The Fascist Worldview: Core Ideas and Dynamics

Fascism is one of the most studied yet most slippery ideologies in political theory. Unlike liberalism or socialism, it never produced a single founding text or a coherent set of principles agreed upon by its leaders. Instead, it presented a worldview built on emotion, myth, and the worship of power. To understand what fascists actually believed, we need to look at three things together: the philosophical attitude that shaped their thinking, the intellectual sources they borrowed from, and the way they organised power once in office. These elements explain how movements led by figures like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler captured entire nations within a few short years.

Irrationalism at the core 🔗

The foundation of the fascist worldview is irrationalism, the rejection of reason and objective science as the basis for political life. Where Enlightenment thinkers trusted reason, evidence, and the idea that all human beings share a capacity for rational thought, fascists rejected that assumption entirely. As the philosopher Umberto Eco observed in his influential essay on the features of fascism, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason were treated as the beginning of modern depravity, and in this sense fascism can be defined as irrationalism itself.

This was not simply a casual distrust of intellectuals. It was a deliberate philosophical stance. Fascists argued that human beings are driven far more by instinct, emotion, and will than by logic. They abandoned the search for objective truth in favour of feeling, myth, and action. Eco noted that this produced a cult of action for action’s sake, where doing something forceful was valued above thinking carefully about it, and where critical thinking itself became suspect.

Why emotion replaced reason 🔗

Fascists drew a sharp line between the masses and the elite. They rejected the Enlightenment belief in universal human rationality and instead held that ordinary people were largely emotional and easily led, while a gifted elite alone could perceive the nation’s true interest. This view is well documented in surveys of fascist thought, which note that fascists divided society into an irrational, apathetic mass ruled by emotion and an elite that demanded obedience. Once you assume the public cannot reason, persuasion stops being about argument. It becomes about stirring feelings, projecting strength, and overwhelming weaker wills with a stronger one. This is exactly why fascist politics relied so heavily on rallies, uniforms, slogans, and spectacle rather than reasoned debate.

The intellectual sources fascists borrowed from 🔗

Although fascism prized action over theory, its leaders and supporters drew selectively on earlier thinkers, frequently distorting their ideas to suit political needs. It is important to stress that selective borrowing: many of these philosophers would have rejected what fascism made of their work.

Hegel and the supremacy of the state 🔗

From the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, fascism took the idea that the state is the highest expression of collective life, an organic whole greater than any individual within it. Mussolini openly built on this. A Cambridge analysis of the period notes that Mussolini probably took the term totalitarian from Hegel’s writing, where it described the organic unity of the people. The fascist state was therefore not merely a government. It was presented as the true reality of the individual.

Rousseau and the general will 🔗

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fascism absorbed a particular reading of the “general will,” the notion that there is a single collective will of the people that the individual should serve. Fascists used this to argue that genuine freedom lay not in personal choice but in submission to the larger community. The Romantic emphasis on belonging, transcendence, and shared identity was redirected toward the nation and, in Germany, toward the racial folk.

Sorel and the power of myth 🔗

The French thinker Georges Sorel gave fascism perhaps its most distinctive tool. Sorel argued that political action is driven not by rational programmes but by powerful myths capable of inspiring collective sacrifice, and he saw violence as a legitimate instrument of social change. Britannica records that Sorel preached violence as an antidote for decadence, an idea that Mussolini admired, even though Sorel’s wider economic views were too socialistic for most fascists. Friedrich Nietzsche was similarly mined for ideas about the heroic individual and the “will to power,” even though Nietzsche himself, as Britannica notes in the same discussion, was appalled by nationalism and antisemitism.

The myth of the Volk 🔗

If myth was a tool, the myth of the Volk was the most potent example, especially in Nazi Germany. Volk is a German word meaning “people,” but in fascist usage it carried a deeper, almost mystical meaning. It referred to a people bound together by blood, soil, language, and ancestry, possessing a unique spirit that set them above other groups.

This idea grew out of nineteenth-century populist and racial writers. Britannica describes how German writers extolled the image of racially pure peasants close to the soil who would one day follow a charismatic leader able to intuit the Volk soul without the need for elections. Racial Darwinists of the era glorified the survival of the fittest and rejected the idea of social equality outright. In Nazi ideology, the racial folk, rather than the state, became the ultimate creator and bearer of culture and the source of all moral and political standards.

Why the myth mattered 🔗

The myth of the Volk did powerful political work. It gave followers a sense of pride and superiority, a feeling of belonging to something ancient and destined for greatness. It also created a target. If the nation was a pure organic body, then anyone defined as outside it, especially Jews in the Nazi case, could be cast as a contaminant to be removed. This is how an emotional myth translated directly into persecution and, ultimately, genocide. The fascist worldview’s rejection of objective truth meant there was no shared standard of evidence to challenge these claims; the myth simply had to feel true to those who wanted to believe it.

How fascism organised power 🔗

The fascist worldview was not confined to ideas. It shaped a distinctive way of organising the state once fascists took control. Three operational features stand out: centralised power, the single-party state, and absolute leadership.

The totalitarian state 🔗

Fascism aimed at totalitarian control, meaning the state sought to direct every aspect of life, not just politics but the economy, culture, education, and even private belief. Mussolini himself coined the term totalitario to describe the new fascist state, and Britannica records his summary of it as all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state. In the official Doctrine of Fascism, the fascist conception of the state is described as all-embracing, with no human or spiritual values able to exist outside it. The individual existed only insofar as their interests aligned with the state’s.

The single-party state and the suppression of dissent 🔗

Totalitarian ambition required the elimination of rivals. Fascist regimes dismantled democracy and banned competing parties. In Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum records that after Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler to enact laws without the approval of parliament and became the cornerstone of his dictatorship, destroying parliamentary democracy. Opposition was met with force. Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Storm Troopers assaulted political rivals, the press was muzzled, and elections were rigged or abolished. Secret police and propaganda machinery ensured that dissent was crushed and that the official ideology was everywhere.

The leader who embodies the state 🔗

At the apex stood the leader. Fascists defended the Führerprinzip, or leadership principle, the belief that the party and the state should be guided by a single leader with absolute power. Britannica explains that under this principle Hitler was the Führer and Mussolini the Duce, both meaning the leader who gave the orders that everyone else had to obey, with authority enhanced by personal charisma. The leader was not merely a head of government. He was presented as the living embodiment of the nation’s will and the racial folk, a figure whose decisions were beyond question. This fused leader, party, and state into a single source of authority.

How the pieces fit together 🔗

The genius and danger of fascism lay in how tightly these elements connected. Irrationalism cleared away reason and objective truth, leaving room for myth. The borrowed ideas of Hegel, Rousseau, and Sorel supplied the raw material: the supreme state, the collective will, and the mobilising power of myth and violence. The myth of the Volk gave followers identity, pride, and an enemy. And the operational structure, centralised, single-party, and led by an all-powerful figure, turned that emotional energy into total control. Once reason was abandoned and the leader’s will became the only standard, there was nothing left to restrain the state from acts of repression and mass violence. Studying this worldview matters not because fascism is a relic, but because its building blocks, distrust of reason, the politics of myth, and the cult of the strong leader, can reappear under new names in any era.

What do you think? If fascism gained strength by appealing to emotion rather than reason, what does that suggest about the role of critical thinking and a free press in protecting a democracy? And when a leader claims to personally embody “the will of the people,” what warning signs should make us cautious?

References

1. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
2. https://earlhamsociologypages.uk/fascirrat/
3. https://cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/totalitarian-state/F883CAD484B11F2E45AFA934D144BED8
4. https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Intellectual-origins
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism
6. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/fascism-1
7. https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Volksgemeinschaft