Fascism and Authoritarianism in the Early 20th Century
In the early twentieth century, a series of events were experienced as a catastrophe: a long and bloody war perceived as absurd and irrational that had finished with the traditional European empires, a social revolution, and finally, an unprecedented economic depression. Many people accused the old nineteenth-century liberal system of having caused these catastrophes. The values of reason, progress, education, and science had not prevented the war. Institutions such as parliaments, representative governments, and constitutions that guaranteed fundamental rights and freedoms encouraged the masses to demand more and more rights and more democracy. In addition, the liberals’ economic measures failed to survive the crisis of 1929.
This context led to the emergence, in the twenties and thirties, of social and political movements of an authoritarian character, as it required the disappearance of the liberal regime. They coincided with left-wing movements, but unlike those, the right did not claim workers’ participation in politics, society, and the economy but rather the imposition of the state over the masses. Sometimes, authoritarian right-wing movements organized a genuine mass movement in the line of modern political parties, and trade unions were supported by all social classes. Political propaganda used the media, violence, and street intimidation. These constituted mass movements. Strictly speaking, fascism’s most representative examples were in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.
Common Features of Authoritarian Right-Wing Movements and Fascism
- Rejection of the Bourgeois World: After the Great War, the Western world was ruled by individualism, egoism, the feeling of defeat, and speculation. Many claimed the spirit of community, camaraderie, heroism, and solidarity that was felt at the front. In many cases, there was nostalgia for past societies but hierarchical and rigidly rehearsed corporate partnerships dividing social groups according to their job or function, like corporations or estates of the Middle Ages.
- Contempt for Liberal Policy: They rejected parliamentary democracy and its institutions. They considered this a feeble political system for curbing social revolution and imposing order and discipline on the streets and also ineffective in establishing a social and alternative economic policy to contain the crisis. They believed that liberalism and democracy were responsible for the defeat and national decline. European authoritarian right-wing ideologies were inspired by pre-liberal values and rejected the values of freedom and equality.
- Repression of Marxism: Communist ideology and social revolution were the result of the Enlightenment and the ultimate consequences of democratic values. Authoritarian right-wing movements often persecuted, imprisoned, and even eliminated militants of left-wing political parties, unions, or groups considered extremist and subversive. Communists were their main enemies, but also trade unionists, anarchists, progressives, Masons, and Jews. The existing division within the labor movement favored the repression of Marxism.
- Strong Nationalism: Nationalism combined with xenophobia and racism. They persecuted those who threatened national unity, their conception of the nation, or its independence. Nationalism was higher in the big states that perished in the war. Cultural minorities that threatened national identity were repressed.
- Militarism: Right-wing authoritarian movements tended to rely on the armed forces of the state. Under the law, they could exercise physical violence to suppress any attempt against national unity or social order. There were many soldiers who led or supported these movements, such as Franco and Horthy. In most cases, the authoritarian right imposed military character values on civil society: unity, obedience, respect for hierarchy, order, worship of force, violence, and arms. Many activists were veterans of the Great War and accepted these values with ease. They used their own militias to intimidate the rest of society with triumphal processions, assaulting other political formations and enforcing their will.