Criticism of Fascism and Nazism

Both lacked humanism. Both Fascism and Nazism lacked humanism; they were not mean! for humanity and human happiness. They established a “closed society” from which all those who could not belong to it by race or nationality, were to be liquidated by extirpation or concentration camps. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany could only exist by enslavement, exploitation and extermination of all other peoples and nations. Hence they preached war on the world. Hence they sang hymns of hate in pseudo-scientific terms of racialism, biology and evolution, which turned the fair Germans into a race of “blue, blonde beasts.”

Both were based on force and violence as essential weapons of politics and government.

Fascism and Nazism were based on no political philosophy or system: they relied on force and force alone. As Joad says, “Once the democratic concepts of popular consent, majority rule and equality before law are abandoned, once the test of happiness is rejected and individual freedom required to be subordinate to State necessity, there seems to be no way of determining controversial issues except, in Bertrand Russell’s words, “the appeal to force and the arbitration of the big battalions,” Fascists assert that force and not will is the basis of the State. But such a theory is to be ruled out of Political Science as a political philosophy of the State.

Fascism and Nazism uphold the rule of the few and the Dictatorship of one man.

Fascism and Nazism establish a single party government, a government of the few, headed by one supreme ruler, the Duce or the Fuhrer. They were based on the dictatorship of one man. Yet they provide us with no criterion on which the rule of the few or the dictatorship of the one is to be judged and the rulers are to be chosen. Really the Fascist and Nazi leaders selected themselves. But this idea of political aristocracy is not only undemocratic it is also impracticable in modem times.

It could exist only in the static societies of the past ages, or for a temporary period in times of crisis such as war, etc. In a State of siege, as Napoleon said, even a fool can rule. Fascism and Nazism were based on the presumption that mankind as a whole comprised of ignoramuses and fools. But such an attitude is quite untenable in the present days, when science, learning, arts and culture have become popular and mass education is the order of the day.

Fascism and Nazism which based on unreason, hate and prejudice.

Fascism and Nazism distrusted reason and relied upon ignorance, prejudice, hate and superstition. They made powerful appeal to sentiments and emotions, making use of such means as military uniforms, part pageantry, rituals and rhetorics. They assumed that the masses had n< interest in politics and no capacity to govern them. Their lack of culture am reason and the emphasis on emotions and myths is aptly presented b; Bertrand Russell in these words: ‘There is no philosophy of Fascism; then is a psycho-analysis,” In short, they were based on the fear of reason, and 01 the philosophy of despair.

Force and fear were the only basis of the Fascist and Nazi States.

Human reason and good-will had no place in their philosophy o State and politics. Meetings and conferences, discussion and theory wen replaced by action of strong men and obedience by the masses. The ideal ol Fascism and Nazism was a national State, “well-ordered internally aggressive and bent upon expansion externally.”