[aloisthebeekeeper]

Is the term 'fascism' really applicable to the post-war period?

'It is still fascism, there has essentially been a re-working of its manifestations since 1945 to regain credibility'

OR

'inter-war fascism has nothing to do with contemporary right wing extremism, the current Western European movements of the radical right are essentially different phenomena from fascism'

[starman2003]

..current Western European movements of the radical right wing are essentially different phenomena from fascism.

Hard to say not knowing for sure how they'd act if they actually got power. But I do perceive a difference: Current groups appear intellectually "empty" or archaic; they're just anti-immigration or what not and lack an allembracing ideology comparable to those of 20th century European statists.

[Preston Cole]

'It is still fascism, there has essentially been a re-working of its manifestations since 1945 to regain credibility'

I'd go with this one. There's been a democratization of far-right and far-left ideologies since World War II and 1991, respectively. It has essentially numbed the truly creative and honest forces of nationalism and fascism (mass regimentation, single-party rule, cultural revolution) in favor of reluctantly accepting the effects of multicultural liberalism and capitalism, leading to the contradictory notion of a democracy-faithful nationalism. There are plenty of such nationalist parties in Europe right now, and I'm constantly amused by their facade embrace of democracy, especially Jobbik in Hungary which also runs the paramilitary Magyar Guard with ties to neo-Nazis.

[Rei Murasame]

'It is still fascism, there has essentially been a re-working of its manifestations since 1945 to regain credibility'

Yes. It's just an internal exile. The watch-phrase is: "Preserving the spirit of National Rebirth in the interregnum."

Because the necessary social conditions do not quite yet exist, and because the acceptance - or at least flirtation with - of Fascist core ideas by the general public has not yet happened, you will notice that there has been a general retreat from the political arena and more of a focus on criticism of the vacuousness and emptiness of the present order.

In due time, you will see it slowly come out of that exile (soon?) and attempt to insert itself into the political arena again. It will not be a carbon copy of interwar Fascism, because in a post-1945 and post-1968 world, the ideas that are mixed into the formula are going to be different. There are some things that are presently part of social landscape now, that it will not have a problem with taking on board and accepting, even though interwar Fascism did have a problem with them when they were emergent.

What remains a sign that you will know them by in the interregnum, is that there will be a relentless campaign of criticism against materialism, against Abrahamic religion in general, against social dislocation and atomisation, against mass immigration, against liberal-capitalism, against enlightenment values, against universalism. They will suggest that there ought to be a new order. When they do that, they are preparing the way, for later.

There are some who are dropping the ball in the ways that Preston Cole has described, but in this post I am simply saying what they are supposed to be doing.

[Red Star]

against enlightenment values

I find this interesting. Would you not say that fascism, at least in the way it transpired, was not a product of the Enlightenment in many ways? We do have to remember that the Enlightenment is not a monolithic entity, and indeed hid many sub-currents (see Jonathan Israel's recent book on the subject). Or are you here referring to a "neo-fascism" which will be different to the historic current?

[Rei Murasame]

hid many sub-currents

Actually, that's an interesting thought, I've heard it said that Fascism existed within the seeds of Enlightenment, and that - as you sort of said - there may well be a 'main body' of the Enlightenment values which are generally regarded as a monument to all that it is, but there is also a shadow cast and what is in the shadow (can it be described?) may have influenced Fascism.

product of the Enlightenment

Perhaps produced by, but then inveighs against those parts that it finds to be unsuited to its purposes?

[Red Star]

Yep, sort of what I was getting at. But even the main body of the Enlightenment produced things that Fascism could not thrive without: first of all is the nation. There is still, obviously, debate about exactly how nations come into being but really it was the Enlightenment and its ideas that brought the idea of the nation as a political, rather than just a cultural, community into being; and the levée en masse after the French Revolution can be seen as a precursor to the mobilisation of societies. Something that Fascism cannot live without.

Then there are the ideas of Darwinism; and more specifically Huxley's and Spencer's Social Darwinism. Ideas that again can trace their roots to the ideas of the Enlightenment. I think it is Omer Bartov who writes quite a lot on the seeds of fascism and then the Holocaust to be found in these founding blocks of Western thought.

I am sure there are many more examples, but this is just a quick reply. I do realise that fascism does, as you say, inveigh against what it sees as the negative ideas of the Enlightenment. After all, a common definition of fascism is through its negations: anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-capitalist. But in its adherence to the idea of the social rebirth, the palengenetic nation, it cannot be separated from that legacy. It seeks to remedy the negatives it sees in the capitalist mode, the atomisation of society and the division of the nation; my belief that it does this in a thoroughly misguided way (by not identifying the true causes of these problems) still doesn't preclude me from seeing it as another outcome of the ideas set in motion during the 18th century. I guess it just goes to show how many diverse currents simple terms can have, and the Enlightenment is, I think, one of the umbrella terms that does most to obscure the myriad of ideas it supposedly encapsulates.

[Figlio di Moros]

I'm sorry, I've never understood the idea the nation miraculously appeared to the world in englightenment Europe. The French fought against the English to preserve their nation in the 1300-1400's. The Scots asserted their seperate identity from the English before that. Machievelli wrote an entire book on how to reunify Italy, not to mention the divisions in the Kalmar Union, Iberian Union, and the Guelph/Ghibelline wars which removed German influence over northern Italy.

[xoplytnyk]

The US is a fascist state right now.

[Section Leader]

The US is a fascist state right now.

Are you a Ron Paul supporter? Under no circumstances could the present day USA be regarded as fascist, and I say that as a fascist myself.

[starman2003]

The French fought against the English to preserve their nation in the 1300-1400's.

It may be more accurate to say they fought to expel foreign invaders since modern european nation states weren't consolidated until the late 15th century. Prior to that, they were too decentralized to be considered real nations. The hundred years' war did pave the way for the French nation state since it was a common cause which united them and joan became a national symbol with the same result.

The US is a fascist state right now.

To all but paranoid liberals, the US is currently antithetical to fascism.

[Preston Cole]

The US is a fascist state right now.

Disregarding the stupidity of such a statement, considering the US's record of military interventions and the sheer size of its military, all it lacks is a strong sense of authoritarian nationalism and government and it would certainly come close to fascism.

[Red Star]

I've never understood the idea the nation miraculously appeared to the world in englightenment Europe

I did not claim they miraculously appeared in the 18th/19th centuries, but that they did in their present forms. I think the best description of modern nationalism is still Ernest Gellner's: "nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent". As a concept, what you see in the medieval period is really mostly the protection of state and dynastic interests. While there were definitely ethnicities, and I am a fan of other ideas of nationalism too (namely that you cannot build a modern national identity without using previous cultural and ethnic ties or memories), the modern concept of the nation is unthinkable in the Middle Ages for precisely as Starman said they were too decentralized.

Using France as an example of a medieval nation is actually problematic, as the consolidation of the nation really ran right up to 1914 (Eugen Weber's excellent book "Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1880–1914" betrays this through its title). It was during the French Revolution that the diversity of languages spoken, for example, was considered a threat and a move to centralize French identity appeared. Occitan, Breton etc. declined during the 19th century as regional identities were eroded, following Barere's articulation of the la religion de la patrie in 1793 and 1794. Modern nationalism is unthinkable without public education, the public rituals of the nation and other such advances that were just not present in the 1300-1400s.

[starman2003]

...all it lacks is a strong sense of authoritarian nationalism and government...

Sure the potential is there and the "missing ingredients" may not be long in coming, given mounting failures of democracy.