Fascism and Democracy Today: What Use Is the Study of History in the Current Crisis?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12176
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Mark Mazower

Fascism and Democracy Today: What Use Is

the Study of History in the Current Crisis?

Mark Mazower*

Anyone wonderingwhat use the study of thehistory of fascism is today willfind a straight-

forward answer in an unexpected place. On the website of the Greek extreme rightwing

party Golden Dawn

1

and under the section entitled ‘Ideology’(Ideologia), you will find

the following:

For the well-behaved patriots,the members of Golden Dawn are ‘evil fascists’. But how can this be? The

question of whether or not Golden Dawn’ssupporters are fascists depends directly on themeaning of the

term ‘fascism’. In currentpolitical parlance, a fascist is someonewho acts violently and exercises tyrannical

authority over peopleand situations…Let us offer this excerptfrom a book by an anti-fascist writer, who

states the following:

“By the end of the 20

th

century, the termFascist remains perhaps the mostunclear of all the major

political labels….. The term has beenused rather by its rivals than by itssupporters, and it was the

former who were responsible for popularizingits usage internationally from as early as 1923. The

word fascismis one of the most over-used termsof political abuse often synonymous with violence,

evil, repression and dictatorship. But if it means nothing more than these things, then communist

regimes, for instance,should probably be put under the category of fascistregimes, thus depriving

the word of any useful limits”.

And the party website conscientiously goes on to cite the source of this quotation: the His-

tory of Fascism by Stanley Payne,

2

one of the most distinguished historians of the subject.

In this way, a leading European party of the far right, in a kind of bizarre feedback

loop, not only demonstrates its consciousness of the state of historiographical play but

turns it to its own purposes. Critics, it says, may call us ‘extremists, fascists, criminals’;

but all historical analogies are untrue: Golden Dawn is a genuinely Greek product, not

an imitation, and its members are not fascists but nationalists, pure and simple:

‘Golden Dawn is not a fascist or Nazi movement [since] at the epicenter of fascism lies

not the nation-race but the state.’

Now of course, every Fasci st party worth its salt betwee n the wars highlighted its

impeccably nationalist credentials and often believed in them too, making sure they had

their own special colour for their shirts and their own national symbols. Sartorially, to

be a fascist between the wars meant wearing a brown shirt in Germany, a black one in

Italy, greenin Romania, blue in Spain, grey in South Africaand gold in Mexico. (It is hard

to resist mention of the immortal Roderick Spode in Wodehouse’s1938The Code of the

Woosters,

3

who featuresas leader of the much-feared Black Shorts.)None of this of course

meant there were not substanti al ideological affinities wit h other, older and more

* Ira D. WallachProfessor of World Order Studies and Professorof History, Columbia University.

1

A versionof this article was originallydelivered as a lecture at Cambridgein the spring of 2014.Reference is to

the Golden Dawnwebsite (http://www.xryshaygh.com/)at that time (on file with the author).

2

(Universityof Wisconsin Press, 1995).

3

The novelwas serialized in the DailyMail from 14 Septemberto 6 October 1938, and thenpublished as a book

by the presses of HerbertJenkins, London.

European LawJournal, Vol. 22, No. 3, May2016, pp. 375–385.

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