Is Fascism just Monarchy in a Suit and Tie?
Disclosure: I majored in politics in undergrad and sometimes consider myself a hedge wizard kind of scholar of politics, in that I don't have a ton of formal training; and certainly nobody pays me for my observations, but over the years I've been mulling and ruminating on things, especially the things that give me indigestion (like current events.)
And since I'm kind of a history geek, married the daughter of a brit lit scholar focused on Shakespeare, I read up on the old history of places like Europe or Japan or China, and I think to myself...is modern history that different?
Fascism is often an attempt to reinvent the future in the imagining of the past, but is what we're doing not really all that different than traditional monarchy, with literally one dude making the decisions and declaring themself to be the sole imperator of the state?
Thomas Hobbes and Louis XIV come to mind, of course. And this might run parallel my earlier reflection that capitalism begins to resemble to feudalism, with "employees" working private properties instead of "serfs" working "land," or "unions" instead of "guilds."
Analogies are imperfect, but are they close enough to be useful?
And since I'm kind of a history geek, married the daughter of a brit lit scholar focused on Shakespeare, I read up on the old history of places like Europe or Japan or China, and I think to myself...is modern history that different?
Fascism is often an attempt to reinvent the future in the imagining of the past, but is what we're doing not really all that different than traditional monarchy, with literally one dude making the decisions and declaring themself to be the sole imperator of the state?
Thomas Hobbes and Louis XIV come to mind, of course. And this might run parallel my earlier reflection that capitalism begins to resemble to feudalism, with "employees" working private properties instead of "serfs" working "land," or "unions" instead of "guilds."
Analogies are imperfect, but are they close enough to be useful?
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It does seem that at the outset some specificity might be called for—for “traditional monarchy,” perhaps substitute “absolute monarchy” (as opposed to constitutional monarchy)?
Even under fascism, I don't think workers are bonded to their employers in the way that serfs were bonded to the land, are they? So the economic structure is definitely capitalist, not feudalist.
But, yeah, it probably captures the imagined spirit of feudalism, everyone subjugating their individual happiness for some hierarchically arranged common good. George Orwell described Yeats as having "had the outlook of those who teach fascism by the aristocratic route", which would indicate Orwell was picking up on the same vibes you are. Though his phrasing implies there are other routes, eg. I'd say the populist and the clerical.
Monarchy legitimises itself partly by having everyone agree on the rules of inheritance and partly by having the king perform particular functions, chiefly success in war (though peace will do) and administering justice (at least in the perception of those able to kick up a fuss). While monarchies do engage in propaganda the idea of a monarch who is competent but no more is ok. Traditional monarchy is generally compatible with having a civil society.
Fascism legitimises itself solely through the strength of the leader and the leader's ability to embody the nation. It doesn't allow civil society that isn't under its control.
That should be "reach fascism".
Fascism is opposed to organic tradition and custom, although it appropriates nostalgia and rewrites history to create precedent for itself.
Although being paid in scrip that can only be spent at the company store starts to look really quite feudal. Trump is basically a robber baron, so I wouldn't put that sort of nonsense past him.
At the same time, we've spoken of Chinese Emperors and bureaucracies that predate European contact by centuries. And Japanese history has its own form of feudalism. Ironically, due to playing Sekiro* and memories from college studies, I was looking back at the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan and you can see some of it there. He was establishing laws in which people were encouraged to snitch on their neighbors, check. Total power vested in a leader, check. Soldiers so insanely bound to their "honor" that they would literally commit ritual suicide under orders if circumstances warranted.
It's not exact, but this all feels familiar. I've been quipping on facebook (not to cross pollinate) about fascism being a kind of polisci convergent evolution. It's like a mode of organization that keeps turning up over and over again in history for whatever reason, with some variation.
In that vein, while I'll admit that fascism has European roots, I think it might be describing a broader trend.
* A computer game set in a fantasy version of 1600s Japan, which involved a vast civil war from which a military dictator (shogun) took over, and his family ruled into the 20th century.
Yep. Since I grew up in the rural end of Maryland, which is adjacent to coal country, that example leaped into my mind as well.
I think the boundaries between capitalism and feudalism are never as clear as some people would like for them to be, especially when you're in a town with basically one functioning industry.
I think Japan and China both have a long history of authoritarian rule, at least from what I've studied, long predating direct contact with "western Europe" as we know it.
Look up "Tokugawa Shogunate" if you want an example. I think that one is actually really neat, from a safe distance.
And an interesting case I've read is that Hungary is often regarded as a modern model for fascists, in that it has the appearances of a democracy but functionally is controlled by an autocrat.
In my final year of my BA I was part of a term long history seminar on Fascism. We focused on the experience in European countries from 1919-1945. One of the texts we used was Fascism in Europe Ed. SJ Woolf. It contained essays by various historians on how fascism manifested itself in various European countries in the interwar years. The greatest traction for fascism in Canada was in Quebec where Adrien Arcand led the Blueshirts.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/adrian-arcand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Arcand
And “right of God” seems to assume a certain understanding of God that I suspect did not apply to, say, the Siamese monarchy prior to 1932.
I’d say it’s probably more accurate to say an absolute monarch rules by might. The “right” likely means little without the might to maintain it.
You are right over all but a monarch in England would have been crowned because of relation to the previous one. Not because of the power. Social hierarchy was important
Was this directed toward me? If so, would you mind rephrasing? If not, apologies.
But since you want to focus on “a monarch in England,” Harold Godwinson, who was killed at the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror’s army, might disagree with your take, as might Edgar Ætheling. (And, of course, while Harold and Edgar had hereditary claims that led to their consideration, it was election by the Witan that made them king.)
Edward V might disagree, too. As far as that goes, the whole saga of the Lancasters and the Yorks, and then the Tudors, would seem to argue against your claim.
(*) Outside Christian Europe placating the gods was another duty of the monarch, but in Latin Christendom the Church had primary responsibility for that.
It was the nobility (whatever form that took in a particular context) whose opinions on legitimacy mattered. And I think history provides plenty of examples where legitimacy was accepted until, for whatever reason, it wasn’t.
What do you imagine that power is?
"Social hierarchy" gives you power. Plenty of people in plenty of monarchies have been willing to play the sort of game that says that I will support your claim to the throne, and you will give me lands and power and authority, marry your eldest son to my daughter, name my son as your heir, and so on.
If you're talking about monarchies with a strict line of succession, then the consistent rule, as others have noted, is that that rule of succession has been applied right up until enough people didn't want it to. Just in modern English terms, that would include the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda; the abdication of Richard II in favour of Henry IV rather than Edmund, Earl of March; the entirety of the Wars of the Roses; the English Civil War; the Stuart succession (the Stuarts has been disbarred from the succession by Henry VIII's will. Elizabeth chose to put them back); and the Glorious Revolution in 1688.
Pre-Norman conquest, there was not a strict line of inheritance.
Arguably, royal power was later constrained both by Magna Carta and the baronial wars of Henry III's reign.
Medieval English monarchs had to get the nobility on board.
On the 'might' thing, Charles I was hampered in his 'Divine Right of Kings' malarkey by not having a standing army. There were only a small number of permanent garrisons in places vulnerable to French or Spanish attack.
That's why Queen Henrietta Maria had to go abroad to pawn the Crown Jewels to raise funds and why he had to wander around the Midlands and North raising support for his initial push towards London as the First Civil War began.
Cheshire, for instance, voted not to get involved on either side but was gradually drawn in.
It's also why the First Civil War lasted so long, because neither side could gain immediate advantage as both were in the same boat when it came to raising men and munitions.
Parliament gradually prevailed because it was able to raise the resources to develop The New Model Army and break through the stalemate.
Charles, I imagine, assumed he had the 'moral right' which would compensate for insufficient resources to secure a quick victory.
That might also explain why he kept trying to do deals with the Scots and to make come-backs even after it became obvious that his cause was lost.
At any rate, I'm not sure medieval or Early Modern Western European models of monarchy are directly comparable with fascism.
I'd tend to see fascism as tapping into something older, darker and more visceral than that in terms of it being some kind of personality-cult around a great leader or war lord. Something almost tribal in a dodgy eugenics / quasi-historical skewed romanticism sense.
Degenerate late 19th century Romanticism fed into fascism - think Wagner, think Yeats - which doesn't necessarily imply that either were full-on fascists.
Yeats apparently regretted his brief flirtation with the Irish 'blue-shirts' but then he had all sorts of weird and wonderful whishty-whishty Celtic Twilight views that could easily skew in that kind of direction.
Italian Futurism fed into fascism too, as did Mussolini's obsession with ancient Rome and so on.
There are all manner of factors that played into it, medieval antisemitism, late-Romantic notions of national identity and destiny - a toxic brew drawn from any number of poisoned wells.
I think "I have the right of God" is a very easy thing to say when you've got a bunch of thugs standing behind you to enforce it. And "right of succession" has been overturned so many times in history that it's kind of a joke.
Mind, given how long the American project has lasted, that might apply to any model of governance. Hm. I think there's a folk wisdom that "two centuries" is what you should expect, and that does fit the dynastic histories I'm aware of, more or less. China went through a bunch, and I think they usually broke succession every few centuries. In that sense, there was a centralized imperial "system" but the people running it would replace each other with extreme violence at intervals.
I keep going back to Japan, which I'm more familiar with, and they're neat because they have, I think, the longest-running imperial lineage in the world, going back to the 700s. Of course, in 1100 or so, the Japanese emperor became (to describe it loosely) a figurehead as the real power belonged to the shogun, a military warlord who actually ruled with the emperor's formal "permission." And for most of that history the Emperor was something akin to the modern British Monarchy, a symbolic office with limited clout.*
But in that form, the Japanese Imperial succession has continued for over 1000 years while the shogunates would - with great violence - replace each other every few centuries.
All this is to say that "divine right" is something anyone can say, especially in America, and "succession" has a very spotty history. Though I think there might be a thing that fascists fancy themselves as establishing monarchy. And if they succeed, they become kings.
But is that really so different? A caterpillar is still a butterfly, in a certain sense. Or more aptly, a nymph still grows up to be a cockroach. Maybe fascism is just the nascent phase.
* The exception being the early 20th century when it was a fascist figurehead, later overturned by the Americans after WWII, which led to the modern democratic state.
Which sounds a lot like "good citizens sacrifice for their country" which is something Fascists like to say a lot.
Oh, well then let me apologize. I wan't referring to anything re: Trump or his supporters/imitators. I was just making a general comment about the tool I prefer to use to try to "ground" the term Fascism whenever I encounter it, which is fairly often re: Trump & Co. That said, there are plenty of things he's done and had done that can be categorized as fascistic. Sure.
Sure, although as I tried to demonstrate upthread, saying this is one thing, imposing it quite another.
Charles I couldn't impose it because he had Parliament against him and no standing army to enforce it. He still gave it a pretty good go though.
The old 'Tories', the kind of 'Church and King' party that evolved into the UK Conservative and Unionist Party as we have today were very much for the union of Church and State.
Tsarist Russia the same, of course.
As indeed was the Byzantine Empire before that.
We could debate the role religion played in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. The National Socialists were pretty atheistic I think, but swathes of German Christendom backed it or accommodated themselves with it.
The RCC was very supportive of Franco in Spain, of course and I remember reading that the Pope supported Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia as he thought it would bring the Ethiopian Orthodox Church within the orbit of Rome.
In Eastern Europe there have been examples of 'Orthofascism' and that seems to be having an unwelcome resurgence. Yikes!
At any rate, I don't think it's enough to say that fascism is simply medieval monarchism in a suit and tie rather than doublet and hose or a suit of chain-mail.
I think there's more to it than that.
And why not discuss Stalinism while we are at it, another hideous system.
In the case of the English monarchy as I understand it where there's a failure of legitimacy or a revolt it was a combination of military failures with some nobleman feeling aggrieved that their rights weren't respected and convincing the other nobility that their grievances were justified. Furthermore, those new monarchs - Henry IV or Edward IV had to face a rather more resistance than equivalently capable predecessors. On the other hand, Edward III, son of a deposed father, was able to seize power and kill his regent with little to no resistance.
That said, the Canadians have definitely done a better job of trying to deal with that history than we have.
I can never quite understand the 'Charles, King and Martyr' types at the 'Higher' end of the Anglican spectrum, particularly those among the US Episcopalians.
Charles I certainly faced his execution with dignity and courage, but he'd plunged his Three Realms into chaos and civil war.
That said, he'd seen his powers reduced to a nominal level and had become little more than a figure-head like the Venetian Doge or the Dutch Stadtholder.
If the more radical Parliamentarians had their way he'd have been compelled to divorce his Catholic wife and commit England to The Thirty Years War with the anticipated result of overthrowing the Papal Antichrist and the despotic Catholic monarchies of mainland Europe thereby ushering in the reign of King Jesus and the hegemony of the saints.
Was the military junta that ran the country during the Commonwealth period any less authoritarian and despotic?
Are we to think in terms of theocratic Puritan fascism as well as monarchical despotism?
Edward III expelled the Jews from England. Cromwell invited them back, but purely because he thought that would lead to their conversion and to the return of Christ.
There may well be parallels between the actions of absolutist monarchies and Early Modern theocratic experiments such as Puritan New England or the English Commonwealth and later fascism. There are certainly some emphases that carried forward into modern times - the antisemitism of the Tsarist pogroms and the way the Nazis didn't have to try very hard to stir up bloody massacres of Jews in Lithuania, Romania and elsewhere.
But I think all that runs deeper than whether you had an absolutist monarchy or an early attempt at some form of republic such as in Poland/Lithuania or in England during the Commonwealth.
Lithuania didn't have a tradition of absolutist monarchy - at least not until it was absorbed by Tsarist Russia - but it didn't take much to get murderous mobs out to slaughter their Jewish neighbours.
I've said before that while Marxism can easily be defined by reference to Karl Marx, fascism doesn't have the same kind of theoretical basis that makes it easily definable. It's a term used more often by outsiders to mean this political group can usefully be likened to Mussolini's political movement.
My favored communist, author and political analyst, Lincoln Steffens, formed much the same belief at the end of his life, looking in through a different window: he felt partially reconciled to American capitalism by the recognition that Russian communism was the same thing.
It's relevant of course, because Mussolini's "post socialist" political movement was inspired partly by Russian communism: recognizing that it was impossible to say which was which, Mussolini went straight to the (nationalist) end point. (This put him in conflict with both "Internationalist" (Russian imperialist) communism, and with orthodox Marxist/Leninist communism, which held that a workers revolution was a necessary intermediate step).
So this is a different way of looking at it: is/was Monarchism a post-socialist form of government, characterized by the union of Big Business, Big Labour, and Big Government, symbolized by the faggot, representing the strength in unity of those elements?
I would say no. The examples of Monarchy I am familiar with recognized a responsibility from the Monarch to the People, but did not regard the People as part of the political body.
Orwell and Trotsky might say Yes. They might say that any system where the workers are exploited is ultimately the same system under different guises.
I realised my mistake and changed what I said.
Magna Carta is an interesting case when talking what traditional monarchy is, in that the Barons presented it as stating explicitly and formally what had been long-established customs. A modern equivalent might be adding a clause to the US Constitution saying that the President is subject to the law in all their functions. Everyone believed that went without saying until the Supreme Court said otherwise. Across Europe the late Medieval period was one where monarchs attempted to centralise and consolidate power. We tend to think of progress as being a straight growth in individual liberty, with Magna Carta as a step in that direction, but that's not how it was presented at the time.
I don't know much about medieval Japan and I don't trust what I do know since I can't tell how much of it is orientalising. China may be closer to an authoritarian modern state in that I believe the government was a bureaucracy with generals and governors appointed by the Emperor rather than being drawn from a hereditary landed nobility. Even there I think the mandate of Heaven depends on the Emperor governing justly rather than on the Emperor being strong. (Wu Zetian might have been a step closer to fascist methods of claiming legitimacy though our sources for her are all hostile.)
I wasn’t trying to illustrate a general state of affairs. I was trying to illustrate that the two statements I quoted and was responding to were inaccurate over-generalizations.
I'll cheerfully accept that amendment. Well played!