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Populism and Fascism

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Populism and Fascism Populism and Fascism An evaluation of their similarities and differences MA Thesis in Philosophy University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Humanities Titus Vreeke Student number: 10171169 Supervisor: Dr. Robin Celikates Date: 04-08-2017 1 Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 3 1. Ideology ............................................................................................................................................. 8 1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 Populism and fascism as ideologies ........................................................................................................ 9 1.3 The Dichotomies of Populism and Fascism ........................................................................................... 13 1.4 Culture and Nationalism in Populism and Fascism ............................................................................... 19 1.5 The Form of the State and its Role in Security ...................................................................................... 22 1.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 25 2. Practice ................................................................................................................................................ 28 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 28 2.2 Organizational structure of populism and fascism and the importance of leadership ......................... 29 2.3 Propaganda and the use of media ........................................................................................................ 35 2.4 Role of Emotion ..................................................................................................................................... 40 2.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 43 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 45 Literature ................................................................................................................................................. 48 2 Introduction In recent years, populism has been a popular and highly debated topic. With the electoral successes of populist leaders and parties all around the world, the media as well as the scientific community have jumped on the subject to analyse its role and place in Western democracies. In some of the discussions in the media, populism is being discussed alongside fascism. The opinions on the subject are diverse. Some of the articles highlight similarities between populism and fascism, arguing that populism is a new, modern form of fascism. A column in the Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ (Huseman 2017) for example, warns for the extreme polarization in politics. The author argues that this polarization is partially caused by the rising populist parties and compares this situation to the 1930’s, when the European fascist leaders started their rise to power. Another Dutch article in newspaper ‘Vrij Nederland’ (Broer 2017) points out several similarities between populism and fascism, using observations on fascism from an article by political scientist Robert Paxton (2004). The discussed similarities between populism and fascism include the creation of a common enemy, taking on the role of the victim and emphasizing a commonly felt social crisis. There are however, also plenty of newspaper articles and columns that defend populism from these accusations and attempt to correct them by pointing out differences between populism and fascism. An article in another Dutch Newspaper ‘Trouw’ (Klijn and Te Sla 2010), states that the common assimilation of populism and fascism distorts the discussion surrounding populism by focusing on the wrong attributes of populism. Populism, the authors claim, is much less extreme than fascism and has no true ideological standpoints as fascism is known to have. We would be better off discussing populism and its standpoints separately rather than merely making comparisons with the extremist ideology of fascism. I do not agree with this last statement. I believe the debate that is stirred up by these comparisons is an interesting one and it is why I explore it more thoroughly in this thesis. The various authors seem to prioritize and interpret features of populism and fascism differently. There is no denying that there are some characteristics of contemporary populism that are reminiscent of fascism, but are they the same? Or are they so minutely similar that a comparison quickly becomes an exaggeration of the similarities. In this paper I investigate populism and fascism alongside each other. Ultimately, I aim to distil whether an assimilation of populism to fascism is justifiable and on what features this assimilation holds or falters. I discuss the ideologies over the course of two chapters that address the ideology and practice of populism and fascism. I will introduce the specific contents of the chapters in detail in the respective introductions but I will start with a more general overview here. 3 The first chapter contains a discussion of the ideological differences and similarities between populism and fascism. Both ideologies are difficult to typify as ideologies for their own separate reasons. Populism is generally understood as a ‘thin-centred ideology’ (Mudde 2004: 544), which means that the ideology does not carry a complete idea of how society should be organized. Instead populism relies on an attachment to other, full ideologies such as conservatism, liberalism or socialism (Freeden 1998: 752) to answer these questions. The result of this is that populism comes in many forms, depending on what ideology it attaches to. Nevertheless, the populist ‘shell’ has very distinct ideological properties which lend themselves to a comparison with fascism. Fascism as an ideology is somewhat problematic because of the strong historical connotations attached to the ideology. Although fascism should be understood as a full ideology (Eatwell 2013, Griffin 1991, Pinto 1986, Sternhell 2008), there is little literature that discusses the ideology as a concept detached from the historical reality. Most literature discusses the concept in tandem with German and Italian fascism, thereby clouding the general features of fascist ideology with details that might be relevant to the specific example, but not necessarily for fascism in general. For these two reasons, the difference in ‘fullness’ of the ideology and the historical connotations of fascism, populism and fascism as ideologies are not as straightforward to compare as it might seem. To work around the difficulties of populism being such a diverse ideology, I focus my discussion on Western European right-wing populism. Western Europe is starting to develop a rich tradition of right- wing populism as virtually all Western European countries are home to a successful populist party or movement (Johansson 2014). Furthermore, most of these parties share a great deal of features. They generally rely on strong leadership, they are anti-immigration and they oppose globalizing trends and institutions like the European Union. By centring the ideological discussion on European populism I am able to provide a clear, concise overview of a common populist ideology. However, this means that my conclusions are not universally applicable. Although some of my observations regarding populism address general features of the ideology and could be indicative of more general trends I will not attempt to generalize my conclusions. My research is centred around West European populism specifically and as such I have no grounds to make claims beyond that scope. The common practice of relating fascism to history when discussing the ideology, is difficult to circumvent. I want to clarify that I do not wish to write a historical account of populism and fascism, nor relate them historically. I compare the ideologies without considering their genesis or historical relation. I therefore distil from the literatures those features of fascism that are commonly found in all or most fascist regimes that have existed, and that have come to be understood as general features of fascism. Nevertheless, I will at times make use of historical examples to clarify the features I describe. On the same 4 note, I will make references to recent events and debates surrounding populists to strengthen my arguments. It must be clear however, that the goal of these examples is not to define the ideologies, but to indicate and visualize their general features. The first chapter consists of three sections. I will introduce them shortly here, a more detailed overview can be found in the introduction of the chapter. The first section contains a general description of populism and fascism as ideologies. I introduce the key components of the ideologies and I discuss the important concepts that I will use throughout the rest of the chapter. In the second section I address the importance of dichotomies
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