Fascism - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2024

Anti-liberalism is often highlighted as central to interpretations of fascism. This article discusses the existence of a liberal-fascist current in Italian Fascism. Very active during the first years of the Fascist government, this current was expressed in the pages of the journals La Nuova Politica Liberale, which brought together disciples of the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, and Critica Fascista, an organ of the revisionists led by Giuseppe Bottai. Anti-individualist, anti-naturalist and anti-democratic, this current asserted that the rights of the nation preceded individual rights, that freedom would not exist in a supposed state of nature and would be the creation of a political society. It rejected the opposition between freedom and authority, stating that only a strong and orderly state would allow freedom to occur. Although the existence of a liberal-fascist current does not impugn the predominantly anti-liberal character of Italian Fascism, bringing it to light contributes to a more complex assessment of Italian Fascism, underlining the existence of different intellectual currents, ideological clashes, and political antagonism within the movement.

This article examines the Nazi seizure of power from the perspective of Indian communist Saumyendranath Tagore (1901–1974). In the Weimar era, Berlin developed into a hub of transnational anti-colonial activism. After seizing power, the Nazis forcibly dismantled these networks and terrorized several leading members of the Indian diasporic community. In April 1933, Tagore was arrested for allegedly planning the assassination of Hitler. After fleeing Berlin, Tagore publicly urged progressive forces from around the world to confront the Nazi menace. Like many global anti-fascists, he argued that anti-colonialism encompassed anti-Nazism (as well as vice-versa). Hitler, Tagore argued, could not fathom the emancipation of India, nor the collapse of European imperial hegemony. He would sooner preside over a German Raj than support the self-determination of India.

This article examines the published literatures of the British proto-fascist group the British Fascists (BF). It argues that, while failing to develop a ‘fully-fledged’ fascist ideology, the organisation’s materials fostered an emotionology, or instructions on how to think and feel, that contained some fascist qualities, especially profound anxieties over the nation facing an existential threat. It draws on conceptual framings from the history of emotions to assess how the BF promoted a variegated range of views, united by deep worry and fear over Communism and profound concern over its potential to influence the future of Britain and its empire, as well as corrupting a future generation through influencing the minds of children. While the BF’s solutions often lacked the fully palingenetic vision typical of fascists, the BF helped to foster a fascist-style emotional refuge and developed this through ideological instruction as well as providing social opportunities and in principle empowerment. Finally, it concludes that the study of such emotionologies allows for deeper consideration of the overlapping political spaces of the right and processes of fascistisation.

Contemporary fascism is an understudied phenomenon in Latin America. As a contribution to this understudied area, this article analyzes the evolution of fascist thought in Peru from its interwar history to the twenty-first century. Following Roger Griffin’s influential ‘new consensus’ approach to fascism studies based on a fascist minimum, this study explores Peruvian fascism and will argue that fascism developed new expressions in the years after 1945. It will develop the terms ‘neo-fascism’ and ‘post-fascism’, based on Griffin’s fascist minimum, to clarify the nature of the fascist movements to be analyzed. It will conclude that historically Peruvian fascism was exemplified by the Partido Unión Revolucionaria [Revolutionary Union Party], while in the postwar period, it took two parallel directions: the uniquely Peruvian neo-fascism of Acción Legionaria [Legionary Action] and the ethnocacerist or Andean post-fascism of Antauro Humala.