Neo-fascism

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Definition
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Neofascism and religion
Crypto-fascism
Neo-Nazi groups of the United States

Origins of Neo-fascism

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Neo-fascist political parties and movements

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This page pertains to fascism after World War II. For post-World War II Nazi movements, see Neo-Nazism. For neo-fascist groups associated with a religious identity or theology, see Neo-fascism and religion. For analysis of where fascism fits on the political spectrum, see Fascism and ideology.

Neo-fascism is the ideology of political movements that emerged after the Second World War that display significant elements of fascism. The term neo-fascist may be claimed by groups that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini and Fascist Italy. This usually includes nationalism, nativism, anti-communism and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy. Allegations that a group is neo-fascist may be hotly contested, in particular if the term is used as a hyperbolic political attack that uses the term fascism as a politic epithet. George Orwell once remarked that the word fascism no longer seemed to mean much of anything, other than objectionable (See Godwin's Law).

Contents

[edit] Regimes often called fascist after World War II
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

Under the most narrow definition of the term neo-fascism, which basically excludes the use of "neo-fascist" for post-WWII regimes, neo-fascism is in fact restricted to more or less marginal political movements which never actually attained power. Some post-World War II regimes have been called "neo-fascists" due to their authoritarian nature and sometimes their fascination for fascist ideology and rituals.

Latin America has a long tradition of populism and authoritarian regimes, since the military caudillos of the 19th and early 20th century, and the various military juntas who took on power during the Cold War. Military intervention in politics has been common since the independences in the 1820-1830s, and most of these juntas were thus qualified as traditional military dictatorships. However, insofar as some of these regimes profided clandestine refugee after WWII for several former Nazis (Adolf Eichmann, etc.), and supported in other cases neofascist movements (e.g. the Argentinian Triple A), some have qualified them as neofascists.

For example, Luis García Meza Tejada's regime, whom took power during the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia, with the help of Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and the support of Buenos Aires' junta, has been accused of neofascist tendencies and of admiration for Nazi paraphernalia and rituals. Hugo Banzer, who preceded him, also displayed admiration towards Nazism and Fascism. Several former Nazis and Fascists directly involved in neofascist groups engaged after WWII in the "Crusade against Communism" [1]

In some cases neofascist elements did acquire executive power. Hence, even before Videla's junta, José López Rega, the piduista leader of the Triple A neofascist movement, was also Minister of Social Welfare. Again, those who opposed the classification of such regimes as neofascist will argue that, despite the acknowledged presence of neofascist tendencies in the government itself, such regimes should be qualified as ordinary dictatorships, as the precedent authoritarian regimes of the 1920-30s. Such an argument left the question of the legimity itself of the "neofascist" category, since in this case it is restricted to movements which are not in power, although they may have benefitted from specific state complicities. Neofascism is thus understood as a tendency, but not as a valid category for defining a political regime. Its definition is henceforth strictly limited, in such an extent than it may be argued that the concept itself of neofascism disappears in this definition.

This debate notwithstanding, many scholars, public intellectuals, and political activists have described various post-WWII regimes as neo-fascist.

[edit] Italy

Main article: History of Italy as a Republic

Italy was broadly divided into two political blocs following the World War, the Christian Democracy, which remained in power until the 1980s, and the Italian Communist Party (PCI), very strong immediately after the war but which was expulsed from power in May 1947, a month before the Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan, along with the French Communist Party (PCF). Despite attempts in the 1970s towards a "historic compromise" between the PCI and the DC, the PCI didn't take part in the executive power until the 1980s. In December 1970, Junio Valerio Borghese attempted, along with Stefano Delle Chiaie, the Borghese Coup which was supposed to install a neofascist regime. Neofascist groups took part in various false flag terrorist attacks, starting with the December 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre, for which Vincenzo Vinciguerra was convicted, and usually considered to have stop with the 1980 Bologna railway bombing. A 2000 parliamentary report from the center-left Olive Tree coalition concluded that "the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States in order to impede the PCI, and, in a lesser measure, the PSI from reaching executive power".

Since the 1990s, Alleanza Nazionale, led by Gianfranco Fini, has distanced itself from Mussolini and fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups, with most die-hards leaving it; it now seeks to present itself as a respectable rightwing party. As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of Mussolini, left to form Freedom of Action. Lega Nord led by Umberto Bossi is primarily a regionalist secessionist movement, but has often been accused of xenophobia and racism; however, it has also lately presented its goals as a more moderate quest for local autonomy.

[edit] Greece

See also Neo-Nazism in Greece

Neo-fascism in Greece has been present in Greek politics since the authoritarian regime of Ioannis Metaxas, though with limited popularity among the public. During the 50's and 60's, Greek neo-fascists composed extremist fractions, one of which was responsible for the killing of politician Gregoris Lambrakis. In 1967, the Greek military Junta of George Papadopoulos found inspiration in the Metaxas period (Greek fascism) of 1936-1941 and gathered many Greeks of a neo-fascist mentality to power.

A decade after the restoration of democracy in 1974, former Junta leader George Papadopoulos founded and lead the National Political Union, a party supporting, if not neo-fascism, at least authoritarian views and the ideal of "Ellas ton Ellinon Christianon" (Greece of Greek-Orthodox Greeks).The Greek neo-fascists were greatly alienated though, but continued to existed in fringe minority parties, very rarely achieving parliament seats. In the early 80's Nikolaos Michaloliakos, a former Greek Army parachutist and youth leader of the National Political Union founded Hrisi Avgi, an extreme Neo-Nazi party.

Another important neo-fascist party was the 4th of August Party, later named Proti Grammi (First Line), headed by Kostas Plevris. Plevris is a former Greek secret intelligence agent and a die-hard admirer of Metaxas and Hitler[citation needed], a renowned Hellenic supremacist, revisionist and Holocaust denier with close ties with other European revisionists. A former member of this party Kostas Kiltidis is now a deputy with the conservative party Nea Dimokratia.

Colonels' Junta in Greece (1967-1974) - This regime was often adjectived as "fascist", even if the regime's nature was not fascist but military-based, anti-communist, ultra-nationalist and authoritarian. Some claim it was backed by the CIA because of the Junta's leader George Papadopoulos' former militancy in the Greek Secret Intelligence service (KYP].

[edit] Turkey

Alparslan Türkeş' Grey Wolves movement, the youth organization of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) founded in 1969, claims to be inspired by Italian fascist Giovanni Gentile's "Actual Idealism" theory. It is a pan-Turkish party which advocates the creation of the Turan, the "Great Turkish Empire", including all Turkic peoples mainly in the successor Central-Asian countries of the former Soviet Union as well as China (the Uyghurs of East Turkestan). Alparslan Türkeş thus went to Baku (Azerbaijan) in 1992 to support Abülfaz Elçibay, who openly described himself as sympathiser of the ultranationalist group, during the presidential election. Once elected as president of Azerbaijan, Elçibay chose as ministry of Interior İsgandar Hamidov, a member of the Grey Wolves who plead for the creation of a Greater Turkey which would include northern Iran and extend itself to Siberia, India and China. Hamidov resigned in April 1993 after having threatened Armenia with a nuclear strike.[2] The Grey Wolves share a racist and supremacist ideology, and have taken part in murders and other violent attacks, including false flag attacks aimed against the Kurdish PKK. Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Grey Wolves member who would try to assassinate the Pope John Paul II in May 1981, had for example assassinated Abdi İpekçi, editor of Milliyet newspaper, in 1979. He escaped from prison with the help of Abdullah Çatlı, who himself has been in contact with Stefano Delle Chiaie among other international terrorists; Türkeş and Çatlı have both been accused of being prominent members of "Counter-Guerrilla", the Turkish branch of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind anti-communist organizations set up during the Cold War officially to counter an eventual Soviet invasion [3].

[edit] South Africa

South Africa (1948-1994) - Many scholars have labelled the apartheid system built by Malan and Verwoerd as a type of fascism.[citation needed] Whether it was a fascist regime or an example of a socially conservative administration with excessive powers is hotly debated. The racial and nationalist ideas were implanted inside the South African regime, however the economic structure of the country was not as regulated as that of a typically fascist state.[citation needed]

[edit] Guatemala

Guatemala (1953-1980s) - Mario Sandoval Alarcón, a self-declared fascist, headed the National Liberation Movement after a coup d'état, supported by the US, overthrew the democratic government of Col. Jacobo Arbenz. Sandoval became known as the "godfather of the death squads" during the Guatemalan military's 30-year counter-insurgency campaign and at one point served as Guatemala's vice president.

[edit] Rhodesia

Rhodesia (1965-1978) - The racial segregation system by Ian Smith is similarly considered by some to be a form of fascism.[citation needed] See the comments for South Africa.

[edit] Lebanon

Lebanon (1982-1988) - The right wing Christian Phalangist Party, backed by its own private army and inspired by the Spanish Falangists, was nominally in power in the country during the 1980s but had limited authority over the highly factionalised state, two-thirds of which was occupied by Israeli and Syrian troops.

[edit] Iran

Iran (1950-1953) - Under the Iranian National Front, during the regime of Mohammad Mossadegh, attacks on the political left were led by right-wing groups with fascistic elements including the Iranian Nation Party, led by Dariush Forouhar; the Sumka (The National Socialist Iranian Workers Party) led by Dr. Davud Monshizadeh; and Kabud (Iranian Nazi Party) founded by Habibollah Nobakht.

[edit] Argentina

Argentina (1946-1955 and 1973-1974) - Juan Perón admired Mussolini and established his own pseudo-fascist regime, although it has been more often considered a right-wing populist. After he died, his third wife and vice-president Isabel Perón was deposed by a military junta, after a short interreign characterized by support to the neo-fascist Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (la Triple A) terrorist group. Videla's junta, which participated in Operation Condor, supported various neofascist and right-wing terrorist movements; the SIDE supported Meza Tejada's "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia and trained the Contras in Nicaragua.

[edit] Contentious contemporary claims of neo-fascism

[edit] Neo-Fascism and the United States

See also Neo-Nazism in the USA

Movements identified as neo-fascist would generally include all U.S. neo-Nazi groups including the National Alliance and the American Nazi Party. The presence or absence of fascism or fascistic elements in the United States since the Second World War has been a matter of long-dispute from a variety of political viewpoints. Some have argued though that American economic policies have had fascist elements since the New Deal. This is further discussed in the New Deal and Fascism and ideology articles. Few scholars support these claims. Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, has warned that people in the U.S. need to remain vigilant to keep America from drifting towards fascism.[4] Some link growing corporate power to fascism.[5]

Sheldon S. Wolin, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University, speaks of an “inverted totalitarianism” which “has an upside-down character”: political apathy instead of mobilization of the society, “short-circuits” in the voting system replaces the abolition of the parliamentary system, and media state control is replaced by concentrated ownership of the media.[6]

In several essays, author David Neiwert has explored the rise of what he calls “pseudo-fascism”. Neiwert concedes that “American democracy has not yet reached the genuine stage of crisis required for full-blown fascism to take root” and thus “the current phenomenon cannot properly be labeled ‘fascism’.” He warns:

But what is so deeply disturbing about the current state of the conservative movement [in the United States] is that it has otherwise plainly adopted not only many of the cosmetic traits of fascism, its larger architecture -- derived from its core impulses — now almost exactly replicates that by which fascists came to power in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s.[7]

In his Free Inquiry magazine article “Fascism, Anyone?”,[8] Lawrence Britt considers “14 Characteristics of Fascism” which he implies resonate today in the United States as they did in “Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.” Britt calls these regimes fascist or proto-fascist. However, the Britt article has been criticized as relying on a logical fallacy that undercuts Britt's premise: in this case the claim that two countries sharing certain characteristics can be seen as sharing a common ideology. Compare Britt's list to “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”[9] which is Umberto Eco's list of 14 characteristics of Fascism, originally published 1995.

[edit] A post-WWII neofascist international?

There was a relationship between several Cold War regimes and international neofascist movements whom cooperated in several specific operations, including assassinations and false flag bombings [10] [11] [12]. Along with Delle Chiaie, Vinciguerra testified in Rome in December 1995 before judge Maria Servini de Cubria, stating that Enrique Arancibia Clavel (a former Chilean secret police agent prosecuted for crimes against humanity in 2004) and US expatriate DINA agent Michael Townley were directly involved in General Carlos Prats' assassination. Michael Townley was condemned in Italy to 15 years of prison for having served as intermediary between the DINA and the Italian neofascists [13], thus displaying again connections between European neofascist elements and South American dictatorships.

The case of Bernardo Leighton is an example of such international cooperation mixing neofascist elements and state services. The latter, a Chilean Christian Democrat, was severely injured, along with his wife, on October 5, 1976 by gunshots while in exile in Rome. According to the National Security Archive and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, in charge of former DINA head Manuel Contreras' prosecution, Stefano Delle Chiaie (founder of Avanguardia Nazionale) met with former CIA agent Michael Townley and anti-Castrist Virgilio Paz Romero in Madrid, in 1975, to prepare, with the help of Franco's secret police, the murder of Bernardo Leighton [14]. Attorney general Giovanni Salvi accused the Italian SISMI of having dissimulated proofs of the DINA's involvement in the terrorist attack.

The regimes of Franquist Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Isabel and Juan Perón's Argentinia and Stroessner's Paraguay also participated together in Operation Condor, which targeted political opponents worldwide. In the frame of the Cold War, these international operations gave rise to some cooperation between various neo-fascist elements engaged in a "Crusade against Communism"[1][15] and state security services. This includes Operation Condor, but also Operation Gladio and Italy's strategy of tension, in which "false flag" terrorism actions were used — (see the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing or the 1980 Bologna massacre) [16].

[edit] List of organizations and movements

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Organizations that have self-described themselves as 'neo-fascist,' or are categorized as such in scholarly studies or media reports include:

[edit] See also

[edit] Endnotes

  1. ^ a b "During this period we have systematically established close contacts with like-minded groups emerging in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain or Portugal, for the purpose of forming the kernel of a truly Western League of Struggle against Marxism." Yves Guérin-Sérac, quoted by Stuart Christie, in Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist, London: Anarchy Magazine/Refract Publications, 1984. ISBN 0-946222-09-6, p.27)
  2. ^ (French) "Les liaisons dangereuses de la police turque", by Martin A. Lee, Le Monde diplomatique, March 1997
  3. ^ http://mondediplo.com/1998/07/05turkey
  4. ^ http://bunker.defcode.com/index.php/2003/12/14/p95
  5. ^ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html
  6. ^ http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0718-07.htm
  7. ^ http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/11/holiday-break.html
  8. ^ http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2
  9. ^ http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html
  10. ^ See the case of Stefano Delle Chiaie, involved in Italy's strategy of tension but whom also took part in Operation Condor, organizing the 1976 assassination attempt of Chilean Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton. See also the case of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who escaped to Franquist Spain with the help of the SISMI following the 1972 Peteano attack for which he was punished with a life sentence
  11. ^ http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_gladio/Terrorism_Western_Europe.pdf
  12. ^ http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/news/media_desk.htm#Gladio
  13. ^ http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/05/22/mun6.html
  14. ^ Documents concerning attempted assassination of Bernardo Leighton, on the National Security Archives website
  15. ^ Anti-Castrist Luis Posada Carriles, was condemned for the Cubana Flight 455 bombing on October 6, 1976. According to the Miami Herald this bombing was decided at the same meeting that also decided to target Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier, who was assassination on September 21, 1976. Carriles declared in his autobiography:
    I became conscious that (...) we the Cubans didn't oppose ourselves to an isolated tyranny, nor to a particular system of our fatherland, but that we had in front of us a colossal enemy, whose main head was in Moscow, with its tentacles dangerously extended on all the planet. The battle-field, therefore, was as much on the Cuban territory that as in any other point of the Earth where the enemy was present or tried to penetrate in order to enlarge its dominions. Without knowing it nor proposing it to myself, I converted myself into a universal soldier in service of whatever could contribute to cutting the monster's tentacles away, if possible beginning with my own fatherland. Preface to Los Caminos del Guerrero, 1994.
  16. ^ On Operation Gladio, see Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe, London, Franck Cass, 2005, ISBN 0-7146-8500-3 (a quick resume available here) and Various documents (Report by the SIFAR (Italian Military Secret Service) on Operation Gladio; US Field Manual; Report by Giulio Andreotti; Parliamentary Investigation into the Swiss Defense Ministry; various FOIA requests to the CIA; Parliamentary Investigation report in Belgium & in Italy... on the ETH Zurich website

[edit] Further reading

  • The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997, ISBN 0-316-51959-6)
  • Fascism (Oxford Readers) by Roger Griffin, 1995, ISBN 0-19-289249-5
  • Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985 by Richard C. Thurlow (Olympic Marketing Corp, 1987, ISBN 0-631-13618-5)
  • Fascism Today: A World Survey by Angelo Del Boca (Pantheon Books, 1st American edition, 1969)
  • Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe by Paul Hockenos (Routledge; Reprint edition, 1994, ISBN 0-415-91058-7)
  • The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today by Geoff Harris, (Edinburgh University Press; New edition, 1994, ISBN 0-7486-0466-9)
  • The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe by Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (Longman Publishing Group; 2nd edition, 1995, ISBN 0-582-23881-1)
  • The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis by Herbert Kitschelt (University of Michigan Press; Reprint edition, 1997, ISBN 0-472-08441-0)
  • Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe edited by Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition, 2002, ISBN 0-312-29593-6)

[edit] External links

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