A key fascist lie was the idea that dictatorship was the truest form of democracy. As with other fascist lies, this fabrication of “truth” replaced empirical truth. From the perspective of reality, the result of this kind of ideology could never be true. It was simply false. Nonetheless, fascists believed that their lies were evidence of deeper truths. They rejected real evidence and substituted it with a deep, almost religious faith in their leaders and the totalitarian ideology they defended. The leader and the ideology were, for them, the evidence that what they stood for represented an absolute truth. Fascists were not simply cynical about their lies. They wanted to believe in them, and they did.
Democracy was not an exception to this fascist pattern of combining lies with a deep belief in them. Inverting the terms of the equation, fascists identified existing democracy as a lie because they believed that electoral representation did not truly express the desires of the people. Only the leader could represent the people forever. For Hitler, as we might expect, the Jews were also behind this inherently false idea of a pluralistic democracy (i.e., a system that lacked a single will). Ironically, given this complaint, his rhetoric compressed all Jews into a unified willpower. Hitler spoke of the Jews’ supposed plan as that of a singular figure: “His ultimate goal in this stage is the victory of ‘democracy’, or as he understands it: the rule of parliamentarianism.” In doing this Jews would replace “personality” with “the majority characterized by stupidity.” Projecting his own intentions and desires, Hitler not only saw Jews as having a single evil plan; he actually said that they did not believe in democracy and wanted to establish a dictatorship. “Now begins the great last revolution,” he wrote, forecasting the results of a radical Jewish plot. “In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The ‘democratic peoples’ Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over peoples. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave’s lot of permanent subjugation.”1
In truth, of course, the fascists rejected liberal democracy and replaced it with dictatorship. The fascists also planned to exterminate their enemies, and, in time, they did. This displacement was practical as well as theoretical. As fascists argued, fascism was ontologically opposed to existing democratic life.2 Fascism reified violent drives, presenting them as naked emanations of the true self. It was opaque, insofar as it represented something that could not be shared through either straightforward language or analogies. Instincts could only be expressed through acts of submission to the leader, who owned the truth.
From the United States to India, from Argentina to Japan, fascists argued that a real democracy never existed. They denounced parliamentarianism or maintained that it was old, or that it had been corrupted by communism, or that it was a Jewish plot. Nonetheless, they invented the idea that their authoritarianism would lead to a better, more functional, and truer form of democracy.3 In China, the fascist Blue Shirts argued that existing democracy was the antithesis of the successful revolutionary movements that would “lay the foundation for a people’s democracy.”4 Similarly, Spanish fascists denounced “the old lies of democracy” and identified popular sovereignty with the “doctrines and the procedures of redemptive fascism.”5
In Mexico, the fascist intellectual José Vasconcelos argued that real modern democracy never existed. He editorialized, “Even the stones know already that democracy was buried the day when the main peoples of the time handed over their destinies, no longer to the freedom of suffrage, as in the small mediaeval republics of Italy or Spain, but to the Judeomasonic mafias who have been exploiting the eagerness and anguish, and innocence and misfortune of the nations. Democracy we have not seen, but we have seen imperialist intrigue and high plutocracy.” Vasconcelos concluded that the absence of a real democracy meant that Nazi Germany represented the best possible power for Latin America’s future. Like Hitler, he believed that Jews, especially American Jews, represented the true enemy of fascism, or, as he put it, they were “the same elements . . . that today in the United States preach the ‘holy war’ of international banking democracy against the liberating totalitarianism of Hitler and Mussolini.”6
In Peru, fascists argued that as it existed democracy engendered “plutocracy” and could only be corrected by “proportional representation”; in France, they confronted “political democracy” with their aspiration to achieve a “democracy” that would be “integral” and “totalitarian.”7 In Argentina, Lugones described authoritarian rule as essentially antipolitical.8
Lugones advocated the reform of the electoral system in terms of corporative structures of government, what he, with self-proclaimed “impersonal objectivity,” called “functional representation.” Lugones argued that functional representation, with a universal but qualified vote organized in corporations and vocational groups, was the form of nationalism best adapted to the needs of Argentina. The people, as opposed to the “amorphous masses,” would be the electors of this political system. Lugones identified ordinary politics with liberal democracy. He saw a corporatist system as part of the global fascist reaction against electoral representation but also diverged from Italian fascism in the sense that he wanted one corporation (the military) to reign supreme, even over the dictator. He considered this state to be transcendentally detached from politics as usual. This mythical dimension was at the root of his insistence on an “authoritarian reorganization [reorganización autoritaria]” of the state.9
Like the Mexican and Brazilian fascists, Lugones framed his proposed corporatist military state in the context of global fascism. For him, Mussolini was a “Machiavellian synthesis.” Rather than being peculiarly Italian, fascism represented a universal pattern of “military democracies.” The state’s “reconcentration and defense” seemed to Lugones to be one of the basic tenets of Italian fascism. But they also were symptoms of broader dictatorial trends. Italian fascism was exemplary but not a model. Nonetheless, Italy’s corporatist reality was truly important for Lugones. In his view, Mussolini had transformed Italy from a “proletarian and subaltern country” into a “potentate.” This potency was the building block for the “creation of a new type of State.”
Lugones saw fascism as he wanted it to be: a “democratic dictatorship.”10 In his mind fascism looked very similar to his own proposal for the Argentine state: a militaristic corporatist dictatorship, which he also symptomatically conceived as a military form of democracy.11 Where antifascists simply saw a ruthless fascist dictatorship, many fascists believed that fascism was the only true democracy. This was, of course, a lie. But it is interesting that fascists really struggled to create a form of representation to replace constitutional democracy.
Delegation of power, and truth, in and to the leader was key. But this was not enough. For fascists, corporatism, as a legitimizing tool, could effectively bridge the contradiction between dictatorship and representation. Thus, they presented corporatism as the hallmark of democracy. Free and universal electoral representation would no longer be allowed. Corporatism was a crucial dimension of the defense against the supposed enemies of the nation: liberalism, communism, and Judaism. Democracy was in its “infancy,” and fascism would bring it to maturity.12
All in all, fascists believed that corporatism provided substantial legitimacy to a dictatorial form of representation rooted in popular, if not electoral, sovereignty. In other words, for the fascists, true democracy was, in fact, a corporatist dictatorship.13 Most fascists worldwide agreed that corporatism was an authoritarian form of democracy, a political regime that they also equated with the fascist form of dictatorship. They conceived of dictatorship as the only real form of political representation where dictators could arbitrate between different sectors of society and also where all people could obey the dictates of an autocratic executive power.
Corporatism was a key dimension of the global response to liberal democracy in the interwar period. To be sure, this idea had existed for many centuries, and it has not always been restricted to the antidemocratic camp or subordinated to the fascist notion of truth in politics.14As an ideological proposal, fascists came to associate corporatism with the absolute truths of their ideology. It was a constitutive part of the dictatorial alternative to liberal democracy, which many fascists saw as a mere prelude to communism.
This antiliberal and anticommunist version of corporatism was a major element in the global circulation of fascism.15 While there are important doubts regarding the real application of corporatist practices, few historians will disagree about the centrality of corporatist ideas within fascist ideological circles and fascist regimes.16
Starting in the 1920s, corporatism increasingly became synonymous with antiliberal and anticommunist dictatorial forms of government. During this period, Mussolini included corporatism as a central element of fascist ideology. It was part of a “new synthesis” that “overcomes socialism and liberalism.”17 Mussolini was not alone. His corporatist “third way” between liberalism and socialism became a global vehicle for the diffusion and reformulation of fascist ideas. For fascist regimes, corporatism represented a form of sovereign legitimacy; it established a system of representation that did not downplay in any significant way the true authority of the dictator. In this situation corporatism provided a theory for regulating conflict under the supreme arbitration of the leader. If in nondictatorial forms of representation corporatism identified the state as the arbiter of interest groups, under totalitarian corporatism there was no difference between leader and state. In theory, corporatism worked ideologically for the legitimation of the dictator. It was supposed to demonstrate the truth of the power of people as incarnated in the leader. But in practice it never worked.
There was nothing democratic about fascist corporatism. Basically, one person ruled and everyone else was supposed to obey. Antifascists understood this clearly. In the 1920s, the famous legal thinker Hans Kelsen wrote that corporatism replaced the democratic form of parliamentary representation with a different form more akin to dictatorial rule. Kelsen argued against those who still believed that corporatism could enhance democracy. In fact, he demonstrated that the opposite was the case. Corporatism only served the interests of those who no longer identified with democratic constitutions. A desire for authoritarian domination was behind their opportunistic calls for the “organic” participation of all vocation groups in government. For Kelsen, corporatism was potentially dictatorial but intrinsically autocratic. It was always hostile to democracy.18
In contrast, for fascists, true corporatist democracy could not resemble the past. But what they understood as democracy, for all other observers was dictatorship. Why would dictators want to present dictatorship as democracy? Did they actually believe they were democratic? What is clear is that fascists needed democracy to be molded according to their ideological premises and expectations. Its truth was rooted in ideological imperatives, not reality. If the leader actually fully knew what the people wanted, then there would be real democracy. But this was clearly not the case, so dictatorship was constructed as democracy and democracy as it existed or had existed was presented as a fake vessel for evil plans that had to be destroyed. It had to be defeated in the name of ideological truth. Thus, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco claimed that there were many definitions of democracy but only one “authentic one.”19 When Franco said, “In the new Spain, the democratic tradition will be preserved and, if possible, improved,”20 was he simply lying? He later explained, “Confronting formal democracy, we oppose it with a practical democracy. . . . Our democracy gathers its desires and needs from the people.”21
Across the world, fascists identified the existing liberal democracies with decadence and regarded them as, willingly or unwillingly, opening the gates to communism. The leader of the National Socialist Movement of Chile (the Chilean Nacis), Jorge Gonzalez von Marées, claimed that there was only a “pretense” of democracy in Chile. The fascists would “save democracy” by destroying the supposed democracy that was “feeding and strengthening the roots of Soviet dictatorship.” In contrast to a communist dictatorship, the Chilean fascists maintained they wanted to create a “true democracy.”22
Fascists identified constitutional democracies with a lie. They believed that it was not true that electoral representation could express popular sovereignty. For them, this idea was an “illusion.”23 Democracy imposed lies on the people and the nation. For Jean-Renaud, leader of the French Faisceau, democratic parliaments were the place representatives lost contact with “the real country,” and also where they lost the “sense of truth.”24 Thus, for fascists, parliamentary democracy acted against the truth. Popular sovereignty could not be measured by democratic representation. Moreover, for fascists, democratic elections distorted true representation.
As the Argentine dictator José Felix Uriburu stated, “The word Democracy with a capital D no longer has meaning for us. . . . This doesn’t imply that we are not democrats but more sincerely how much we hope that at some point a democracy in lowercase, but organic and truthful, replaces the dislocated demagogy that has done us great harm.”25 Uriburu was, above all, antiliberal. He wanted a dictatorial form of “democracy” rooted in corporatist forms of state organization. The Argentine dictator presented liberal democracy as a thing of the past. He warned those who believed “that the last word in politics is universal suffrage . . . as if there were nothing new under the sun[;] the corporations gave greatness and splendor to the Italian Communes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and degenerated later by the predominant action of the princes.” Uriburu presented fascism as a novel actualization of a long-standing tradition: “The corporatist union is not a discovery of fascism but the modernized adaptation of a system whose results over a long epoch of history justify their resurgence.”26
In fascism, elections were valid only if they confirmed dictatorship. Having decimated all opposition in the Spanish Civil War—half a million people were killed, and nearly as many went into exile—Franco called a referendum in 1947, confirming him as Head of State for life. Franco argued that this dubious election was extremely “free and welcoming.” His ultimate lie was his argument that dictatorship and freedom were compatible. For Franco, antifascists were lying when they insisted that freedom was impossible under his rule. The enemy’s lie had “such a virtuality, that it ends up deceiving the same ones that manufacture it by force of repeating it. Our triumph has overwhelmed them. However, no, we should not have great illusions. Malice is unforgiving, and we must be willing to defend, tenaciously and on all occasions, our truth.”27
In 1938, Franco defended the fascists’ lethal attack against Spanish democracy as being based on “arguments derived from the defense of the truth.” Franco’s place in the history of fascist lies did not escape the antifascist artist Pablo Picasso, who, shortly before completing his famous Guernica denouncing fascism and setting the record straight about its aerial killings of civilians, had published a small booklet with forceful etchings of the dictator, some of them related to his studies for the subsequent famous painting. The book was titled Dream and Lie of Franco. Picasso aptly saw the connections between the role that fascist lies and violence played in the figure of the dictator and the dictatorial methods he represented, on the one hand, and reality and experience, on the other.28 Fascists lies spared believers from engaging with the reality and suffering of those whose lives had been attacked and destroyed along with democracy.
The Spanish dictator projected onto his enemies the very mechanism that had allowed so many fascists to believe in the veracity of their own lies. This, of course, is a pattern we see repeated over time in the history of the fascist fabrication of truth.