"Fascism": An ex-paradigm?
Reflections on the taxonomy of contemporary "authoritarian movements"
Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes University)
brookes.ac.uk
Excerpt:
Democratic fascism, ethnocratic liberalism
Those sceptics who have read on to this point would be forgiven for thinking that this paper is no more than an example of special pleading for political scientists to rehabilitate "fascism" as the key term for the analysis of what they now call the "radical right" or "radical right populism". Far from it. I do not believe that "real fascism" constitutes the principal form taken by the "extreme right" contemporary world. On the contrary, the structural weakness of revolutionary forms of ultra-nationalism and organized racism in age of perceived liberal democratic stability has fostered the emergence of gradualistic forms of it which do not challenge democratic institutions per se, but reject the multi-ethnicity, philosophical individualism, and belief in universal human rights which underpins all genuine liberal democracy. In other words, a non-fascist radical right has crept up on European society, one which is potentially of considerable virulence, not in its ability to destroy liberalism from without, but to contaminate it from within. Rather than characterize it as "radical right populism", or simply "the radical right" (which, as I have pointed out is now often misleadingly used as a substitute for the term fascism and still retains the highly problematic concept of "right"), its paradoxical qualities perhaps emerge more clearly in the term "ethnocratic liberalism". It is a type of party politics which is not technically a form of fascism, even a disguised form, for it lacks the core palingenetic vision of a "new order" totally replacing the liberal system. Rather it enthusiastically embraces the liberal system, but considers only one ethnic group full members of civil society. As the case of apartheid South Africa illustrates only too clearly, a state based on ethnocratic liberalism is forced by its own logic to create institutions, including a terror apparatus, to impose a deeply illiberal regime on all those who do not qualify on racial grounds for being treated as human beings. This contaminated, restrictive form of liberalism poses considerable taxonomic problems because, while it aims to retain liberal institutions and procedures and remain economically and diplomatically part of the international liberal democratic community, its axiomatic denial of the universality of human rights predisposes it to behave against ethnic outgroups as violently as a fascist regime.
The fact that ethnocratic liberalism is a hybrid of radical right and centre (which is why the term "radical right populism" is misleading), and is a paradox, rather than an oxymoron also makes it more dangerous. It is perfectly attuned to a post-war world hostile to unadulterated fascism, one where the clerks now enthusiastically help "man" the ideological Maginot Line which has been erected to stop an openly revolutionary brand of illiberalism ever again achieving credibility. It speaks a language of "rights" - rights of ethnic peoples, rights to a culture - which addresses deep-seated and understandable fears about the erosion of identity and tradition by the globalizing (but only partially homogenizing) forces of high modernity. It is a discourse which has grown in sophistication thanks to the theorists of communitarianism, ethnopluralism, and differentialism, and in legitimacy in the context of justified concerns over cultural imperialism and globalization. The ground for its widespread acceptance as a familiar and genuine (if unwelcome) member of the liberal ideological family rather than the offspring of a highly fecund anti-liberal cuckoo, has been well prepared by liberalism's long history of contamination by prejudices which have denied entire groups access to the rights it upholds as "sacred": women, the poor, children, the handicapped, the nomad, the allophone, the aboriginal, the "primitive". If the battle cry of liberalism in theory is Rousseau's 'All [human beings] are born equal and everywhere they live in chains" then its slogan in practice has been Orwell's "All men are equal but some are more equal than others" (a phrase which is often conveniently identified with the authoritarian "other" rather than "our" own brand of totalitarianism).
The FPÖ, the Lega Nord, the Vlaamsblok, the Republikaner, the Centrumpartei, the Scandinavian Progress parties, and scores of openly xenophobic parties which have emerged in the countries of the former Soviet Empire vary considerably in their programmes and aspirations, and can sincerely claim to have nothing to do with historic fascism in the conventional sense of the word. Yet in a world inoculated against openly revolutionary varieties of palingenetic ultranationalism, their axiomatic rejection of multi-culturalism, the nostalgia of some of their supporters and leaders for a mythical world of racial homogeneity and clearly demarcated boundaries of cultural differentiation, their celebration of the ties of blood and history over reason and a common humanity, their rejection of ius soli for ius sanguinis, represent a reformist version of the same basic myth, one which poses a more serious threat to liberal democracy than fascism because it is able to disguise itself, rather like a stick insect posing as a twig to catch its prey. It was arguably because Zhirinovsky created a blend of fascism with ethnocratic liberalism that he made such an impact on Russian party politics in 1993, even if events since have shown that it is the militarist/imperialist perversion of liberalism familiar from 19th century Europe which still retains hegemony. It was his exploitation of ethnocratic liberalism, not fascism, which enabled Milosovic to carry out ethnic cleansing for years under the gaze of an international community mesmerized by the (procedurally speaking) democratic consensus on which he based his actions. The total number of victims of the calculated atrocities against non-Serbs which resulted far outweighs that of all the outrages committed by post-war fascists put together, suggesting that ethnocratic liberalism has replaced fascism as the form of radical right best adapted to the realities of the modern world.
[...]
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Footnotes:
Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics
by Ulick Varange (Francis Parker Yockey)
The Noontide Press, 1962 (First Published 1948)
626 Pages, US$ 7.75
ISBN 0-911038-10-8
"Imperium" may be the closest thing that the real world offers to H.P. Lovecraft's fictional "Necronomicon." Though little more than a rumor in the world at large, it is a key text in the underground universe of international fascist ideology, and it seems to have had a significant effect on the development of Traditional Satanism. At the risk of making "Imperium" sound more interesting than it actually is, we may note that the book claims an almost magical essence for itself. By its own account, "Imperium" is "part of a life of action" and "only in form a book at all," so that reading it is more than a merely mental event.
"Imperium" was written in the service of an ambitious cause. The author, Francis Parker Yockey, holds that it is the destiny of the West to found a universal empire, the core of which will be a Nazi Europe. His book promotes European unity and the expulsion of the United States from the continent's affairs, as well as a fascist revolution in the United States itself. "Imperium" is a reprise of history and political theory, designed to show why the outcomes of the world wars of the first half of the 20th century were only temporary setbacks toward the ultimate goal.
[snip]
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