Someone explain the "philosophical" foundation of Fascism?

[ContrarianLemming]

Can someone explain the "philosophical" foundation of Fascism? ie: their ideas about "heroism" and "will" the "will of the people" though the leader etc
I understand it's all rooted in Hegels writings (as was Marx's, who was a left hegelian?) but I'd like to get a good look at the meat and bone of fascism. Not that it's all about complete control and police statism, but it's ideas about humans being motivated by "glory" and such.

Cheers

[Guerrilla22]

Can someone explain the "philosophical" foundation of Fascism? ie: their ideas about "heroism" and "will" the "will of the people" though the leader etc
I understand it's all rooted in Hegels writings (as was Marx's, who was a left hegelian?) but I'd like to get a good look at the meat and bone of fascism. Not that it's all about complete control and police statism, but it's ideas about humans being motivated by "glory" and such.

Cheers

Basically it is an ideology that came out of Roman times. It's symbol was an axe with a bundle of sticks wrapped around it. Symbolizing that even if one stick were to break, so many others would be in place that it wouldn't affect the bundle as a whole. The whole nationalism thing. It was an idea concocted by the Roman elite to get the masses to protect the empire by playing up nationalism.

Fascism is based around the idea of class collaboration (everyone plays a role in society like the cogs of a machine working together) rather than class conflict. It emphasizes hierarchy as some are naturally superior to others, but also nationalism as everyone no matter what their place in society should work together to further the interest of their nation or state.

[anticap]

Start here (http://worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm).

[Proletarian Ultra]

There is none.

Capital is in crisis. Capitalists find some thuggish loons and paranoids amongst the lumpen classes. Capitalists hire said loons to beat up workers and socialists. And if pressed entirely into a corner, capitalists hand over the state to said loons.

That's all there is to it. Trying to find a "theory" behind it, which liberal historians are wont to do, just obfuscates the role the liberal bourgeoisie itself has had in arming and handing power to fascist movements. It's just pure lunacy and paranoia let loose on society by capital.

[anticap]

There is none.

Giovanni Gentile, the self-described "philosopher of Fascism" and ghost-writer of Mussolini's Doctrine, which I linked above, would disagree.


Capital is in crisis. Capitalists find some thuggish loons and paranoids amongst the lumpen classes. Capitalists hire said loons to beat up workers and socialists. And if pressed entirely into a corner, capitalists hand over the state to said loons.

Be that as it may, there were and are fascists who view it as a philosophical doctrine.


Trying to find a "theory" behind it, which liberal historians are wont to do, just obfuscates the role the liberal bourgeoisie itself has had in arming and handing power to fascist movements.

Again, be that as it may, there is a theory behind it, for those who advocate it.


It's just pure lunacy and paranoia let loose on society by capital.

At the end of the day, that's what it amounts to, yes. Theory or no.

[AK]

Start here (http://worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm).
From the site:

As our web site makes very clear, we are totally opposed to ideas such as racism, religious intolerance and communism. However, in order to combat such evils[...]

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

From the site:

Irrelevant to the document, thought it can also be found on wikisource I believe, if the anti-communism of those whoever they are bother you. Maybe the anti-communism of wikipedia is preferential. :rolleyes:

[AK]

Irrelevant to the document, thought it can also be found on wikisource I believe, if the anti-communism of those whoever they are bother you. Maybe the anti-communism of wikipedia is preferential. :rolleyes:
It didn't bother me, I just found something amusing and decided to share it. And I've noticed wikipedia isn't as anti-leftist as made out to be. Some articles are written from genuinely neutral points of view and some even leftists points of view. However, there's still the rightist propaganda and the countless factual inaccuracies in the articles about how evil the "communist states" were.

[Dimentio]

Can someone explain the "philosophical" foundation of Fascism? ie: their ideas about "heroism" and "will" the "will of the people" though the leader etc
I understand it's all rooted in Hegels writings (as was Marx's, who was a left hegelian?) but I'd like to get a good look at the meat and bone of fascism. Not that it's all about complete control and police statism, but it's ideas about humans being motivated by "glory" and such.

Cheers

It is very hard, given that fascism when it emerged, emerged in various different forms based on different ideological foundations. Italian fascism was to a large degree inspired by ultra-leftist thinking mixed with Italian nationalism, while what we usually refer to as German fascism - national socialism - was a product of social darwinism, conspiratism (antisemitism) and German ultranationalism. Spanish fascism which emerged later had borrowed traits from both Italian and German fascism, but dressed it all in religious language which worked in predominantly catholic Spain.

I would say that what is characteristic to fascism is a few traits.

Particularism - the notion that the own nation or group is superior to and should be elevated above other nations/groups.

Elitism - the notion that people should be treated after how much "value" they add to society.

Total collectivism - the notion that the state, the race or the ethnic group should be viewed as a collective monolith where all individual members have identical interests with one another and with the ruling class.

Thus, fascism - in the context of the 1920's and 1930's, served the interests of the bourgeoisie because it focused the resentment of the toiling classes on foreign enemies or ethnic minorities. That is the issue which leftists mostly have with fascists.

It is unlikely that fascism would be able to play the same role today, given that capital in the 1930's still mainly was national - i.e every major country basically had its own steel plants, forest industry, canned food factories, and so on. Today, the highest echelons of capitalism are thoroughly internationalised, and for example Chinese capitalists would not be inclined to put support behind Swedish fascists.

Modern fascists in Europe, like Jobbik, BNP, Front National and similar parties, are also not explicitly supportive of the führerprinzip. In more liberal countries, like Sweden and the Netherlands, fascists tend to dress their language in a liberal toga, for example attacking muslims on the basis of "islamic homophobia". In Sweden, it has gone so far that the Sweden Democrats - previously a party where a lot of the members were actual nazis, nowadays are called "the Zion Democrats" by proponents of small and largely ineffectual nazi parties.

Modern fascists generally like to dress up as the defenders of the existing society, which they claim is threatened by multi-culturalism, and they also claim that cultures - like individuals - have the rights to exist unaffected by other cultures (as if human beings were geese). While vocal racism of the old 1930's school is still existent in small neonazi sects, and amongst a few psychotic nutcases, ethnopluralism is the new mantra amongst fascists in general.

Thus, if an openly fascist party gained power in one country in Europe, we could expect to see two things. One, international isolation and a largely stagnated economy, and two, attempts to ethnically cleanse the nation to make it look homogenous, in the worst case Yugoslavian-style ethnic cleansing operations. Thus, modern fascism is in the service of actually destroying advanced social systems and replacing them with more primitive social systems.

If nazis won power in Russia for example, Russia would probably desintegrate completely.