Uniqueness and Family Resemblances in Generic Fascism

East Central Europe 37 (2010) 338344

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI 10.1163/187633010X534540

brill.nl/eceu

Uniqueness and Family Resemblances inGeneric Fascism

Roger GriffinOxford Brookes University, United Kingdom

1. Was Fascism a Synchronic-Epochal or a Generic-DiachronicPhenomenon?

I have always considered the synchronic-epochal and generic-diachronicapproaches as existing in a dialectical relationship rather than being mutuallyexclusive. In fact, one of the premises of my research (still hotly contested bymany scholars) is to reject the assumption that fascism assumed its sole histori-cally significant expression in the inter-war period when it acquired a numberof features with which it is still widely identified in the public imagination(e.g. leader-cult, uniforms, paramilitarism, expansionist imperial policy, per-vasive propaganda, cultural vandalism). Such an approach still dominatesmany encyclopaedia-style definitions and leads to a check-list definitionof fascism based on an amalgam of properties displayed by Fascism andNazism.

Residues of this nave approaches still linger in my original definition pre-sented in The Nature of Fascism (1991) when I talk of the fascist belief in animminent transformation of the status quosomething that does not apply tomore sophisticated fascist historical scenarios since 1945, e.g. ones based onthe visions of Armin Mohler (1950) and Julius Evola (1953). These are basedon seeing the present as an interregnum, meaning that the breakthrough to anew era is indefinitely postponed.They are present in even more blatant formsin the definitions of such fascistologists as Stanley Payne, Michael Mann,A. James Gregor, and Ernst Nolte when such attributes as the leader-cult,corporatism, or a state-terror apparatus are treated as definitional properties.When the interwar period is seen as providing the true manifestations of fas-cism, post-war fascism is regarded as a sort of coda of minimal relevanceto understanding the genus. My approach stresses instead the need to track

R. Griffin / East Central Europe 37 (2010) 338344 339

fascisms evolution as a genus, its adaptation to different local historical condi-tions and its ability to mutate into new forms (e.g. cyberfascism or the NewRight) outwardly different from Nazism or Fascism while retaining its coremyth of national/ethnic rebirth (which must be treated as an ideal-typicallyidentified ideological core and NOT an essence).

In short, my premise is that fascism can be usefully seen in its first inter-warstage of development as a new ideological force characterized by a revolution-ary version of organic, populist nationalism (palingenetic ultra-nationalism).This certainly assumed its first significant organizational form as a factor innational politics and society in Mussolinis movement from where the termearned its generic name. However, in my view, to treat Fascism as the real-type of fascism from which others derived, as proposed by WolfgangWippermann (see Loh, Wippermann 2002; Wippermann, 2009), is ill-conceived. In contrast to Nolte (1963), I argue that the inter-war period wasa fascist era only in the sense that it was then that forms of revolutionarynationalism emerged in many countriespredominantly but not exclusivelyin Europeas a radical alternative to what was conceived as a dying liberalcapitalism, to reactionary ultra-conservatism, and to a profoundly threateningcommunism. In my narrative fascism assumed two profoundly differentregime forms that partially compromised the original ideals of the movementin Italy and Germany, and had a decisive impact on government in severalother countries, including Hungary and Romania, and was imitated by anumber of conservative military regimes. However, the totalitarian form itassumed till 1945 was a product of an age shaped byWorldWar I, the collapseof absolutist empires and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The core ideology,which I must stress again is an ideal-typical construct and not an essence, hassince assumed a number of ideological and organizational expressions whichdiverge significantly from interwar models.

I consider the real essentialists those historians whose work implies in prac-tice (whatever their theoretical convictions) that Nazism represents theessence of fascism, and who fail to recognize the profound and empiricallydemonstrable continuity and kinship of inter-war variants of fascism withsuch phenomena asWhite Noise music, InternationalThird Position, and actsof lone-wolf terrorism carried out against multi-culturalism or the OneWorld society with no trace of leader-cult or coloured shirts. The approachI have adopted in the last 25 years (though far more restrictive in its definitionthan the one promoted by Stein Larsen in his Fascism outside Europe, 2001)also makes it natural to look for fascism and phenomena akin to fascism bothoutside Europe and outside the inter-war period. However, it assumes that

340 R. Griffin / East Central Europe 37 (2010) 338344

there will be limited or no political space for fascism to emerge in societieswhose traditional religions and social hierarchies have not been significantlyfragmented and secularized by the forces ofmodernization andWesternization,and where organic populist nationalism on the European model has notbecome a hegemonic force in society. It also sees Islamism as akin to fascismin some respects in its war on existing modernity and radically utopian questfor an alternative, but as a form of politicized religion rather than sacralizedpolitics generically different from it.

2. Varieties of Fascism: Are Historical Regions Heuristically Useful Unitsof Analyzing Fascism?

The topological approaches to fascism which emerged in the 1960s now seemvery misleading and simplistic (in this respect Fascism: A Readers Guide, 1976,however ground-breaking, is a testimony to the confusion endemic to com-parative fascist studies of the time).These arose either on the basis of a Marxisthypothesis that saw fascism as the in-built tendency of all capitalist societiesreacting to the threat of socialism, or because of a failure to develop itsdefinition to take account of revolutionary mission to inaugurate a new his-torical era, so that it became assimilable with any form of repressive ultra-conservatism ormilitarism.Thus Franquism, Salazarism and evenMetaxas-ismcould become amalgamated with Fascism and give rise to the idea of a SouthEast/Southern Fascism.

Clearly for heuristic purposes of comparative studies it is valid to look forpatterns of similarity and elements of uniqueness in the extremist politicswithin ideal-types constructed by regions of the world, but they must notbe homogenized or reified. I am very suspicious of a category such asMediterranean, Scandinavian or East European fascism given the radicaldifferences between, say, the regimes of Franco and Mussolini, betweenHungarys Arrow Cross and Romanias Iron Guard, and between the domesticpolitics and situations of Demark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.Thus regionalstudies have to be approached with great care and subtlety. Having said this,the collapse of the Soviet Empire has made it possible for Anglophone scholarsfinally to learn something about right-wing extremism in the inter-war periodwithout distortions of Soviet propaganda, and I would welcome some good,intelligently conducted regional studies of, say, the Baltic or South EasternEuropean far right informed by the latest developments in comparative stud-ies of fascism, totalitarianism, political religion, and modernism.


3. Are there Distinct East Central or Southeastern European Types ofFascism? If so, What Are their Specific Features?

Each expert on fascism will answer this differently. My own position is thefollowing: a) To treat any movement as a specimen of fascism assumes theapplication of a generic definition that identifies certain common traits sharedwith other movements that fit the ideal-type, and the analysis should not becarried out on the basis that the movement is only fascist. In other words, thegeneric term allows recognition of family likenesses without any suggestionthat each fascism is not also unique, and may also not belong to other genericcategories of politics, such as political religion, or totalitarianism. It is alsovalid and necessary to study it as a historical specificity, a unique product of thehistorical conditions prevailing in the period when it arose; b) There is noreal-type or archetype of fascism from which a particular manifestation of itdeviates. The Catholicism of Hungarism or the Orthodox Christianity of theIron Guard in inter-war Europe are no more deviant than the paganism ofNazism or the technocracy of the British Union of Fascism, and certainly theyare not all aberrant permutations of Italian Fascism; c) In other words, all areproducts of a unique national culture which determined the concrete expres-sion of the revolutionary nationalism (which I termed palingenetic ultra-nationalism) in that society. (Even a historian as brilliant as Stanley Payne isunclear about this in his categorization of the Iron Guard as a deviant form ofthe genus in his groundbreaking Fascism: Comparison and Definition, pub-lished in 1980): all fascisms, including Nazism, are simultaneously exceptionaland unique; d) There are no regional types of fascism, only unique nationaltypes (and in some cases a variety of national types: Nazism was only one of anumber of German variants of fascism that thrived in the chaos of Weimarand Fascism merged several competing visions of the new Fascist Italy).

This is not to say that commonalities of regional experience do not lendfascisms in a particular region or type of society some common traits (forexample, it would be useful to compare the way fascists in predominantlyCatholic countries or Orthodox countries accommodated their essentiallypagan/atheistic beliefs in national rebirth to hegemonic values, a topic distinctfrom the study of clerical fascism, about which much is already known);e) Thus there are no common traits of East Central or Southeastern Europeanfascism which can be identified as the properties of a clearly demarcatedregional sub-genus or species of generic fascism. Instead there are just intrigu-ing patterns of similarity, cross-cultural influences, histoires croises on the onehand and unique singularities on the other.


4. How Would You Evaluate the State of the Field of Studies on Fascismin East Central and Southeastern Europe?

Here I profess ignorance. I am aware of some notable scholars in Hungary,Romania, Ukraine, and Russia doing pioneering work to write proper histo-ries of fascism and political extremism in their countries for the first time(some of whom also produce excellent contributions to comparative fas-cist studies), and many who put Western historians to shame in their poly-linguistic ability and familiarity with comparative fascist studies and theory inall its complexity. Particularly encouraging is the way a new generation of PhDstudents and post-docs in Eastern Europe are working on aspects of fascismwhich will not only fill lacunae in national histories but considerably enrichWestern fascist studies.

By rejecting the assumption that all putative fascism in Eastern Europe, ingeneral, are clones or imperfect imitations of Fascism and Nazism, by givingdue weight to the unique, endogenous dimension of each movement, and byapplying the latest scholarship on related topics such as totalitarianism, politi-cal religion, and modernism, these scholars will, I hope, come to be consid-ered at the centre of fascist studies and not peripheral to them. (To dismiss thesubtle, complex approach to history that results as pioneered by George Mosseand Emilio Gentile as culturalist with pejorative connotationsthe wont ofsome particularly blinkered self-styled empiricistsis the hallmark of anacute deficiency in the historical imagination and creative intelligence). Thenew wave of research in which Eastern European scholars are playing a leadingrole promises to produce some exciting examples of joined up thinking onhow different national phenomena can be classified, and their complex genesisand causation, but also how these phenomena can be located within not onebut several international processes and patterns of events as Western culturesadapted to the devastating impact of modernization on traditional structuresand beliefs. This is especially possible if their work is informed by a sophisti-cated grasp of the cultural, anthropological, and modernist dynamics of theabortive fascist revolution.

However, as I have said I simply do not know enough to be more specificabout the new avenues of research referred to in the question. What I wouldsay is that post-Soviet Eastern European scholarship in this area, thoughunder-financed, has the advantage of travelling light, of having far lessacademic baggage from the bad old days when comparative fascist studieswere dominated by an extraordinary degree of ethnocentrism, tunnel vision,conceptual and methodological confusionnot to mention sheer ignoranceof many national histories and languageswhich made them of minimal


value to real historians. Eastern Europe seems to be creating a new breedof comparativists and experts on national history who understand theinternational context, and Western scholars could learn a great deal fromthem. The more Eastern scholars illuminate the unique events in their ownhistories (in works published in English!), the more they will enrich Westernscholarship.

5. Can One Speak of a Recrudescence of Fascism in ContemporaryEurope, orWe Deal here with an Essentially New Political Phenomenon?

Every individual form of (putative) neo-fascism is to be seen in terms of itscontinuity with interwar movements, both internally and outside the country,as well as a unique, novel phenomenon shaped by a contemporary history,utterly different from the interwar period, however constant the fascist mind-set. Thus we are dealing with BOTH a revival or recrudescence to be illumi-nated by comparative fascist studies (nomothetically) and a new phenomenonto be illuminated by political scientists with a historical awareness of unique-ness (the idiographic). Everything in history is unique while simultaneouslydisplaying general patterns.

The experience of being forcibly integrated and gleichgestaltet economically,culturally, and ideologically into the Soviet Empire, the intense socio-economic and political chaos that followed the collapse of that empire in the1990s, the impact of the resumption of unfinished nationalist and racist busi-ness postponed for two generations when the Soviets cryogenically froze eth-nic politics in Eastern Europe, the enormous problems that accompanied theHerculean task of modernizing time-warped societies overnight and bringingtheir financial and technological infrastructures in line with the West, thehuge social inequalities that suddenly opened up, the explosion of resent-ment politics, ethnic hatred and utopias: all of these factors contributed toturning the nations and ethnies of the former Soviet Empire into an incubatorof extremist anti-democratic tendencies along with forms of politics masquer-ading as democratic but ultimately extremist. These included some nostalgicand mimetic fascisms, but also new forms of extremism (e.g. radical rightpopulism) which are best regarded as taxonomically distinct, even if they serveas outlets for what in the inter-war period might well have expressed them-selves in revolutionary, and hence fascist, forms.

Thus there are rich pickings in Europes New East for students of extrem-ism, racism, neo-fascism, fundamentalism, and political religion. However,I do not know enough to identify any main trends in this area, let alone


evaluate them. I can only assume that there are major differences between thesituation in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, for example, so thatregional generalizations are hazardous. That said, I believe that Europeandemocracy needs journals like East Central Europe, focused on Eastern Europe,but fully integrated in spirit and through international research networks withwider European and Western academic communities in a transdisciplinaryspirit so as to help ensure that within the fledgling democracies there is anintellectual and political space for genuine history to counteract the destruc-tive and divisive force of mythical histories and grand rcits.

Bibliography

Evola, Julius (2000). Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist.Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International (originally published in 1953).

Griffin, Roger (1991).The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martins Press.Laqueur, Walter, ed. (1976). Fascism: A readers guide. Analyses, interpretations, bibliography.

Berkeley: University of California Press.Larsen, Stein Ugelvik, ed. (2001). Fascism outside Europe. Boulder. Social Science Monographs,

Distributed by New York: Columbia University Press.Loh, Werner and Wippermann, Wolfgang, eds. (2002). Faschismus kontrovers. Stuttgart:

Lucius & Lucius.Mohler, Armin (1950). Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 19181932. Stuttgart:

Friedrich Vorwerck-Verlag.Nolte, Ernst (1963). Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Action franaise Italienischer Faschismus

Nationalsozialismus. Munich: Piper.Payne, Stanley G. (1980). Fascism. Comparison and Definition. Madison: University ofWisconsin

Press.Wippermann, Wolfgang (2009). Faschismus: Eine Weltgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute.

Darmstadt: Primus.

Uniqueness and Family Resemblances in Generic Fascism

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Uniqueness and Family Resemblances in Generic Fascism