Neo-fascism
[5][6] According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the neo-fascist ideology emerged in 1942, after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and decided to reorient its propaganda on a Europeanist ground.
[10] At the initiative of the MSI, the European Social Movement was established in 1951 as a pan-European organization of like-minded neo-fascist groups and figures such as the Francoist Falange, Maurice Bardèche, Per Engdahl, and Oswald Mosley.
[12] The main driving force of neo-fascist movements was what they saw as the defense of a Western civilization from the rise of both communism and the Third World, in some cases the loss of the colonial empire.
According to him, fascism could survive the 20th century in a new metapolitical guise if its theorists succeed in building inventive methods adapted to the changes of their times; the aim being the promotion of the core politico-cultural fascist project rather than vain attempts to revive doomed regimes:[14] In addition, Bardèche wrote: "The single party, the secret police, the public displays of Caesarism, even the presence of a Führer are not necessarily attributes of fascism.
... With another name, another face, and with nothing which betrays the projection from the past, with the form of a child we do not recognize and the head of a young Medusa, the Order of Sparta will be reborn: and paradoxically it will, without doubt, be the last bastion of Freedom and the sweetness of living.
"[15] In the spirit of Bardèche's strategy of disguise through framework change, the MSI had developed a policy of inserimento (insertion, entryism), which relied on gaining political acceptance via the cooperation with other parties within the democratic system.
[16] According to psychologist David Pavón-Cuéllar of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, the emergence of neoliberalism in the late-twentieth century prompted neoliberalist politicians to utilize neo-fascism by authoritatively removing all limits to capital (including labor laws, social rights and tariffs), through the aestheticization of politics and by using the narcissism of small differences to find a target for hate to exploit in order to maintain a social hierarchy instead of protecting all individuals.
Whether that is a significant difference between neo-fascism and historical fascism is doubted by other scholars, who point out that Hitler worked within the existing political system of the Weimar Republic to obtain power, although it took an anti-democratic but constitutional process in the form of presidential appointment rather than election through the Reichstag.
Historian Stanley G. Payne claims that the differences in current circumstance to that of the interwar years, and the strengthening of democracy in European countries since the end of the war prevents a general return of historical fascism, and causes true neo-fascist groups to be small and remain on the fringe.
For Payne, groups like the National Front in France are not neo-fascists in nature, but are merely "right radical parties" that will, in the course of time, moderate their positions in order to achieve electoral victory.
Both Jean-Marie Le Pen of France's National Front and Jörg Haider's Freedom Party of Austria, in the words of historian Tony Judt, "revealed [their] prejudices only indirectly".
[21] The public presentation of their leaders is one principal difference between the neo-fascists and historical fascists: their programs have been "finely honed and 'modernized'" to appeal to the electorate, a "far-right ideology with a democratic veneer".
The NEO had its origins in the 1951 Malmö conference, when a group of rebels led by René Binet and Maurice Bardèche refused to join the European Social Movement as they felt that it did not go far enough in terms of racialism and anti-communism.
As a result, Binet joined with Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in a second meeting that same year in Zürich to set up a second group pledged to wage war on communists and non-white people.
Stefano Delle Chiaie, who was involved in Italy's Years of Lead, took part in Operation Condor; organizing the 1976 assassination attempt on Chilean Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton.
[25][26] Along with Delle Chiaie, Vinciguerra testified in Rome in December 1995 before judge María Servini de Cubría, stating that Enrique Arancibia Clavel (a former Chilean secret police agent prosecuted for crimes against humanity in 2004) and US expatriate DINA agent Michael Townley were directly involved in General Carlos Prats' assassination.
[27] The regimes of Francoist Spain, Augusto Pinochet's Chile and Alfredo Stroessner's Paraguay participated together in Operation Condor, which targeted political opponents worldwide.
Carriles wrote in his autobiography that "we the Cubans didn't oppose ourselves to an isolated tyranny, nor to a particular system of our fatherland, but that we had in front of us a colossal enemy, whose main head was in Moscow, with its tentacles dangerously extended on all the planet.
[32][33] The party was founded in 1972 to unify the French nationalist movement by Holocaust denier[34][35] Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was its leader until his resignation in 2011.
Neo-fascist groups took part in various false flag terrorist attacks, starting with the December 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre, for which Vincenzo Vinciguerra was convicted, and they are usually considered to have stopped with the 1980 Bologna railway bombing.
[52] Recent studies have studied the geopolitical role of Italian neofascism with some groups participating with CIA-backing in the Strategy of Tension during the Cold War where terrorists actions were aimed to keep Italy in NATO and prevent the Communist Party from coming to power [53] In Romania, the ultra-nationalist movement which allied itself with the Axis powers and German National Socialism was the Iron Guard, also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael.
There are some modern political organisations which consider themselves heirs of Legionarism, this includes Noua Dreaptă and the Everything For the Country Party, founded by former Iron Guard members.
The Party's leader, Marian Kotleba, is a former neo-Nazi,[75] who once wore a uniform modelled on that of the Hlinka Guard, the militia of the 1939–45 Nazi-sponsored Slovak State.
[112][113][114][115] The Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is cited as the rising point of neo-fascism in South America in the 21st century,[116][117][118][119][120][121][122] based on the denial of science, bellicose rhetoric and authoritarian measures that withdraw rights from the population linked to a strongly neoliberal economic policy.
[123][124][125][126][122] As a result of factors such as opposition to Workers' Party, fear and reaction to the 2013 protests, as well as the economic crises of 2008 and 2014, Jair Bolsonaro emerged as a viable option, not because of a well-defined strategic project, but almost accidentally.
[16] The core of this Brazilian neo-fascism converged its interests and rhetoric with Pentecostal religious fundamentalism and both allied themselves with military sectors and liberal think tanks,[123] so that within bolsonarism there is a power bloc made up of non-fascist conservatives and far-right neo-fascists; although still without the support of the broad and fanatical mass movement which was the basis of European fascism.
[123] Groups which are identified as neo-fascist in the United States generally include neo-Nazi organizations and movements such as the Proud Boys,[129] the National Alliance, and the American Nazi Party.
[132][133] The Economic Freedom Fighters are a self-described pan-Africanist political party founded in 2013 by the expelled former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema, and his allies.
[142][143][144] Marzia Casolari has linked the association and the borrowing of pre-World War II European nationalist ideas by early leaders of Hindutva ideology.
[151] According to Patnaik, Hindutva has the following fascist ingredients: "an attempt to create a unified homogeneous majority under the concept of "the Hindus"; a sense of grievance against past injustice; a sense of cultural superiority; an interpretation of history according to this grievance and superiority; a rejection of rational arguments against this interpretation; and an appeal to the majority based on race and masculinity".
