All the hilarity about Baudet’s insane claim that we are ruled by ‘evil reptiles’ threatens to misunderstand the danger this politician and his party. Not only the influence of possible Russian prompters, but also the question to what extent Forum for Democracy should be regarded as fascist, deserves our attention.
Because of Forum leaders alluding to a rebellion against lawful authority and a reckoning with opponents, the latter is much more than an academic matter. For a careful answer to it, it is nevertheless necessary to determine what experts understand by fascism.
About the author
Robin in Slaa is a historian and author of Fascism. Origin and ideology and co-author of two studies on the NSB.
Fascism is nowadays regarded by authoritative scientists as a generic revolutionary movement with various national variants, including the Italian fascismthe German-Austrian National Socialismus and the ‘Dutch National Socialism’ of the NSB.
Political religion
As a political religion, fascism had several utopian ideals, such as a cross-class, ethnically homogeneous and collectivist society. The creation of a new civilization, a new elite and even a superior human race were also on his political-ideological program.
As a new revolutionary movement, fascism partly built on ideas and views that were older. This includes racism and anti-Semitism, which took on epidemic proportions from the second half of the 19th century. The ‘Aryan’ was considered superior to other races and was therefore entitled to subjugate them. His nemesis was ‘the Jew’, who tried to establish his sinister world domination through Marxism, capitalism and miscegenation. The mere presence of ‘foreign’ and non-assimilable Jews undermined the health of one’s own ‘national body’.
Also widespread Social Darwinism, which believed that struggle is the essence of existence and war between peoples and races is the normal condition, became a fundamental component of fascism. The same was true of theories about a non-Marxist and national form of socialism, Nietzsche’s reflections on the superhuman and of the Will of Powerthe belief that one’s own people are unique and had an imperialist mission to fulfill and the belief that the irrational masses need an authoritarian leader and can be mobilized through myth and fanatical faith for revolutionary ends.
Deep rooted
Existing ideas were incorporated—often in vulgarized and radicalized form—into a new revolutionary movement that emerged after the First World War and came to be called fascism. Fascism was thus not an inexplicable industrial accident in European history, but deeply rooted in it. Fascists strove for a ruthless revolution that should purify society of alleged decadence phenomena such as democracy and humanism.
According to them, violence emanated a regenerative power. The fascist revolution would lead to a national rebirth. The myth of a national rebirth was at the heart of the extreme nationalism of all fascist movements.
Despite the initial differences on this point, virtually all fascist movements from the second half of the 1930s onwards professed biologically “grounded” racism and anti-Semitism. Its own people were regarded as an organism whose ‘blood’ – as a carrier of hereditary racial characteristics – had to be kept pure.
Fascism could only succeed if there was a widely shared sense of existential crisis, with its own people, or indeed the whole of Western civilization, being threatened from within and without. In the irreconcilable worldview of fascists, the insidious elites collaborated in the enslavement and even destruction of their own people, often directed by the real rulers behind the scenes. Only a determined fascist vanguard could salvage this.
Concealing language
Although it is used by the dogwhistles and the disguising language is not recognizable to everyone, Baudet and his party indisputably display certain characteristics of fascism. Examples include biologically based racism based on the superiority of the Aryan race, the delusion that there is a Jewish plot to rule the world, the idea that the ‘boreal world’ is in an existential crisis, the pursuit of a national rebirth, referred to as ‘renaissance’, to be initiated by a strong-willed vanguard.
Even the idea that violence can emanate a regenerative force is flourishing within FvD. Given the ideological affiliation with other right-wing extremists, who according to the AIVD are already anticipating a coming race war in the Netherlands, there is very little reason to make us happy about Baudet.