Clerical fascism
Clerical fascism is an ideological construct that combines the political and economic doctrines of
fascism with
theology or religious tradition. The term has been used to describe organisations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, support by religious organisations for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role. For
Catholic clerical fascism, the term
Catholic integralism is sometimes used, though
Catholic integralism may have points of disagreement with
fascism.
The term clerical fascism emerged in the 1920s to refer to the links between the Church and Italian fascism.[
1] More recently, the term has been used by scholars, such as
Hugh Trevor-Roper, who seek to create a typology of fascism, distringuishing between clerical fascism and more
radical types of fascism such as
Naziism.
[H.R. Trevor-Roper, 'The Phenomenon of Fascism', in S. Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), especially p.26. Cited in Roger Eatwell "Reflections on Fascism and Religion"http://staff.bath.ac.uk/mlsre/ReflectionsonFascismandReligion.htm]Examples of
dictatorships or political movements involving certain elements of clerical fascism include those of
António Salazar in
Portugal,
Maurice Duplessis of
Quebec[
2],
Engelbert Dollfuss in
Austria,
Jozef Tiso in
Slovakia,
Getulio Vargas in
Brazil,
Ante Pavelić and the
Ustashe in
Croatia, the
Iron Guard movement in
Romania, the
Rexists in
Belgium and the government of
Vichy France. The regime of
General Franco in
Spain had
nacionalcatolicismo as part of its ideology. It has been described by some as clerical fascist, especially after the decline in influence of the more secular-fascist
Falange beginning in the mid-
1940s. With the exception of the Croatian Ustashe movement, scholars debate which other examples in this list should be dubbed, without reservation, clerical fascist.
Some scholars, such as
Walter Laqueur, consider certain contemporary movements to be forms of clerical fascism, including
Christian Identity and possibly
Christian Reconstructionism in the United States; militant forms of politicized
Islamic fundamentalism; and militant
Hindu nationalism in
India (
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh /
Bharatiya Janata Party).
Other scholars, such as
Juan Cole, however point to the fact, that presently the term is used pejoratively by those opposed to religious influence upon politics in general.
Footnotes
*
Fascism and the Catholic Church*
Islamic fundamentalism*
Islamofascism (epithet)*
Green-Fascism*
Positive Christianity*
Randolph L. Braham and Scott Miller,
The Nazis Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, [1998] 2002). (ISBN 0814327370)
*
Leon Volovici,
Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991). (ISBN 0080410243)
* Nicholas M. Nagy–Talavera,
The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania (Iaşi and Oxford: The Center for Romanian Studies, 2001). (ISBN 9739432115)
*
Charles Bloomberg and
Saul Dubow, eds.,
Christian–Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, 1918–48 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). (ISBN 0253312353)
*
Walid Phares,
Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance (Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner, 1995). (ISBN 1555875351)
*
Ainslie T. Embree, ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation', in
Accounting for Fundamentalisms, The Fundamentalism Project 4, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 617–652. (ISBN 0226508854)
*
Partha Banerjee,
In the Belly of the Beast: The Hindu Supremacist RSS and BJP of India (Delhi: Ajanta, 1998). (ISBN 8120205042)
*
Walter K. Andersen. ‘Bharatiya Janata Party: Searching for the Hindu Nationalist Face',
In The New Politics of the Right: Neo–Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, ed. Hans–Georg Betz and Stefan Immerfall (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), pp. 219–232. (ISBN 0312211341 or ISBN 0312213387)
*
Mark Juergensmeyer.
The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). (ISBN 0520086511)
*
Roger Eatwell "Reflections on Fascism and Religion"[
3]
*
Chip Berlet Terms to use with caution*
Laqueur, Walter. 1966.
Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 019511793X
Vatican policy
*
Anthony Rhodes,
The Vatican in the Age of Dictators 1922–1945 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973). (ISBN 0340023943)
*
Michael Phayer,
The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) (ISBN 0253337259)
*
Livia Rothkirchen, ‘Vatican Policy and the ‘Jewish Problem' in Independent Slovakia (1939–1945)' in Michael R. Marrus (ed.),
The Nazi Holocaust 3, section 8, Bystanders to the Holocaust (Wesport: Meckler, 1989), pp. 1306–1332. (ISBN 0887362559 or ISBN 0887362567)
