Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Volume III - Historiaonceib ...

230 Fascism and non-democratic regimesand to further an alliance of the most diverse regimes against Westerndemocracies and the Soviet Union. Despite this, the fascist leaders andintellectuals were keenly aware of the differences between their movementsand regimes and others, including those that imitated them. For their part,democrats, socialists and communists – all of them victims of anti-democraticand authoritarian movements and regimes – were interested in identifyingthem with fascist Italy and particularly with Nazism later on becausethose regimes were capable of mobilizing widespread rejection, especiallyafter World War II. The hegemony of the Axis powers in Europe or parts ofEurope led anti-democratic movements and authoritarian regimes not tounderscore their own differences with fascism until the prospect of the victoryof those powers had already become dim.Fascism and the breakdown of democracyEven though fascism played a major role in the crisis of democratic regimes,the failure of the consolidation of democracy in a number of countriescannot be linked to the presence, strengths or ambitions of fascist movements.A number of democracies that had been established before andimmediately after World War I underwent serious crises in the consolidationprocess even before fascism became an attractive alternative to democracyfor significant sectors of the population and elites. Even after fascism gainedpower in Italy, no significant fascist movements emerged in a number ofcountries where democratic regimes experienced a breakdown. The elitesthat established authoritarian regimes were not unaware of the fascistexperience, and in some cases they explored the possibility of incorporatingelements of that experience into their regimes. However, their understandingof what fascism entailed was limited, and their regimes reflected both thislack of understanding and the independent development of their forms ofauthoritarian rule. 5 The fact that some of those regimes – particularlyHungary – held on to semi- or pseudo-democratic institutions and did notreject the liberal heritage outright proves the non-fascist character ofauthoritarian rule. 6 Another indication is that the fascist movementsemerged in a number of cases as opponents of authoritarian regimes(particularly in Romania, Hungary and Lithuania) and sometimes experienceddiscrimination and even persecution (like the murder of Codreanu by thedictatorship of King Carol in 1938). 7With those identifying with a Marxist – particularly a vulgar-Marxist –interpretation of fascism as an instrument used to suppress the emergingworking class and to defend capitalism, there is a tendency to forget thatthe authoritarian solutions appeared in response to other social and politicalproblems: the building of a state in the case of Turkey, the bitternationality conflicts in some Eastern European countries, the rural/urbanconflict in Bulgaria, and, paradoxically, the response to a perceived fascistthreat in Estonia and Latvia in the 1930s. 8 The failure of the consolidation