| Abstract | Fascism and Nazism indeed demonstrated a great proximity to the religious, as revealed by their leaders' frequent invocations of God or Providence, by Mussolini's religious practice and Hitler's decision to remain within the Catholic church, along with their constant denunciation of atheism, which evidently involved the desire to distinguish themselves from communism, and their insistence upon the religious character of their movements and their ideology. Fascism, for instance, used from the 1920s on the expressions "fascist religion," "political and civilian religion," and "Italy's religion."(35) The Nazi leaders also referred to themselves in religious terms, even appealing to Christianity, a "positive Christianity," in the 1920s. In Mein Kampf, [Adolf Hitler] praised the Catholic church, offering it as a model for his party; and in 1926, he called the NSDAP's program the "founding text of our religion."(36)
(6). Anon. [[Hans-Joachim Schoeps]], "Der Nationalsozialismus als verkappte Religion," Eltheto (1939): 93-98; [Raymond Aron], "Une révolution antiprolétarienne," lecture delivered in the winter of 1934-1935 and published in [Elie Hal]évy, ed., Inventaires: La crise sociale et les idéologies nationales (Paris, 1936), reprinted in Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes (Paris, 1993), 298; "L'...re des tyrannies d'E. Halévy," Revue de métaphysique et de morale (May 1939), reprinted in ibid. under the title "Le socialisme et la guerre," 330; [Lucie Varga], "La genèse du national-socialisme," Annales d'histoire économique et sociale 9 (1937): 529-46; cf. Peter Schöttler, Lucie Varga: Les Autorités invisibles: Une historienne autrichienne aux Annales dans les années trente (Paris, 1991); and "Das Konzept der politischen Religionen bei Lucie Varga und Franz Borkenau," in [Michael Ley] and Schoeps, eds., Der Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion, 186-205. An alternative concept that persisted was that of "cryptoreligion." See Carl Christian Bry, Verkappte Religionen (Gotha and Stuttgart, 1924), who applied this term to Bolshevism, fascism and völkisch anti-Semitism, along with theosophy, vegetarianism etc. Schoeps also used this expression along with that of political religion.
(7). For [Eric Voegelin], this movement toward sacralization did not concern politics alone. In fact, he called "intramundane religion" any aspect of worldly reality to which the value of a superior reality, a Realissimum is attributed (he was probably thinking of the sacralization of other domains of social life such as science or art). Political religion is therefore just one case of its kind: a useful distinction that is overshadowed by the notion of "temporal religion" or "secular religion" preferred by Raymond Aron. See Dietmar Herz, "Die politischen Religionen im Werk Eric Voegelins," in [Hans Maier], ed., "Totalitarismus" und "Politische Religionen," 191-210.
|
