Donald Trump is calling on his supporters to come to Washington to stage a massive, and possibly violent, protest against what he baselessly claims was election fraud. Combined with his phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, pressuring him to falsify the state’s election results and the announced intention of some members of Congress to refuse to certify the Electoral College vote, this constitutes a coup attempt that ranks with the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome and Adolph Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch.
A little more than three years ago the centennial of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution passed all but unnoticed. Unlike the noisily marked 50th anniversary in 1967, this date is completely irrelevant in the modern world. Indeed, the Soviet Union, which was supposed to lead the world to the bright communist future, is no more, having rotted to the core and collapsed thirty years ago. Most members of the old Comecon are in the EU, which the communist economic bloc was supposed to rival. Even though China, Cuba and a handful of other countries are still run by communist parties, their communism is very different from what Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky envisioned.
Communism is dead and the only country that still clings to the original dogma, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, or North Korea, is prima facie evidence of its demise.
Unfortunately, this is not true of the upcoming centennial of Mussolini’s October 1922 March on Rome, a bit of nasty political theater that established the world’s first fascist regime.
Obviously, proto-fascist groups and ideologies existed long before Mussolini — notably, in France, as described in a great book on the subject, The Embrace of Unreason by historian Frederick Brown. In Russia, too, during the civil war parts of the White movement had the characteristics of nascent fascism and, moreover, Stalin’s version of communism built in the Soviet Union looked much more like a variety of fascism than what Marx and Engels had had in mind.
Still, Mussolini not only came up with the term fascism but also built the first actual fascist state. His successful seizure of power in Italy was followed a year later by Hitler’s failed attempt in Munich and, another decade later, the emergence of Nazi Germany. Other varieties of fascist states sprung up on the periphery of Europe, either home-grown or with direct support from Germany and Italy.
But then the defeat of Germany in 1945 seemed to put an end to the ideology. Of course, nothing is ever clear-cut and Josef Stalin was not only among the victors but after the end of World War II he turned the Soviet Union into an openly fascist state, complete with the hero-worship of himself as a leader, militarization of society, glorification of the Russian nation and an anti-Semitic campaign.
It is also true that at the 50th anniversary of the March on Rome moderate, and decaying, fascist regimes persisted in Spain and Portugal and a successor of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party carried on in Italy under the name of the Italian Social Movement, or MSI.
Nevertheless, fascism as an ideology seemed to be definitively repudiated. Most importantly, it was rejected by democratic nations on moral and ethical grounds. In 1972 fascism was equated with medieval barbarism and there seemed to be no more possibility of returning to it than to public executions in city squares.
But the picture looks very different now when we approach the centennial of the March on Rome. In fact, Mussolini and Hitler would have rejoiced at the way their ideology has returned to respectability. Right-wing parties that by and large meet the conventional definition of fascism — such as Umberto Eco’s list of 14 common features of fascism — have sprung up across Europe and some have either entered their countries’ governments or have come fairly close to winning elections. Even some mainstream parties have adopted parts of right-wing radical programs in order to garner rightists’ votes. Right-wing charismatic leaders are in power in a number of countries, including ones that are still considered nominally democratic. Blood-and-soil nationalism, return to “traditional values”, blaming “the other” and other similar notions are now suddenly mainstream — which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Russia, a nuclear superpower, may have a more conventional criminal organization in power, but Vladimir Putin provides both overt and covert support and comfort to foreign fascists.
And now we have an American version of the March on Rome unfolding in Washington, D.C. It may be a comical undertaking with no chance of success, and Trump himself seems to know that since his Washington hotel has jacked up its rates for Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
But the second largest number of voters, over 70 million of them and very close to half of the electorate, supported Trump. His active base measures between 30% and 40% — more than enough for a successful coup and probably much more than Mussolini or Hitler had before they came to power.
Besides, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch was also a piece of political buffoonery that was doomed to failure from the start. The German government at the time gave him a mild slap on the wrist only to see him come back with a vengeance a decade later.
