“Terror in a World Full of Rabbits”

Would you consider Fascism to be a reactionary or revolutionary movement? Why?

Within the tragic shadow of the Great War, much of Europe struggled to democratize itself within the rapidly emerging modern era. Additionally, the Bolshevik Revolution came to successful realization in Russia, firmly rooting Communism within the context of European existence. With the emergence of Fascism in Central Europe, historians arguably define its development as reactionary process, emerging as a counter-weight to balance the political scales in Europe. Growing fear over Communism, coupled with the instability of young democracy, produced heightened levels of uncertainty within Europe. Additionally, as economic depression forced more and more Europeans out of work and into poverty, Europeans, particularly Germans, felt overwhelming displaced, disillusioned, and disenfranchised. Kurt G.W. Ludecke, in The Demagogic Orator, describes with perfect clarity the existence for so many post-war Europeans. In reflecting on the appeal of the speeches of Adolf Hitler, he states:

I was a man of thirty-two, weary of disgust and disillusionment, a wanderer seeking a cause; a patriot without a channel for his patriotism, a yearner after the heroic without a hero. The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity seemed to flow into me. I experienced an exaltation that could be likened only to religious conversion.

Nationalism remained the secular religion of the masses of Europe, despite the brutal war such sentiments had contributed to. The conception of the State as a metaphysical entity continued to give the chaotic existence of Europeans an anchor with which to survive the swirling maelstrom. It is from the anchor of Nationalism that Fascism arose. While Mussolini’s conception of Fascism, itself unclear until 1932, indeed shows itself to be the product of reactionary action and thinking, it is arguably an incomplete realization of what Fascism is intended to be. The history of Italian-German relations during the Fascist era is testimony to this. Mussolini’s ultimate deference to Hitler’s Nazism, the true incarnation of Fascist ideology, distinguishes the Italian model as imperfect in realization. As Mussolini stated in his Fascist Doctrines, “For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.” The conception of Fascism as a “living faith” achieved ultimate realization in Nazism.

Hitler’s full realization of Fascism in the form of Nazism sets the political ideology apart and makes it a truly revolutionary movement. While Fascist doctrine is grounded in opposing aspects of modernity such as Communism, Socialism, Democracy and Liberalism, Nazism manifests in a more encompassing manner; not only does it deny the political ideologies of modernity, it actually REGRESSES to a political and social mentality rooted in traditionalism and xenophobia. This idealized conception of hyper-nationalism, harkening to a mythological existence which denies the social and individual awakenings of The Enlightenment and French Revolution while simultaneously imbuing the believer with a sense of racial and national superiority, instilled within Germans a sense of utility. As described by Freidrich Jünger this emerging form of nationalism, the true heart of Nazi Fascism, “wants to awaken a sense of the greatness of the German past. Life must be evaluated according to the will to power, which reveals the warlike character of all life . . . A mighty mysterious bond of blood links the lives of individuals and subsumes them in a fateful wholeness. Blood, as it were, sings the song of destiny.” The German myth of “Blood and Soil” became the spiritual, secular, and political compass of the Nazi state.

Given the disillusionment caused throughout Europe following the stark and brutal reality that the First World War impressed upon the beleaguered continent, the inception of Fascism is indeed a reactionary movement. However, it’s evolution into a dominating and world-altering political and social influence under Hitler shows that defining it as such is inadequate. For the ideology of Fascism, particularly Nazism, to so successfully overwhelm and bury the psychological and existential reality of The Great War and successfully convince ANY European individual that violent action and warlike existence is absurd. The fact that it successfully warped the mentality of millions is downright terrifying and proves that from reactionary roots, a truly revolutionary movement was born.