“Never Again” is Now: Elements of Fascism in Hitler’s Nazi Regime and Modern-Day Resistance to Fascist Ideology
Abstract
Fascism is a political ideology most prominent in collective memory through the lens of Nazi Germany and is used most commonly today as a blanket descriptor of one who stands in the way of social progress. The most sinister elements of fascism include objectively deplorable ideals such as racism and colonization, which derive from the components of fascism’s predecessor, totalitarianism. History has seen this pattern repeat time and again- up to and including the modern day, despite collective promises made by society to one another and themselves to “never forget” the atrocities that have resulted from regimes such as Hitler’s Nazi Germany. This begs the question, from historians and humanitarians alike: How on Earth does this keep happening? This research essay will seek to educate readers in identifying the elements of fascism in political doctrines by using journal articles, monographs, and historical documents to uncover the history of fascism, how it works, how it has infiltrated societies throughout history, and the different ways in which it rears its ugly head in modern society. Moreover, using political doctrines, sources from current events, and combative techniques presented by Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, this essay will serve as an attempt to understand how to identify and resist fascist elements within sociopolitical structures in an attempt to prevent the notoriously gruesome and devastating byproducts of fascism, such as the Holocaust, from ever happening again.
Introduction
Living under a fascist regime is, for most modern participants in democracy, a concept so far removed that it seems impossible. Living as the target of a fascist regime, an experience remembered in instances such as the Holocaust to have been utterly unimaginable, is an experience even less relatable to many citizens of the modern democratic world. It is this commonly held sense of false security, lending to disbelief that anything like the Holocaust could happen again here and now, that poses the largest threat to modern democracy. Fascism is an insidious entity that must be actively and continuously rejected, for it is in the wake of naive complicity that the fascist regime thrives. Understanding how to properly identify and effectively diffuse the societal elements that comprise a fascist regime demands an extensive understanding of how the ideology came to be, how it has changed, how it has been implemented in practice, and the avenues through which it can permeate a society. This research essay will dissect fascism into its individual ideological elements, primarily within the context of Nazi Germany and supplemented with research into Benito Mussolini’s fascist political doctrine. Using this foundation of understanding to incorporate lessons in active resistance of fascism presented by Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, this essay will seek to understand how on Earth fascism is continuously allowed to infect societal consciousness and whether or not its permanent eradication is possible.
Origins of Nazi Fascism
To ensure that efforts to eradicate fascism in modern society are effective, one must first fully understand the history, historiography, and inner workings of this political ideology- to which end the study of fascism’s rise to power in Nazi Germany is crucial. In her book titled The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt follows the history of totalitarianism ideology, the predecessor to fascism, to further understand how Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime was able to so successfully dominate German society. She divides her book into three parts, each corresponding with the chronology of totalitarianism’s evolution into the Nazi regime: first antisemitism, then imperialism, and ending with totalitarianism. In Part One: Antisemitism, Arendt rejects the idea that antisemitism became the hallmark of the Nazi regime due to chance, by any supposed predisposition of humanity to adopt antisemitism, as the result of jingoistic sentiments in German society extending past national solidarity into racial superiority, or even by the personal design of Hitler. She instead traces the origins of antisemitism in Europe back to the French Revolution, arguing that the tendency of European Jews to work as financiers after the Middle Ages, the resulting attachment of European Jewry to the nation-state, and the subsequent failure of Jews to assimilate into German society were the true contributors in cultivating the stigmatic lens of “other”-ness through which society already viewed Jewish people in an economically struggling, post- WWI Germany. Arendt thus concludes through this historical analysis that the Nazi regime did not popularize antisemitism in Germany- it is more accurate to assert, rather, that the pre-existing antisemitism in Germany helped popularize the Nazi regime.
According to Arendt’s research, “antisemitism grew in proportion as traditional nationalism declined, and reached its climax at the exact moment where the European system of nation-states and its precarious balance of power crashed” (Arendt 3). This process is explained in Part Two: Imperialism, where Arendt describes how antisemitism, the “pan-” movements of Pan- Germanism and Pan- Slavism, and the newly- emerging concept of bureaucracy were discovered to be “new devices for political organization and rule over foreign peoples” (Arendt 185) without conquest or assimilation. The following totalitarian movements, detailed by Arendt in Part Three: Totalitarianism, “[followed] closely in the footsteps of the pan-movements they used for propaganda purposes” and “eventually were led to discard the people” (Arendt 265-6). Arendt argues that the illusions of democracy revealed to Germans in the wake of successful totalitarianism movements during the breakdown of the class system in Europe resulted in the “atomization” of German society. The subjects of this process were stripped of their individuality and assimilated instead into the German collective identity, leaving them psychologically isolated and extremely susceptible to Nazi propaganda, because Hitler believed that “the sacrifice of the individual existence is necessary in order to assure the conservation of the race” (Hiter ch. IV). The culmination of all of these societal factors, Arendt argues, fostered the perfect environment for fascism to rise to power in Germany through Hitler.
Arendt’s analysis of the origins of Hitler’s fascist regime in Germany identifies societal elements such as antisemitism that form the optimal environment for breeding fascist ideology when operating in unison, and demonstrates how these totalitarian elements can be rationalized to a population through propaganda and utilized under fascist political leadership to form the foundations for a fascist government. This historical foundation is essential when studying fascism as a whole, and allows for informed analysis of current events when seeking to identify elements of fascist ideology in modern society.
The Many “Faces” of Fascism
Along with an understanding of the history of fascism, providing a well-rounded framework for recognizing fascism in the modern day requires knowledge of every different avenue in which fascism could rear its head. To fully grasp this concept, a familiarity with historical examples of fascism is essential. The cross-examination of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Benito Mussolini’s Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism offer intimate insights into the minds of two of the most infamous fascists in history and reveal multiple different historical “faces” of fascism, as Alan Cassels phrases it in his 1969 article for The Canadian Historical Association titled Janus: The Two Faces of Fascism. Understanding Cassels’s argument that Nazi fascism is not the only face the ideology rears in practice, though surely the most infamous case of fascism in modern memory, is imperative to the understanding of fascism as a whole.
Cassels describes Nazi fascism as “a revulsion of the modern world and a total rejection of all its values” (Cassels 167), a sentiment reflected continuously throughout Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The “atomization” of German society was crucial to Hitler’s broader plan “to abolish the liberal concept of the individual and the Marxian concept of humanity, and to substitute them for the Volk community, rooted in the soil and united by the bond of its common blood’” (Casseld 167-8), thus bringing Hitler’s vision for a racially “pure” German society. The “blood and soil” trope references Hitler’s belief that “the most essential condition for the establishment and maintenance of a State is a certain feeling of solidarity, wounded in an identity of character and race and in a resolute readiness to defend these at all costs” (Hitler ch. IV). The second volume of Mein Kampf, in which Hitler uses fascist elements of antisemitism, colonialism, and nationalism to call for both the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Germany and the conquering and annexing of Eastern borderlands into Germany, expands on this colonial belief. To achieve this overarching goal of the Nazi regime, Hitler put forth in Mein Kampf a plan to isolate Germans from both the Jewish population and their fellow German, thus creating the path of least resistance towards satisfying Hitler’s antisemitic and colonial desires. Hitler’s iteration of fascism is therefore argued by Cassels to have “constituted, not only the denial of past social progress but also the denial of the intellectual capacity of the human species ever to achieve growth; in short, a denial of even the possibility of progress” (Cassels 169).
Mussolini’s Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism takes a fundamentally different approach to fascism than Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Though Mussolini did share Hitler’s inclination towards extreme nationalism, he describes fascism in his doctrine as follows:
“According to fascism, government is not so much a thing to be expressed in territorial or military terms as in terms of morality and the spirit. It must be thought of as an Empire- that is to say, a nation which directly or indirectly rules other nations, without the need for conquering a single square yard of territory” (Mussolini 25).
Mussolini’s political doctrine, unlike Hitler’s, de-emphasizes the role of forceful militarization in fascist expansion and champions the control of outside territories using the power of international influence. Cassels uses his article to point out further inconsistencies between the fascist doctrines, comparing the “nihilistic and backwards-looking” (Cassels 175) regime of Hitler to that of Mussolini’s corporatism-reliant style of fascism in Italy to demonstrate the inverse relationship between the advancement of a society and the humanity of its fascist regime. He concludes his article by assessing the levels of national industrialization into which both iterations of fascism were born, with the industrialized society of Nazi Germany reflecting a more radical rejection of power structures and the underindustrialized society of Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy “assuming a more transcendental, forward-looking stance” (Cassels 184) resembling traditional conservatism. His cross-analysis demonstrates that even a relatively palatable iteration of fascism that “advertise[s] itself as the heir to… scientific rationalism, and as a modern movement with a progressive social philosophy” (Cassels 172) is fascism nonetheless- a revelation that coincides with Arendt’s assertion that “ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being. They are historical, concerned with becoming and perishing, with the rise and fall of cultures, even if they try to explain history by some ‘law of nature’” (Arendt 469).
The question of how to diffuse fascist elements in modern society becomes convoluted further when discussing principles deemed in the modern day as “fascist” that do not fit the theological definition or follow the historical precedent characterizing true elements of fascist ideology. Recognizing “fascism” as a term that has evolved in the modern day into a descriptor for “whatever the speaker finds viscerally repulsive,” and that this reduction “trumps any sober attempt at persuasion or dissuasion” (Gottfried ch. 7) is a thought-provoking argument presented by Paul Gottfried in his 2015 monograph Fascism: The Career of a Concept. On the surface, this pursuit seems noble- equating the term to ideological principles that are not fascist by theological or historiographic definition is counterproductive to the pursuit of eradicating fascism in that it both cheapens the true meaning of the term and derails attention from resistance to legitimate elements of fascism. However, Gottfried’s overarching thesis that the term “fascism” has been convoluted in the modern day extends into a thinly veiled attempt to argue that fascism and Hitler’s Nazi regime have been wrongfully villainized by “presentist prejudice and partisan enthusiasms” (Gottfried ch. 7), which directly undermines the integrity of his thesis defense. Furthermore, the argument that Gottfried’s underlying purpose in this monograph is to manufacture sympathy with the Nazi party is solidified not only through his outright exclusion of Hitler’s regime in his proposed definition of fascism but through analysis of his verbiage surrounding the fascist party. The final section of his monograph, for instance, opens with the claim that, “in contrast to the backward-looking perspective, however ambivalently expressed, of generic fascism, Nazism exhibited a modernizing thrust” (Gottfried A Final Loose End), which showcases perfectly the apologetic tone Gottfried assumes in this monograph towards the Nazi regime and reiterates his opinion that Hitler’s Nazi regime was not fascist. The arguments he presents against the indiscriminate labeling of any reprehensible ideological element in modern society as an element of fascism- the fanatical face of fascism, so to speak- are undoubtedly beneficial to a nuanced understanding and effective application of modern resistance to fascism. The monograph itself, however, in which Gottfried callously defines the denunciation of Hitler’s fascist and genocidal policies as “the crusade against the national past that [Germany]’s government, educational institutions, and media are all engaged in pursuing” (Gottfried A Final Loose End), stretches beyond this justifiable pursuit and serves instead in this essay as the first example of fascist elements infiltrating the consciousness of modern society under the guise of progress.
Fascism Today
Effective resistance to elements of fascism in modern society, which relies on the ability to recognize fascism in all its iterations, is contingent on understanding the covert strategies through which fascist ideology infiltrates a modernized people. To this end, two forms of mass manipulation have been particularly successful when employed in unison in persuading members of modern society of fascism’s righteousness: fearmongering and propaganda. This tactic of perpetuating the conflation of antifascist resistance and societal regression is exemplified in Dialects of Freedom: Resistance to Fascism, a 1974 article published in an academic journal titled “Patterns of Prejudice” that discusses the debate surrounding free speech on college campuses that was raised during a conference held by the National Union of Students in Liverpool on 4 April 1974. This conference, which resulted in a vote “to take whatever measures seemed necessary, including disruption of meetings, to prevent any members of racialist or fascist organizations from speaking in colleges” (Dialects of Freedom 12), highlighted the disparity between those present who “pointed out the ‘contradiction’ of ‘using fascist tactics to make people more aware of how wicked the fascists are’” (Dialects of Freedom 15) and those present who argued that modern society “‘cannot afford acute pangs of liberal conscience about denying the racist his right to hate in public’” (Dialects of Freedom 14). Those who argued the former inadvertently demonstrated the fascist tactic of fearmongering by equating resistance against harmful rhetoric to an infringement on the members of democratic society’s right to free speech.
Fearmongering is a fascist tactic that harkens back to the dehumanization of European Jewry after the French Revolution and relies both historically and presently on propaganda to insidiously permeate society. Jason Stanly, a professor of philosophy at Yale University, speaks to the relationship between fearmongering and propaganda and how these fascist tactics are currently making a reappearance in his 2022 interview with PBS- one year to the day after the 6 January 2021 insurrection against the U.S. Capital:
“Fascist politics works by saying there’s a nefarious internal enemy who’s working in tandem with the minorities to overthrow the government and control your children… You put people in incredibly anxious and fearful state where they’re looking for some kind of simple explanation. And a conspiracy theory is a kind of very simple explanation that people can grab onto” (“America is Now in Fascism’s Legal Phase.”).
Analysis of the implications of this statement in regards to both Nazi Germany and modern society reveals a process undertaken habitually by fascist governmental bodies of otherising minorities in response to socioeconomic upheaval and using propaganda to both sew seeds of fear in society of this monolithic “other” and point to fascist ideological principles as the solution to this artificial problem. The careful packaging of fascist ideology as an ailment to the fabricated threat of societal regression at the hands of the “other” is a deliberate aggression- the violence enacted by first dehumanizing and then vilifying minorities is not simply a byproduct of this tactic but the very intention. Hitler himself had “no uncertainty about the form and employment of war propaganda as a weapon; for it is nothing but a weapon, and indeed a most terrifying weapon in the hands of those who know how to use it” (Hitler ch. VI). Navigating propaganda in modern society in order to properly identify and effectively resist elements of fascism, therefore, is a constant endeavor, and the mass acceptance of harmful misinformation by a thoroughly propagandized society presses even further the need for informed and vocal resistance.
Modern Resistance
Knowing how to identify fascist elements in modern society is only half the battle- the other half lies in knowing how to resist. Ardent proposes in her book the idea that reconciliation begins with an understanding of the causality of totalitarian regimes, distinguishing causality from origin through her argument that elements of totalitarianism came together under the broader movements of fascist leaders such as Hitler. Breaking up modern fascism into its fundamental elements, therefore, is the first step in the attempt to dismantle its presence in modern society. In his book titled On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder presents twenty lessons in diffusing elements of fascist ideology, of which the most relevant to this discussion are his lessons on the importance of language and listening for dangerous words, diversifying one’s social circle, and believing in truth.
Paying attention to verbiage and being able to identify when language incites violence is critical to resisting fascism in modern society. As demonstrated in Gottfried’s Fascism: The Career of a Concept, how an argument is worded communicates just as much about the author’s purpose as the argument itself- especially when an argument is worded to reframe brutal fascist regimes such as Hitler’s as “an attempt to approximate the liberal concept of the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (Gottfried ch. 6). Dangerous language oftentimes accompanies insidious verbiage to further push a fascist agenda, as is exemplified by Hitler in Mein Kampf through his reference to “the whole Jewish gang of public pests” (Hitler ch. V) in justifying his proposed ethnic cleansing campaign. To combat purposefully misleading and often violent language in practice, Snyder suggests reading books that “[enliven] our ability to think about ambiguous situations and judge the intentions of others” (Snyder 62) and making a point to “be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary” (99). The implementation of these practices into everyday life allows those resisting fascism to not only recognize insidious verbiage and violent language for themselves but to intervene on behalf of those subjected to said language by outwardly denouncing harmful rhetoric.
Along with being well-read, those resisting fascism in modern society must also, according to Snyder, make intentional efforts to connect with peers from diverse backgrounds:
“Having a passport is not a sign of surrender. On the contrary, it is liberating, since it creates the possibility of new experiences. It allows us to see how other people, sometimes wiser than we, react to similar problems. Since so much of what is happening right now is familiar to the rest of the world or from recent history, we must observe and listen” (Snyder 98).
Snyder also speaks to the importance of simply being kind to others when resisting fascism, arguing that “a smile, a handshake, or a word of greeting- banal gestures in a normal situation- [takes] on great significance” (Snyder 82) amidst the impossibility of knowing who feels threatened in a society. Making an effort to connect to and learn from peers who hail from diverse cultures and backgrounds directly combats fascism because these actions work to humanize what could otherwise be perceived by one who is unacclimated as an alien culture, which allows for feelings of empathy and acceptance rather than fear.
When a society prioritizes the state of its nation over the state of its citizens, as is shown through the study of Hitler’s colonial perversions in Mein Kampf, people die. Those who wish to end this vicious cycle must, using historical context to determine modern action, be deliberate and unrelenting in their pursuit and defense of the truth. This is insurmountably important when attempting to eradicate elements of fascism in modern society and prevent a fascist renaissance. Fascist regimes of history “despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism” (Snyder 71). While critiquing institutions such as news outlets is a worthwhile pursuit- one of Snyder’s lessons involves holding public institutions to their respective codes of ethics, in fact- it is a submission to fascism to “renounce the difference between what [an individual wants] to hear and what is actually the case” (Snyder 66). When the truth is clear and uninhibited by elements of fascism such as antisemitism, colonialism, and extreme nationalism, it is all the less difficult to recognize and outwardly resist when fascist ideology attempts to infiltrate society.
“Post-truth is pre-fascism” (Snyder 71).
Conclusion
“After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too.” - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
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Fascism is not a singular enemy that can be defeated outright- it is more comparable, rather, to a disease. Fascism targets societies already afflicted with critical elements such as antisemitism and bureaucracy, silently brings these elements together to crystalize under one political agenda or figurehead, and slowly infects society through first subtle and then outright forceful methods. Using Arendt’s analysis of the nature of fascism as well as Snyder’s lessons for resisting fascism in modern society, with historical context given by cross-examining Hitler’s and Mussolini’s political doctrines, it can be reasonably argued that the most effective way to combat fascism in modern society is to practice radical kindness.
Above all else, this political ideology is characterized by incredible loneliness. The “atomization” of German society on which depended the success of Hitler’s fascist regime required thorough psychological isolation of the individual. Painting European Jewry as a monolithic “other” to enable the smooth passage of fear into the hearts of Germans further isolated citizens of Germany, Jewish and Aryan alike, by driving them away from each other. Fascism itself is a lonely institution, as each of the elements of a fascist regime relies on turning man against his fellow man in one way or another. Modern society, according to Arendt, is therefore especially susceptible to the resurgence of fascist ideology:
“What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century” (Arendt 478).
This political ideology is inherently suicidal in that, characterized by loneliness at every turn, fascism’s disregard for the humanity of others is an outward extension of its disregard for the humanity within itself. It destroys everything in its path first through inconspicuous means, then through unapologetic brutality, until there is nothing left to destroy but itself. Given the ideology’s disregard for even its own well-being, this is the inevitable outcome of every fascist regime- a particularly ironic truth to keep in mind when reading the above quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. This is not to say that fascism will wipe itself out, however; rather, this is an observation of the cyclical duality within fascism that has allowed its survival and demands constant resistance: the self-destructive nature of individual fascist regimes, and the self-preserving nature of fascist ideology as a whole. As many times as the fascist regime dies by its own hand, it will emerge again in the right societal conditions if left unchecked; therefore, the eradication of this political ideology cannot happen once and for all but instead requires the cumulation of individual, recurring battles against fascist societal elements such as antisemitism, colonialism, and nationalism. The application of resistance strategies to dissemble these fascist elements in society at the moment of their conception will prevent them from coming together under fascist leadership to crystalize into a regime, and the continuation of these resistance strategies after the fact will prevent fascist ideology from seeping into modern society in the first place; without vigilant upkeep, all is lost. In short, the eradication effort must become a habit.
When asking if the dismantling and prevention of fascism is an attainable goal, a quote from George Orwell used in Dialects of Freedom: Resistance to Fascism comes to mind. In attempting to answer this very question, Orwell was quoted as having said that “the fascists always won in the end because [one] always had to become like them in order to defeat them” (Dialects of Freedom 15). The conclusions reached in this essay inherently and categorically reject this sentiment. Each of the combative strategies outlined by Snyder in response to fascism in modern society hinges on a foundation of kindness, whether it be connecting with people from a broad scope of demographics, outwardly defending those whom society has “other”-ized, or simply taking the time to smile at a neighbor. Furthermore, these actions all directly expel the sense of loneliness in society that is necessary for the success of fascist regimes. The most effective strategy for diffusing the elements of fascism in modern society, all of which are born of hate, is to intentionally, consistently, and outwardly practice love. Therefore, it can be logically concluded that, despite both Orwell’s sentiments and the seemingly insurmountable task at hand, the only way to ensure the complete and permanent eradication of fascism and work to heal the scars left on the human condition by fascists is to become nothing like one.
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Works Cited
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Gottfried, Paul. Fascism: The Career of a Concept. DeKalb. IL: Northern Illinois University
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Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945, Mein Kampf. Translated into English by James Murphy. London:
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