Fascism is a difficult word to define.
We know it when we see it, but no one ever has a satisfying definition.
In the 30s and 40s, it brought totalitarianism, war, and genocide.
So today, let’s talk about how this idea took hold, grew to prominence, and just how
much support it had.
I’m Tristan Johnson, and this is Step Back History.
In 1929 the world rocked with to this day the largest economic recession in the history
of the industrialized world.
European and American countries experienced a massive stock market crash put millions
out of work, and many more into poverty.
Many saw this downturn as the failure of liberal capitalism.
Capitalist economies are prone to these cycles of big boom times and massive recessions and
it’s not often the wealthy and connected ever seem to suffer during these waves.
Many of the masses of unemployed took to socialist and Marxist activism.
They wanted to break this cycle of boom and bust and take the wealth of the country out
of the hands of a few wealthy industrialists and bankers.
There were, however, people who didn’t go down the red route.
In countries such as Germany and Italy, an alternative solution to the liberal capitalist
order emerged, one steeped in totalitarianism and nationalism.
Why Germany and Italy though?
Well, they both were struggling young democracies in the wake of the First World War.
The other European powers humiliated Germany with the terms of the peace treaty drawn after
the war called the treaty of Versailles.
The treaty imposed debilitating reparations they didn’t finish paying off until 2010;
shutting down all the German colonies, and severe curtailment of their military.
Germany had also been hit hard by the depression, with debilitating economic misery.
The parliamentary government set up after the war attempted to address these problems,
but it resulted in hyperinflation.
German money became worthless, and a country rather new to democracy didn’t see it as
working out for them.
This was fertile ground for radical politics.
With the Soviet Union’s economy growing in this period, many turned to socialist movements.
You might remember from my video on the communist world revolution, but it’s almost a law
of nature liberals and capitalists fear socialism.
Many of the capitalist world leaders sent troops to Russia to suppress the State Capitli-
I mean Communist revolution there.
In Germany and Italy, anti-Communism blended with other ideas such as hypernationalism,
and a desire to do away with the “slow” and “weak” democratic decision-making
in Rome and Berlin.
Throw in the support of industry leaders at war with socialist-leaning organized workers,
and you have a dark mix we call fascism.
Italy was the first country in which fascism took root.
And now we must talk about Benito Mussolini.
Mussolini founded a newspaper called Il Popolo d’Italia, or the people of Italy in 1914
after a break with the Italian Socialist party.
He served in the First World War, and after returning injured began to use this paper
to start a movement.
With economic and social crises and a fear of Communist revolution, this paper espoused
militarist and nationalist ideas with a healthy dose of money from French industrialists.
It became a voice for disillusioned veterans, the unemployed, and Italian nationalists who
were discontented with democracy.
His rise to power began on the streets.
Loyal followers of Mussolini organized into paramilitary groups called the Blackshirt
militia.
They violently clashed with leftists, again with the support of industrialists who feared
a Communist revolution.
A group of leftists organized to fight this group called Antifa, and they were a resistance
through the entire fascist regime.
The Fascists entered the political sphere in 1921, by running in the Italian parliament,
but without much success.
Even with some undercover support from the government, they only got about 5% of the
popular vote.
They did, however, use their small political platform to introduce their ideas to the public.
They proposed solutions to Italy’s problems horrible as they were, while the established
parties had nothing to offer themselves.
Mussolini’s National Fascist party made a huge gamble and organized a massive demonstration
in October of 1922 called the March on Rome.
When his Fascist troops did indeed march on Rome, the Prime Minister Luigi Facta wanted
to fight back.
However, one of Mussolini’s biggest fans overruled him.
The fan was the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.
Without any shots fired, Mussolini became Prime-Minister of Italy.
I want to talk a bit about how Mussolini campaigned and built his following.
He maximised on a crisis situation where the elected government was inactive.
Mussolini used the unique faults and pain points of Italy to one end, giving himself
power.
Much of what he argues wasn’t a coherent ideology.
At times he sounded almost socialist, and at other times defended elitism, industry
leaders, and traditional values.
Lastly, the financial and government elites used Mussolini’s totalitarianism as a way
to suppress a socialist uprising and bring order back to a chaotic situation.
Many didn’t see Mussolini himself as much of a threat, and Fascism was just a phase
before Italy could get itself back on track.
After taking power, Mussolini used the organs of the state he could to consolidate his power
and suppressed those who challenged it.
He escalated violence to the point where by 1925, blackshirts were killing his political
rivals.
He managed to make an era of economic prosperity with a totalitarian fist, and with economic
growth, a lot of dissent quieted down.
The extralegal violence became legitimised, and so it gained a veneer of respectability.
Now, how did Fascism come to power in Germany?
Well, to begin they had the positive example of Italy to inform them, many of the same
problems as Italy, and a dictator in waiting ready to go, Adolf Hitler.
Now, there are a million videos out there about Hitler, so I won’t go too much into
his life story.
An important detail is that he found the party which would become the Nazis by working to
undermine them as a German agent.
They won him over with their rhetoric, and he sort-of defected.
One of his first works as the leader of this party was to rebrand it to the Nazi party
we know today.
They quickly became a force on the German radical right.
So, there’s a common misconception about the Nazis we need to discuss because if I
don’t it’ll be the subject of at least a thousand comments.
The name of the party was the National Socialist Party of German Workers, which sounds like
they should be a far left socialist group.
However, the party was far right in its politics.They took inspiration from the rhetoric of Italian
Fascism, which in itself was a rightwing reaction to the fear of socialism as I mentioned earlier.
They had some super benign socialist policies such as an investment in public spending on
infrastructure.
(How you liking that Autobahn Germany?
Nah just kidding this video is going to be super censored there).
When Hitler joined this party it was just the German Worker’s Party, but Hitler wanted
to get support from disaffected socialists who don’t support any actual social equality.
The leftypol of Germany if you will.
Socialism was still pretty new in this era, so the Nazis also added it as a way to modernize
the party branding.
Socialism was sexy and new.
It made you sound forward-looking.
However, they lacked a lot of the policies an actual left-wing party would have.
They were for increasing inequality, not eliminating it, and that applies to both economic class
AND their horrible opinions about race and nation.
Their economic spending quickly turned into a corporate cartel, and they banned communist
organization as well as unionization.
If they’re left wing, those are some strange policies to have.
Ok, massive aside over.
Like the Italian Fascists, Nazis campaigned on lifting Germany out of the Depression and
reaffirming traditional German values.
They wanted to return Germany to its former greatness by undoing the humiliation imposed
on them by losing the First World War, the sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, and
the imposition of a parliamentary republic.
They also sold themselves as a way to fight off the rising communist threat.
Also like the Italians, they didn’t keep any consistency in their positions, they just
campaigned on whatever they needed to obtain and consolidate power.
They’d downplay antisemitism and emphasize anticommunism to business leaders, promise
price controls to farmers, and stable buying power for pensioners.
In January of 1933, President Hindenberg appointed Hitler to prime minister despite him not winning
an electoral victory, just like Mussolini.
This time, instead of a king appointing him he came to power with a deal between a few
conservative politicians who had given up on a parliamentary rule.
They wanted to use Hitler’s popularity to bring back a conservative authoritarian rule,
even playing with the idea of restoring the monarchy.
Again, they saw Hitler, like the elites who backed Mussolini, as a temporary way to restore
order and bring about the government they desired.
And just like Mussolini, Hitler outmaneuvered these conservatives to install a Nazi dictatorship
completely subordinate to his will.
These are just the successful takeovers of government.
I think when we tell the story of the rise of fascism in this period we overlook that
fascism had a growing fanbase in a lot of the western world.
In my country of Canada, there was also a depression, and desire to bring back order
and prosperity.
Many Canadians thought Mussolini and Hitler were on to something.
Fascist ideas were also popular in America.
High profile American celebrities like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh admired what Hitler
was doing in Germany.
Again, American fascists used unique American pain point to attempt to consolidate power,
such as racial tensions, and anti-immigrant sentiments.
The Ku Klux Klan was larger in the 30s than today, and they lapped up this rhetoric.
A book in 1941 reported that more than 100 fascist organizations had formed in the US
since 1933.
One popular radio preacher Catholic Reverend Charles Coughlin had the most popular radio
show in America next to Roosevelt’s fireside chats.He spoke glowingly about the Nazis,
often quoting propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and admired the German quest for “full employment
and racial purity”.
Also in before someone points this out, yes I know he was born in Canada.
And this is all before we talk about anti semitism.
As in Germany, the Americans of the 30s saw Jews as a vague, but dangerous threat undermining
the country.
A Gallup poll in 1942 showed 1 in 6 Americans thought Hitler was doing the right thing to
the Jews, and one in five considered Jews a “menace”.
This was, by the way, a higher number than those who considered Germans a menace… in
1942.
12% of Americans even supported a widespread campaign against the Jews in America.
No one considered fascism marginal; it was popular.
On the geopolitical stage, the western allies tended to let Hitler make massive land grabs
rather than confront them in war.
This meant undermining a lot of the collective security which they vowed at the end of the
First World War to uphold.
Many wanted to prevent another war, but they also saw Germany’s nazi government as one
they could use as a bulwark against the growing power of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Germany used their pain points to gain more power.
He… fish hooked them if you will.
So what should we take away from all this?
Well, the first question I want to answer is why we seem to have a hard time defining
fascism.
It’s not so much an ideology as an active undermining of representative democracy and
the electoral process.
Fascists in Europe used rhetoric all over the political spectrum for the sole purpose
of consolidating power and installing a totalitarian regime.
It’s a method for those seeking naked personal power, built and maintained through violence.
This means fascism looks different everywhere it springs up.
They use whatever pain points the country has to consolidate a base, whether it be scapegoating
a maligned other, anxiety over radical ideologies or economic chaos.
It doesn’t matter.
In this period the great depression, fear of Communists, and the fallout of the First
World War were the main factors.
It could be something different again.
So how do we combat it?
Well, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but be sceptical.
When politicians use rhetoric, make sure it's backed up by their policies and actions.
Don’t fall for empty promises and platitudes.
Also, maybe we can do away with nationalist rhetoric?
Please?
It doesn’t help anyone.
Lastly, it helps protect you from manipulation if you don’t have a vague malicious other
to exploit.
Read about other groups, see people complexly and whatnot.
Resist the rhetoric of scapegoating, and be ready to resist it when it pokes its head.
Because when we don’t combat fascism when it’s small, the end result can be literal
genocide.
Well, that was a dark one.
Next week I promise we’ll have a bit more fun.
It’s going to be my first *cut* HALLOWEEN SPECIAL *cut*.
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