Page 69 - Fascism: The Bloody Ideology Of Darwinsim

An Analysis Of 20th Century Fascism 69

lack of education of many communities. Education had suffered heavily
during the chaos of the First World War. A great number of young educated
people had lost their lives on the battlefield. In general, this led to a lowering
of the level of culture in society. It was largely the ignorant who supported
fascism, fought in its name, and became pawns of its chauvinistic policies.
Because the fundamental ideas on which fascism were based (in other words,
racism, romantic nationalism, chauvinism and fantasy) could only be widely
accepted by the uneducated, susceptible as they were to crude, facile slogans.
Such people, seeing themselves as trapped, looked for easy way out.
They embraced fascist leaders, as if they were a kind of lifebelt, as Eric Hoffer
says in his book The True Believer:

For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they
must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have
the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible
leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible
power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects
and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of
the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. 34
An examination of the societal conditions that preceded fascism makes
light of the fact that many people had just such a psychology.

The Methods by Which Fascism Came to Power

Mussolini's
quasi-
paramilitary
Black Shirts.