Prefascism

In parts of German historical studies, prefascism or proto-fascism is an alternative term to the term “ conservative revolution ” coined by Armin Mohler and describes a radicalization of conservatism . The concept of conservatism, on the other hand, is difficult to apply to anti-liberal intellectuals such as Georges Sorel and various national revolutionaries as well as the futurists . Many pre-fascist thinkers related to fascism , such as B. in Italy Benedetto Croce , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Robert Michels and Gaetano Mosca , due to the anti-intellectualism of the fascists and the own elitist contempt of the masses ambivalent .

The French Germanist and historian Louis Dupeux considers the Conservative Revolution during the Weimar era to be a weighty ideology that could explicitly be understood as “German prefascism”.

The contemporary historian Dieter Krüger understands prefascism after the First World War as all new-conservative ideologues and movements that anticipate and popularize important elements of fascist ideology without directly engaging in nationalist propaganda.

The historian Zeev Sternhell uses the term prefascism to summarize culturally pessimistic currents of thought that have found supporters, especially in Germany and France since 1890 ( Maurice Barrès , Oswald Spengler , Julius Langbehn ) and are based on a shortened popularization of older anti-modernist ideas.

literature

• Hans-Jürgen Puhle : From the Agricultural Crisis to Pre-Fascism: Theses on the Importance of Agrarian Interest Groups in German Politics at the End of the 19th Century. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1972; 60 p .; Series of publications: Lectures by the Institute for European History Mainz; 54.
• Klaus Eberhardt: literature, social character, society: investigations into the constitutional phase of pre-fascist literature ; 190 p .; Univ., Diss., Göttingen 1984.
• Andreas Zobel: France's extreme right before the First World War with special reference to the action francaise. An empirical contribution to the definition of the term prefascism. Diss. FU Berlin, 1982.
• Zeev Sternhell: From Enlightenment to Fascism and Nazism. Reflections on the fate of ideas in the 20th century. In .: jour fixe initiative berlin: history after Auschwitz . Münster 2002, ISBN 3-89771-409-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Veit Thomas : Anatomy of the conservative destructiveness: A study of the theory of suffering and culture on the conservative character . LIT Verlag , Münster 2019, ISBN 978-3-643-14429-4 , pp. 231 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
2. ^ Dieter Krüger : Economists in Wilhelmine Germany . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1983, ISBN 978-3-647-35717-1 , p. 23–24 ( limited preview in Google Book search).