JIM BENNETT WONDERS: “Where have all the Fascists gone?”

After the Germans invaded and occupied most of the rest of Continental Europe, this myth contends, they recruited a few isolated losers and opportunists to form puppet governments, which were hated by the great mass of the population, most of whom supported the resistance.

After the war, goes the myth, this handful of collaborators was punished, and in Germany and Italy themselves, the great mass of the population who had gone along realized their errors and became ardent democrats.

What this myth (promoted partly to allow the construction of NATO) ignores is the fact that fascism, and the proto-fascist movements from which the historical fascist parties emerged, was an integral part of the Continental European cultural and political scene for several generations prior to its political-military victory of 1940, and represented a major current in Continental political and social thought. . . .

Integral to the fascist message were the hatred of individualism and free markets and hostility to the Anglo-American culture that they saw (accurately enough) as the source of those values in the modern world. They hated the popular culture that they saw as eroding respect for the traditional forms of European cultural authority. Of course, they despised the Jews as agents of modernism among them, but that current was muted in post-war Europe, since the fascists had successfully achieved their agenda of destroying the Jewish communities as significant economic and cultural forces on the European continent.

Well, if you want the answer, you’ll have to follow the link and read the whole thing.