Introduction — Fascism, Racism and Darwinism

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We can list the principle features of fascism as such concepts as authoritarian or dictatorial state rule, and an aggressive foreign policy. But alongside all of these, its really dominant characteristic is racism. When we look at the Nazi ideology, in particular, we can see that it is racism that makes fascism what it is. The Nazis set out with the dream of establishing the hegemony of the Aryan race, which they believed to be superior, over the whole world, an idea on which all their policies and social measures were based. In the words of Wilhelm Reich, "The race theory is German fascism's theoretical axis."78

In their book The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code, the American historians Michael Grodin and George Annas, write of the murders committed by Nazi doctors in accordance with their belief in Social Darwinism.

Racism was also the fundamental ideology of other fascist regimes, such as those of Mussolini and Franco, even if not to the extent it was in Nazism. Mussolini suggested that the Romans who had governed the Roman Empire were a "superior race," and that the Italians, as their descendants, also possessed this superior nature. The conquest of Ethiopia was based on this notion of the superior race, and that the black-skinned Ethiopians need submit to the Italians, in accordance to what was perceived as a natural racial hierarchy. Franco made similar claims for the Spanish.

Japanese fascism, which developed before the Second World War, and was part of the Hitler-Mussolini alliance, also possessed a "superior race" complex. In the New York Times of August 14, 1942, Otto D. Tolischus wrote about a booklet issued in Tokyo by Professor Chikao Fujisawa, one of the leading exponents of Japan's political thought and philosophy;

According to this booklet, which was made up for widest distribution, Japan, as the original motherland of the human race and world civilization, is fighting a holy war to reunite warring mankind into one universal family household in which every nation will take its proper place under the divine sovereignty of the Japenese Emperor, who is a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess in the "absolute cosmic life-center," from which the nations have strayed and to which they must return.79

The interesting thing is that the alliance of the fascist states was set up between groups who each saw themselves as the "superior race." For instance, the Nazis did not object to the Japanese superior race claims, but even encouraged them by describing them as "honorary Aryans."

But what is the root of the racism which forms the basis of all fascist regimes and movements?

We shall consider the answer to that question in this chapter.

In order to gain them as an ally, the Nazis did not oppose the Japanese's claims of being the "superior race," and even honored them as "honorary Aryans."