders all depend on a mercantile distribution of wealth.
Wealth and Class Structure
The phrase “mercantile distribution of wealth” may sound redundant, but it is not. Consider that in warrior ruled societies, the richest men are soldiers, dictators, enforcers, adventurers, mercenaries, or conquistadors.
The rule of the Roman Republic was divided between senators, who were descendants of the military generals of Romulus, and the consuls, who were originally called praetors, or military commanders. The Roman Republic overthrew the monarchy, not because it was too militaristic, but because the last legendary monarch was socialistic and feminist:
“Inspired by this woman's frenzy [his daughter-wife, Tullia] Tarquinius began to go about and solicit support, especially among the heads of the lesser families, [..] he had been an abettor of the lowest class of society, to which he himself belonged, and his hatred of the nobility possessed by others had led him to plunder the leading citizens of their land and divide it amongst the dregs of the populace. All the burdens which had before been borne in common he had laid upon the nation's foremost men. He had instituted the census that he might hold up to envy the fortunes of the wealthy, and make them available, when he chose to draw upon them, for largesses to the destitute.”1
Over time, the senatorial families of Rome themselves became divorced from the practice of war, and more involved in economic pursuits. As a result, the Republic degenerated to the point where Caesar was able to seize power and allow for a renewal of Roman warrior power within the empire. This power waxed and waned (being especially weak during the reign of Heliogabalus) until the empire fell to Germanic chieftains. These chieftains hailed from tribes such as the Angles, Saxons, Danes, Jutes, Scandi, Rurikid, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks, Burgundians, and Normans.
The descendants of these chieftains founded virtually all of the western European royal and aristocratic families. Thus, the majority of wealth and power was distributed according to the rights of warrior conquest, not according to an economized mercantile meritocracy.
The rise of the Lombard banking system in the 12th century represents again a decline of the warrior ethos of the aristocracy in favor of a mercantile ethos. The function of the warrior aristocracy was replaced by the condottieri. This decline reached a critical point with the Anglican confiscation of church properties, which ushered in the modern conception of land as “free property” which can be bought and sold, rather than as a hereditary possession tied to a particular bloodline. This opened the door to a mercantile distribution of wealth — essentially a massive wealth transfer away from the warrior class and their descendants to an ascendant merchant class. The merchant class no longer existed to serve the aristocracy, but overcame and replaced their masters.
Communism and Fascism
The result was the ideology of Republicanism, represented by American and British liberalism, and Communism, its 19th century offshoot in central and eastern Europe. Whereas the intellectual theorists behind liberalism were generally Protestants, Communism was particularly influenced by secular and assimilated Jews. Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle (1848), Eduard Bernstein (1872), Alexandre Millerand (1885), Rosa Luxemburg (1886), and Trotsky (1897) all formed a crucial part of the development of Marxism. Jews were attracted to Marxism not out of racial or religious loyalty to their in-group, but as Marxism offered Jews who rejected their religion an opportunity to adopt the Christian ethos without the historical baggage of the Christian crusade or pogrom. Marxism played the same role for assimilated Jews that Christianity played for Hellenized Jews, 1800 years earlier.
Against this extreme expression of the mercantile economizing tendency arose antisemitism, first among socialists such as Wilhelm Marr2 and Richard Wagner, and then among former Freemasons such as the Thulegesellshaft, atheists, pagans, and Nordicists. The volkisch movement preceded this antisemitism, and was founded in response to the Napoleonic conquest of Germany and the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, father of gymnastics, believed that a culture of bodily excellence was necessary to make a nation strong, masculine, patriotic, nationalistic, and wehrhaft, “defensive.”
The fusion of the antisemitic and volkisch movements created the precursor to German National Socialism. The development of other European fascist movements was independent and followed a different course, but all were reactions to communism. All of them were militant and rejected the Christian ethos of communism, which raised up the common man above the aristocracy. Iberian Fascists such as Franco believed in a restoration of the monarchy, while secular fascists such as Mussolini believed in a natural aristocracy which had the right to rule by its spiritual superiority.
Fascism, in the case of Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler, all came to power as a result of a strong military ethos. Franco fought a war and Mussolini marched on Rome. Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch failed in 1923, but he succeeded in allying with General Hindenburg, and through the intimidation tactics of the Sturmabteilung, he was able to secure dictatorial power. The core cult of Nazi ideology, the SS, was dedicated first and foremost to the art of war.
Conclusion
Pedantic studies of fascism attempt to align it with a particular economic, social, or religious program. Such studies are unconvincing and leave the reader wondering if fascism has any inner substance at all, or if it is simply a catch-all term for “bad ideas.” A deeper and more essential study will reveal the inherent nature of fascism as springing forth from the warrior aesthetic. In this way, ancient Greeks can be fascist, Romans can be fascist, even non-white peoples can be fascist.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, “democracy” seems at first like a meaningless concept. If humans are a blank slate, and democracy means the will of the majority, then democracy could mean fascism, communism, liberalism — whatever the people want. However, the warnings against the “populist threat to democracy” show that democracy cannot simply be a popularity contest, but has an inner essential ethos. That ethos is a rejection of the warrior class and its replacement by the rule of an economizing merchant class, alongside a Christian or post-Christian priest class. In this way, Communism grew out of a fundamentally democratic ethos, and capitalism as well.
Recognizing the aesthetic connotations of terms like “fascist” and “democratic” allows for a more analysis of politics. Without this understanding, one is lost in a mire of semantic “contradictions” and “hypocrisy,” going nowhere. The threat of fascism is real so long as there exists a warrior class capable of overthrowing the current merchant and priest class. Alternatively, attempts to “shore up democracy” will always include the degradation, humiliation, and replacement of the warrior class, sometimes with ethnic foreigners, sometimes with regime loyalists, and sometimes with technology such as drones and AI. The future of the battle between democracy and fascism will be determined by whether or not the merchant and priest classes can maintain a strict control over these technologies. If not, a new condottieri may arise through these emerging technologies, including genetic engineering, overthrowing eight centuries of democratic progress. Such an upset would be similar in scale to the Black Sea Deluge and Saharan collapse of 5600 BC, the collapse of Sumer in 1739 BC, the Bronze Age Collapse of 1200 BC, the conquests of Alexander in 323 BC, the collapse of Rome in 476, and the Mongol invasions of 1206.3
Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 1. Translated by Benjamin Oliver Foster, 1919.
“Towards a Transnational History of Racism: Interrelationships between Colonial Racism and German Anti-Semitism? The Example of Wilhelm Marr,” in: Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation. Manfred Berg, 2011. Pages 122-139.
In the case of the Deluge and Saharan collapse, civilization did not “restart” until nearly 1600 years later in Egypt and Sumer. Sumer was completely destroyed as a culture. Other collapses, such as the Bronze Age Collapse, took 400 years before a new high culture emerged in Greece. After the decline of the Greek kingdoms, the Greeks experienced a renaissance under the Byzantines, which then was destroyed by the Ottomans in 1453 and has not recovered since. The Roman collapse was followed by the Italian Renaissance, which began as early as the Madonna del Bordone of Marcovaldo in 1261. However, after the decline of Italy with the rise of Spain, England, and France, Italy has never recovered to its former relative power in Europe.