Van: orwell.ru
, oorspronkelijk verschenen in de Tribune, 1944, door George Orwell |
What is Fascism?
Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is:
‘What is Fascism?’
One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question
of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to
‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to
define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian
régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states
differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.
It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework,
and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as
Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently
warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its
economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly
this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships.
Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of
Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies,
reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to
determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we
apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know
broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the
last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there
is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of
any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years.
Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of
what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of
Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the
following bodies of people:
Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be
subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be
indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic
and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples
are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key
phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.
Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn)
maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic
journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in
the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle
by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the
Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists.
This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian
Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.
Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter
Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between
the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are
aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same
people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a
‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and
Trotskyists.
Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky's own
organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was
widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their
ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all
factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P.
Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally
regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;
War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not
only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with
pro-Fascist feeling.
Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that
British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’
to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People's
Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was
a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist
organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to
equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly
always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’.
Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered
conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a
sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both
denounced as Fascist phenomena.
Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but
this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to
disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the
Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all
described as Fascist but not by the same people.
* * *
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely
meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in
print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal
punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee,
Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth
Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin
with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to
point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and
those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’,
some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more
justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word
‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it.
By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous,
arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the
relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would
accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition
as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a
clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not
yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is
impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which
neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any
colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word
with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it
to the level of a swearword.
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