Clerical fascism
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Clerical fascism (also clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.
History
The term clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) emerged in the early 1920s in the
Sturzo made a distinction between the "filofascists", who left the Catholic PPI in 1921 and 1922, and the "clerical fascists" who stayed in the party after the March on Rome, advocating collaboration with the fascist government.[3] Eventually, the latter group converged with Mussolini, abandoning the PPI in 1923 and creating the Centro Nazionale Italiano. The PPI was disbanded by the fascist régime in 1926.[4]
The term has since been used by scholars seeking to contrast authoritarian-conservative clerical fascism with more radical variants.[5] Christian fascists focus on internal religious politics, such as passing laws and regulations that reflect their view of Christianity. Radicalized forms of Christian fascism or clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) were emerging on the far-right of the political spectrum in some European countries during the interwar period in the first half of the 20th century.[6]
Fascist Italy
In 1870, the newly formed
In March 1929, a nationwide plebiscite was held to publicly endorse the Lateran Treaty. Opponents were intimidated by the fascist regime: the Catholic Action organisation (Azione Cattolica) and Mussolini claimed that "no" votes were of those "few ill-advised anti-clericals who refuse to accept the Lateran Pacts".[9] Nearly nine million Italians voted, or 90 per cent of the registered electorate, and only 136,000 voted "no".[10]
Almost immediately after the signing of the Treaty, relations between Mussolini and the Church soured again. Mussolini "referred to Catholicism as, in origin, a minor sect that had spread beyond Palestine only because grafted onto the organization of the Roman empire."
In 1938, the
Despite Mussolini's close alliance with Hitler's Germany, Italy did not fully adopt Nazism's genocidal ideology towards the Jews. The Nazis were frustrated by the Italian authorities' refusal to co-operate in the round-ups of Jews, and no Jews were deported prior to the formation of the Italian Social Republic following the Armistice of Cassibile.[17] In the Italian-occupied Independent State of Croatia, German envoy Siegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism.[18] As anti-Axis feeling grew in Italy, the use of Vatican Radio to broadcast papal disapproval of race murder and anti-Semitism angered the Nazis.[19] When Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943, the Germans moved to occupy Italy and commenced a round-up of Jews.
Around 4% of
Examples of clerical fascism
Examples of political movements which incorporate certain elements of clerical fascism into their ideologies include:
- the Austrian Catholic Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg.
- the Belgian Catholic.
- the Brazilian Catholic Plínio Salgado.
- the Nationalist Liberation Alliance in Argentina led by Juan Queraltó .
- the körtti) Vihtori Kosola and Vilho Annala respectively. Pastor Elias Simojoki led the IKL's youth organization the Blue-and-Blacks.
- the German Christians of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany led by Ludwig Müller which attempted but failed to unify German Protestants during the Kirchenkampf.
- Metaxism and the 4th of August Regime in Greece which was led by Ioannis Metaxas and heavily supported the Greek Orthodox Church.
- the Mexican Catholic José Antonio Urquiza before his assassination in 1938, it was a revival of the Catholic reaction that triggered the Cristero War; midcentury, the movement would become the focus of a conspiracy theory which alleged that it had infiltrated various institutions under the name El Yunque.
- the Boleslaw Piasecki, Henryk Rossman, Tadeusz Gluzinski and Jan Mosdorf which heavily incorporated Polish Catholicisminto its ideology, especially the Falangist faction.
- the National Union in Portugal led by Prime Ministers António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano.
- the National-Christian Defense League/Iron Guard of Romania, which was led by the devoutly Romanian Orthodox Corneliu Zelea Codreanu.
- Serbian Action, an ultranationalist and clerical fascist[24] movement, active in Serbia since 2010.[25]
- the Slovak People's Party (Ľudaks) in Slovakia led by President Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest.
- the Spanish Catholic Francisco Franco, which developed into National Catholicism.
- the Silver Legion of America in the United States led by William Dudley Pelley which combined American Christianity (specifically Protestantism) with American white nationalism.
The National Union in Portugal led by Prime Ministers António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano is not considered Fascist by historians such as Stanley G. Payne, Thomas Gerard Gallagher, Juan José Linz, António Costa Pinto, Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and Howard J. Wiarda, though it is considered Fascist by historians such as Manuel de Lucena, Jorge Pais de Sousa, Manuel Loff, and Hermínio Martins.[26][27][28][29] One of Salazar's actions was to ban the National Syndicalists/Fascists. Salazar distanced himself from fascism and Nazism, which he criticized as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognise either legal or moral limits.[30]
Likewise, the
Use of the Term
Scholars who accept the use of the term clerical fascism debate about which of the listed examples should be dubbed "clerical fascist". In the examples which are cited above, the degree of official Catholic support and the degree of clerical influence over lawmaking and government both vary. Moreover, several authors reject the concept of a clerical fascist régime, arguing that an entire fascist régime does not become "clerical" if elements of the clergy support it, while others are not prepared to use the term "clerical fascism" outside the context of what they call the fascist epoch, between the ends of the two
Some scholars consider certain contemporary movements forms of clerical fascism, such as
The political theorist Roger Griffin warns against the "hyperinflation of clerical fascism".[35] According to Griffin, the use of the term "clerical fascism" should be limited to "the peculiar forms of politics that arise when religious clerics and professional theologians are drawn either into collusion with the secular ideology of fascism (an occurrence particularly common in interwar Europe); or, more rarely, manage to mix a theologically illicit cocktail of deeply held religious beliefs with a fascist commitment to saving the nation or race from decadence or collapse".[36] Griffin adds that "clerical fascism" "should never be used to characterize a political movement or a regime in its entirety, since it can at most be a faction within fascism", while he defines fascism as "a revolutionary, secular variant of ultranationalism bent on the total rebirth of society through human agency".[37]
In the case of the
See also
- Alois Hudal
- Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
- Christian Nationalism
- Christofascism
- Criticism of Zionism
- Hindutva
- Islamofascism
- Kahanism
- National Union (Italy, 1923)
- Positive Christianity
- Religious nationalism
- Ratlines (World War II aftermath)
References
- ^ Eatwell 2003.
- ^ Laqueur, Walter (25 October 2006). The Origins of Fascism: Islamic Fascism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 14 January 2008.
- ^ Santulli, Carlo (2001). Filofascisti e Partito Popolare (1923-1926) [Philo-fascists and the People's Party (1923-1926)] (Thesis) (in Italian). Università di Roma - La Sapienza. p. 5.
- ^ Carlo Santulli, Id.
- ^ Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1981). "The Phenomenon of Fascism". In Woolf, S. (ed.). Fascism in Europe. London: Methuen. p. 26., Cited in Eatwell (2003)
- ^ Feldman, Turda & Georgescu 2008.
- ISBN 0-8386-3988-7
Lyons and I put Christian Identity into the category of clerical fascism, and we also included the militant theocratic Protestant movement called Christian Reconstructionism... a case can be made for... the Hindu nationalist (Hinduvata) Bharatiya Janata Party in India (which grew out of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Hindu religious movement).
In the most virulent form, theocratic Islamic fundamentalism could be a form of clerical fascism (theocratic fascism built around existing institutionalized clerics). This is a disputed view...
'Clerical fascism' is perhaps the nearest concept which comes closest to Islamism.
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