What is Nazism
Nazism is a political
ideology rooted in the
nineteenth-century
German racialist
(völkisch) movement,
emerging in the context
of Germany’s defeat in
WW1, the counter-
revolutionary
movement, and the rise
of fascism in Europe.
It was heavily defined by
the Hitler regime and its
genocidal campaign in
WW2: authoritarian,
activist, violent,
antisemitic,
murderously radical.
Nazism is an extremist
and at times terrorist
fringe phenomenon in
the postwar period, but
has effectively exploited
political and
technological
developments to
exercise some
influence.
Key definition
With its vivid and extremely violent
history, Nazism is a highly mutable
phenomenon, which like fascism resists
precise definition. In no part has Nazism
been consistently the same everywhere,
but core concepts like racial community,
antisemitism, and violent masculinity
have proven to be the most prevalent
aspects.
History
Nazism, properly termed National
Socialism, was the ideology of the
German Nazi party,
the Nationalsozialistischer Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist
German Workers’ Party). The term ‘Nazi’
(Nationalsozialist) was an insult coined
by opponents, hence Nazism. Originally
the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, founded in
1919 and led by Anton Drexler, the small
Bavarian party ended up under Adolf
Hitler who would come to define it under
his dictatorial charismatic leadership.
[1]
The NSDAP emerged in the immediate
aftermath of Germany’s defeat in WW1,
and the development a new right-wing
politics in Europe after the Russian
Revolution of 1917, and ostensibly
combined a worker-oriented politics with
a rejection of conventional socialist
internationalism. Instead, the NSDAP
emerged directly from the
German völkisch milieu – a scene of
radical racist nationalism that originated
in the Nineteenth Century.[2] The NSDAP
also rejected core Marxist concepts like
the class struggle, proclaiming the
utopian Volksgemeinschaft (lit. national
community), a cross-class racial
community.
National Socialism spread beyond
Germany’s borders already in the 1920s,
initially as a junior alternative to Italy’s
model of fascism. In 1924, for example,
the National Socialist Freedom League
was established by the Furugård brothers
in Sweden,[3] though it was only with
what has been termed the ‘second wave’
of fascism in the 1930s that German
National Socialism became the primary
source of inspiration for the new wave of
right-wing politics rather than Fascist
Italy. By the mid-30s there were
numerous new (and old) fascist groups
that now termed themselves National
Socialist, most – though not all – placing
racist ideology and antisemitism front
and centre of their politics.
When Hitler seized power in 1933, he
established a concrete model of National
Socialist rule that would be an abiding
source of inspiration down to the present
day. The aesthetics of the regime, and its
use of political spectacle, ensured that
the imagery of a dynamic, disciplined,
and youthful military masculinity would
be one of national socialism’s primary
myths and selling points. At the same
time, the June 1934 massacre of left-
wing opponents within the National
Socialist movement, particularly from the
paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA),
cemented its reputation for brute
violence and gangsterism, and put an
end to its flirtation with social revolution.
Other developments like the 1935
Nuremberg Laws which legally excluded
Jews from German civic life or the even
internally controversial 1938 pogroms
which seriously harmed the state’s
reputation, demonstrated that National
Socialism’s radical and uncivil drive for
political taboo-breaking had not been
dulled by the experience of state
government.
Ultimately it was the events of WW2,
triggered by Hitler’s invasion of Poland in
September 1939, which defined National
Socialism for future generations. The
sheer brutality of military conquest as
Nazi Germany sought to vastly expand
the borders of the Reich and the violence
with which it sought to establish its
dominance in Europe perhaps appalled
contemporaries most, in what has been
understood as a transfer of the
murderousness of colonialism to
European territory.[4] The Nazi military
campaign also radicalised the regime’s
political goals for the Volksgemeinschaft,
and in 1939-41 culminated in the
Holocaust, a concerted effort to
physically exterminate perceived national
enemies, principally Jews, but also
disabled people, Roma, Sinti, and
homosexuals.[5] There was extensive
collaboration of local groups and
national authorities across Europe – for
instance Dutch police helped the German
occupiers identify Jews directly, while
members of the indigenous fascist
movement participated in razzias and
deportations.[6] The genocide claimed
some eleven million victims, itself only a
portion of the number the Nazi
leadership intended to kill in the
establishment of the so-called New
Order, mainly in plans of deliberate mass
starvation.[7]
Different conceptualisations
One of the most prevalent initial
understandings of National Socialism
after 1945, particularly in the West, was
as a nihilistic force, emphasising its
thuggish politics, cult of violence, and
anti-intellectualism. On the other hand,
Marxist scholars had since the 1920s
argued that it was a form of fascism, and
as such the terroristic defence of
capitalist rule against the revolutionary
working classes.[8] This is not unrelated
to the main debate in the understanding
of Nazism after WW2: whether to
understand it as part of a broader
development in European history,
particularly as a sub-category of fascism,
or as something sui generis, that was
particular to Germany’s so-called special
path in historical development.
Proponents of the former cite supposed
fascist commonalities like the cult of
violence, ultra-nationalism,
aestheticization of politics, and
charismatic leadership, while the latter
believe features like antisemitism and
biological racism, and Nazi Germany’s
campaign of genocide mark it out as
historically unique.
Prevalence
Perhaps surprisingly this has not
stopped scholars, and media more
generally, from identifying a distinct neo-
Nazism in the postwar period. Nazi
Germany’s total defeat in WW2 and the
subsequent denazification process in the
West by no means completely removed
Nazi veterans from power in postwar
societies, while many others were
recruited by Western powers in the Cold
War struggle against communism. But
the events of the war, and the Holocaust
in particular, did put National Socialist
ideology completely beyond the pale,
even more so than fascism, such that
groups describing themselves as
National Socialist were wilfully
associating themselves with mass
violence and genocide, and automatically
relegated to remaining fringe
phenomena, if they were tolerated at all.
Nevertheless the ideas and myths of
National Socialism proved to have
considerable staying power, as Hitler’s
regime’s own imagery continued to play a
key role in defining postwar
understandings of it. In the 1950s and
60s groups like the American Nazi Party,
the British National Socialist Movement,
and the World Union of National
Socialists emerged.[9] While utterly
irrelevant to mainstream politics, they
provided a framework for continued
political activity. Neo-Nazism produced
virtually no new ideas (starting from an
already appalling intellectual calibre), but
did see innovations in terms of political
tactics, ranging from the terrorism of the
70s in the US in particular, to the
construction of the neo-Nazi skinhead
scene, starting in the UK in the late
1970s before spreading globally, with a
significant degree of Americanisation
along the way.
It is these metamorphoses, particularly
since the 1990s, which have proved
crucial in allowing neo-Nazism too put
punch well above its weight, even as the
actual number of neo-Nazi activists has
remained very low. Through avoiding the
highly divisive racial theory of interwar
National Socialism, e.g. the treatment of
Slavic populations as subhuman, neo-
Nazism has made a place for itself in a
much broader White Power movement
with ideas, while avidly using the internet
to grow a global, if highly fissiparous,
network.[10] Race, antisemitism, and
violent authoritarian solutions remain key
to neo-Nazism, but it has also mobilised
around new issues such as immigration,
feminism, and LGBTQ rights. The
retention of media interest, successful
exploitation of the internet and social
media in particular, has taken neo-
Nazism some way away from political
irrelevance after decades. It remains a
fringe subcultural phenomenon, neo-
Nazism now also surfaces in more
prominent political contexts – most
notably in the case of the American
Trump movement, where neo-Nazi
supporters can happily rub shoulders
with both other extremists and more
mainstream right-wingers.[11]
