It is not Adolf Hitler who established the völkische movement. Whether Adolf Hitler’s birth were to never have come about, the political folkdom and ethno-cultural attitudes would still manifest in the myriad of ways it had and continues to. Those, that cannot grasp this will continue to fail to comprehend and challenge adaptions of such positions. The use of the term National Socialism here is not to demean the socialist movement.

It is imagined by some people, that Adolf Hitler sat shuffling through a dictionary all-day deliberately looking for runic and magical symbols (e.g., the swastika) and terminology in a dictionary or encyclopedia to subvert for the creation of his Nazi Party. However, in regards to National Socialism, the ideology of Anton Drexler’s German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) pre-existed Adolf Hitler’s political endeavors for almost two decades and had developed solid foundations in three countries. In the 1904 Trautenau Program, the 1913 Iglau Program, the 1918 Vienna Program, and Rudolf Jung’s 1919 work Der Nationale Sozialismus lay the basis of National Socialism by its foundational theorists prior to Adolf Hitler. One fails to understand why these ideas do not die, and why it attracts and appeals to certain minds, in particularly exhibiting the same psychological profile, or unsanity of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Many find strength in the philosophy of Fascism, including Adolf Hitler, first inspired by the philosophy and aesthetic of Mussolini’s Fascists. Fascism has a transcendental, or metaphysical element, which promoted the unity of the people and its forward advancement, the astuteness of function, and good health in form and mind on the individual and collective level.

Adolf Hitler explained this in a speech:

“Those who do not understand have not experienced the same calamities among their people. These things appear enigmatic and mysterious that hundreds and thousands would be led to assemble amidst calamity and passion. Others cannot understand, that this is not an order of the State! They are deceiving themselves. The State does not order us. We order the State!”

ADOLF HITLER

On the intellectual and emotional side of Fascism, its metaphysical idealism reflects man’s general longing for transcendence, and more deeply, finding that force immanent in life and organizing the State upon that principle.

Julius Evola explains in relation to this need for immanent relation of man with higher law, but from the view of the historic Right:

“There was also the demand to integrate man through means of an ‘immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society’. The formulation of this demand is significant, even if its content was never adequately defined. There are various possible judgments one can make regarding the concrete forms with which Fascism tried to meet this demand so as to consider itself the perfect representative of the doctrine of the state we have just discussed. Recognising the superficial and contrived character of the various initiatives and customs of Fascist Italy should not provide a pretext for neglecting a problem which is of fundamental importance no less now than then. It is basically a question of the problem of how to confront an impulse of ‘self-transcendence’ that can be repressed and silenced, but never completely eliminated, except in the extreme case of systematically degrading people into a bovine state. Yesterday’s ‘nationalist revolutions’ tried to furnish a political centre to crystallise this impulse (again, this is the action we have mentioned of ‘form’ on ‘matter’), to impede its running wild and its onset or breaking out into destructive forms. Indeed, no one can ignore the deep crisis of the ‘rationalising’ of existence attempted by bourgeois culture, given the many examples of the emerging of the irrational or ‘elemental’ (in the sense of the elemental character of a force of nature) through the fissures of this culture on every level. Today, with the return of this obsession with ‘rationalising’, there is a tendency to render service to an ideal that is not political but ‘social’ and which belongs to physical comfort, and to marginalise and discredit everything that is comprised of existential tension, heroism and the galvanising force of a myth. But it has been correctly pointed out that a profound crisis is inevitable at the point when prosperity and comfort will finally become boring. The early signs of this crisis are already apparent. They consist of all those forms of blind, anarchic and destructive revolts embraced by a youth that, precisely in the most prosperous nations, notice the absurdity and senselessness of an existence that is socialised, rationalised, materialistic, and dominated by the so-called ‘consumer culture’. In these revolts, this elementary impulse finds no object and, left to itself, becomes barbaric. In traditional societies, there has always existed a certain liturgy or mystique of power and sovereignty that was an integral part of the system, and which furnished a solution to the problem we have been addressing.”

These ideas are therefore bound to have a hold on certain minds.

This paper directly relates to the historical contexts I provide about the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, who came into that party and added things, but nonetheless, he was no inventor of National Socialism from thin-air. We are continuously told, that fascism has no intellectual or philosophical side, and that it is not a system, though as I’ve shown numerously, we repeatedly find the Fascists and Nazis themselves saying, that it is, and anyone that says otherwise, they call them ignorant.

I must object to the argument of the Communists in this paper, that objective idealism is Fascism hence Fascism is objective idealism. Theosophy is also described as monistic and objective idealism and is yet entirely based on a teaching of compassion. Despite this the Communist is able to identify that there is an intellectual side of Fascism:

“Who is a fascist intellectual? Fascism springs from a person’s social and intellectual attitudes and it is essential to go into its genesis. When idealists talk of fascism they usually refer to the murderous crusades carried out as a result of social, political or religious dogmas: they picture dismembered bodies and recall all kinds of physical killing and persecution. Idealist historians suggests that all of a sudden somebody, some class of people, or some society went berserk and started killing people. This is a simplistic definition of fascism, a comfortable rationalisation which ignores the reality of the human situation. Do people become murderers all of a sudden? No. The moment people believe something without undertaking the act-of-finding out they are manifesting a fascist tendency; to accept without questioning the premise involved in a statement, an analysis or a concept is to create the basis of fascism. Cold war slogans operate precisely in this manner. Beliefs devoid of experiential validity and made up of the accumulate prejudices of the society give rise to overt fascism.” (The Internationalists – Communist Party of Ireland Marxist-Leninists, Objective Idealism is Fascism: A Denunciation of Northrop Frye’s “Literary Criticism”)

The critique of Neo-Hegelianism here is to be expected, and unfortunately, writer uses Fascism like a verb [e.g., if someone does this, they are manifesting a “fascist tendency”] in the same way, the term “Jesuitical” used to be employed in a negative manner. This is why I wrote The Historical Context of Giovanni Gentile’s Fascism, Mazzini and Carbonaro Theosophists and The Issue of Theosophy, Occultism, and National Socialism in Germany (1880s-1930s), because we’d have to say, something positively or authoritatively like ‘religion is fascist,’ and ‘manifests fascist tendencies.’ Anything then can manifest “fascist tendencies” in this use of the term.

Just these two of ten commandments of Fascist Italy explain the limits placed on the minds of those under its law, despite Gentile’s transcendental aspirations:

XII – Complete and willing obedience is the legionary’s virtue.
X – The Duce [Mussolini] is always Right (“Il Duce ha sempre ragione”)

In our day, the political Left and the Right use the term Fascism in a frivolous sense, as demonstrated, accusing each other’s very rationale of being connected to the origins of Fascism.

The foundational National Socialists (pre-Hitler) were in-fact a league of ex-Social Democrats and Trade Unionists. Benito Mussolini found inspiration in Sorel, the Syndicalists, and Anarchists, and sought a balance in his own at first, new revolutionary socialism, which develops into “Fascism” in stark contrast to Marx, Trotsky and Lenin’s revolutionary socialism in Communism. Adolf Hitler truly believed in his ideas for the German workers, and the National Socialists were avowed anti-capitalists, despite being aided by the German conservatives. By studying more into the history of liberalism, I began to observe Giuseppe Mazzini’s liberal thought, and even the young Giovanni Gentile, who was early on liberal and humanist. Mussolini till his death still believed he was a socialist. There are numerous sources, where Hitler and his colleagues preach anti-capitalism, and believe themselves to be socialist. For Gentile, he stated, that his Fascist thought was an evolution of Liberalism, and is an interpretation of Mazzini’s thought. He argues exactly where this diverges into his conception of the Organic State and into Actualism based on his observations of the weaknesses and failures of Italian liberalism. Here is where we begin to understand what is a “Third Positionist.” I simply went to the primary sources! Their own words. This isn’t about portraying Fascists as right-wing or left-wing. It is more complex. The original Fascists state that their rank is a mixture of both elements and more, a “third position,” a new political theory that supersedes liberal democracy and Marxism.

In the Organic State, there is no King Immanuel III, no right or left faction (all are absorbed into a totalistic organism), one Hero at the apex and a unified, obedient Fasces.

So, I followed the historical tract of Romanticism, German folkdom and romantic nationalism. Hence, the arguments on the Right that the Leftists are Fascists, or that the Right or Conservatives resemble the economic policies and thought of the Nazis becomes confusing once you set aside all the facts, separated from its historical contexts.

These are sources, which most people with opinions on this subject are afraid of directly exploring, in fear, perhaps they may be . . . susceptible to and persuaded by aspects of Fascist Philosophy? This is not my problem. If you know your history, science, grow keen to certain tropes and propaganda, and you are true to your moral principles, you will be fine.

The metaphysical and intellectual side of Fascism transcends it, because it was for Gentile and Mussolini a compilation of the library of Italian thought. The history of its thought is fully traceable, and demonstrates Theosophy and Fascism take completely dissimilar routes in forming its spiritual philosophy, or metaphysics. This must be dissected as detailed as possible, because of false slander, despite any uncomfortable facts.

The Fascists sought alliance with the Catholic Church and Jesuits and hated Freemasonry, yet the public speaks nothing of it. Instead, they adopt the conspiracies and propaganda of the Fascists, which many claim to hate, and the instigated lies that their Churches are responsible for spreading. But the irony does not fall on them. Fascists and Nazis did not ally with the Theosophists, and in fact as documented, the Nazis and Fascists believed the Theosophists teachings were antithetical to theirs and their aims. Therefore, the Fascists tried to subordinate and police the Italian, Austrian and German Theosophists, some of which were among the first sent to concentration camps. Remember this and avoid over-simplifying this particular history, and those that ignorantly and dangerously do.