Beyond the Fascist Century by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030468316
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Palingenetic Temporalities

The idea of a future without ‘others’ brings me to another important part of my work for which Roger Griffin’s conceptual interpretation of generic fascism has been extremely influential: the temporalities of the Legion’s fascist palingenetic project. In an earlier publication, I argued that the alternative temporality put forth by the legionary movement was not “an epiphenomenon to its ideological structure of pure scholarly interest, but a central aspect of its fascist ideology, a vision grounded on an unreal mythical edifice that was no less real in its murderous consequences”.41 Drawing on those insights, as well as on Roger’s notion of “fascism as a temporal revolution”,42 I believe that exploring fascist temporalities represents another fruitful path of enquiry into the ramifications of fascism’s palingenetic ‘mythic core’.

To begin with, even a cursory look at the fascists’ pronouncements on time helps settle the old debate on the reactionary vs. revolutionary character of fascism, decisively in favour of the latter. Both the futural orientation of fascist ideology and the idea of a complete rupture with a decadent present are ubiquitous in legionary rhetoric, as they are in that of other fascist movements and regimes. The legionary future was both imminent and redemptive of Romania’s past and present: “the resurrection of our nation is seething underground and it will soon erupt, enlightening with its light our entire future and our entire dark past”.43 Since a bright future of legionary making was consistently juxtaposed with present decay, acceleration toward the latter appeared imperative, acting as a mobilising factor. Agency was key in ensuring the ‘right’ future would come to be, instead of its “enslavement” by the Legion’s ubiquitous Jewish enemy.44 Such agency was both invoked by a legionary elite laying claim to a knowledge transcending time and demanded of its members, whose participation in the (historic) legionary revolution was necessary for its success. “It is your time: Come!” read one of Codreanu’s earliest appeals.45 As some of the letters from the readers published in the first legionary newspaper show, they did not fall on deaf ears—someone self-identifying only as “a village accountant” wrote back: “You are the hope of our tomorrow. Our future and the future of our children we lay at your feet”.46

Yet fascist temporalities were much more complex than the acceleration of time toward an imminent redemptive future, as anyone familiar with the notion of a ‘thousand-year Reich’ knows. The end point of the fascist regenerative project was a temporal standstill, an eternity of plenitude that was directly linked to that of the nation.47 A concept of the nation as eternal was indeed fundamental to legionary ideology, and it involved two distinct, yet related features. On the one hand, it posited a ‘natural’, pre-historical existence of ‘the Romanians’ and, in doing so, laid a claim to land, rendering a highly contested territory incontestable. For Codreanu, in contrast to all ‘others’ who ‘came later’, “only one nation did not come from anywhere. That nation is us. We were born in the dawn of time on this land, together with the oaks and the firs”.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.