WI: More Religious Fascism?

Wolf1965

Donor
Austria before 1938 was on a very "good" way into a religious-faschist state. The church played an enourmous part in suppressing civil rights and democracy because of the perceived immorality of these.
 
The Utsahe would count, the Chetniks would count also.

Generally it depends on how important religion is to the cohesion provided by the movement, in places like Croatia and Serbia where ethnicity was actually less a divider than faith.
 
Well its a little different. Falangism in the Middle East is far less associated with Fascism. It is more indicative of a movement being Christian.

Fascism in general isn't really a thing in the Mideast.

Elements of it have been appropriated by regimes that saw it as being useful for them over the years though, namely Syria and Iraq.
 
Wasn't Saddam's Iraq practically Fascist for all intents and purposes? It is the closet we've come to a Fascist state it seems after Franco's Spain fell, among other things.
 
Saddam Hussain was more of a military dictator than a fascist. Was his Ba'ath Party a Cadre Party organised based on an ideology? Of course they had Arab Nationalism and Socialism as an ideology. But that was common to the leaders like Nasser and Assad. Also there was nothing religious in their ideology or policies. Saddam was thoroughly secular in his thoughts and actions, and that must be appreciated.
 
What I find interesting is that the Iron Guard of Romania is the only example of a religious Fascist state, and so I pose this question.

What if there were more Fascist states that were highly religious? What if, for example, there was a Fascist movement that was explicitly Protestant or a sect in Islam? For that matter, what about other Asian religions? I don't know how plausible or implausible this is for many religions, which is another reason I ask. So really,

1. Why were there not more religious Fascist movements?
2. If there more in OTL, what impact would this have on the religion in question? Just the typical reaction to extremists of that religion?
3. What are other religions that could've had Fascist movements explicitly utilizing them?

I think it depends on whether you by "fascism" mean the ACTUAL ideology "Fascism", or what some people on the left refer to as "Fascism", which is "Anything I don't agree with".
In case of the latter, the examples are legio.
In case of the former.....not really happening. Fascism, as with Communism demands total obedience to the State and the Party/Leader aboce all else, a demand that no devout religious person can comply with. Sure, the historical fascist regimes have tried to use religion for political benefits - hence Mussolini's and Franco's (and you could add Hitler to that, though he was a nazi, not a fascist, but for the purposes of this discussion, same deal) concordat with the Vatican, as well as the way the USSR also making use of nominally "reactionary" forces like tradition and the Orthodox church during WW2.
 
Saddam Hussain was more of a military dictator than a fascist. Was his Ba'ath Party a Cadre Party organised based on an ideology? Of course they had Arab Nationalism and Socialism as an ideology. But that was common to the leaders like Nasser and Assad. Also there was nothing religious in their ideology or policies. Saddam was thoroughly secular in his thoughts and actions, and that must be appreciated.

Secular of course, but that doesn't eliminate Fascism.

For Fascism, it seemed to have all the unification thing going, and revanchist elements that are similar to many other Fascist states.
 
Austria before 1938 was on a very "good" way into a religious-faschist state. The church played an enourmous part in suppressing civil rights and democracy because of the perceived immorality of these.

In the same way as some people claim it does so (suppress civil rights (the definition of which vary) and democracy) today? Because if so, then I'm highly sceptical as to the validity of that claim.
 
Wouldn't Mussolini's upbringing have to be changed to be less socialist and against the Catholic Church, but wouldn't that butterfly Fascism as we know it.
 
Wouldn't Mussolini's upbringing have to be changed to be less socialist and against the Catholic Church, but wouldn't that butterfly Fascism as we know it.

Actually, Mussolini's Socialism is key to his later Fascism because of his wants to combine his previous Socialist viewpoints with that of extreme Nationalism. Take away his Socialism, and he probably just becomes another conservative or reactionary.
 
What are other religions that could've had Fascist movements explicitly utilizing them?

I imagine that Chiang Kai Sheks nationalists could have supported a Confucian variant of fascism. This is especially so considering the emphasis that confuncianism places on traditional authority and social structure.

Also the Grand Mufti of Jersusalem (old Palestine) may have flirted with combining european style right wing nationalism with Islam.
 
I imagine that Chiang Kai Sheks nationalists could have supported a Confucian variant of fascism. This is especially so considering the emphasis that confuncianism places on traditional authority and social structure.

That is an interesting point, and additionally, may go along with things like Legalism in the past.
 
Saddam Hussain was more of a military dictator than a fascist. Was his Ba'ath Party a Cadre Party organised based on an ideology? Of course they had Arab Nationalism and Socialism as an ideology. But that was common to the leaders like Nasser and Assad. Also there was nothing religious in their ideology or policies. Saddam was thoroughly secular in his thoughts and actions, and that must be appreciated.

Pretty much this.

Secular of course, but that doesn't eliminate Fascism.

For Fascism, it seemed to have all the unification thing going, and revanchist elements that are similar to many other Fascist states.

Saddam's Iraq could be best described as taking whatever it needed to from successful totalitarian states (the big two for Saddam were Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR) to achieve success in the construction of the Ba'athist regime. As it stood, Saddam's regime at its base level was a military dictatorship, Saddam was a strongman, and he relied on an all-encompassing state apparatus to keep power over his country, drowning in blood anyone who stood against him. He wasn't particularly an ideologue outside of supporting Arab nationalism based on ethnicity as opposed to religion (a common component of early Arab nationalism of the Nasserist/Ba'athist strain).

I don't really think that a state can be argued as fascist if we really have to dig deep into the finer points of the regime to argue whether it is or not.

Ba'athism, which was Syrian in origin, was ultimately an indigenous movement, it borrowed elements of classical Italian fascism and Stalinist socialism to make something all its own.

So, to make a long story short, Iraq resembled fascism, but was really too unique of a case to simply be labeled as fascist and have that be the end of it.
 
Not true at all. Both Austrian and Iberian fascisms were highly religious and very much championed a system of clerical fascism that both used. Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and the Austria under the Fatherland's Front were always more "Catholic" than "Fascist."

The Croat Ustasha were ultra-Catholic in their ideology, counted priests among their ranks, and absolutely loved butchering those Orthodox Serbs and Jews.

The Hlinka Guard was extremely Catholic as well, and eventually they (as with the rest of Slovakia) were ruled by Fr. Jozef Tiso, a frocked Catholic Priest.

The list goes on and on. Long story short--fascisms (though not necessarily national socialisms) have a long history of cozying up to and employing the Religious Establishment of their respective countries.

These are all Catholic, probably for (1) socioeconomic factors (Catholic countries of the era had smaller middle classes) and (2) because the Catholic Church had been self-consciously trying to find a third way between capitalism and socialism, which wasn't itself necessarily fascist but fit naturally with the fascist project.

A non-Catholic religious fascism would be a nice change of pace. One obvious candidate would be something in an alternate Ulster.

Imperial Japan was arguably a religious fascist state in its last decade or so.
 
Well, we did already have that with the Iron Guard of Romania, which were an explicitly religious movement. It was lead by a priest after all, from what I understand, and heavily utilized symbols of the Eastern Orthodox Church in its Fascism.
 
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