A fascist Trojan horse: Maurice Bardegraceche, fascism and authoritarian socialism

Abstract

Maurice Bardegraveche was an important neo-fascist writer whose ideas derived from those of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Robert Brasillach. Bardegraveche was a neo-fascist of the pen, and he used his journal Deacutefense de lposOccident to provide a link between fascism and neo-fascism in an attempt to resurrect the 'purity' of fascism in his post-1945 critique of West European history. Barnes addresses how Bardegraveche utilized a concept of 'authoritarian fascism', present in some old fascisms, to rehabilitate Europe. Bardegraveche commenced by analysing the faults of pre-war fascism and located many of his ideas in the work of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. He wanted to replace liberal democracy with an organic regime, both social and economic, but within a hierarchical framework. He opposed bourgeois society and advocated a corporate state of national solidarity. However, he believed that any new civilization must be aesthetic and move away from an insect-like industrialism in order to achieve a society based on peasant virtues. Bardèche appeared to be a utopian fascist, an anti-modernist. Barnes analyses his attack on capitalism, its feudalistic nature and the power of money, which he thought could only be opposed by fascist socialism and an ordered society. Bardèche located his variant of socialism within the context of the fascist philosophies of Drieu la Rochelle, Benito Mussolini, Jos Antonio, Corneliu Codreanu, Oswald Mosley and Jacques Doriot. He condemned political and economic liberalism and the class struggle. He wanted national capital to be protected and thought economic dependence relied on national independence. He believed economic power was held in too few hands and advocated a corporate state. Bardegraveche proves, essentially, to be a utopian, transcendental fascist.