From Fascism to Populism in History

Abstract

Federico Finchelstein has pioneered innovative approaches to the study of Argentine fascism and is the leading scholar on this topic today. He has probed its ceremonies, construction of masculinity, use of myth and memory, and sexual and racial obsessions, as well as the simultaneous development of fascism in Argentina and Europe and their mutual influences. In From Fascism to Populism in History, Finchelstein analyzes fascism and populism, their origins, the similarities and differences between them, and how the first morphed into the second. Finchelstein's gaze from the South enhances this comparative and transnational study, which treats Europe, Asia, and the United States as well as Latin America.The author defines fascism as an ever-changing global ideology that refashioned itself in many settings. This antidemocratic, antiliberal, anti-Marxist, hypermasculine, and extreme nationalist creed spread through much of the world, including Latin America, during the Great Depression and intertwined political crisis. It sought to demolish democracy, replace it with a severe dictatorship that prohibited political opposition, and erase the divides between public and private and the state and citizenry. Fascist movements and regimes mandated loyalty to the nation and to the leader, who embodied popular sovereignty. Seeking working-class support while papering over social divisions, fascists supported a corporatist harmonizing of capital and labor and a “third way” between liberalism and socialism that addressed popular needs while retaining a heavily regulated national capitalism. They also substituted political myths for substantiated facts. Inherent to fascism was its persecution of perceived enemies and exaltation of violence and warfare. Variants of fascism borrowed from and competed with each other.Fascists wore shirts whose colors varied by country (including green for Brazil, gold for Mexico, and gray for Chile), a practice that, according to Finchelstein, highlighted the importance of local distinctions. Yet Peronism, the first modern populist regime, was “shirtless,” which for the author signified the shift to a new ideology that departed from fascism (p. 18). Indeed, the Holocaust and defeat of the Axis rendered fascism untenable after 1945, and populism took its place in the new postwar context. Juan Perón's numerous shirtless (descamisado) followers also indicated that while “fascism mobilized the middle class, Peronism rallied the working class” (p. 149). (One should note, however, that in Brazil, Chile, Hungary, and elsewhere laborers and the poor composed a significant minority within fascist ranks.) Not to be confused with neofascism, populism differs from its precursor by accepting electoral democracy, albeit in an authoritarian form that permits yet stigmatizes political rivals; rejecting the emphasis on violence; and including leftist and rightist manifestations. Among the carryovers from fascism are ultranationalism mixed with social concerns, belief in a charismatic leader who stands for the people, deployment of myths, demonization of perceived enemies, and antiliberalism. Some rightist populisms tend toward a vulgar hypermasculinity, but others, along with leftist versions, do not. Like fascism, populism is a fluid transnational and global ideology with distinctive features in each location.This book's importance for Latin Americanists resides largely in Finchelstein's decentering of these phenomena. He inserts many Latin American (and US and Asian) examples into his discussions of fascism and populism. Furthermore, he explains how generic definitions of fascism and fascist “minimums” based on European cases do not necessarily apply to non-European ones (pp. 53–56). The difficulty in fitting non-European movements into these static, homogenizing models encourages local historians who idealize their country's past to deny that such groups were fascist. Even when theorists have recognized national variations, they generally have overlooked the transnational nature of fascism. Ignoring the circulation of ideas among movements, some have claimed that fascism simply spread in one direction from Europe to other places. Finchelstein argues convincingly that one must study a number of cases, including ones outside Europe; situate them within the context of international fascism; and examine global exchanges. He says much the same about populism, which, as he observes, began in Argentina and the South, not the North Atlantic.A cogent example of the importance of transnational exchanges relates to the Holocaust. Some specialists have characterized Nazi Germany as a fascist outlier because it murdered millions. Yet Finchelstein explains how these efforts drew on previous European imperialist policies and fascist brutalities of the 1930s in Africa and Spain. European and Latin American fascists collaborated with and justified Nazi genocide, enabling Germany to take fascism to its ultimate extreme. Viewing the Holocaust through a transnational lens places it squarely within the history of fascism and demonstrates the complicity of global actors in this genocide.Finchelstein combines original research on many countries with a superb synthesis and critical examination of the literature on fascism and populism. A short review cannot do justice to his provocative insights. It would be useful to study in greater detail what Finchelstein calls pre- and protopopulism to distinguish more clearly between them and full-blown populism. This minor caveat, however, does not detract from the quality of his timely and fascinating book.

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