Page:L. W. - Fascism, Its History and Significance (1924).pdf/33

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HE essential features of Fascism as it developed in Italy have been seen in preceding chapters. The Italian movement arose as a bourgeois reaction to the revolutionary tendencies of 1920. It is a movement of lower middle class and declassed elements organised on a physical force basis to further the interests of heavy industrial capitalists; it has succeeded by the combined methods of terror and of propaganda in dominating the political sense of the workers.

It would be pedantic to deny the name of Fascist to movements in other countries simply because they do not conform in all details to the Italian model. Whatever purists may desire, it is certain that common usage will fix the meaning of the title sufficiently wide to cover any organisation fighting extra-constitutionally for the bourgeoisie against the workers.

The situation in most countries other than Italy is that, while numerous bodies exist which are potentially Fascist in character only a few have openly taken the field against the workers.

The only countries other than Italy where there is a definite Fascist movement are Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary. In other lands, there exist movements which might, in given conditions, form the basis for such an organisation, but it cannot be said that the so-called Fascism in Spain, France or England is really worthy of the name.

There are a number of organisations of a Fascist character in Germany. The membership is formed of ex-officers, students, de-classed elements, and other miscellaneous sections of the lower middle classes. ‘The most powerful section is that formerly under the control of Hitler in Bavaria, known as the National Socialist Party and financed by heavy industrialists; others are The Union of Patriotic Societies, in North Germany, the German Order, which consists of public officials, and the National Union of German Officers. A National Fascist Congress was held in the early part of 1923, and Hitler defined the principal objective of the movement as "the destruction and the expulsion of communists and of the criminals responsible for the events of November [1918]." The methods used by the Germans are taken from the Italian models, and consist of aéts of violence directed against working-class organisations and propaganda among trade unionists. This propaganda is of a nationalist, anti-semitic and even slightly anti-capitalist nature, the last element being put in to attract the workers who suffer most