Clarifying Terms and Grammar
Before we proceed, it is important to clarify the terms used in this text, since they provide the basis of the analytical framework—particularly radical-right, parafascist, and protofascist. The radical right is generally perceived as a socially conservative milieu that rejects immigrants, religious difference, gender and sexual diversity, and it is, if not openly racist, then racist in deed. It is important not to confuse or conflate the radical right with fascism. They can hybridize and often contain overlap that may bring power to fascists, but fascists typically maintain a more hardcore revolutionary ideology. The radical right is concerned with creating a “closed society,” walled off to immigrants and migrants and based around the idea of the nation rooted in territorial claims and family values.32 Scholar Cas Mudde ascribes three attributes to the radical right: populism, nativism, and authoritarianism.33 It is important not to underestimate or underplay the violence of the radical right in relation to fascism. The propaganda of the Council of Conservative Citizens, at one time supported by former Republican senator Trent Lott, inspired Dylann Roof to go on a murderous shooting spree in a black church in Charleston, North Carolina, on June 17, 2015. In this way, the semi-legitimacy of the “radical right” and even parafascist “authoritarian conservatives” obscures the direct connection to white nationalism that can translate to mass and lone-wolf violence carried out by fascists.
The term parafascist here connotes a more genuinely authoritarian and conservative ideology than the radical right. Scholars Payne and Griffin identify Francisco Franco, Ioannis Metaxas, and Juan Perón, for instance, as parafascists who embrace some form of corporatism or vertical syndicalism as a model of state-driven economic power but typically lack a “mass movement” base that fascists attempt to generate and lead. While Perón’s descamisados and the cult Franco created around “martyred” fascist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera did produce the semblance of mass movements, their regimes relied more on the bureaucratization of syndicalism from above and a conservative military establishment than any ultranationalist “revolution from below.” For this reason, parafascism has also been called “fascism from above.”34 Participants in the conservative revolution can and often do straddle the radical right, parafascism, and fascism. They typically call to mind figures we will discuss in this text, such as Otto Strasser, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Julius Evola, Ernst Jünger, Armin Mohler, and others who participated in fascist movements while also criticizing aspects of certain fascist groups. Another term to describe the school of thought that emerged in the interwar period around the ideas of Schmitt, Heidegger, and others is neoconservative, which Heidegger’s disciple, Leo Strauss, brought to the United States and disseminated through the University of Chicago to a host of up-and-coming Republicans who later became associated with the Reagan and Bush administrations.35
Although important scholarship recognizes a clear-cut distinction between the radical right, parafascism, and fascism, there also seems to be a growing wave of scholars of fascism who view hybridization as equally important. Constantin Iordachi describes this “new wave” precisely:
At an analytical level, the differentiation between conservative, authoritarian, radical right-wing and fascist movements and parties is indispensable for comparative work, enabling historians to distinguish between related radical political phenomena and account for similarities and differences within the wider ‘family of authoritarians’ in inter-war Europe. In historical reality, however, these ideal types are never to be found in pure form.… [I]n politics in particular, the fluid nature of ideologies, the dynamics of the political process, and the multiple social-political factors that generally shape the nature and outlook of political regimes generate hybrid outcomes.36
As the title of this book implies, much of the development of fascism takes place more as a “process” than an “outcome.”37 This process, or “creep,” takes place through the “positive” intermingling of conservatism, parafascism, and hardcore fascist groups, as much as it is a result of the “negative” distinction of fascists identifying themselves in isolation. For instance, it might be important to note that the radical right populist party can act as a container for a heteroclite mixture of ideologies, in particular where it does not necessarily exclude fascist membership and even leadership. It is possible, then, for a radical-right party to become “fascistized” by internal forces over time, leading scholars to contend with the difficult implications of process-oriented analysis.
Fascist Process
The process of “creeping fascism” or fascistization can take place in a political party or group, as with the Nazi Party after Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome, but it can also be seen as a general cultural, social, and political movement from radical-right to parafascist to fascism. Fascism in Italy went from a pseudo-revolutionary paramilitary force to a compromised parliamentarian coalition with liberals and conservatives, and on to the leading force in a parliamentary system to a dictatorship. From 1928 to 1931, Weimar Germany’s government went from Social Democracy to authoritarian conservatism, ending with Adolf Hitler’s chancellorship in 1933. While these seizures of power were relatively rapid, they reflect a process by which fascism takes power. Among the most thorough scholars of fascism, Robert O. Paxton elucidates this approach to understanding fascist processes through a stage theory. According to Paxton, fascism passes through five stages:
A movement-building base dedicated to creating a “new order”
A process of “rooting in the political system”
Seizing power
Exercising power
Either entering a decline period or a period of compromise called “entropy,” or a radicalization by hardcore fascist groups who advocate a “second revolution”38
In the early stage, fascist groups form through the syncretic allure of a left-to-right alliance. These early formations tend to include xenophobes, traditional conservatives, fundamentalist Christians, and people Cas Mudde refers to as “prodigal sons of the left.”39 The fascist groups often play a relatively minor role within a larger, heterogeneous, populist coalition of different groups. Given credibility and protection by these populist movements, fascist groups can grow their ranks and gain leadership.
In stages one and two, fascist groups “creeping” among radical-right populists maintain a revolutionary, mass-movement stance but lack the cohesion to organize others on a truly revolutionary level. A unifying fascist leader might come from the outside to unite feuding and disorganized sects, or fascist elements within the radical right may rise to leadership capacity from within. However, in the meantime, during stage two, fascists gaining popularity and prestige increasingly insinuate themselves within institutions of power and authority in order to open the space for expansion. It must be clarified at this point that this is not a book about “protofascist movements”—a term that I am not entirely comfortable with—but about protofascist conditions in which the relationship between radical-right, mainstream, and stage 1 and 2 fascism become increasingly hybridized, allowing fascism an opportunity to wield increasing power within the state itself. Hence, I do not suggest that this or that movement or group (say, the Patriot movement, for instance) will “become fascist,” but that it is part of a larger process that facilitates fascism’s creep into power.
Creeping Right Along…
The first chapter of this book will uncover the ideological fringes that came together to form