Fascism and the Masses by Ishay Landa

Author:Ishay Landa
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

4 Fascism and Mass Society I

Cultural Questions

In the previous chapter, it was described how the fascists aimed to block as far as possible the continued advance of the masses along the political track. Yet does not this argument run into difficulties when we move on from a discussion of political measures, to address the way fascism related to mass culture? If fascism negated the principle of mass political rule, is it not possible that the terrain of mass culture, being less about tangible power and more about symbolic recompense, permitted the fascists to accommodate themselves to the masses? That what was taken from the masses politically was given back to them, with compound interest, symbolically and culturally? “It was only in cultural matters,” argued a judicious observer such as Robert Soucy (1995: 25), “in their pandering to some of the most parochial, authoritarian, and vicious aspects of popular culture, that fascists were, in a sense, democratic.” And a comparable claim was contained in George Mosse’s affirmation that fascism screwed to its highest pitch the ritualistic dimension of mass politics. Such a notion, indeed, is very common. Many have regarded fascism and continue to regard it as a typical manifestation of mass culture, a brutal uprising against Western civilization and the heritage of high culture. Nazism, in particular, it is often claimed, represented an attack on culture on the part of the uneducated or half-educated (see the frequent complaint, in the German context, against Halbbildung). From such vantage point, fascism ought to be seen as integral to the revolt against the élite theorized by José Ortega y Gasset. This interpretive line has produced innumerable examples, which can be gleaned not only from texts written by historians, but also from cultural and philosophical theories, as well as works of art and literature attempting to reflect fascism. Let us sample just a few of these cases.

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