European Fascism Essay examples -- European Fascist Regimes

Fascism is both an outgrowth of and a reaction against nineteenth-century liberalism. Nineteenth-century liberals argued for laissez-faire economics, the equating of men (and it was, explicitly, men), and the universality of human progress and human reason. Underlying both of these ideals was the sanctity of the individual. By the 1920s, though, these liberal ideals were challenged (Paxton 36-41). Laissez-faire economics led to dingy, flinty industrial towns anthropological research called into question the equality of all great deal economic crises threatened to drop the newly emerging middle-class into the proletariat, leaning against progress and the mass annihilation of human life in the cracking War eroded belief in rationality. Fascist regimes developed in response to the crumbling world view of the West. Fascists offered a national revival in which racial purity, mass fervor and authoritarian rule somehow strengthen one another (Paxton 218). By defining the nation in aspiration to other races, fascistics promoted a sense of inclusiveness and security. The idealization of the nation as an fundamental being promoted jingoistic fervor and a sense of worth. Finally, the authoritarian discover (always a man) was reminiscent of older, and therefore more secure, forms of rulethe father learn or the monarch. Fascists offered remedies to what many saw as the disease that was modern culture. These fascist themesracial purity, mass fervor, and authoritarian ruleare held together by one common principle the degradation of the individual and concomitant saint of the group. This principle is a reaction against liberal ideas that lionize the individual. The mechanism by which fascists degraded the indiv... ...f fascism, can we afford it? These five authors answer a resound no. Works Cited Blackstone, Bernard. Virginia Woolf A Commentary. London Hogarth, 1949. Camus, Albert. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York Vintage Inte rnational, 1991. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. The stopping point Industry Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in Dialectics of Enlightenment. New York Seabury Press, 1972 120-167. Leser, Esther H. doubting Thomas Manns Short Fiction. Cranbury Associated University Press, 1989. Mann, Thomas. Mario and the Magician. Trans. H. L. Lowe Porter. New York Knopf, 1931. Parker, Emmet. Albert Camus The Artist in the Arena. Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. Paxton, Robert O. europium in the Twentieth Century. San Diego Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. London Hogarth, 1977.