Landa - Fascism and the masses: the revolt against the last human, 1848-1945

Highlighting the mass nature of interwar European fascism has long become commonplace. Throughout the years, numerous critics have construed fascism as a phenomenon of mass society, perhaps the ultimate expression of mass politics. This study deconstructs this long-standing perception. It argues that the entwining of fascism with the masses is a remarkable transubstantiation of a movement which understood and presented itself as a militant rejection of the ideal of mass politics, and indeed of mass society and mass culture more broadly conceived. Thus, rather than massifying society, fascism was the culmination of a long effort on the part of the lites and the middle classes to de-massify it. The perennially menacing massseen as plebeian and insubordinatewas to be drilled into submission, replaced by supposedly superior collective entities, such as the nation, the race, or the people. Focusing on Italian fascism and German National Socialism, but consulting fascist movements and individuals elsewhere in interwar Europe, the book incisively shows how fascism is best understood as ferociously resisting what Elias referred to as the civilizing process and what Marx termed the social individual. Fascism, notably, was a revolt against what Nietzsche described as the peaceful, middling and egalitarian Last Humans.

Ishay Landa is Senior Lecturer of History at the Israeli Open University.

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56Fascism and the Masses

The Revolt Against the Last Humans, 18481945

Ishay Landa

Ishay Landa

First published 2018

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To Maria, Judith and Nomi

In the long process of writing this book, numerous people were greatly helpful to me.

For their various incisive suggestions, kind encouragements and useful critiques, I wish to express deep gratitude to my esteemed colleagues, Michal Aharony, Stuart Cohen, Guy Elgat, Yuval Eylon, Donny Gluckstein, Nicols Gonzlez Varela, Daniel Gutwein, Zohar Kohavi, Guy Miron, Inbal Ofer, Iris Shagrir, Alberto Spektorowski, Bernhard H.F. Taureck and Shulamit Volkov. I thank Harrison Fluss, who read the entire manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. I am very grateful to Max Novick of Routledge for his interest in this project and support in having it published. I am especially obliged to Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, whose generous, wise and abiding assistance and encouragement were invaluable.

Very special thanks to Luis, my Argentinean Yiddishe tate, for help beyond measure. As I was writing this book, I often felt that whatever value this study may hope to possess for understanding the horror of fascism, derives from the lessons he has given me all these years, in his infinitely kind and humane way.

Ishay Landa

Summer 2017

So I shall speak to them of the most contemptible human: and that is The Last Human. []

Nobody grows rich or poor anymore: both are too much of a burden.

Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden.

No herdsman and one herd.

Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 (1969: 4546)

The overman [] will have to do battle with two enemies: the mass and God.

The fight against the latter will not be dangerous. God is dead, isnt it so?[.] The mass [la Plebe] will pose greater obstacles to the development of the overman. The mass is too Christian and too egalitarian, and it will never comprehend that in order for the overman to ascend, a higher level of cruelty is required. [] Nevertheless, the overman will overcome both the mass and God. He will impose on all his leonine will.

Benito Mussolini 1908 (1958, vol. 1: 183)

[Nietzsches] prophecy of the Last Human has found rapid fulfillment. It is accurateexcept for the assertion that the Last Human lives longest. His age already lies behind us.

Ernst Jnger 1934 (2008: 13)

In the historiography of fascism and in the way this political movement is understood across academic disciplines, and indeed remembered by the general public, few convictions have struck deeper roots, proving more persistent and influential, than the one affiliating fascism with the masses. As conservative and liberal criticsbut also many radical onestraditionally aver ever since the 1930s, interwar European fascism was essentially a case of mass hysteria, an over-boiling of the pernicious populist tendencies inherent in mass democracy. This book will revisit the long-standing notion that fascism was mass politics at its purest, least inhibited and most vehement form. Scrutinizing such a common argument, the aim will be to show, not only that it is in some respects inadequate, as other historians have done before (see Hagtvets (1985) classical critique of mass society theories of fascism); going beyond specific reservations, it will be claimed that it is in fact useful to reverse the argument altogether and see fascism as the culmination of an effort on the part of the upper-class lites and their middle-class allies, especially since the 1848 revolutions, to subdue mass politics and its broader social, cultural and economic implications, to cut short the advances of the working class and the lower orders more generally. The notion of the masses, newly approached, can offer vital insight into the nature of one of the most fateful political and social phenomena of modern times. For that to happen, a critical confrontation will be necessary with the deeply-ingrained association of fascism with the masses.