Wednesday, February 24, 2010

ADM 1122, Ders Notları: Nazism and Fascism (Lecture 24.2.2010)

Although both fascism and nazism are very similar, they have slight differences seperating them from each other. Despite both of them being self-applied labels in the sense that both Benito Mussolini'si Italy and Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party called themselves fascists and nazis respectively and both of them sharing a similar ideal of national unity, the ideology of nazism has a slight nuance; unlike fascist ideology, nazis also believe in and act on racism. For nazis, politics involved -and for the most part consisted of- the struggle of races.

Despite this small difference, both ideologies are very close to each other in their opposition to other views and beliefs, specifically the popular ideologies of the 20th Century: liberalism, marxism, conservatism and democracy.

Nazis and fascists oppose liberalism because of the harm liberalism's focus on the individual inflicts on the idea of national unity. For these two ideologies nation is an entity itself and the individuals and individual groups within this entity can not exist if the nation was to act as one.

Their opposition to marxism also stands on similar ideals, namely the oppostion to individual groups; in this case, the classes. Marxist belief focuses on the elimination of the exploitation of the worker class by the bourgeoise, which means that it advocates class struggles as a means to achieve a just society and this condradicts the nazi and the fascist belief because of its disruption of national unity.

Their distance from conservatism, however, is based on different ideals. At first, the conservatist sides of the early 20th Century supported the rise of nazi and fascist powers for they assumed this would stop the spread of communism which threatened to harm the traditional authority. However, the nazis and the fascists wanted a shift, they wanted to mobilize and energize the people which deeply harmed the ideas of traditional authority and the historical continuity which the conservatists believe.

And their opposition to democracy is somewhat based on these as well, while democracy supports and values equality and individual voice, fascism and nazism deeply disagree with this, instead believing that some people are inferior to others and they should be -either politically or literally- eliminated.

So, the political system of nazism and fascism is obviously totalitarian and the leaders are authoritarian, no individuals, no classes and no equality, just a single, total national (or racist) entity.