Fascism by Roger Eatwell

Author:Roger Eatwell [Roger Eatwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2003-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

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It is easy to see why French legend holds that fascism was a marginal movement in France during the interwar years. It is far more difficult to understand the counterclaim that France was riddled with fascist ideology.16 To understand the latter argument, it is necessary to turn from the world of concrete politics to the arena of ideas—an important one in a country that takes intellectuals seriously. Whereas few politicians were willing openly to proclaim themselves fascist, more intellectuals were willing to embrace the ideology—or to exhibit aspects of thought that had strong affinities with fascism, and that more generally contributed to the critique of parliamentary democracy. While this may not have produced a fascist mass movement during the 1930s, it undoubtedly helped to condition attitudes after France’s defeat in 1940.

During the early 1930s a group of young writers and artists emerged, many of whom were collectively known as the Jeune Droite. They recognized Maurras as a major source of nationalist inspiration and were often associated with Action Française publications, which continued to attract a small but able group of intellectuals. They shared common concerns about decadence and the communist menace, but had noticeable philosophical differences. There was a general desire for spiritual rebirth, but some saw this mainly in religious terms while for others it had a more Nietzschean side, stressing the need for leadership and will. Another major division was between those more concerned with program and those more interested in developing a kind of Sorelian myth that could rejuvenate either the masses or an elite. In general, those who represented the religious or programmatic tendencies were more hostile to fascism—though there was no rigid division. The novelist Alphonse de Chateaubriand was attracted to Nazism precisely because he saw it as the incarnation of religious spiritual rebirth (thus managing to ignore its clear pagan side).

The differences over fascism can be seen even more clearly by comparing two leading members of Jeune Droite, Thierry Maulnier, and Robert Brasillach. Maulnier was particularly worried by the Nazis, whom he found vulgar and addicted to a dangerous suppression of cultural diversity. He was also concerned that their “new man” was essentially German rather than European. Brasillach too was worried about the Germanic side of Nazism, believing that there was a collectivism and conformity in German culture that did not exist among the more individualistic French. He was attracted all the same by other aspects of the Nazi “new man,” especially his youth and his dynamism. He held vague Third Way views which interested him in Nazi social experiments, like the KDF organization. Unlike Maulnier, Brasillach was an aesthete more than a serious thinker, a man who sought an art that would fuse force and form. Details of program mattered less than images. Symptomatically, he described fascism as “poetry” rather than doctrine—it was about feeling, rhythm, and spirit rather than rational thought.17

Arguably the most important thinker among the literary fascists was Pierre Drieu la Rochelle.18 Unlike Brasillach and Maulnier, who were born in

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