FASCISM AND NAZISM

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 5

FASCISM AND NAZISM

ITALIAN AND GERMAN MODELS. W.E.A. DISCUSSION GROUP PAPER. Fascism and Nazism the subject for a paper read on Thursday by the New Plymouth W.E.A. discussion group at its weekly meeting. Mr. A. M. Spooner presided. Quoting Professor Mac Murray the paper outlined a meaning of Socialism and Fascism. The struggle for freedom, says Mac Murray, has so far resulted in a planlessness which threatens to let civilisation go to pieces. Ought we to continue the struggle or “call a halt, confess that freedom was a vain dream and retrace our steps before the last remnants of civilisation and culture are destroyed?” “Nietzsche is the protagonist of Fascism because Fascism wishes to go back to the old idea of authority and discipline, to the .old Roman tradition of Europe from which the modern, spirit has been in revolt. Marx is the protagonist of Socialism, for Socialism reasserts the faith in freedom and equality and de- ' ! mands that we shall carry the struggle ■ > to the bitter end. It is between these , two attitudes that the modern spirit has got to make its choice.” The paper then dealt with the rise oi Fascism in Italy and Germany. It wai only since about 1870 that Italy as a. country had emerged as a united nation with ambitions to copy the parliamentary system of government from politically older countries. But Italian politics were left in the hands of “the black-coated - proletariat, consisting. largely of adventurers, clever parochial 'orators, lovers of intrigue, sycophants and wire-pullers.” Thus Italy’s “nationhood” and her “democracy” were ill-formed. Moreover, ' said the paper, although the country was on the winning side in the Great War it had been'practically bribed to join that side by lavish promises of what it would get out of it When it found that what it did get out of it was in the main a crop of economic problems with which the Government appeared incapable of dealing, a strong feeling of. resentment arose. The returning soldiers, finding anything but “a land fit ft>r Y heroes” • awaiting them, “went Socialist” in many cases.

Mussolini’s movement began with the n organisation of small bands of returned soldiers which were formed all over Italy for the purpose of protecting property and public order, both in danger in the existing chaos. His programme in these early days was on paper, definitely Socialist. Yet his movement derived'its strength hot from the industrial workers ■< but from the middle and lower middle classes and the peasants—people with small businesses or farms, office workers and civil servants. Those were the people who disliked large-scale capitalism— ■ but feared still more the coming of - i Socialism or Communism. They ■ were thus willing to . ally themselves with large-scale capitalism for the time, if they saw no other way of defeating Socialism. ' . ! v .

That was actually what happened. It seemed doubtful if Mussolini could have succeeded except for the large subsidies he received from the great Italian industrialists. ‘ Germany had the same political immaturity as Italy; its nationhood was of no longer standing. In addition war left its aftermaths even more strongly in the nation which' “lost” it. It had physical effects not realised in New Zealand—thousands actually died of starvation. Then there .was the bitter feeling that the peace treaty took little note of President Wilson’s fourteen Points on which the armistice had been accepted. The early insistence upon a drastic “reparations” figure succeeded ; before long. in wrecking German currency, and the result was chaos and privation for large sections of the, German people, particularly > middle-class . - ■ people whose savings completely disappeared. . - AH this made the task . of. any . German goverament'-peculiarly difficult And much more so when the government was one of compartively new men trying to work a democratic system that was entirely new and unfamiliar to the Germans. After a fourteen years’ attempt to live under it Germany rejected it in favour of a dictatorship. Harrison Brown gave a good account of the position on the eve of Hitler’s rise to full power. He said: “Young Germans have become nationalist largely from believing that the rest of the world was still against them, and that therefore they must be self-sufficient and stand alone. Germany has become increasingly Socialist of a. sort, pernaps rather a funny sort, partly because y capitalism never was regarded there with any religious awe, , partly because . middle-class fortunes were swept away during the inflation. Hitlers great ( brain-wave was to combine, nationalism with Socialism; his great illusion was to think that he could so'magnify nations.- , ism that it would eliminate the class war. What he has done is to radicalise and nationalise the lower middle classes. -Hitler provided a mental home for the enormous army of the' middle-class, which had been reduced to the level of the proletariat and bitterly resented the fact.”