AN ANALYSIS OF 20TH CENTURY FASCISM - (4)


    Fascism's Policy of Conquest

    Another feature without which fascism cannot survive is its policy of expansion by conquering other countries. The basis of this policy of conquest is racism, and the concept of "the struggle for survival between the races," a legacy of Darwinism. Fascist states believe that in order to develop as a nation, they have to conquer weaker nations, and grow by absorbing them.

    According to fascist thinking, man can only progress by engaging in war. Therefore, "militarism" is fascism's most defining characteristic. In order to encourage this martial spirit, fascist parties attempt to impress their citizens with their uniforms and pompous ceremonies. In Mussolini's words, "Fascism... believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it."52

    Mussolini expressed his opposition to peace in another speech, saying, "I do not believe in peace, but I find it depressing and a negation of all human virtues of man."53

    Mussolini inflicted great suffering, both on his own people and on those in the countries he occupied, in the name of his ideology. He occupied Ethiopia(Abyssinia) in 1935, and 15,000 innocent Muslims were killed towards his dreams of "reviving the Roman Empire." He had no compunction about ordering civilians who tried to fight the occupation to be shot. He was also responsible for terrible atrocities through the use of poison gas against civilians.

    The most grievous example of fascism's politics of occupation is, of course, Nazi Germany. The Nazis claimed that the Germans, "the master race," needed "room to live" beyond the frontiers of Germany, and for that reason sparked World War II. Within a very short time, the German Army had occupied Poland, Belgium, the Baltic countries, France, the Balkan peninsula and Northern Africa, invaded Russia as far as Moscow, and headed from there to the Caspian Sea. This murder, which ultimately culminated in a disaster for the German people as well as for those of other countries, left 55 million dead, and was the bloodiest legacy of fascism in the 20th century. .

    The Fascist System's Attack on Art

    Another disturbing aspect of fascism is that people living under such a regime are unable to develop their artistic talents, and that their scientific research fails to produce any productive results.

    In order to determine the reason for this, we must first define what art is. Art is found in people taking pleasure in beauty and wanting to express it. Therefore, it first of all requires a soul capable of appreciating beauty. For instance, an artist who possesses feelings such as love and affection can see beauty in an animal, a landscape, or a plant. He experiences a feeling of joy, which he then tries to depict. A composer, in the presence of such beauty produces beautiful music, because his soul, feeling that beauty, longs to express it. The same applies to every other type of art, from literature to music.

    However, it is impossible for those with a dark and cold soul, who are used to oppression and cruelty, and who have lost all semblance of humanity, to produce art. It is impossible for a person who believes in aggression and the superiority of force, who considers that bloodshed is necessary, who sees the world as a battleground, a kind of arena where only the strong have the right to live, to be affected by the beauties of nature or human beings, and influenced by their intricacies.

    Those are the characteristics of fascists, and therefore, it is impossible for a fascist to possess any artistic feeling. The fascist soul is utterly debilitated and ignorant, and lacks all understanding, and considers art "unnecessary."

    Actually, the fascists' hostility to art goes back to ancient Sparta, that ancient city which they took as a model. At a period when art was greatly prized in Athens, Sparta saw art as unnecessary, and raised its citizens instead to become warriors from an early age. It was virtually forbidden for Spartan children to take an interest in subjects such as reading and writing or art in their education.

    In 20th century fascist states, works of art, if any, were prepared and controlled by the state to serve as propaganda. These were the products of a soulless and mechanical "art to order." No real works of art emerged. For instance, only those subjects that the state allowed could be painted, such as war. Subjects disliked by the state were forbidden. The same applied to the written word, only those things the fascist state permitted could be written about, and nothing else. As a result, art totally unrelated to true art emerged, that, aesthetically, rendered art, architecture and literature rigid, soulless and dull.

    The most obvious examples of this were seen in Hitler's Germany. Because of his racist views, Hitler boycotted certain art forms. For example, because he looked on Africans as an "inferior race," the playing of jazz was forbidden in Germany, for it was regarded as "black man's music." In 1935, Eugen Hadamowski, the head of German radio, announced that by order of Hitler, he prohibited the playing of Negro jazz on German radio.

    At the beginning of the 1940s, at the height of Hitler's power, jazz began to be used as a propaganda tool in radio broadcasts directed at Great Britain and America. At that time, and in most countries, jazz was one of the most popular forms of music. Europe's greatest jazz musicians were brought together. The first thing done was to translate all the English names of the famous jazz songs into German. The lyrics of these songs were altered to conform with Nazi propaganda, and was played only on programs aimed at the West, and completely forbidden on domestic German radio.

    The lyrics of the songs were entirely fascist in content. Here is one example.

    You're the greatest… You're a German pilot… You're machine gun fire… You're a heroic submariner… You're the greatest… You're a German bomber…54

    That was the Nazis' idea of art and music. Paintings, song lyrics, music and literature were all expected to include subjects approved of by the state. Painters could only paint subjects that encouraged the spirit of war. For instance, when the above-mentioned "state controlled jazz group" produced a record that did not consist of Nazi propaganda, they were immediately accused of being "degenerate" and warned never to try such a thing again.

    And, that was not the end of Hitler's measures against artists. After the race laws of 1933, the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) required a registry of all German musicians. As a result, hundreds of talented composers had their work deliberately suppressed and careers ended simply because their race or style of music offended the Third Reich. Famous works by Mendelssohn, Mahler and Schoenberg were used as examples of unacceptable music.55

    According to Hitler, the role of art was to carry political messages in order to shape the mind of the public. What to Hitler was true art was that which portrayed life in the countryside, the healthy, and the Aryan race. In one speech, he offered his views on art and artists:

    We shall discover and encourage the artists who are able to impress upon the State of the German people the cultural stamp of the Germanic race... in their origin and in the picture which they present they are the expressions of the soul and the ideals of the community.56

    As can be discerned from all that has been mentioned, the artistic talents and scientific endeavor of people living under fascist regimes are ultimately fruitless. On the other hand, however, a society which lives by true religion sees great progress and development in the arts. Since religious people know that the universe and all living things in it were created by God, they look at everything around them with the intention of recognizing their beauty. They see the art in God's creation and are in awe of it. They see people, animals, plants and everything in nature as God's creations, and both love and appreciate them, realizing their beauty and detail. In fact, the greatest works of art in history arose out of inspiration artists have found in religious subjects.

    Fascism's Hatred of Women

    There is another little known but exceedingly important aspect of fascism. It has an inimical attitude towards women, and sees them as inferior to men.

    This fact is recognizable in words and statements of 20th century fascist leaders. For instance, Mussolini's statement to Maurice de Valeffe, a reporter for the French publication Journal, on Nov. 12, 1922, openly belittled women:

    There are those who say that I intend to limit the right to vote. No! Every citizen will keep his right to vote for the Rome Parliament… Let me also admit to you that I am not thinking of extending the vote to women. There would be no point. My blood opposes all kinds of feminism when it comes to women participating in state affairs. Naturally a woman shouldn't be a slave, but if I conceded her the vote, I'd be laughed at. In our state, she must not count.57

    During the serious economic crisis beginning in 1930, Mussolini ordered that women should leave their places of work. Because he saw women as "thieves who reach out to steal men's bread, and responsible for men's unproductiveness."58

    The Duce's views on women are strikingly apparent in an interview he granted the French journalist Hélène Gosset in 1932:

    Women must submit… Even if they have an analytical power, they have no synthetic one. Have they ever put up an architectural structure? I am not talking about a temple: a woman could do no better than erecting a hut. Women are strangers to architecture, the synthesis of all the arts: and their destiny ends at this point.59

    Through various measures, restrictions on women in the workplace were also imposed in education. For instance, a decree of Jan. 30, 1927 forbade women in high school from taking classes in literature and philosophy. A decree passed in 1928 resorted to legal measures to oppose women's education, and women were prevented from becoming directors of middle schools. Female students were required to pay double the fees in schools and universities.

    A decree which Mussolini put before Parliament on Nov. 28, 1933 declared, "State bodies are empowered to impose conditions excluding women in advertisements for exams to take on new employees.. They must impose limits against a rise in the number of female workers in public offices…"60 According to a decree instituted by force of law on Sept. 1, 1938, women could only make up 10 percent of the workforce in public offices.

    In Nazi Germany the status of women as "second class citizens" was even more pronounced. The German Education Ministry decided that women should make up no more than 10 percent of high school graduates. In 1934, only 1,500 out of every 10,000 female high school graduates were allowed to proceed to higher education. In 1929, there were 39 National Socialist education bodies. Only two of these were for women. Laws were passed banning women from taking Latin classes in middle school: before having even finished high school, they were prevented from going on to university.61

    These decrees did not just represent a social ideology or merely imposed regulations to foster a division of labor, they were actually the implementation of the biological dogma of Nazism. Maria A. Macciocchi, author of Eléments pour une Analyse du Fascisme comments that in the eyes of the Nazis, women were a kind of animal.62 According to such a philosophy, women were a primitive race, at a lower level in biological terms.63

    The Darwinist Roots of the Hostility to Women

    The root of this prejudice among fascists towards women was, as in so many other matters, Darwinism. Fascists did not merely appropriate the idea of the inequality between the races from Darwinism, they also adopted the idea that men were superior to women.

    In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that women some of whose "powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation."64 According to Darwin, evolution meant "a struggle of individuals of one sex, generally males, for the possession of the other sex."65

    In the Descent, Darwin also wrote, "Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection."66 Evolution was in the hands of men, and women were basically passive. As a result, women had evolved less and were more primitive, for which reason women were dominated by instinct and emotions, which was their "greatest weakness."67

    Darwin maintained his views on the superiority of men and its importance for evolution throughout his life. He had this to say about this issue also by referring to his cousin Francis Galton's theories:

    The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman-whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of composition and performance), history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on Hereditary Genius, that if men are capable of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman.68

    Darwin's views could also be recognized in his personal outlook towards women. He described a woman's role in marriage as "constant companion, (friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, object to be beloved and played with-better than a dog anyhow-Home, and someone to take care of house ..."69 It is evident that Darwin looked at women and the institution of the family from a materialistic standpoint. There was not a trace of love, respect, loyalty, affection or compassion in his outlook.

    The evolutionist and materialist Carl Vogt, a contemporary of Darwin and a Geneva scholar of the mid nineteenth century, also held disparaging views regarding women. "We may be sure that wherever we perceive an approach to the animal type the female is nearer to it than the male" he wrote. "Hence we should discover a greater [apelike] resemblance if we were to take a female as our standard."70

    Many evolutionists, following Darwin, have continued to maintain that women are inferior to men, both biologically and intellectually. Some evolutionists have even classified men and women as two distinct psychological species: males were homo frontalis, females homo parietalis.71 One evolutionist, Elaine Morgan, noted that Darwin had motivated men into researching the reasons why women were "manifestly inferior and irreversibly subordinant".72

    Paul Broca (1824-1880), an evolutionist physicist and anthropologist, was particularly interested in the differences in intelligence and brain size between men and women, ascribing their inferior intelligence to the smaller size of their brains.

    Another follower of Darwin, the evolutionist social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, wrote; In the most intelligent races ... are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. ... Women ... represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and ... are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconsistency, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without a doubt there exist some distinguished women ... but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely.73

    Therefore, at the basis of fascism's disparagement of and contempt for women lies the theory of Darwinism. Mussolini's taking away of women's social rights, and Hitler's building of "breeding farms" to reproduce the superior race and obliging young girls to sleep with SS officers, are all reflections of fascists' attitudes to women. Both Darwinists and fascists are enemies of women. They see them as an inferior and backward species, and both despise them, as well as employing discriminatory and oppressive methods against them.

    This fascist perspective is completely at odds with the ethics of the Koran. God has commanded in the Koran that women should be cherished, respected, and protected. In addition, He has shown examples of women with superior morals, such as Mary and the wife of Pharaoh. In the eyes of God, superiority does not lie in race, sex or rank, but in closeness to Him and strength of belief. In a number of verses of the Koran, God has revealed that all believers will receive their reward without discrimination between men and women.

    Their Lord responds to them: "I will not let the deeds of any doer among you go to waste, male or female-you are both the same in that respect…" (Koran, 3:195)

    Anyone, male or female, who does right actions and is a believer, will enter the Garden. They will not be wronged by so much as the tiniest speck. (Koran, 4:124)

    Anyone who acts rightly, male or female, being a believer, We will give them a good life and We will recompense them according to the best of what they did. (Koran, 16:97)

    However, as religion was abandoned, these truths were abandoned with it, and in their place were provided superstitions such as fascism and Darwinism, in which all forms of discrimination based on sex or race are seen as justified.

    Fascism's Sexual Deviations

    The hostility to women that we have so far examined is actually the manifestation of a dark subconscious tendency. Fascism equated feelings such as love, compassion and affection with womanhood, and thus regarded it as despicable. On the other hand, tendencies such as the love of war, bloodlust and ruthlessness were seen as typically "male," and for that reason "manliness" was elevated to the point of being sacred.

    When fascism's myth of "manliness" is examined a bit closer, however, there we find homosexuality hidden within it. This little known but important connection between fascism and homosexuality dates back as far as ancient Sparta.

    In earlier chapters of this book, we saw that fascism was founded on pagan culture, and that it emerged together with claim of re-awakening paganism. The most defining characteristic of paganism is that it lacks the moral criteria and laws revealed by God. In the pagan world, therefore, sexual deviance of all kinds was able to flourish. It was the city-states of ancient Greece that brought these to their highest point. In Athens and Sparta, homosexuality was seen as quite normal, an acceptable relationship, and even a virtue.

    In Sparta especially, the ancestor of fascism, a special importance was attributed to the concept of "manliness," and under the name of "love of man," homosexuality was widely accepted. Spartan soldiers believed that they increased their strength by having sexual relations with each other. The historian Plutarch of Chaeronea, who lived around 50-120 A.D., wrote of "the sacred battalion" of Thebans made up of 150 male homosexual pairs.74 In Sparta, all healthy male children were taken into the army at the age of 12, and were immediately raped by experienced soldiers. It was believed that these perverted relations were the greatest source of strength for the Spartan army, with its "warrior" culture and passion for bloodshed.

    Such a debased and deviant culture raised its head again with the neo-pagan movement of the 19th century. And, the major center of this deviancy was Germany. The leader of the movement, Adolf Brand, founded the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of the Elite) in 1902, together with Wilheml Jansen and Benedict Friedlander, both of whom were known for their deviant sexual tendencies. Friedlander published a book called Renaissance des Eros Uranios (Renaissance of Uranian Erotica) in 1904. On the cover was a picture of a naked Greek youth. Friedlander explained the aim of the book in these words:

    The positive goal...is the revival of Hellenic chivalry and its recognition by society. By chivalric love we mean in particular close friendships between youths and even more particularly the bonds between men of unequal ages.75

    The aim of the community was to transform Germany from a Judeo-Christian society to a Greco-Uranian one.76 This deviant organization was also known for its racism. Referring to the ideas of the Community of the Elite, Kurt Hildebrandt, the leader of the Society for Human Rights established in 1923, wrote in his book Norm Entartung Verfall (Ideal, Degeneration, Ruin) that the superior race was that composed of homosexuals. In his view, relations with women were only necessary for "reproductive reasons," but that in order to achieve an "ultramasculine" race, sexual "love" between men was essential.

    These ideas were none other than those of the Nazi Party, which was basically a "homosexual club."

    This fact was set out by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams in their book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, a wide-ranging study. The book examines both pre-Nazi movements and organizations, as well as the Nazi Party leadership, and reveals that there was a large number of homosexuals within it. It explains, with historical documentation, how the Nazis' policy of rounding up homosexuals and sending them to concentration camps was all for show, and that by doing so, senior Nazi leaders were trying to cover up their own practices. Among the known Nazi homosexuals were SA chief Ernst Röhm, Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich, Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering, Rudolf Hess, leader of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) organization Baldur von Schirach, Nazi Germany's Finance Minister Walther Funk, and Hitler's land Forces commander Freiherr Werner von Fritsch. There is also evidence to suggest that SS chief Himmler and Hitler himself also had homosexual tendencies.77

    The Pink Swastika also demonstrates that this tendency was not restricted to Nazis in Germany, and that there are many homosexuals in neo-Nazi movements and racist organizations active in the United States, and shows that such deviance is a regular feature of fascism. Fascist pagans indulge in the sin as related in the Koran, that of the people to whom the prophet Lot was sent.

    However, those who engage in these practices must not forget what happened to the people of Lot. The disaster visited on them is described in the Koran in this way:

    And Lot, when he said to his people, "Do you commit an obscenity not perpetrated before you by anyone in all the worlds? You come with lust to men instead of women. You are indeed a depraved people." The only answer of his people was to say, "Expel them from your city! They are people who keep themselves pure!" So We rescued him and his family-except for his wife. She was one of those who stayed behind. We rained down a rain upon them. See the final fate of the evildoers! (Koran, 7:80-84)

     

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