Suchergebnisse

The doctrinal roots of US fascist thought have long remained obscure for reasons inherent in recent US history itself. The fascist popular movement grew up in the US during 1929-1941. The essential elements of American fascism are: an econ program designed to appeal to a Mc composed largely of farmers & small merchants; nationalism; despair of liberal democratic institutions; &, an interpretation of history in which the causal factor is the machinations of international financiers. This creed arose logically from the Populist creed. Populism here is meant to denote not only the People's party, but such closely allied movements as the Greenback Party, the Bryan free silver crusades, La Follette Progressivism. The Populist econ program was designed mainly for farmers & centered round the need for public control of credit; it did not attack private property or the wage system. Its protest against financial interests was frequently associated with hatred of cities as centers of exploitation, moral & econ. It was anti-Semitic. Its pol'al thoughts were comparable in spirit with the plebiscitary democracy of Huey Long or Hitler. The degeneration of Populism into incipient fascism can be explained by the rebuffs & defections it suffered during the early yrs of the 20th cent. The US fascist doctrine developed during the Depression & under the influence of various European doctrines like syndicalism. The controversy over intervention in WWII gave US fascism an issue on which to seek popular support. The America First Committee became the basis on which fascism was to grow & gain power till the attack on Pearl Harbor. American fascism dissolved after the war because the radical right appropriated its demogogic nationalism & anti-communism. Modified IPSA.

Translated by A. H. Lograsso.

This question may be answered by "yes" or "no," according to one's point of view. Mussolini's Fascism—that of the black shirts, of banners bearing the skull and bones emblem, of the so-called Roman salute, of parades, punitive expeditions with muskets, clubs and castor oil, of the East African Empire and the Albanian Kingdom—may be called dead, even buried. But the Fascism that ante-dates Mussolini, the Fascism of all times and all countries—that brand of Fascism never dies. It adapts itself, instead, to all climates and all temperatures; it dresses according to the fashion, disguises itself and hides. That brand of Fascism has not died because it is deathless.

Dr. Nolte's Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche is a work of exceptionally broad range that combines description, comparison, and interpretation in an admirable manner. It attempts three major tasks requiring skills rarely combined in a single historian: a general classification of Fascist systems aiming at a typology; a special examination of the main features of one pre-Fascist (Action Française) and two Fascist movements (in Mussolini's Italy and in Hitler's Germany); and an overall interpretation, in both historical and philosophical terms, of fascism as the dominant force of the period of European history extending from 1919 to 1945.