Nobody Knows Anything About Fascism

As I wrote in this space a few weeks ago, Donald Trump is no fascist, but there are many pundits who are calling him that.  Their efforts, I think, tells us more about their ignorance of fascism than about Trump and his followers.

The latest to show off his ignorance is Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, writing in the Washington Post.  Fascist movements, according to Kagan, are incoherent mobocracies with strong leaders.  They had, he claims,

no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation.

It’s fanciful to call Nazism a bundle of contradictions when, a decade before coming to power, it had a detailed diagnosis of what ailed Germany, and how to fix it.  It was called Mein Kampf, and it provided the basis for the Third Reich.  Kagan apparently doesn’t consider the Nazis’ racist doctrines to be explicit either, even though they were the basis for very detailed legislation, indoctrination in all the schools and universities, military operations, and eventually the Holocaust.  Nazism was a great deal more than one-man rule by a charismatic leader.

As for Italian fascism, it is perverse to call it anti-clerical.  In fact, Mussolini greatly empowered the Catholic Church, required religious education in the schools, and granted enhanced autonomy to the Holy See.  “Successful fascism” in Italy was very much about policies.  That’s why it was so greatly admired throughout the West, including scores of American liberals, from FDR to Walter Lippmann.  There’s a substantial quantity of scholarly work on this subject, starting with John Diggins’ analysis of  American support for Italian fascism.

For Mr. Kagan (surprisingly and disappointingly praised by Bret Stephens), fascism is little more than any political movement led by a charismatic strong man.  That’s ahistorical and vague, so vague that it applies to movements of both political extremes.  On Mr. Kagan’s account, Communists from Che to Mao qualify for the “fascist” label, a serious distortion.  Indeed the Soviet show trials make a cameo appearance in his op-ed as an example of what fascism can do.  Imagine!

Finally, Mr. Kagan doesn’t discuss the revolutionary aspect of fascism.  Italian fascists claimed to be able to unleash the creative powers of a “new fascist man,” while the Nazis advocated the superiority of the Aryan race.  Neither concept is to be found anywhere in Trumpism either in theory or practice.

Being a strong leader isn’t enough to make you a fascist.

That men so smart and cultured as Kagan and Stephens can buy into such a misleading “analysis” testifies, one more time, to the failure of our educational system.  As Ben Rhodes said in his true confessions, the current breed of journalist is very young and really doesn’t know much of anything.  Robert Kagan is a bit older and a lot better educated than the White House reporters, but when it comes to fascism he shares their ignorance.

Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.