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Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler
Intellectual debates surrounding modernity, modernism and fascism continue to be active and hotly contested. In this ambitious book, renowned expert on fascism Roger Griffin analyzes Western modernity and the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler and offers a pioneering new interpretation of the links between these apparently contradictory phenomena.
485 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
About the author
Roger Griffin
44 books53 followersRoger David Griffin is a British professor of modern history and political theorist at Oxford Brookes University, England. His principal interest is the socio-historical and ideological dynamics of fascism, as well as various forms of political or religious fanaticism.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 5, 2026
[(2012) — my long study of fascism (see my shelf), which I actually began in late 2005, proved prescient — though I was mocked by many of my students and colleagues for my endless warnings, which began during the Bush years. I knew James Mann (of whom I could tell some stories!) and spoke to him critically of his book on the Neocons at a party, and when I told him then in 2006 what was coming, he laughed in my face. Literally. Oh, well…]
This book is a failure -- an interesting failure -- but a huge failure, nonetheless. What a disappointment! He lays it on WAY too thick for my tastes. I thought he would turn from all the blowhard theorizing, eventually, to actually analyzing something that really exists on the ground (instead of in his own pretentious head)..., but no such luck. Approach this book with caution and at your peril...
{{This book is, by turns, extremely interesting and extremely annoying. There is a lot of jargon in it -- which (jargonmonixide) adds little to thought, imo -- and a lot of third-rate theory (read: anthropological theory); though that, of course, is largely a sin of the times (pun intended). He is attempting to refute the views of Jeffrey Herf's Reactionary Modernism (Herf argued that the Modernism of the Fascists was largely spurious; that they were actually anti-modern), by claiming that modernism has a transcendental and apocalyptic aspect that accomodates both Left AND Right. He makes a persuasive case for this -- in part (see below); though he also tends not infrequently to over-interpret. At the same time, the book, which is dense, is full of insightful comments and analysis. It's shaping up so far to being a four-star read, with an asterisk for "you should still definitely read this, if possible... flaws & all".}}
The French Revolution and the end of the 18th cen. saw what David Harvey called a "temporalization of history" -- as history..., previously felt, in the long wave of the centuries of tradition, as if it were a winding snake, ever chasing its tail, suddenly darted forth in a linear direction..., and at ever-accelerating speeds.
The initial response was on of infinite possibility. But by 1848 (the failed revolutions), this sense of optimism was giving way to deespair (Nietzsche's 'romantische Pessimismus'), exercerbated by the disturbances of the Industrial Revolution... and a growing sense that modernization was leaching out the elements vital to a healthy civilization. This earlier sense of optimistic progress thus gave way to a feeling of regress or involution..., of decadence, and the paradox of modernity was born - viz., the paradox that exponential growth in productivity, wealth, power, technik were all coupled with a loss of beauty, meaning, and health. modernity (small-"m") thus came to be idenditified not just with progress, but with decadence and anomie as well.
Many artists and other intellectuals sought to reverse this tide of anomie..., of the encroching chaos..., the encroaching barbarism -- and it is this "revolt against decadence" that cultural historians now refer to as "Modernism" (with a capital "M"). Many sought, these artists and intellectuals, to counter this growing sense disorder and instability ('Modernity thursts all of us into the maelstrom', said Marshall Berman) by making contact with deeper truths and deeper patterns, with regenerative patters..., thus striving to break out (Aufbruch) from the encroaching madness... so as "to turn the crepuscular twilight into a new dawn, to inaugurate a new beginning beyond the ongoing dissolution...."
For these men and women, seeking shelter and refuge, "modernity" itself became a trope for "decadence" -- and Modernism an attempt to overturn it.
The preferred method of of "regeneration" was commonly through an form of creative destruction. Initially (1880-1914), this destruction was restricted to the sphere of Arts and other cultural products; but eventually (after 1914), it spilled over into the sphere of action (history amd politics). Modernism thus overflowed the "aesthetic boundaries" (to which Harvey and others think to confine it) and morphed into something else -- as Politik (and war) became a form of "Art by other means".
Hence was born a "fascist modernism".
Later - while distinguishing programmatic (regenerative, palingenetic, political) from 'epiphanic' (Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Eliot, mystical and ecstatic/satori) modernism, Griffin argues that was is unique to our topic is that the boundaries between these two were porous -- with 'epiphanic' artists moving to the programmatic and back again: e.g., Evola who moved from Dada to mystical Traditionalism, and Gottfried Benn from Expressionism to Nazism back to "inner emigration"... Some of this appears a bit overly-schematic, no doubt -- but Griffin is aware of the fact that he is setting up only ideal "types".
In place of the Marxist interpretation which views fascism as a function of reactionary capitalism - in its terroristic, rather than liberal incarnation -- Griffin finds the roots of fascism and other forms of revolutionaryr modernism in the archaic roots of human consciousness -- symbolism, myth and liturgy - which serve to fashion a "home" for man cut loose ('homelessness') by modernity, and seeking shelter from the ultimate paradox of modernity, viz. the absolutely certainty of our own individual death in linear time. (It is shocking, truly..., to see Griffin "go there"; see chs. 3-4). This is what is called the "primordialist" approach to nationalism (73f.; Anthony D. Smith).
[Where the 'modernists' in nationalism studies (that is) argue that nationalism is a modern phenomenon because the Nation State is a modern phenomenon; 'Primordialists' like Smith think that nationalism is primoridial, since "nations are linked by chains of memory, myth and symbol to... the 9primitive) ethnie...." This is the view, btw, proposed by many early Italian fascists, who claimed that race was not a product of biological determinism, but a product of climate and diet history and memory... almost a-la-Montesquieu; see Gregor's Mussolini's Intelecutals. There may be some truth to this. Yet, by going down this path, Griffin is trodding some dangerous territory.]
OTOH, the use Peter Berger and the Sacred Canopy is not at all convincing, and is methodologically flawed. It's not the business of an historian to base his case on the assumption of metaphysical claims, but simply to establish what he can establish on an inductive basis. For all his ability, there is a certain lack of self-knowledge (and a lack of full understanding of his own limitations) that marrs certain portions of this book and is one of the reasons why it is not a five-star book. The whole of chapter 3, in fact, is incredibly pretentious - as Griffin adopts a whole metaphysical apparatus to undergird his analysis - an analysis that is based on the belief that the drive to symbols and myth-making is instinctual, with lots of reference and reliance on neo-Jungians, Eliadeans, Peter Berger, and others - all of which should have been edited out of the final text.
Cutting through the bull, however, the core argument here (ch. 3) is not so foolish and runs as follows: culture traditionally anaesthesizes us from the terror that results from our recognition of our absolute mortality -- it is "a sheltering sky". Modernity has torn down the illusions of that "canopy"; hence the need to reconstruct that refuge by seeking a suprapersonal refuge *within* history..., in the nation (nationalism), the race, etc.... as a refuge against the fragmentation wrought by modernity. Surely this argument is partial (at best), and dressed up unattractively (with anthropological pseudy-science) that weakens it. But it is, when stripped, worth attention.
The temporalization of history and consciousness, brought on by modernity, has unleashed great forces of anomy; and fascism, like other revolutionary utopias, by tapping into a primordial palingenetic instinct, is a powerful attempt to transcend (like a collective rite of initiation) the chaos - with the promise of 'New Shores'. (Ch. 4)
This book is a failure -- an interesting failure -- but a huge failure, nonetheless. What a disappointment! He lays it on WAY too thick for my tastes. I thought he would turn from all the blowhard theorizing, eventually, to actually analyzing something that really exists on the ground (instead of in his own pretentious head)..., but no such luck. Approach this book with caution and at your peril...
{{This book is, by turns, extremely interesting and extremely annoying. There is a lot of jargon in it -- which (jargonmonixide) adds little to thought, imo -- and a lot of third-rate theory (read: anthropological theory); though that, of course, is largely a sin of the times (pun intended). He is attempting to refute the views of Jeffrey Herf's Reactionary Modernism (Herf argued that the Modernism of the Fascists was largely spurious; that they were actually anti-modern), by claiming that modernism has a transcendental and apocalyptic aspect that accomodates both Left AND Right. He makes a persuasive case for this -- in part (see below); though he also tends not infrequently to over-interpret. At the same time, the book, which is dense, is full of insightful comments and analysis. It's shaping up so far to being a four-star read, with an asterisk for "you should still definitely read this, if possible... flaws & all".}}
The French Revolution and the end of the 18th cen. saw what David Harvey called a "temporalization of history" -- as history..., previously felt, in the long wave of the centuries of tradition, as if it were a winding snake, ever chasing its tail, suddenly darted forth in a linear direction..., and at ever-accelerating speeds.
The initial response was on of infinite possibility. But by 1848 (the failed revolutions), this sense of optimism was giving way to deespair (Nietzsche's 'romantische Pessimismus'), exercerbated by the disturbances of the Industrial Revolution... and a growing sense that modernization was leaching out the elements vital to a healthy civilization. This earlier sense of optimistic progress thus gave way to a feeling of regress or involution..., of decadence, and the paradox of modernity was born - viz., the paradox that exponential growth in productivity, wealth, power, technik were all coupled with a loss of beauty, meaning, and health. modernity (small-"m") thus came to be idenditified not just with progress, but with decadence and anomie as well.
Many artists and other intellectuals sought to reverse this tide of anomie..., of the encroching chaos..., the encroaching barbarism -- and it is this "revolt against decadence" that cultural historians now refer to as "Modernism" (with a capital "M"). Many sought, these artists and intellectuals, to counter this growing sense disorder and instability ('Modernity thursts all of us into the maelstrom', said Marshall Berman) by making contact with deeper truths and deeper patterns, with regenerative patters..., thus striving to break out (Aufbruch) from the encroaching madness... so as "to turn the crepuscular twilight into a new dawn, to inaugurate a new beginning beyond the ongoing dissolution...."
For these men and women, seeking shelter and refuge, "modernity" itself became a trope for "decadence" -- and Modernism an attempt to overturn it.
The preferred method of of "regeneration" was commonly through an form of creative destruction. Initially (1880-1914), this destruction was restricted to the sphere of Arts and other cultural products; but eventually (after 1914), it spilled over into the sphere of action (history amd politics). Modernism thus overflowed the "aesthetic boundaries" (to which Harvey and others think to confine it) and morphed into something else -- as Politik (and war) became a form of "Art by other means".
Hence was born a "fascist modernism".
Later - while distinguishing programmatic (regenerative, palingenetic, political) from 'epiphanic' (Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Eliot, mystical and ecstatic/satori) modernism, Griffin argues that was is unique to our topic is that the boundaries between these two were porous -- with 'epiphanic' artists moving to the programmatic and back again: e.g., Evola who moved from Dada to mystical Traditionalism, and Gottfried Benn from Expressionism to Nazism back to "inner emigration"... Some of this appears a bit overly-schematic, no doubt -- but Griffin is aware of the fact that he is setting up only ideal "types".
In place of the Marxist interpretation which views fascism as a function of reactionary capitalism - in its terroristic, rather than liberal incarnation -- Griffin finds the roots of fascism and other forms of revolutionaryr modernism in the archaic roots of human consciousness -- symbolism, myth and liturgy - which serve to fashion a "home" for man cut loose ('homelessness') by modernity, and seeking shelter from the ultimate paradox of modernity, viz. the absolutely certainty of our own individual death in linear time. (It is shocking, truly..., to see Griffin "go there"; see chs. 3-4). This is what is called the "primordialist" approach to nationalism (73f.; Anthony D. Smith).
[Where the 'modernists' in nationalism studies (that is) argue that nationalism is a modern phenomenon because the Nation State is a modern phenomenon; 'Primordialists' like Smith think that nationalism is primoridial, since "nations are linked by chains of memory, myth and symbol to... the 9primitive) ethnie...." This is the view, btw, proposed by many early Italian fascists, who claimed that race was not a product of biological determinism, but a product of climate and diet history and memory... almost a-la-Montesquieu; see Gregor's Mussolini's Intelecutals. There may be some truth to this. Yet, by going down this path, Griffin is trodding some dangerous territory.]
OTOH, the use Peter Berger and the Sacred Canopy is not at all convincing, and is methodologically flawed. It's not the business of an historian to base his case on the assumption of metaphysical claims, but simply to establish what he can establish on an inductive basis. For all his ability, there is a certain lack of self-knowledge (and a lack of full understanding of his own limitations) that marrs certain portions of this book and is one of the reasons why it is not a five-star book. The whole of chapter 3, in fact, is incredibly pretentious - as Griffin adopts a whole metaphysical apparatus to undergird his analysis - an analysis that is based on the belief that the drive to symbols and myth-making is instinctual, with lots of reference and reliance on neo-Jungians, Eliadeans, Peter Berger, and others - all of which should have been edited out of the final text.
Cutting through the bull, however, the core argument here (ch. 3) is not so foolish and runs as follows: culture traditionally anaesthesizes us from the terror that results from our recognition of our absolute mortality -- it is "a sheltering sky". Modernity has torn down the illusions of that "canopy"; hence the need to reconstruct that refuge by seeking a suprapersonal refuge *within* history..., in the nation (nationalism), the race, etc.... as a refuge against the fragmentation wrought by modernity. Surely this argument is partial (at best), and dressed up unattractively (with anthropological pseudy-science) that weakens it. But it is, when stripped, worth attention.
The temporalization of history and consciousness, brought on by modernity, has unleashed great forces of anomy; and fascism, like other revolutionary utopias, by tapping into a primordial palingenetic instinct, is a powerful attempt to transcend (like a collective rite of initiation) the chaos - with the promise of 'New Shores'. (Ch. 4)
March 12, 2017
Simplified: offers first a definition of modernism and then a definition of fascism that arises out of the definition of modernism.
Herf, in Reactionary Modernism, began his study under the influence of Dialectic of Enlightenment, but by the time he had finished came to believe that fascism is not the result of too much enlightenment but rather too little, a sophisticated and rigorous variant of the thesis that the sleep of reason creates monsters.
Griffin characterizes Herf’s thesis as “hardcore Nazi conservatives wholeheartedly embraced modern technology” (32). He doesn’t much care for this, and implicitly adopts Adorno & Horkheimer: The Holocaust is “to be approached not as products of irrationality, regression, and barbarism, for in reality they enact the ultimate logic of hyper-modernity--an intensified, supercharged modernity,” with the purpose to “establish not only the new political and metaphysical order [but also] a new, redemptive temporality, beyond anomy, degeneracy, and the liminoid of an incoherently modernized world” (185).
Griffin therefore argues, against positions like Herf’s (whom he cites only seldomly), that fascism is thoroughly modernist. There is something of an equivocation fallacy here, as modernism is really not the same as modernity: “Fascists and Nazis were not rejecting modernity, but using the built environment to lay the cultural foundations of an alternative modernity. They were thus seeking to realize an alternative modernism” (31). The alternative is rooted in nietzschean negative romanticism: “modernity itself started to be experienced in biological, moral, and aesthetic categories of degeneration, corruption, and effeteness” (52)--“as an epoch not of progress and evolution, but of regression and involution: in a word, of decadence” (id.).
Basic point of intervention is that certain greasers began to believe that “a new elite of ‘warrior-priest’ would arise to regenerate the decadent West” (17), which was plagued apparently by “the putrefying world of modernity epitomized in materialism, individualism, egalitarianism, the loss of hierarchy, and the erosion of higher values” (16).
Locates the issue in anthropological writings regarding “the resulting complex of beliefs, practices, and rituals subsumed under the term ‘culture’ [that] serves not only to provide the basis for physical survival, but to guarantee to members of society the experiential certainty that their lives are an integral part of a higher reality, one who cohesion stems from a cosmic, superhuman ordering principle which [another guy] terms ‘nomos’” (74). The nomic annoyingly becomes a “sacred canopy” or “sheltering sky” throughout the rest of the volume, “to ward off the ‘Terror of History’ by maintaining the belief in a sacred time, space and history scrupulously demarcated from the profane world of human mortality” (75). Renaissance is culpable in modernist belief for “a gradually intensifying ‘symbolic crisis’, as the sacred canopy fashioned by Christianity became ever more ‘flimsy’ and inadequate for the nomic needs of a growing educated elite” (88). (German Romanticism regarded this process as Zerrissenheit--a “state of being ripped to pieces”--I know, right?)
Simplistic po-stru Frankfurt marxist that I am, it just looks to me as though it were a dialectical development wherein modern society is more all that is solid melts into air, and that this melting terrifies the fuck out of people who do not perform well on the Wechsler. Liberalism, capitalism, technological development, atheism, secular states, and whatnot lead to durkheimian anomie, and the modernist is one who regards this as degenerate.
Author develops two lines of inquiry: epiphanic modernism and programmatic modernism. Former is content to make lamentation, typically in art, whereas the latter builds concentration camps.
All of this stuff is damned interesting, but for two extremely irritating defects: a) it “authentically expresses a quintessentially primordial human drive to resolve the unprecedented sociopolitical and nomic crisis through which European history was passing after the First World War by constructing a new order which would provide ‘healthy’ Italians and Germans with a new homeland, both material and spiritual” (96); and b) Marxism is modernism, too (167-75). The former point is objectionable insofar as anytime someone claims “human nature,” I ask them to pay cash. The latter point is just plain churlish. Better to argue, as to the first, from the historical record, and by process of induction assemble the nomic thesis from the theory & praxis of fascism--rather than deducing same from an alleged human nature as found in anthropology.
Nevertheless: modernism as defined in light of the anthropological workup: an attempt “to achieve a sense of transcendent value, meaning, or purpose despite Western culture’s progressive loss of a homogenous value system and overarching cosmology (nomos) caused by the secularizing and disembodying forces of modernization […] shaped by innate predispositions of the human consciousness and mythopoeia faculty to create culture, to construct utopias, to access a superhuman temporality, and to belong to a community united by a shared culture” (116).
Fascism thereafter defined in accordance with same: “a revolutionary species of political modernism originating in the early twentieth century whose mission is to combat the allegedly degenerative forces of contemporary history (decadence) by bringing about an alternative modernity and temporality ( a ‘new order’ and a ‘new era’) based on the rebirth, or palingenesis, of the nation. Fascists conceive of the nation as an organism, shaped by historic, cultural, and in some cases, ethnic and hereditary factors, a mythic construct incompatible with liberal, conservative, and communist theories of society. The health of this organism they see undermined as much by the principles of institutional and cultural pluralism, individualism, and globalized consumerism promoted by liberalism as by the global regime of social justice and human equality identified by socialism in theory as the ultimate goal of history, or by the conservative defense of ‘tradition.’ The fascist process of national regeneration demands radical measures to create or assert national validity and strength […] The charisma of fascist leaders depended on their success in performing the role of a modern propheta who offered his followers a new ‘mazeway’ (world-view) to redeem the nation from chaos and lead it into a new era, one that drew from a mythicized past to regenerate the future” (181).
So, plenty of spenglerianism to go around. There’re some cool conceptual twists and turns in the travaux preparatoires here, and he spends lots of space discussing the arts, architecture, and so on. It is definitely not a political history. Stated plainly that modernism is an “anti-materialist revolt,” however (125). After the anthropological bits, author presents a history of modernism from 1848 to 1945 in two overlapping chapters. Some cool lineages therein, such as the passage of bullshit from theosophy to anthroposophy to ariosophy to the Thule Society to the DAP (and thence NSDAP) (137 ff.). Some overlap with Carlson’s The Unfit in these sections.
These general theses laid down in the first half, the second half reads Fascist Italy and the Third Reich accordingly, spending as much time on arts policy as on anything else. Comparatively slight coverage of actual war, genocide, law, economics, and so on.
Other thingies: nifty rhetorical device in reading fascism grammatically as a historical “caesura” (e.g., 32, 51, 162). Author is very well read, incorporating the writings of many others. Text has not considered Neumann’s Behemoth or Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, so that’s demerits! Agrees implicitly with Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism that fascism used “collaboration from the representatives of ideological currents that were nationalistic for conservative reasons, notably civil servants, industrialists, or were motivated by anti-anarchist or anti-Bolshevik forms of monarchist, aristocratic, bourgeois, militarist, feudal, or Catholic reaction” (216). Attempts to dick with Paxton toward the end, however (349 ff.).
Indicates that “postmodernity” is really just part of modernity proper (344 ff). Maybe the inference to draw out is that modernists recognize anomie caused by modernity and loathe it, wishing to replace it with some other nomos, whereas postmodernists recognize the result of modernity, feel no anomie, but rather liberty, and see no need to find shelter or put down roots. Dunno.
Damned interesting overall, and zips right along. The human nature demands nomos thesis is just plain silly, but can be adopted as part of ideology critique once we drop the unauthorized and unscientific assumption that these absurdly bad ideas are genetic (i.e., it neverminds the lack of evidence for them in the yaknow genome). I don’t much care for the lumping of marxism into modernism generally. Marxism after all adopts liberalism’s progress and emancipation narratives that Lyotard whines about in The Postmodern Condition; its primary complaint is not that liberalism goes too far, but rather that it goes not nearly far enough, and in no place do we see the primitivst demand to turn back the clock. I do not detect in Marxism an intrinsic meditation on corruption, degeneracy, decadence, or other rightwing concepts, even if some incidental comments might be made by leftists otherwise. Those complaints made--
Recommended.
Herf, in Reactionary Modernism, began his study under the influence of Dialectic of Enlightenment, but by the time he had finished came to believe that fascism is not the result of too much enlightenment but rather too little, a sophisticated and rigorous variant of the thesis that the sleep of reason creates monsters.
Griffin characterizes Herf’s thesis as “hardcore Nazi conservatives wholeheartedly embraced modern technology” (32). He doesn’t much care for this, and implicitly adopts Adorno & Horkheimer: The Holocaust is “to be approached not as products of irrationality, regression, and barbarism, for in reality they enact the ultimate logic of hyper-modernity--an intensified, supercharged modernity,” with the purpose to “establish not only the new political and metaphysical order [but also] a new, redemptive temporality, beyond anomy, degeneracy, and the liminoid of an incoherently modernized world” (185).
Griffin therefore argues, against positions like Herf’s (whom he cites only seldomly), that fascism is thoroughly modernist. There is something of an equivocation fallacy here, as modernism is really not the same as modernity: “Fascists and Nazis were not rejecting modernity, but using the built environment to lay the cultural foundations of an alternative modernity. They were thus seeking to realize an alternative modernism” (31). The alternative is rooted in nietzschean negative romanticism: “modernity itself started to be experienced in biological, moral, and aesthetic categories of degeneration, corruption, and effeteness” (52)--“as an epoch not of progress and evolution, but of regression and involution: in a word, of decadence” (id.).
Basic point of intervention is that certain greasers began to believe that “a new elite of ‘warrior-priest’ would arise to regenerate the decadent West” (17), which was plagued apparently by “the putrefying world of modernity epitomized in materialism, individualism, egalitarianism, the loss of hierarchy, and the erosion of higher values” (16).
Locates the issue in anthropological writings regarding “the resulting complex of beliefs, practices, and rituals subsumed under the term ‘culture’ [that] serves not only to provide the basis for physical survival, but to guarantee to members of society the experiential certainty that their lives are an integral part of a higher reality, one who cohesion stems from a cosmic, superhuman ordering principle which [another guy] terms ‘nomos’” (74). The nomic annoyingly becomes a “sacred canopy” or “sheltering sky” throughout the rest of the volume, “to ward off the ‘Terror of History’ by maintaining the belief in a sacred time, space and history scrupulously demarcated from the profane world of human mortality” (75). Renaissance is culpable in modernist belief for “a gradually intensifying ‘symbolic crisis’, as the sacred canopy fashioned by Christianity became ever more ‘flimsy’ and inadequate for the nomic needs of a growing educated elite” (88). (German Romanticism regarded this process as Zerrissenheit--a “state of being ripped to pieces”--I know, right?)
Simplistic po-stru Frankfurt marxist that I am, it just looks to me as though it were a dialectical development wherein modern society is more all that is solid melts into air, and that this melting terrifies the fuck out of people who do not perform well on the Wechsler. Liberalism, capitalism, technological development, atheism, secular states, and whatnot lead to durkheimian anomie, and the modernist is one who regards this as degenerate.
Author develops two lines of inquiry: epiphanic modernism and programmatic modernism. Former is content to make lamentation, typically in art, whereas the latter builds concentration camps.
All of this stuff is damned interesting, but for two extremely irritating defects: a) it “authentically expresses a quintessentially primordial human drive to resolve the unprecedented sociopolitical and nomic crisis through which European history was passing after the First World War by constructing a new order which would provide ‘healthy’ Italians and Germans with a new homeland, both material and spiritual” (96); and b) Marxism is modernism, too (167-75). The former point is objectionable insofar as anytime someone claims “human nature,” I ask them to pay cash. The latter point is just plain churlish. Better to argue, as to the first, from the historical record, and by process of induction assemble the nomic thesis from the theory & praxis of fascism--rather than deducing same from an alleged human nature as found in anthropology.
Nevertheless: modernism as defined in light of the anthropological workup: an attempt “to achieve a sense of transcendent value, meaning, or purpose despite Western culture’s progressive loss of a homogenous value system and overarching cosmology (nomos) caused by the secularizing and disembodying forces of modernization […] shaped by innate predispositions of the human consciousness and mythopoeia faculty to create culture, to construct utopias, to access a superhuman temporality, and to belong to a community united by a shared culture” (116).
Fascism thereafter defined in accordance with same: “a revolutionary species of political modernism originating in the early twentieth century whose mission is to combat the allegedly degenerative forces of contemporary history (decadence) by bringing about an alternative modernity and temporality ( a ‘new order’ and a ‘new era’) based on the rebirth, or palingenesis, of the nation. Fascists conceive of the nation as an organism, shaped by historic, cultural, and in some cases, ethnic and hereditary factors, a mythic construct incompatible with liberal, conservative, and communist theories of society. The health of this organism they see undermined as much by the principles of institutional and cultural pluralism, individualism, and globalized consumerism promoted by liberalism as by the global regime of social justice and human equality identified by socialism in theory as the ultimate goal of history, or by the conservative defense of ‘tradition.’ The fascist process of national regeneration demands radical measures to create or assert national validity and strength […] The charisma of fascist leaders depended on their success in performing the role of a modern propheta who offered his followers a new ‘mazeway’ (world-view) to redeem the nation from chaos and lead it into a new era, one that drew from a mythicized past to regenerate the future” (181).
So, plenty of spenglerianism to go around. There’re some cool conceptual twists and turns in the travaux preparatoires here, and he spends lots of space discussing the arts, architecture, and so on. It is definitely not a political history. Stated plainly that modernism is an “anti-materialist revolt,” however (125). After the anthropological bits, author presents a history of modernism from 1848 to 1945 in two overlapping chapters. Some cool lineages therein, such as the passage of bullshit from theosophy to anthroposophy to ariosophy to the Thule Society to the DAP (and thence NSDAP) (137 ff.). Some overlap with Carlson’s The Unfit in these sections.
These general theses laid down in the first half, the second half reads Fascist Italy and the Third Reich accordingly, spending as much time on arts policy as on anything else. Comparatively slight coverage of actual war, genocide, law, economics, and so on.
Other thingies: nifty rhetorical device in reading fascism grammatically as a historical “caesura” (e.g., 32, 51, 162). Author is very well read, incorporating the writings of many others. Text has not considered Neumann’s Behemoth or Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, so that’s demerits! Agrees implicitly with Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism that fascism used “collaboration from the representatives of ideological currents that were nationalistic for conservative reasons, notably civil servants, industrialists, or were motivated by anti-anarchist or anti-Bolshevik forms of monarchist, aristocratic, bourgeois, militarist, feudal, or Catholic reaction” (216). Attempts to dick with Paxton toward the end, however (349 ff.).
Indicates that “postmodernity” is really just part of modernity proper (344 ff). Maybe the inference to draw out is that modernists recognize anomie caused by modernity and loathe it, wishing to replace it with some other nomos, whereas postmodernists recognize the result of modernity, feel no anomie, but rather liberty, and see no need to find shelter or put down roots. Dunno.
Damned interesting overall, and zips right along. The human nature demands nomos thesis is just plain silly, but can be adopted as part of ideology critique once we drop the unauthorized and unscientific assumption that these absurdly bad ideas are genetic (i.e., it neverminds the lack of evidence for them in the yaknow genome). I don’t much care for the lumping of marxism into modernism generally. Marxism after all adopts liberalism’s progress and emancipation narratives that Lyotard whines about in The Postmodern Condition; its primary complaint is not that liberalism goes too far, but rather that it goes not nearly far enough, and in no place do we see the primitivst demand to turn back the clock. I do not detect in Marxism an intrinsic meditation on corruption, degeneracy, decadence, or other rightwing concepts, even if some incidental comments might be made by leftists otherwise. Those complaints made--
Recommended.
June 6, 2020
extremely clarifying, thorough overview of modernism as an existential-phenomenological-spiritual response to the nihilistic crises of modernity, and a novel application of the argument to 20th century italian and german fascism. highly relevant in contemporary contexts re: resurgence of revolutionary left and right political projects. would recommend to everyone. will write a proper review in a bit.
November 21, 2024
While numerous people seem to be impressed with this book, I am somewhat less so. Griffin's basic point regarding fascism is that unless you have the conceit that a revolution of mobilization will rekindle the mythic image of the nation in question you really don't have fascism. How this ties into modernity is the conceit that radical measures are needed to induce a cultural revolution, plus shared foundational notions between regarding concepts of occult other knowledge, largely lifted from Theosophy, and some Nietzschean notions of form givers who transcend good and evil; or at least conventionality. That is essentially what the book boils down to, with the problem being that Griffin is also engaged in an epistemological argument with his discipline and one enters that zone where you're not sure whether the concepts being dealt with are legitimately difficult, or whether Griffin is just being prolix.
Originally written: February 20, 2020.
Originally written: February 20, 2020.
October 11, 2019
Fascism is frequently (and sometimes self-admittedly) anti-modernist. In this book, Griffin offers a compelling argument that many cultural and political elements of Fascist Italy and Nazism point towards an alternative modernism instead.
While that content would be interesting to history students, I found Griffin's methodology to be the most interesting part of the book. He has created a 'reflexive metanarrative' where he explains his project then explores connections in Fascism and Nazism while 'reflecting' back to the 'meta' arguement.
Actually a pretty interesting read on the scale of academic monographs.
While that content would be interesting to history students, I found Griffin's methodology to be the most interesting part of the book. He has created a 'reflexive metanarrative' where he explains his project then explores connections in Fascism and Nazism while 'reflecting' back to the 'meta' arguement.
Actually a pretty interesting read on the scale of academic monographs.
June 20, 2017
Excellent. Take the title seriously: the book breaks into halves: and the first half with a novel conception of modernism is quite good. Highly recommended.
March 6, 2024
Fundamental, ineludible y necesario.
Es imposible saber del fascismo con propiedad sin aproximarse a las perspectivas culturales, artísticas, y sociales que ofrece el autor.
Quedarse parapetado tras una lectura del fascismo simplona, considerando que sus rasgos son el reaccionarismo, el militarismo, el nacionalismo o el racismo es, en el fondo, querer negar la presencia (terrible y peligrosísima) de ingredientes fascistas muchos más invisibles en nuestra sociedad: propaganda de masas, apología tecnológica y económica, cientifismo, racionalismo frío y aséptico, esoterismos emocionales, narcisismo corporal....
Considerar que todo el fascismo era una "expresión del mal" sólo sirve para no reflexionar en profundidad sobre todos los ingredientes tangenciales y totales que se dieron en esos tumultuosos años, puesto que lo que hay que desentrañar es el modo en que enarbolaron también la bandera del antitabaquismo, del vegetarianismo o del nudismo higienista como para ser catalizadores de la supuesta "revolución fascista".
El libro de Roger Griffin exhibe con rotundidad una metodología de la que deberían beber numerosos historiadores historicistas (precisamente el "historicismo" fue un arma esgrimida por el fascismo) para alejarse de perspectivas meramente políticas y belicistas.
Es imposible saber del fascismo con propiedad sin aproximarse a las perspectivas culturales, artísticas, y sociales que ofrece el autor.
Quedarse parapetado tras una lectura del fascismo simplona, considerando que sus rasgos son el reaccionarismo, el militarismo, el nacionalismo o el racismo es, en el fondo, querer negar la presencia (terrible y peligrosísima) de ingredientes fascistas muchos más invisibles en nuestra sociedad: propaganda de masas, apología tecnológica y económica, cientifismo, racionalismo frío y aséptico, esoterismos emocionales, narcisismo corporal....
Considerar que todo el fascismo era una "expresión del mal" sólo sirve para no reflexionar en profundidad sobre todos los ingredientes tangenciales y totales que se dieron en esos tumultuosos años, puesto que lo que hay que desentrañar es el modo en que enarbolaron también la bandera del antitabaquismo, del vegetarianismo o del nudismo higienista como para ser catalizadores de la supuesta "revolución fascista".
El libro de Roger Griffin exhibe con rotundidad una metodología de la que deberían beber numerosos historiadores historicistas (precisamente el "historicismo" fue un arma esgrimida por el fascismo) para alejarse de perspectivas meramente políticas y belicistas.
September 28, 2024
One of the best books I have read in my entire life.
Roger Griffin proposes a "maximalist view" of modernism. He calls it "primordialist theory of modernism", which means that he traces modernism not just in the aesthetic realm and between Baudelaire and 1945, but considers modernism a universal, transhistorical, holistic attempt at societal regeneration and revitalization.
He incorporates diverse material from a wide rage of disciplines. Indicatively, he borrows ideas from social anthropology such as the rites of passage (liminality, liminoidality or propheta) or concepts like the "sacred canopy"; he also incorporates ideas from social or existential psychology, such as the Terror Management Theory, concepts from philosophies of time, like chronos, kairos and auevum, he discusses symbols from Jungian theorists and a wide range of academics specialized in cultural studies to argue for his "primordialist theory of modernism" as a programmatic socio-political movement that aims at restoring an existential and cosmological order (nomos) that is perceived as collapsing.
In this conceptual context he argues that fascism and nazism are a form of modernism, social, cultural, aesthetic and political, a revolt against the perceived "decadence" of "Modernity"; Modernity here meaning the disenchantment and demystification of nature and life, of the clutches of nihilism of the late 19th and early 20th century (the one called "iron cage" by Max Weber). This is the "Modernity" against which artists and political actors from the whole range of the political and artistic spectrum have revolted, from Nietzsche, to Kafka and Hermann Broch, to Ezra Pound, to the Bolsheviks.
Roger Griffin has read an immense amount of bibliography and his references are so rich that an entire PhD wouldn't be enough to exhaust them. He cites not only academics or political actors from Churchill to Hitler, but also painters, philosophers of all variants, authors, architects, technocrats, journals and he even gives pictures of some of the pieces of art he is discussing.
I would call his epistemological and methodological principles reflexive post-weberian: he makes an ideal type of modernism, he stresses the "reflexive" character of his "synoptic interpretation" and its limits as a conceptual construct, but at the same time he proposes a grand metanarrative of modernism, fascism and nazism. A theory of a universal human "mythopoetic faculty".
Even though I am not an expert in fascist studies, I can intuitively grasp that his book marks a break and a milestone for the discipline. But even if one isn't interested as much in fascism and in nazism, the book is still worth a read because of the first part — the books is divided in two parts — on modernism. Watching how he tries to take modernism out of the realm of European pure aesthetics and to make it a universal human urge to restore a failing "sacred canopy" and a "Chronus-defying" attempt via "regeneration and revitalization" movements is a fascinating trip in itself.
Roger Griffin proposes a "maximalist view" of modernism. He calls it "primordialist theory of modernism", which means that he traces modernism not just in the aesthetic realm and between Baudelaire and 1945, but considers modernism a universal, transhistorical, holistic attempt at societal regeneration and revitalization.
He incorporates diverse material from a wide rage of disciplines. Indicatively, he borrows ideas from social anthropology such as the rites of passage (liminality, liminoidality or propheta) or concepts like the "sacred canopy"; he also incorporates ideas from social or existential psychology, such as the Terror Management Theory, concepts from philosophies of time, like chronos, kairos and auevum, he discusses symbols from Jungian theorists and a wide range of academics specialized in cultural studies to argue for his "primordialist theory of modernism" as a programmatic socio-political movement that aims at restoring an existential and cosmological order (nomos) that is perceived as collapsing.
In this conceptual context he argues that fascism and nazism are a form of modernism, social, cultural, aesthetic and political, a revolt against the perceived "decadence" of "Modernity"; Modernity here meaning the disenchantment and demystification of nature and life, of the clutches of nihilism of the late 19th and early 20th century (the one called "iron cage" by Max Weber). This is the "Modernity" against which artists and political actors from the whole range of the political and artistic spectrum have revolted, from Nietzsche, to Kafka and Hermann Broch, to Ezra Pound, to the Bolsheviks.
Roger Griffin has read an immense amount of bibliography and his references are so rich that an entire PhD wouldn't be enough to exhaust them. He cites not only academics or political actors from Churchill to Hitler, but also painters, philosophers of all variants, authors, architects, technocrats, journals and he even gives pictures of some of the pieces of art he is discussing.
I would call his epistemological and methodological principles reflexive post-weberian: he makes an ideal type of modernism, he stresses the "reflexive" character of his "synoptic interpretation" and its limits as a conceptual construct, but at the same time he proposes a grand metanarrative of modernism, fascism and nazism. A theory of a universal human "mythopoetic faculty".
Even though I am not an expert in fascist studies, I can intuitively grasp that his book marks a break and a milestone for the discipline. But even if one isn't interested as much in fascism and in nazism, the book is still worth a read because of the first part — the books is divided in two parts — on modernism. Watching how he tries to take modernism out of the realm of European pure aesthetics and to make it a universal human urge to restore a failing "sacred canopy" and a "Chronus-defying" attempt via "regeneration and revitalization" movements is a fascinating trip in itself.
October 25, 2021
Writing a more detailed review would take time and energy that i sadly cannot devote at the moment. In absence of this, my impression is as follows:
A very rich book, full of close engagement with a wide array of sources. at times a bit repetitive - it feels like it could have been boiled down to 2/3 of the pages (though the author probably foreshadowed the reading habits in academia and wanted to make sure that each chapter could be read on its own and still reflect the overall argument, which is developed over several chapters, so each chapter contains a summary of all previous steps of the argument), and in the repetition the author risks simplifying his own argument, discarding the complexity of the different sources examined previously; each repetition risks the strength of the book - integrating many different primary sources and actually doing justice to them instead of simply taking from each text what fits a predetermined narrative. But then, when repeating the previous steps of the argument, the author does exactly that - discarding the ambivalence of these sources for a linear narrative.
Also, while I sympathise with his project of demonstrating the modernist, future-oriented dimension of fascism, the recourse to alleged anthropological constants seems a strange way of doing so. If I tried to demonstrate the modernist dimension in fascist ideology, I wouldn't refer to something that humans had always wanted or that is a remnant of our prehistoric urges (the need for a comprehensive worldview as protection against the contingency of the world). Griffin does refer to Peter Osbourne, and yet tries to prove the modernism of fascism by referring to something that in his view had always been the same in every age and would just have to adapt to the conditions of life in modernity, thereby presenting modernity (and the perception thereof) as a period parallel to any other historical period - while Osbourne makes the case that what distinguishes modernity from other periods is not just an advance in chronology, but a qualitative difference, a wholly new perception of time. Griffin is aware of this conception of modernity, but his reference to anthropological constants doesn't allow him to really integrate this conception into his understanding of fascism.
That's a shame as Griffin wonderfully carves out the modernist elements in fascist writings, only to resort to a simplifying explanation of fascist modernism. Yet, a very worthwhile read - Griffin's interpretations and conclusions over the course of the book are still so refined that attempting to counter them will pose a very instructive challenge.
A very rich book, full of close engagement with a wide array of sources. at times a bit repetitive - it feels like it could have been boiled down to 2/3 of the pages (though the author probably foreshadowed the reading habits in academia and wanted to make sure that each chapter could be read on its own and still reflect the overall argument, which is developed over several chapters, so each chapter contains a summary of all previous steps of the argument), and in the repetition the author risks simplifying his own argument, discarding the complexity of the different sources examined previously; each repetition risks the strength of the book - integrating many different primary sources and actually doing justice to them instead of simply taking from each text what fits a predetermined narrative. But then, when repeating the previous steps of the argument, the author does exactly that - discarding the ambivalence of these sources for a linear narrative.
Also, while I sympathise with his project of demonstrating the modernist, future-oriented dimension of fascism, the recourse to alleged anthropological constants seems a strange way of doing so. If I tried to demonstrate the modernist dimension in fascist ideology, I wouldn't refer to something that humans had always wanted or that is a remnant of our prehistoric urges (the need for a comprehensive worldview as protection against the contingency of the world). Griffin does refer to Peter Osbourne, and yet tries to prove the modernism of fascism by referring to something that in his view had always been the same in every age and would just have to adapt to the conditions of life in modernity, thereby presenting modernity (and the perception thereof) as a period parallel to any other historical period - while Osbourne makes the case that what distinguishes modernity from other periods is not just an advance in chronology, but a qualitative difference, a wholly new perception of time. Griffin is aware of this conception of modernity, but his reference to anthropological constants doesn't allow him to really integrate this conception into his understanding of fascism.
That's a shame as Griffin wonderfully carves out the modernist elements in fascist writings, only to resort to a simplifying explanation of fascist modernism. Yet, a very worthwhile read - Griffin's interpretations and conclusions over the course of the book are still so refined that attempting to counter them will pose a very instructive challenge.
March 19, 2022
Excellent book. Like Jeffrey Herf's "Reactionary Modernism" this essay helps us to understand that fascismus is more problematic and dangerous that people use to think.
We have trivialized the word (Fascismus), applying it to everything that sounds "evil" or "reactionary". Basically, we have devoided Fascismus of what is its essence.
Slavoj Zizek understood pretty well fascismus when he stated about Hitler: "His problem is that he wasn't as revolutionary as he promised". What does Zizek mean? Fascismus attempts to make a great (wicked) revolution using all that sounds "new" for people, just to seduce the masses, but finally it embraces conservative trends too. That's what Roger Griffin points at. Conservative trends are important within fascismus, of course. But we should be warned that it is just an envelope, and doesn't help to recognize the face of totalitarism.
Understanding what Roger Griffin tells us might help to notice that many of the elements of our culture are fascists. That's what Lewis Mumford wrote in his classic book "The pentagon of power" (1970). Mumford claimed that mass propaganda, the utopian role of technology, the obsession with work, technique and the economy (and more) are the original and constitutive ingredients of fascism that are being employed against us. And remember what Hannah Arendt concluded: "Totalitarianism seeks to make the human being superfluous".
If we bear in mind all those warnings, we will understand why this book is so important. Perhaps it will aid us noticing the links between the technological virtual cosmos (i.e. transhumanism) and fascismus.
We have trivialized the word (Fascismus), applying it to everything that sounds "evil" or "reactionary". Basically, we have devoided Fascismus of what is its essence.
Slavoj Zizek understood pretty well fascismus when he stated about Hitler: "His problem is that he wasn't as revolutionary as he promised". What does Zizek mean? Fascismus attempts to make a great (wicked) revolution using all that sounds "new" for people, just to seduce the masses, but finally it embraces conservative trends too. That's what Roger Griffin points at. Conservative trends are important within fascismus, of course. But we should be warned that it is just an envelope, and doesn't help to recognize the face of totalitarism.
Understanding what Roger Griffin tells us might help to notice that many of the elements of our culture are fascists. That's what Lewis Mumford wrote in his classic book "The pentagon of power" (1970). Mumford claimed that mass propaganda, the utopian role of technology, the obsession with work, technique and the economy (and more) are the original and constitutive ingredients of fascism that are being employed against us. And remember what Hannah Arendt concluded: "Totalitarianism seeks to make the human being superfluous".
If we bear in mind all those warnings, we will understand why this book is so important. Perhaps it will aid us noticing the links between the technological virtual cosmos (i.e. transhumanism) and fascismus.
November 13, 2025
Personalmente, me gustó bastante, sobre todo porque visto en perspectiva, nuestra época se asemeja mucho a lo analizado en el libro, asumiendo que se debe ver al fascismo como fenómeno cultural antes que político.
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