10.1.5 Elitism

Fascism strikes a populist note in its attack on established elites and vulnerable minorities as causes of national decline. A naïve observer might even think there is something vaguely democratic in its preoccupation with mass mobilization and in the vision of fascist leaders and followers mutually engaged in the heroic project of national rebirth. Au contraire. Fascism is the most profoundly anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideology on the entire ideological spectrum. Fascists reject the view that all members of the nation should be viewed as legally or substantively equal and explicitly repudiate any formal structures for citizens’ democratic participation. In Hitler’s view, “The parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle in nature” (cited in Eatwell, 2015, p. 481). In fact, fascists posit that if a nation is not led by its naturally superior members, it will be no better than a “degenerate mass” (Mussolini, 1932, p. 6). The fittest must therefore rule at the head of a mass party and mobilized citizenry.