What you describe is essentially the truth of the matter. In fact, fascism (the more generic term) was touted as a "third way", much as Swedish social democracy would be later. I think the correct term for the phenomenon is "right- wing populism", although, of course, of a particularly virulent strain.
The political rationale is actually found in Rousseau, who describes the General Will as something above parliamentary politics, and supposes that the chief magistrate will have the ability to divine the underlying consensus and rally all factions. Thus, dictatorship becomes "organic democracy", and the charismatic leader is supposed to speak for the People.
Moreover, the People can be defined more expansively or more narrowly. In Italian fascism, there was little anti- semitism (Mussolini's mistress was Jewish), and the Fascists resisted cooperation with deportation more than Vichy, because their conception of the people was cultural, primarily, and Italian Jews were highly assimilated. In the case of the Nazis, a bogus racism was interjected, and the Volk was therefore contaminated by mongrelization, and even the culturally assimilated were rejected outright.
In any event, the anti- universalism of fascism comprised what might be considered its right- wing character: the People create value; values differ among Peoples; only in tradition can one find the true character of the People. Just as Communism believes in class morality, fascism believes in Volk morality, and they are, in fact, both versions of moral relativism, where system of value are incommensurable and the final recourse is conflict, to impose one's vision of the world on those who would impede it.
Fascism shares with left- wing populism the tendency to have contempt for parliamentary politics, and to suppose that the desires and well- being of the People are constantly being thwarted by elites. (For example, being crucified on a Cross of Gold). These elites are, in the first instance, reactionary or capitalist, hence the hostility to the older European conservatism or the newer European liberalism. But they are also any group which is hostile to purely nationalist aspirations, like the Communists.
Mussolini was originally a part of the Socialist milieu, and, in fact, attended the Second International. But he was eventually swayed by irredentism, in the case of Trieste, and became an ardent Nationalist. A sort of intellectual, he was enamored of Marx and Nietzsche, and tried to combine them. Fascism was what resulted, and Il Duce was the inspiration for Der Fuerher.
Hitler came out of the milieu of embittered veterans hostile to Versaille and the Weimar Republic, and convinced that the Socialists and Jews had somehow sold them out. Some of the early Nazis were like militiamen nowadays, some were from the fringe right, few were from the mainstream right. Some were, indeed, from the revolutionary Left, splinter groups from the Communists. Goebbels, for example, had a left- wing background.
According to fascist doctrine, class conflict would be eliminated by the subordination of all to the interests of the state, which would adjudicate claims and plan for the future. If one is a libertarian, and divides Left and Right by "statism", that puts it on the Left. However, the emphasis on ethnic nationalism and organic tradition makes it a phenomenon of the reactionary (anti- capitalist) right....... |
