Glad to see you mention Mosse, whose work is quite illuminating and, in my view, unduly neglected these days.
As I have suggested here before, "critics of the fascism thesis," as you put it, seem almost perversely literal-minded in seeing fascism only in terms of the specific circumstances of 1930s Italy and Germany. But Paxton, who can hardly be accused of careless speculation, quite clearly outlines five stages of fascist development, each quite different from what came before or later. Its Phase One agenda is cultural regeneration, extreme nationalism, middle-class resentment, and the scape-goating of some "other." And he makes clear that its pre-history is, as you observe, to be found in quarter-century BEFORE WW1. The war, the Bolshevik Revolution, and, later, the Depression, all contributed to later developmental stages. The conditions of Paxton's Stage One, I think, are quite visible in the U.S. today. And the militia movement, which has now given rise to the Oath Keepers and their ilk, is a critical part of that story.
Thanks for another fascinating post. (And, contra Susan Sontag, there is no etymological connection between "fascination" and "fascism.")
1) The one key substitution of race for community that you identify in the leap from Protestantism to Christian Identity is probably a lot easier to buy into if you have LDS-adjacent family or grew up raised in an LDS-adjacent faith. It's fair to say that RLDS has been more skeptical of a literal translation of the BOM than C of LDS proper for a while now, but Americans as literal Israelites would not have been a foreign concept for someone familiar with either tradition!
2) Detail #11 on the Christian Soldier ("regular neck") is absolutely sending me
"it taught that they were the literal bloodline descendants of the tribes, which also were actually the Aryans of Europe, not the Semites of the Middle East."
The Ariosophists strike again.
"All the better that has some organic basis in American culture: for example, Confederate Lost Cause mythos, although it probably always contains a high-degree nostalgia for white supremacy, is far more widespread than the hard-core of the self-conscious extreme right. "
What I would say, is that in the United States post-Revolution, upper-class men had already started inventing a replacement ideology to justify a non-monarchial conservatism, that also existed in a country that had too much religious diversity to be bound together as a monolithic religious state. (Although the officially-sanctioned Angelican churches persisted in the South longer than anywhere else.) The plantation owners, in turn, needed a lot of supplemental ideological superstructure to rationalise the enslavement of human beings (under a government dedicated to 'freedom') - a practice that had withered away for economic and then social reasons. They additionally needed to justify the utter domination of Southern elites over all levers of power, AND they needed to justify the brutal authoritarianism of 'slave catchers' and the like. In that context the South devolved into one-party states.
I think, by 1860, all the elements were present for an post-monarchial absolutist system which amounted to a form of proto-fascism that was based on a violently racist ideology. After World War I and the collapse of the various empires & monarchies, the hard right (and the hard economic conservatives) in those countries were casting about for a replacement ideology, and almost all the elements were present in the American South. (They copied off the South's homework - there's a reason Hitler said things like 'the Volga will be our Mississippi' and he named one of his armoured trains 'Amerika'. Likewise there's a reason Hitler hated FDR since FDR was 'overturning the proper order' in the US.) The fascists just tacked on the influence of trench warfare and the one-party militarisation practiced by the 'socialists' in Soviet Russia.
Basically, the hard-right authoritarians just needed a rationalisation to justify the previous way of life they had under monarchialism and also to fend off their hated enemies and the South provided a big part of a ready-made template for rebranding. 'Neo-Nazis' and Christian Identitarian types in the US are just back-porting old school Southern ideology and adapting it to their circumstances. (The Turner Diaries are nothing but a reimagined and bulked-up Krystalnacht - but blacks are much more prominently featured as the hated subhuman enemy.)
I think that squares the fascism circle argument there.
In our current circumstances, a soft-rebranding of the inherited ideological détritus of the plantation owners, with a fat helping of fascist imagery turns to have a lot of appeal to lunatic & corrupt plutocratic wanna-be obligarchs. Like Peter Thiel. Or Vladimir Putin.
Great post. Made me think: How much of that ideology in the context of Germany, France and Italy was just an outgrowth of the emergence of nationalism in the 19th century? Seems like the “ultra” nationalist movements of the early 20th century were part of the contestation over the nascent concept of a nation-state. In that sense, it’s harder to see a connection to current trends in the US, since (though still contested) ideas of the nation-state are far more congealed.
Glad to see you mention Mosse, whose work is quite illuminating and, in my view, unduly neglected these days.
As I have suggested here before, "critics of the fascism thesis," as you put it, seem almost perversely literal-minded in seeing fascism only in terms of the specific circumstances of 1930s Italy and Germany. But Paxton, who can hardly be accused of careless speculation, quite clearly outlines five stages of fascist development, each quite different from what came before or later. Its Phase One agenda is cultural regeneration, extreme nationalism, middle-class resentment, and the scape-goating of some "other." And he makes clear that its pre-history is, as you observe, to be found in quarter-century BEFORE WW1. The war, the Bolshevik Revolution, and, later, the Depression, all contributed to later developmental stages. The conditions of Paxton's Stage One, I think, are quite visible in the U.S. today. And the militia movement, which has now given rise to the Oath Keepers and their ilk, is a critical part of that story.
Thanks for another fascinating post. (And, contra Susan Sontag, there is no etymological connection between "fascination" and "fascism.")
Two comments, one substantive and one less so:
1) The one key substitution of race for community that you identify in the leap from Protestantism to Christian Identity is probably a lot easier to buy into if you have LDS-adjacent family or grew up raised in an LDS-adjacent faith. It's fair to say that RLDS has been more skeptical of a literal translation of the BOM than C of LDS proper for a while now, but Americans as literal Israelites would not have been a foreign concept for someone familiar with either tradition!
2) Detail #11 on the Christian Soldier ("regular neck") is absolutely sending me
"it taught that they were the literal bloodline descendants of the tribes, which also were actually the Aryans of Europe, not the Semites of the Middle East."
The Ariosophists strike again.
"All the better that has some organic basis in American culture: for example, Confederate Lost Cause mythos, although it probably always contains a high-degree nostalgia for white supremacy, is far more widespread than the hard-core of the self-conscious extreme right. "
What I would say, is that in the United States post-Revolution, upper-class men had already started inventing a replacement ideology to justify a non-monarchial conservatism, that also existed in a country that had too much religious diversity to be bound together as a monolithic religious state. (Although the officially-sanctioned Angelican churches persisted in the South longer than anywhere else.) The plantation owners, in turn, needed a lot of supplemental ideological superstructure to rationalise the enslavement of human beings (under a government dedicated to 'freedom') - a practice that had withered away for economic and then social reasons. They additionally needed to justify the utter domination of Southern elites over all levers of power, AND they needed to justify the brutal authoritarianism of 'slave catchers' and the like. In that context the South devolved into one-party states.
I think, by 1860, all the elements were present for an post-monarchial absolutist system which amounted to a form of proto-fascism that was based on a violently racist ideology. After World War I and the collapse of the various empires & monarchies, the hard right (and the hard economic conservatives) in those countries were casting about for a replacement ideology, and almost all the elements were present in the American South. (They copied off the South's homework - there's a reason Hitler said things like 'the Volga will be our Mississippi' and he named one of his armoured trains 'Amerika'. Likewise there's a reason Hitler hated FDR since FDR was 'overturning the proper order' in the US.) The fascists just tacked on the influence of trench warfare and the one-party militarisation practiced by the 'socialists' in Soviet Russia.
Basically, the hard-right authoritarians just needed a rationalisation to justify the previous way of life they had under monarchialism and also to fend off their hated enemies and the South provided a big part of a ready-made template for rebranding. 'Neo-Nazis' and Christian Identitarian types in the US are just back-porting old school Southern ideology and adapting it to their circumstances. (The Turner Diaries are nothing but a reimagined and bulked-up Krystalnacht - but blacks are much more prominently featured as the hated subhuman enemy.)
I think that squares the fascism circle argument there.
In our current circumstances, a soft-rebranding of the inherited ideological détritus of the plantation owners, with a fat helping of fascist imagery turns to have a lot of appeal to lunatic & corrupt plutocratic wanna-be obligarchs. Like Peter Thiel. Or Vladimir Putin.
elm
good post john
4th paragraph "didn’t come out of anywhere". Should that be "didn’t come out of nowhere"?
Typo: Bood when you meant Blood (in the blood-and-soil reference)
Great read though.
Great post. Made me think: How much of that ideology in the context of Germany, France and Italy was just an outgrowth of the emergence of nationalism in the 19th century? Seems like the “ultra” nationalist movements of the early 20th century were part of the contestation over the nascent concept of a nation-state. In that sense, it’s harder to see a connection to current trends in the US, since (though still contested) ideas of the nation-state are far more congealed.