What was fascism, and has it returned?

         With the rise of National Rally in France’s recent parliamentary elections and the possibility that Donald Trump will be re-elected president of the United States in November, it is almost certain that we are all going to see the word “fascist” used to describe their ideologies. Is this the correct word? It has always been a particularly difficult term to define – to the point where its German expression, Nazism, is usually defined by the “Fuhrer Principle” – ie, whatever Adolf Hitler believed – regardless of whether or not he had believed something else a week earlier. So, does Fascism have a fixed definition – and if so, can that definition be applied to any governing ideologies today?
         The definition I have provide for my students states that “Fascism was a militant political movement that emphasized loyalty to the state and obedience to its leader.” Key elements include “extreme nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, and indirect control of the economy by the state”. I also provide some of the historical background.
          When twenty-five thousand Blackshirts marched on Rome on October 28, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III accepted Mussolini as the world’s first Fascist state dictator. By the late 1930s Fascist parties had formed in several European countries, and it might have become a dominant ideology had it not been discredited by the Second World War. By looking at commonalities across these parties, we can say that Fascism:

• was a response to the pain (and usually humiliation) of the First World War – and the normalization of industrialised warfare and mass killing
• rejected intellectual inquiry and instead promoted a single correct, uniform way of thinking
• promoted strict gender roles, with men as labourers and soldiers and women as wives and mothers
• looked to a lost glorious past, placed blame on certain people (a cosmopolitan elite, trade unions, immigrants, Jews) for the fall from greatness, and promised a resurrection of that past
• was defined by an autarkic economy – that is, a mostly closed economic system that prized self-sufficiency over cooperation – distinct from capitalism or communism

Elements of these can be seen throughout modern Western politicians and parties, but there is one nation that seems to most fit this description – Russia. Vladimir Putin refers to the fall of the Soviet Union as the single greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century – and comparisons can be drawn between 1990s Russia and 1920s Weimar Germany. Putin authorises most opposition in Russia – so that while people can and do still protest against their government, it is managed by the state so that it never produces undesired results. Putin’s rise to power came from being able to manage the oligarchs who had swallowed up key industries during the privatization that followed the demise of the Soviets. And so on.
       But Russians can still access YouTube, Google, and Tiktok. The war in Ukraine has been fought with professional soldiers, prisoners, foreign auxiliaries, and mercenaries – Russia’s conscripts serve only twelve months, and there has been no mass mobilization yet. And, controlled or otherwise, people in Russia do still express disapproval of their leader – something not allowed in fascist systems. Therefore, I would argue that Russia is not a fascist country – and that no modern country is.
      There are other words we can use to label the growing right-wing movements we are witnessing – autocracy, populism, authoritarianism among them – without using the historically loaded term Fascism – but for many, these substitutes are unsatisfying because they are not extreme enough. In our secularized world, Christian notions of good and evil have lost their currency – most people still use these terms, but evil is now defined with fascism and the Nazis. As opposed to Christian ideas, which rely on faith, there is direct and tangible evidence for the Holocaust – and therefore the concept of evil has become much more tangible. In our western imaginations, Hell has been replaced with Auschwitz, and Satan has been replaced by Hitler. To be good, therefore, is to do what Hitler would not do – which is, of course, a lot vaguer than the Christian question of What Would Jesus Do? The quickest way to brand someone as evil, therefore, is to identify them with fascism.

Ultimately, common usage will not depend on whether or not the word is being used as it was originally intended. The term “democracy” is used very differently from the Greek demoskratia, and North Korean Communism bears little resemblance to Karl Marx’s vision. Historians define fascism through interwar Germany and Italy - and maybe Japan and Spain – and that the term is misused when applied to contemporary politics. I would personally avoid the term, because fascism was ultimately a militaristic ideology – and until we see dictators promoting war as an end rather than a mean, the word fascism is being misapplied. Better to use a clearer term, like evil.