The Role of Fascist Movements

Abstract

Did fascism play a crucial role in the interwar crisis of democratic regimes in Europe? For a long period, almost all historians and political scientists agreed on a positive answer to this question. Along with communism, fascism was usually seen as the major challenge for democracy during the twentieth century both in ideological and practical terms. As a consequence of the cultural reaction to the Enlightenment philosophy which had laid the foundations of liberal policies and above all as a direct product of the new nationalist and communitarian mentality born in the trenches in the course of the First World War and rapidly diffused through wide sectors of middle classes, its deep influence on European society and politics between 1919 and 1939 raised few doubts. Of course, that influence had not always been direct: nobody ignored the fact that, despite the multiplication of fascist movements all over the continent and in many other countries worldwide (Larsen 2002) especially during the thirties, only two of these had risen to power, the National Fascist Party (PNF) in Italy and the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) in Germany, and a third one, the Spanish Falange, merged within Franco’s Movimiento, had been formally appointed as the official political structure of an authoritarian regime. Nevertheless, the belief was widespread that, even if they had not succeeded in passing to the stage of governmental participation, many other fascist parties and movements had played a significant role within the crisis of democratic institutions in their own countries, so justifying the attitude of those scholars who described that historical period in terms of ‘fascist era’.