- Sir Oswald Mosley
Friday, 15 February 2013
A National Creed
"Fascism was in essence a national creed, and therefore by definition took an entirely different form in different countries. In origin, it was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remedial wrongs which the old world had failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live and live greatly. Without understanding these three basic facts it is possible to abuse fascism, but not to make a serious reply to its case and its spirit."
- Sir Oswald Mosley
- Sir Oswald Mosley
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Had the liberal governments been willing to stand up to the violence and disorder of the Left, the Fascists might have gotten nowhere politically, but the liberal governments were not willing to do so and people saw that the Fascists were. And they saw that the Fascists were patriotic, anti-communist and protective of private property, while the governments seemed somewhat less committed to these things, and so decent people were willing to go along with the Fascists. I suspect we might be seeing something like that going on in Europe today.
ReplyDeleteYou say "fascism" like it's a bad thing :)
Delete"To stand up" has never been a thing for liberals, especially not against the left. They are way too good buddies for that.
The fascists/nationalists of today are basically the only ones that try to prevent our civilization's total collapse.
This is a great quote, which nicely foreshadows how the understanding of Fascism has developed over the last few decades.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to high school in the 80s I was taught the received Marxist wisdom that Fascism wasn't an ideology at all, but an ad-hoc set of excuses to hold the labour movement back. Now that I think of it, it was a bit like the people today who hate Muslims so much that they won’t even concede that Islam is a faith. You also, of course, had the Wilhelm Reich-inspired types who claimed people became Nazis because of mental deficiencies.
Today, the “new consensus” in Fascist studies (very much inspired by Roger Griffin) lays a heavy emphasis on understanding Fascism precisely as an ideology of national rebirth, an ideology which appeals and recruits in the same ways that other ideologies do.
The world of today is a terrible complicated one. No wonder Stefan Zweig shot himself after he had written his wonderful "The World of Yesterday".
DeleteMany years ago, when I was in college, I ran across a collection called Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, compiled by the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado. I remember the Italian Fascist readings as being more clearly presented than those of the National Socialists, though I may just have been familiar with some of their ideas from the New Deal.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a point there DEK. One explanation could be that the Italians did have quite a few good and experienced writers among them.
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