6

Fascism and Religion

John Pollard

The relationship between fascism and religion, especially during the

period 1919-45 in Europe, was a very complex phenomenon and one
that has still not been fully explored. Nevertheless, over the last 40
years much scholarly study has been devoted to it, in particular to the
relationships between Italian Fascism, the Third Reich and institutional
religion. This contribution will not cover that particular ground again
in detail, but will instead concentrate on some specific aspects of the
interaction between fascism and religion that have been the subject of
attention by historians in recent decades: the attitude of the leadership
and membership of fascist movements towards religion, the ways in
which fascist regimes engaged in processes of 'sacralizing politics', and
the appeal of fascism to Christians-in particular the phenomenon of
'clerical fascism'.
In this chapter, use of the term 'religion' will not be confined to
the mainstream Christian churches in Europe and North America-
Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism in its various forms-but
will include elements of paganism and Odinism, the religion of
the Norse gods, the occult and other esoteric ideas that are some-
times derived from Eastern religions. The latter two are essential in
understanding the beliefs of some National Socialists and present-day
neo-Nazis.

Italian Fascism and religion

Italian Fascism in its origins was essentially anti-clerical rather than anti-
Catholic or anti-Christian. Mussolini was an atheist and remained so
despite his very opportunistic gestures of marrying in church and having

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A. C. Pinto (ed.), Rethinking the Nature of Fascism

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2011
142 New Approaches

his children baptized. Mussolini's anti-clericalism was the result of life-

long militancy in the Italian working-class movement. Other founders
of Fascism who came from that movement, such as the revolutionary
syndicalist Edmondo Rossoni and the anarchist Michele Bianchi, were
also affected by anti-clericalism, as was Dino Grandi, whose political
past lay in a republican movement that in part drew its inspiration from
the Masonic anti-clericalism of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Then there were the
futurists like Filippo Marinetti who had expressed his hostility to the
Catholic Church and the Papacy in scatological terms: 'Throughout its
history, the Vatican has defecated on Italy.!] But even from the begin-
ning of the movement there were some fascists-like Giorgio Maria De
Vecchi di Val Cismon, the rather brutal ras (boss) of Turin-who claimed
to be practising Catholics.
As Fascism approached power during the early 1920s, Mussolini
made increasingly opportunistic gestures towards those elements of the
Italian establishment-armed forces, monarchy, business groups and the
Church-without which he could not hope to get into power or even
stay there. Thus, in his maiden parliamentary speech in May 1921 he
declared that, 'the only universal values that radiate from Rome are
those of the Vatican'.2 In 1923 the National Fascist Party (PNF-Partito
Nazionale Fascista) merged with the Italian Nationalist Association,
an organization of pre-war origin that under Enrico Corradini, Luigi
Federzoni and Alfredo Rocco had already adopted an instrumentalist
attitude towards the Catholic Church that was rather similar to the
policies of Action Fran~aise.3
This move away from the anti-clericalism of early Fascism, the 1919
congress of which had called for the 'de-Vaticanization' of Italy and the
expropriation of the Church's property, made it possible to pursue a
policy of cooperation with the Vatican that began immediately after
the March on Rome and which paved the way for the negotiations in
the late 1920s with Pius XI (1922-39) and secretary of state Cardinal
Gasparri, which led to the signing of the Lateran Pacts in 1929. 4
At this point even Marinetti jumped on the bandwagon. In 1931
he published the Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art and in the same year
futurist artists participated in the International Exhibition of Sacred Art
held in Rome under the auspices of the Vatican. Marinetti tried to get
round the embarrassment of this obvious volte face by declaring in the
Manifesto that 'It was not [that is, it has never been] essential to practise
the Catholic religion in order to create a masterpiece of sacred art.'s
A strong vein of anti-clericalism survived inside the Fascist move-
ment, represented in particular by the ferocious ras of Cremona: Roberto