Clerical fascism (alsoclero-fascism orclerico-fascism) is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines offascism withclericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, orfascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.
Sturzo made a distinction between the "filofascists", who left the Catholic PPI in 1921 and 1922, and the "clerical fascists" who stayed in the party after theMarch on Rome, advocating collaboration with the fascist government.[3] Eventually, the latter group converged with Mussolini, abandoning the PPI in 1923 and creating the Centro Nazionale Italiano. The PPI was disbanded by the fascist régime in 1926.[4]
The term has since been used by scholars seeking to contrast authoritarian-conservative clerical fascism with more radical variants.[5] Christian fascists focus on internal religious politics, such as passing laws and regulations that reflect their view ofChristianity. Radicalized forms of Christian fascism orclerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) were emerging on the far-right of the political spectrum in some European countries during theinterwar period in the first half of the 20th century.[6]
In March 1929, a nationwide plebiscite was held to publicly endorse the Lateran Treaty. Opponents were intimidated by the fascist regime: the organisationCatholic Action (Azione Cattolica) and Mussolini claimed that "no" votes were of those "few ill-advisedanti-clericals who refuse to accept the Lateran Pacts".[9] Nearly nine million Italians voted, or 90 per cent of the registered electorate, with only 136,000 voting "no".[10]
Almost immediately after the signing of the Treaty, relations between Mussolini and the Church soured again. Mussolini "referred toCatholicism as, in origin, a minor sect that had spread beyondHistorical Palestine only because grafted onto the organization of theRoman empire."[11] After the concordat, "he confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years."[11] Mussolini reportedly came close to beingexcommunicated from the Church around this time.[11]
Despite Mussolini's close alliance with Hitler's Germany, Italy did not fully adopt Nazism's genocidal ideology towards the Jews. The Nazis were frustrated by the Italian authorities' refusal to co-operate in roundups of Jews, and no Jews were deported prior to the formation of theItalian Social Republic following theArmistice of Cassibile.[16] In the Italian-occupiedIndependent State of Croatia, German envoySiegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism.[17] As anti-Axis feeling grew in Italy, the use ofVatican Radio to broadcast papal disapproval of race murder and anti-Semitism angered the Nazis.[18] When Mussolini and his regime wereoverthrown in July 1943, the Germans moved to occupy Italy and commenced a roundup of Jews.
Around 4% ofResistance forces were formally Catholic organisations, but Catholics dominated other "independent groups" such as theFiamme Verdi andOsoppo partisans, and there were also Catholic militants in theGaribaldi Brigades, such asBenigno Zaccagnini, who later served as a prominentChristian Democrat politician.[19] In Northern Italy, tensions between Catholics andcommunists in the movement led Catholics to form theFiamme Verdi as a separate brigade of Christian Democrats.[20] After the war, ideological divisions between former partisans re-emerged, becoming a hallmark ofpost-war Italian politics.[21][22]
Likewise, theFatherland Front inAustria led byAustrian Catholic ChancellorsEngelbert Dollfuss andKurt Schuschnigg is often not regarded as a fully fascist party. It has been called semi-Fascist and even imitation Fascist. Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis, shot in his office by the SS and left to bleed to death. Initially, his regime received support from Fascist Italy, which formed theStresa Front with the United Kingdom and France.[31]
Scholars who accept the use of the termclerical fascism debate about which of the listed examples should be dubbed "clerical fascist", with the Ustaše being the most widely included example. In the examples which are cited above, the degree of official Catholic support and the degree of clerical influence over lawmaking and government both vary. Moreover, several authors reject the concept of aclerical fascist régime, arguing that an entire fascist régime does not become "clerical" if elements of the clergy support it, while others are not prepared to use the term "clerical fascism" outside the context of what they call thefascist epoch, between the ends of the twoworld wars (1918–1945).[32]
The political theoristRoger Griffin warns against the "hyperinflation of clerical fascism".[36] According to Griffin, the use of the term "clerical fascism" should be limited to "the peculiar forms of politics that arise when religious clerics and professional theologians are drawn either into collusion with thesecular ideology of fascism (an occurrence particularly common ininterwarEurope); or, more rarely, manage to mix a theologically illicit cocktail of deeply held religious beliefs with a fascist commitment to saving thenation orrace fromdecadence or collapse".[37] Griffin adds that "clerical fascism" "should never be used to characterize a political movement or a regime in its entirety, since it can at most be a faction within fascism", while he defines fascism as "a revolutionary, secular variant of ultranationalism bent on the total rebirth of society through human agency".[38]
In the case of theSlovak State, some scholars have rejected the use of the term clerical fascism as a label for the regime and they have particularly rejected the use of the term clerical fascist as a label forJozef Tiso.[39]
^Santulli, Carlo (2001).Filofascisti e Partito Popolare (1923-1926) [Philo-fascists and the People's Party (1923-1926)] (Thesis) (in Italian). Università di Roma - La Sapienza. p. 5.
In the period following the signing of the 1929 Lateran Pact, which declared Catholicism as Italy's state religion in the context of a comprehensive regulation of Vatican and Italian government relations, Catholic cultural support for Mussolini is consolidated.
^abGiordano, Alberto; Holian, Anna (2018)."The Holocaust in Italy".United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved15 August 2018.In 1938, the Italian Fascist regime under Benito Mussolini enacted a series of racial laws that placed multiple restrictions on the country's Jewish population. At the time the laws were enacted, it is estimated that about 46,000 Jews lived in Italy, of whom about 9,000 were foreign born and thus subject to further restrictions such as residence requirements. [...] Estimates suggest that between September 1943 and March 1945, about 10,000 Jews were deported. The vast majority perished, principally atAuschwitz.
^Manuel de Lucena,Interpretações do Salazarismo, 1984.
^Jorge Pais de Sousa,O Fascismo Catedrático de Salazar, Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2012.
^Loff, Manuel (2008).O nosso século é Fascista! o mundo visto por Salazar e Franco (1936-1945) [Our century is Fascist! the world seen by Salazar and Franco (1936-1945)] (in Portuguese).
^Martins, Hermínio; Woolf, S. (1968).European Fascism.
Walter K. Andersen. "Bharatiya Janata Party: Searching for the Hindu Nationalist Face", inThe 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.ISBN0-312-21134-1;ISBN0-312-21338-7.
Laqueur, Walter (1966).Fascism: Past, Present, Future. New York; Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997.ISBN0-19-511793-X
Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera,The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania. Iaşi, Romania and Oxford, England: The Center for Romanian Studies, 2001.ISBN973-9432-11-5.
Rothkirchen, Livia (1989). "Vatican Policy and the 'Jewish Problem' in Independent Slovakia (1939–1945)". In Marrus, Michael R. (ed.).The Nazi Holocaust. Vol. 3. Wesport: Meckler. pp. 1306–1332.ISBN0-88736-255-9. orISBN0-88736-256-7
Volovici, Leon (1991).Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s. Oxford, England:Pergamon Press.ISBN0-08-041024-3.
Wolff, Richard J. “The Catholic Church and the Dictatorships in Slovakia and Croatia, 1939–1945.” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 88, no. 1/4 (1977): 3–30.http://www.jstor.org/stable/44210893.
Various authors,‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe, special issue ofTotalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2007.
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