Fascism () is a radical, authoritarian nationalist political ideology. It advocates the creation of a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through indoctrination, physical education, and family policy (such as eugenics).

Fascists seek to purge forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration, and to produce their nation's rebirth based on commitment to the national community based on organic unity, in which individuals are bound together by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood. Fascists believe that a nation requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the state.

Fascism promotes violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. It views conflict as a fact of life that is responsible for all human progress. It exalts militarism as providing positive transformation in society, in providing spiritual renovation, education, instilling of a will to dominate in people's character, and creating national comradeship through military service. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violent attacks on opponents, or to overthrow a political system.

Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s. Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program ''The Doctrine of Fascism''. Fascism is anti-anarchist, anti-communist, anti-conservative, anti-democratic, anti-individualist, anti-liberal, anti-parliamentary, anti-bourgeois and anti-proletarian. It entails a distinctive type of anti-capitalism and is typically, with a few exceptions, anti-clerical. It rejects egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favour of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit and will.

In economics, fascists oppose liberalism (as a bourgeois movement) and Marxism (as a proletarian movement) for being class-based movements. Fascists present their ideology as that of an economically trans-class movement that promotes resolving economic class conflict to secure national solidarity. They support a regulated, multi-class, integrated national economic system. Fascist economics supports the existence of private property, the existence of a market economy and the use of the profit motive, however state directed, as they reject laissez-faire.

Etymology

The term ''fascismo'' is derived from the Latin word ''fasces''. The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around an axe, was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate. They were carried by his lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The word ''fascismo'' also relates to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates.

The symbolism of the fasces suggested ''strength through unity'': a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements. For example the Falange symbol is a bunch of arrows joined together by a yoke.

Definitions

Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism. Each form of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow. Since the 1990s, scholars including Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin and Robert O. Paxton have been gathering a rough consensus on the ideology's core tenets.

For Griffin, fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.

Paxton sees fascism as "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

One common definition of fascism focuses on three groups of ideas: the ''Fascist Negations'' of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist, authoritarian goals for the creation of a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; a political aesthetic using romantic symbolism, mass mobilisation, a positive view of violence, promotion of masculinity and youth and charismatic leadership.

Position in the political spectrum

Fascism is normally described as "extreme right", although some writers have found placing fascism on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult. There is a scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both left and right, conservative and anti-conservative, national and supranational, rational and anti-rational. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things.

Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program ''The Doctrine of Fascism'', stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century.". The majority of scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right.

The accommodation of the political right into the Italian Fascist movement in the early 1920s led to the creation of internal factions. The "Fascist left" included Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Sergio Panunzio and Edmondo Rossoni, who were committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance the interests of workers and the common people. The "Fascist right" included members of the Fascist paramilitary ''Squadristi'' and former members of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI). The ''Squadristi'' wanted to establish Fascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought an authoritarian corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy, while retaining the existing elites. There were also smaller factions within the Italian Fascist movement, such as the "clerical Fascists", who sought to shift Italian Fascism from its anti-Catholic roots to accepting Catholicism. There were also "monarchist Fascists" who sought to use Fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.

A number of fascist movements described themselves as a "third position" outside of the traditional political spectrum. Mussolini promoted ambiguity about fascism's positions in order to rally as many people to it as possible, saying fascists can be "aristocrats or democrats, revolutionaries and reactionaries, proletarians and anti-proletarians, pacifists and anti-pacifists". Mussolini claimed that Italian Fascism's economic system of corporatism could be identified as either state capitalism or state socialism, which in either case involved "the bureaucratisation of the economic activities of the nation." Mussolini described fascism in any language he found useful. Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "basically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile".

''Fascist'' as epithet

Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the term ''fascist'' has been used as a pejorative word, often referring to widely varying movements across the political spectrum. George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'". Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times". "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-war organisations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".

Contrary to the common mainstream academic and popular use of the term, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an epithet. Marxist interpretations of the term have, for example, been applied in relation to Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Herbert Matthews, of the ''New York Times'' asked "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?". J. Edgar Hoover wrote extensively of "Red Fascism". Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split, and likewise, the Soviets used the term to identify Chinese Marxists.

Historical causes and development

''Fin de siècle'' era and the fusion of nationalism with Sorelianism (1880—1914)

The ideological roots of fascism have been traced to the 1880s, and in particular the ''fin de siècle'' theme of that time. The theme was based on revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and liberal democracy. The ''fin-de-siècle'' generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism. The ''fin-de-siècle'' mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment. Social Darwinism's emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for nationalism. New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice, and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason. Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy and modern collectivism; his concept of the ''übermensch''; and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the ''fin-de-siècle'' generation. Bergson's claim of the existence of an "''élan vital''" or vital instinct centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism, this challenged Marxism.

With the advent of the Darwinian theory of evolution came claims of evolution possibly leading to decadence. Proponents of decadence theories claimed that contemporary Western society's decadence was the result of modern life, including urbanization, sedentary lifestyle, the survival of the least fit, and modern culture's emphasize on egalitarianism, individualistic anomie, and nonconformity. The Sorelian concept of the positive nature of social war and its insistence on moral revolution led some syndicalists to believe that war was the ultimate manifestation of social change and moral revolution.

Nationalist and militarist influences that had begun to combine with syndicalism since 1907 created a split in the political left. This split was strong in Italy, where nationalists and syndicalists increasingly influenced each other. Maurassian nationalism, close to Sorelism, influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini. Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight. Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "plutocratic" French and British. Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism". The ANI held ties and influence among conservatives, Catholics, and the business community.

Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism, and pacifism, and the promotion of heroism, vitalism, and violence.

Radical nationalism in Italy — support for expansionism and cultural revolution to create a "New Man" and a "New State" — began to grow in 1912 during the Italian conquest of Libya, and was supported by Italian Futurists and members of the ANI. The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong state and imperialism, claiming that humans are naturally predatory and that nations were in a constant struggle, in which only the strongest could survive.

Until 1914, however, Italian nationalists and revolutionary syndicalists with nationalist leanings remained apart. Such syndicalists opposed the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 as an affair of financial interests and not the nation, but World War I was seen by both Italian nationalists and syndicalists as a national affair.

World War I and the founding of Fascism (1914—1922)

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party opposed the war on the grounds of internationalism, but a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported intervention against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes needed to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism. Corradini presented the same need for Italy as a "proletarian nation" to defeat a reactionary Germany from a nationalist perspective. The beginning of fascism resulted from this split, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti forming the Revolutionary Fascio for International Action in October 1914. At the same time, Benito Mussolini joined the interventionist cause. The Fascists supported nationalism and claimed that proletarian internationalism was a failure.

At this time, the Fascists did not have an integrated set of policies and the movement was very small. Its attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and it was regularly harassed by government authorities and orthodox socialists. Antagonism between interventionists, including Fascists, and anti-interventionist orthodox socialists resulted in violence. Attacks on interventionists were so violent that even democratic socialists who opposed the war, such as Anna Kuliscioff, said that the Italian Socialist Party had gone too far in its campaign to silence supporters of the war.

Italy's use of daredevil elite shock troops known as the ''Arditi'', beginning in 1917, was an important influence on Fascism. The ''Arditi'' were soldiers who were specifically trained for a life of violence and wore unique blackshirt uniforms and fezzes. The ''Arditi'' formed a national organization in November 1918, the ''Associazione fra gli Arditi d'Italia'', which by mid-1919 had about twenty thousand young men within it. Mussolini appealed to the ''Arditi'', and the Fascists' ''Squadristi'', developed after the war, were based upon the ''Arditi''.

With the split between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro-interventionist Fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The Fascists presented themselves as anti-Marxists and as opposed to Soviet communism. Benito Mussolini consolidated control over the Fascist movement in 1919 with the founding of the ''Fasci italiani di combattimento'', whose opposition to orthodox socialism he declared:

In 1919, Alceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti created ''The Manifesto of the Italian Fasci of Combat'' (a.k.a. the ''Fascist Manifesto''). The Manifesto was presented on June 6, 1919 in the Fascist newspaper ''Il Popolo d'Italia''. The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded); proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate. The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of their profits. It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive.

The next events that influenced the Fascists were the raid of Fiume by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio and the founding of the Charter of Carnaro in 1920. D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed the Charter, which advocated national-syndicalist corporatist productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views. Many Fascists saw the Charter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a Fascist Italy.

Beginning in 1920, Fascism began to make a shift towards the political right. This occurred as militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy, where 1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Years". Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.

Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I. The Fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness and believed in the rule of elites. The Fascists assisted the anti-socialist campaign of the political right by allying with the right in a mutual effort to destroy the Italian Socialist Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above national identity.

Fascism sought to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda – abandoning its previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism, adopting policies in support of free enterprise, and accepting the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy. To appeal to Italian conservatives, Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including promotion policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce limiting the woman's role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state. Though Fascism adopted a number of positions designed to appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists sought to maintain Fascism's revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying "Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary." The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.

Prior to its shift to the right, Fascism was a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members. Afterward, the Fascist movement's membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921.

Rise to power and initial international spread of fascism (1922—1929)

Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from one of attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist leadership figures to one of violent occupation of cities. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded to take over several cities, including Bologna, Bolzano, Cremona, Ferrara, Fiume, and Trent. The Fascists attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic unions in Cremona and imposed forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Trent and Bolzano. After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome.

On 24 October 1922, the Fascist party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and to converge on three points around Rome. The march would be led by four prominent Fascist leaders representing its different factions: Italo Balbo, a Blackshirt leader; General Emilio De Bono; Michele Bianchi, an ex-syndicalist; and Cesare Maria De Vecchi, a monarchist Fascist. Mussolini himself remained in Milan to await the results of the actions. The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances. The Italian government had been in a steady state of turmoil, with many governments being created and then being defeated. The Italian government initially took action to prevent the Fascists from entering Rome, but King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy perceived the risk of bloodshed in Rome in response to attempting to disperse the Fascists to be too high. Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, and Mussolini arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment. Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as "March on Rome", as a "seizure" of power due to Fascists' heroic exploits.

Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government, because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament. The coalition government included a cabinet led by Mussolini and thirteen other ministers, only three of whom were Fascists; others included representatives from the army and the navy, two Catholic Popolari members, two democratic liberals, one conservative liberal, one social democrat, one Nationalist member, and the pro-Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile. Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto de Stefani, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service. Initially, little drastic change in government policy had occurred and repressive police actions against communist and d'Annunzian rebels were limited. At the same time, however, Mussolini consolidated his control over the National Fascist Party by creating a governing executive for the party, the Grand Council of Fascism, whose agenda he controlled. In addition, the ''Squadristi'' blackshirt militia was transformed into the state-run MVSN, led by regular army officers. Militant ''Squadristi'' were initially highly dissatisfied with Mussolini's government and demanded a "Fascist revolution".

In this period, to appease the King of Italy, Mussolini formed a close political alliance between the Italian Fascists and Italy's conservative faction in Parliament, which was led by Luigi Federzoni, a conservative monarchist and nationalist who was a member of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI). The ANI joined the National Fascist Party in 1923. Because of the merger of the Nationalists with the Fascists, tensions existed between the conservative nationalist and revolutionary syndicalist factions of the movement. The conservative and syndicalist factions of the Fascist movement sought to reconcile their differences, secure unity, and promote fascism by taking on the views of each other. Conservative nationalist Fascists promoted fascism as a revolutionary movement to appease the revolutionary syndicalists while, to appease conservative nationalist fascists, revolutionary syndicalist Fascists declared they wanted to secure social stability and insure economic productivity.

The Fascists began their attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote. The Acerbo Law was passed in spite of numerous abstentions from the vote. In the 1924 election, the Fascists, along with moderates and conservatives, formed a coalition candidate list, and through considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won with 66% of the vote, allowing it to receive 403 seats, most of which went to the Fascists. In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteoti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist. The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession. On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but he insisted that he had done nothing wrong. He proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament. From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced, and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King. Efforts to Fascistize Italian society accelerated beginning in 1926, with Fascists taking positions in local administration and 30% of all prefects being administered by appointed Fascists by 1929. In 1929, the Fascist regime gained the political support and blessing of the Roman Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the nineteenth century. Though Fascist propaganda had begun to speak of the new regime as an all-encompassing "totalitarian" state beginning in 1925, the Fascist party and regime never gained total control over Italy's institutions; King Victor Emmanuel III remained head of state, the armed forces and the judicial system retained considerable autonomy from the Fascist state, Fascist militias were under military control, and initially the economy had relative autonomy as well.

The Fascist regime began to create a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidioni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions. The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs, and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes. In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves but instead by appointed Fascist party members.

In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included an attack on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention, and making Albania a ''de facto'' protectorate of Italy, which was achieved through diplomatic means by 1927. In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya. This resulted in an aggressive military campaign against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps, and the forced starvation of thousands of people.

The March on Rome brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who, less than a month after the March, had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists. The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin" modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923, where the Nazis briefly captured Bavarian Minister President Gustav Ritter von Kahr and announced the creation of a new German government to be led by a triumvirate of von Kahr, Hitler, and Ludendorff. The Beer Hall Putsch was crushed by Bavarian police, and Hitler and other leading Nazis were arrested and detained until 1925. Another early admirer of Italian Fascism was Gyula Gömbös, leader of the Hungarian National Defence Association (known by its acronym MOVE) and a self-defined "national socialist" who in 1919 spoke of the need for major changes in property and in 1923 stated the need of a "march on Budapest". Amid a political crisis in Spain involving increased strike activity and rising support for anarchism, Spanish army commander Miguel Primo de Rivera engaged in a successful coup against the Spanish government in 1923 and installed himself as a dictator as head of a conservative military junta that dismantled the established party system of government. Upon achieving power, Primo de Rivera sought to resolve the economic crisis by presenting himself as a compromise arbitrator figure between workers and bosses, and his regime created a corporatist economic system based on the Italian Fascist model.

International surge of fascism and World War II (1929—1945)

The events of the Great Depression resulted in an international surge of fascism and the creation of several fascist regimes and regimes that adopted fascist policies. The most important new fascist regime was Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany, and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised, and persecuted Jews, homosexuals and other racial and minority groups. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and visited Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to consolidate good relations with the two regimes. He attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the country; created an eight-hour work day, a forty-eight hour work week in industry, and sought to entrench a corporatist economy; and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors. The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government, and an Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca. A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Yugoslavia.

Fascism also expanded influence outside of Europe, especially in East Asia, the Middle East, and South America. In China, Wang Jingwei's ''Kai-tsu p'ai'' (Reorganization) faction of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) supported Nazism in the late 1930s. In Japan, the Tōhōkai, a Nazi movement was formed by Seigō Nakano. The Al-Muthanna Club of Iraq was a pan-Arab movement that supported Nazism and exercised influence in Iraqi government through cabinet minister Saib Shawkat who formed a youth paramilitary movement. Many fascist governments and prominent fascist movements were formed in South America during this period. Argentine President General José Félix Uriburu proposed that Argentina be reorganized along corporatist and fascist lines. Peruvian president Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro founded the Revolutionary Union in 1931 as the state party for his dictatorship. Upon the Revolutionary Union being taken over by Raúl Ferrero Rebagliati who sought to mobilise mass support for the group's nationalism in a manner akin to fascism. He even started a Blackshirts paramilitary arm as a copy of the Italian group, although the Union lost heavily in the 1936 elections and faded into obscurity. In Paraguay in 1940, Paraguayan President General Higinio Morínigo began his rule as a dictator with the support of pro-fascist military officers, appealed to the masses, exiled opposition leaders, and only abandoned pro-fascist policy after the end of World War II. The Brazilian Integralists led by Plínio Salgado, claimed as many as 200,000 members although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937. In the 1930s The National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile's parliament and attempted a coup d'état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.

During the Great Depression, Mussolini promoted active state intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary "supercapitalism" that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure due to its alleged decadence, support for unlimited consumerism and intention to create the "standardization of humankind". However, Mussolini claimed that the industrial developments of earlier "heroic capitalism" were valuable and continued to support private property as long as it was productive. With the onset of the Great Depression, Fascist Italy began large-scale state intervention into the economy, establishing the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (''Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale'', IRI), a giant state-owned firm and holding company that provided state funding to failing private enterprises. The IRI was made a permanent institution in Fascist Italy in 1937, pursued Fascist policies to create national autarky, and had the power to take over private firms to maximize war production. In the late 1930s Italy enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency restrictions, and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to balance payments. However Italy's policy of autarky failed to achieve effective economic autonomy. Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality imported iron. In Ital

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany both pursued territorial expansionist and interventionist foreign policy agendas from the 1930s through the 1940s culminating in World War II. Mussolini called for irredentist Italian claims to be reclaimed, establishing Italian domination of the Mediterranean Sea and securing Italian access to the Atlantic Ocean, and the creation of Italian ''spazio vitale'' ("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea regions. Hitler called for irredentist German claims to be reclaimed along with the creation of German ''lebensraum'' ("living space") in Eastern Europe, including territories held by the Soviet Union, that would be colonized by Germans.

Ideological origins

Although fascism is considered to have first emerged in France in the 1880s, its influences have been considered to go back as far as Julius Caesar. Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Hegel have also been considered as influential, as well as contemporary ideas such as the syndicalism of Georges Sorel, the futurism of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the nationalist and authoritarian philosophy of Oswald Spengler and the conservatism and social Darwinism of Enrico Corradini.

Core tenets

Nationalism

Fascists saw the struggle of nation and race as fundamental in society, in opposition to communism's perception of class struggle. The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people. Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. Benito Mussolini stated in 1922, "For us the nation is not just territory but something spiritual... A nation is great when it translates into reality the force of its spirit."

According to Eoin O'Duffy, an Irish national corporatist, "before everything we must give a national lead to our people...The first essential is national unity. We can only have that when the Corporative system is accepted".

Joseph Goebbels described the Nazis as being affiliated with authoritarian nationalism:

It enables us to see at once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts of State and State systems. For the authoritarian nationalist conception of the State represents something essentially new. In it the French Revolution is superseded.

Plínio Salgado, leader of the Brazilian Integralist Action party, emphasized the role of the nation:

The best governments in the world cannot succeed in pulling a country out of the quagmire, out of apathy, if they do not express themselves as national energies...Strong governments cannot result either from conspiracies or from military coups, just as they cannot come out of the machinations of parties or the Machiavellian game of political lobbying. They can only be born from the actual roots of the Nation.

Foreign policy

Italian fascists described expansionist imperialism as a necessity. The 1932 ''Italian Encyclopedia'' stated: "For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence." Similarly, the Nazis promoted territorial expansionism to provide "living space" to the German nation. Fascists opposed pacifism and believed that a nation must have a warrior mentality. Benito Mussolini spoke of war idealistically as a source of masculine pride, and spoke negatively of pacifism:

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. Fascism carries this anti-pacifist struggle into the lives of individuals. It is education for combat... war is to man what maternity is to the woman. I do not believe in perpetual peace; not only do I not believe in it but I find it depressing and a negation of all the fundamental virtues of a man.

Authoritarianism

Many fascist movements support the creation of a totalitarian state. Mussolini's ''Doctrine of Fascism'' states, "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people." Some have argued that, in spite of Italian Fascism's attempt at totalitarianism, it became an authoritarian cult of personality around Mussolini.

In ''The Legal Basis of the Total State'', Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart"

Japanese fascist Nakano Seigo advocated that Japan follow the Italian and German models, which were "a form of more democratic government going beyond democracy" which itself had "lost its spirit and decayed into a mechanism which insists only on numerical superiority without considering the essence of human beings."

A key authoritarian element of fascism is its endorsement of a prime national leader, who is often known simply as the "Leader" or a similar title, such as ''Duce'' in Italian, ''Führer'' in German, ''Caudillo'' in Spanish, ''Poglavnik'' in Croatia, or ''Conducător'' in Romanian. Fascist leaders who ruled countries were not always heads of state, but were heads of government, such as Benito Mussolini, who held power under the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

Social Darwinism

Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies. They argue that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.

Italian Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile in ''The Origins and Doctrine of Fascism'' promoted the concept of conflict as an act of progress, stating that "mankind only progresses through division, and progress is achieved through the clash and victory of one side over another". Italian Fascist Alfredo Rocco claimed that conflict was inevitable:

Conflict is in fact the basic law of life in all social organisms, as it is of all biological ones; societies are formed, gain strength, and move forwards through conflict; the healthiest and most vital of them assert themselves against the weakest and less well adapted through conflict; the natural evolution of nations and races takes place through conflict.

In Germany, the Nazis used social Darwinism to promote their racialist concept of the German nation as part of the Aryan race and the need for the Aryan race to be victorious in what the Nazis believed was a race struggle—an ongoing competition and conflict between races. They attempted to strengthen the Aryan race in Germany by killing those they regarded as weak. To this end, Action T4 was introduced in the late 1930s and organized the killing of roughly 275,000 handicapped and elderly German and non-German civilians using carbon monoxide gas.

Social interventionism

Generally, fascist movements endorsed social interventionism dedicated to influencing society to promote the state's interests. According to G.V. Rimlinger, one cannot speak of “fascist social policy” as a single concept with logical and internally consistent ideas and common identifiable goals.

Fascists spoke of creating a "new man" and a "new civilization" as part of their intention to transform society. Mussolini promised a “social revolution” for “remaking” the Italian people. Adolf Hitler promised to purge Germany of non-Aryan influences on society and to create a pure Aryan race through eugenics.

Indoctrination

Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production of educational and media materials. Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and to teach students to be obedient to the state. Therefore, fascism tends to be anti-intellectual. The Nazis, in particular, despised intellectuals and university professors. Hitler declared them unreliable, useless, and even dangerous. He said: "When I take a look at the intellectual classes we have – unfortunately, I suppose, they are necessary; otherwise one could one day, I don't know, exterminate them or something – but unfortunately they're necessary."

Abortion, eugenics and euthanasia

The Fascist government in Italy banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state. The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy "pure" German, "Aryan" fetuses remained strictly forbidden. For non-Aryans, abortion was often compelled. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.

In 1935 Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders. The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not yet viable, and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.

Culture, sex and sexuality

Fascism promoted principles of masculine heroism, militarism and discipline, and rejected cultural pluralism and multiculturalism.

Italian Fascism favoured expanding voting rights to women. In 1920, Benito Mussolini declared: "Fascists do not belong to the crowd of the vain and skeptical who undervalue women's social and political importance. Who cares about voting? You will vote!". In November 1925, women were given restricted voting rights, juxtaposed with the eliminaton of opposition parties, which enabled the Fascist government to rule with dictatorial powers. Fascist women's organizations, disgruntled at the lukewarm reforms, were then made subordinate to the secretariat of the party, headed by Roberto Farinacci, although gradual women's suffrage was retained. In the 1920s, the Italian Fascist government's ''Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro'' (OND) allowed working women to attend various entertainment and recreation events, including sports that in the past had traditionally been played by men. The Roman Catholic Church criticized this move, claimed that these activities were causing "masculinization" of women. The Fascists responded to such criticism by restricting women to participating in "feminine" sports.

Mussolini perceived women's primary role to be childbearers, while men were warriors, once saying, "war is to man what maternity is to the woman". In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families, and initiated policies designed to reduce the number of women employed. Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation", and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation. In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".

The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep house. This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour. The growth of Nazi power, however, was accompanied by a breakdown of traditional sexual morals with regard to extramarital sex and licentiousness.

Fascist movements and governments opposed homosexuality. The Italian Fascist government declared it illegal in 1931. The Nazis argued that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted, and undermined masculinity because it did not produce children. They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority. Critics have claimed that the Nazis' claim of scientific reasons behind their promotion of racism and hostility to homosexuals is pseudoscience. Open homosexuals were among those interned in Nazi concentration camps. The British Union of Fascists opposed homosexuality, and pejoratively questioned their opponents' heterosexuality. The Romanian Iron Guard opposed homosexuality as undermining society.

Economic policies

Fascists promoted their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and Bolshevism. Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers, and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level. Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism". The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.

Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalize it. They pursued economic policies to strengthen state power and spread ideology, such as consolidating trade unions to be state- or party-controlled. Attempts were made by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to establish "autarky" (self-sufficiency) through significant economic planning, but neither achieved economic self-sufficiency.

National corporatism, socialism and syndicalism

Fascists supported the unifying of proletarian workers to their cause along corporatistic, socialistic, or syndicalistic lines, promoting the creation of a strong proletarian nation, but not a proletarian class. Italian Fascism's economy was based on corporatism, and a number of other fascist movements similarly promoted corporatism. Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists, describing fascist corporatism, said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Fascists were not hostile to the ''petit-bourgeoisie'' or to small businesses, and they promised these groups, alongside the proletariat, protection from the upper-class bourgeoisie, big business, and Marxism. The promotion of these groups is the source of the term "extremism of the centre" to describe fascism.

Fascism blamed capitalist liberal democracies for creating class conflict and communists for exploiting it. In Italy, the Fascist period presided over the creation of the largest number of state-owned enterprises in Western Europe, such as the nationalisation of petroleum companies into a single state enterprise called the Italian General Agency for Petroleum (''Azienda Generale Italiani Petroli'', AGIP). Fascists made populist appeals to the middle class, especially the lower middle class, by promising to protect small businesses and property owners from communism, and by promising an economy based on competition and profit while pledging to oppose big business.

In 1933, Benito Mussolini declared Italian Fascism's opposition to the "decadent capitalism" that he claimed prevailed in the world at the time, but he did not denounce capitalism entirely. Mussolini claimed that capitalism had degenerated in three stages, starting with dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870), followed by static capitalism (1870–1914), and reaching its final form of decadent capitalism or "supercapitalism" beginning in 1914. Mussolini argued that Italian Fascism was in favour of dynamic and heroic capitalism for its contribution to industrialism and its technical developments, but that it did not favour supercapitalism, which he claimed was incompatible with Italy's agricultural sector.

Thus Mussolini claimed that Italy under Fascist rule was not capitalist in the contemporary use of the term, which referred to supercapitalism. Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption. Mussolini claimed that at the stage of supercapitalism, "a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously." He saw Fascism as the next logical step to solve the problems of supercapitalism and claimed that this step could be seen as a form of earlier capitalism which involved state intervention, saying "our path would lead inexorably into state capitalism, which is nothing more nor less than state socialism turned on its head. In either event, the result is the bureaucratization of the economic activities of the nation."

Other fascist regimes were indifferent or hostile to corporatism. The Nazis initially attempted to form a corporatist economic system like that of Fascist Italy, creating the National Socialist Institute for Corporatism in May 1933, which included many major economists who argued that corporatism was consistent with National Socialism. In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler spoke enthusiastically about the "National Socialist corporative idea" as one which would eventually "take the place of ruinous class warfare" However, the Nazis later came to view corporatism as detrimental to Germany and institutionalizing and legitimizing social differences within the German nation. Instead, the Nazis began to promote economic organisation that emphasized the biological unity of the German national community.

Hitler continued to refer to corporatism in propaganda, but it was not put into place, even though a number of Nazi officials such as Walther Darré, Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenburg, and Gregor Strasser were in favour of a neo-medievalist form of corporatism, since corporations had been influential in German history in the medieval era.

Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera did not believe that corporatism was effective and denounced it as a propaganda ploy, saying "this stuff about the corporative state is another piece of windbaggery".

Economic planning

Fascists opposed the laissez-faire economic policies that were dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.

Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascists considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy". Fascist governments introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual." Private property rights were supported but were contingent upon service to the state. For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labour than he would find profitable." However, they promoted the interests of successful small businesses. Mussolini wrote approvingly of the notion that profits should not be taken away from those who produced them by their own labour, saying "I do not respect — I even hate — those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others".

According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, ''dirigisme'' was an inherent aspect of fascist economies. The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7: "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation", then continued in article 9: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

Social welfare

Benito Mussolini promised a "social revolution" that would "remake" the Italian people. According to Patricia Knight, this was only achieved in part. The people who primarily benefited from Italian fascist social policies were members of the middle and lower-middle classes, who filled jobs in the vastly expanded government workforce, which grew from about 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs in 1930 alone. Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, with welfare rising from 7% of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.

The ''Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro'' (OND) or "National After-work Program" was one major social welfare initiative in Fascist Italy. Created in 1925, it was the state's largest recreational organisation for adults. The ''Dopolavoro'' was responsible for establishing and maintaining 11,000 sports grounds, over 6,400 libraries, 800 movie houses, 1,200 theatres, and over 2,000 orchestras. Membership of the ''Dopolavoro'' was voluntary, but it had high participation because of its nonpolitical nature. It is estimated that, by 1936, the OND had organised 80% of salaried workers and, by 1939, 40% of the industrial workforce. The sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organisations in Italy.

The enormous success of the ''Dopolavoro'' in Fascist Italy was the key factor in Nazi Germany's creation of its own version of the ''Dopolavoro'', the ''Kraft durch Freude'' (KdF) or "Strength through Joy" program of the Nazi government's German Labour Front, which became even more successful than the ''Dopolavoro''. KdF provided government-subsidized holidays for German workers. KdF was also responsible for the creation of the original Volkswagen ("People's Car"), a state-manufactured automobile that was meant to be cheap enough to allow all German citizens to be able to own one.

While fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as whole, they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons. Fascists criticised egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They instead promoted social Darwinist views. Adolf Hitler was opposed to egalitarian and universal social welfare because, in his view, it encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and feeble. While in power, the Nazis created social welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. However, those programs were neither egalitarian nor universal, excluding many minority groups and other people whom they felt posed a threat to the future health of the German people.

Racism and racialism

Fascists are not unified on the issues of racism and racialism. Mussolini, in a 1919 speech denouncing Soviet Russia, claimed that Jewish bankers in London and New York City were bound by the chains of race to Moscow and that 80% of the Soviet leaders were Jews. In his 1920 autobiography, he wrote, "Race and soil are strong influences upon us all", and said of World War I, "There were seers who saw in the European conflict not only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race". In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race". Mussolini was concerned with the low birth rates of the white race in contrast to the African and Asian races. In 1928 he noted the high birth-rate of blacks in the United States, and that they had surpassed the population of whites in certain areas, such as Harlem in New York City. He described their greater racial consciousness in comparison with American whites as contributing to their growing strength. On the issue of the low birth rate of whites, Mussolini said in 1928:

[When the] city dies, the nation — deprived of the young life — blood of new generations — is now made up of people who are old and degenerate and cannot defend itself against a younger people which launches an attack on the now unguarded frontiers[...] This will happen, and not just to cities and nations, but on an infinitely greater scale: the whole White race, the Western race can be submerged by other coloured races which are multiplying at a rate unknown in our race.

During the Great Depression Mussolini again expressed his alarm at the low birth rate among whites, saying "The singular, enormous problem is the destiny of the white race. Europe is truly towards the end of its destiny as the leader of civilization." He went on to say that under the circumstances, "the white race is sickly", "morally and physically in ruin", and that, in combination with the "progress in numbers and in expansion of yellow and black races, the civilization of the white man is destined to perish." According to Mussolini, only through promoting natality and eugenics could this be reversed.

Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, whom the Italian fascists saw as being in competition with Italy, which had claims on territories of Yugoslavia, particularly Dalmatia. Mussolini claimed that Yugoslavs posed a threat after Italy failed to receive territory along the Adriatic coast at the end of World War I, as promised by the 1915 Treaty of London. He said: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. Italian fascists accused Serbs of having "atavistic impulses" and of being part of a "social democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot". The fascists accused Yugoslavs of conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds".

In 1933, Mussolini contradicted his earlier statements on race, saying, "Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. ... National pride has no need of the delirium of race."

At the 1934 Fascist International Congress, the issue of anti-Semitism was debated amongst various fascist parties, with some more favourable to it, and others less favourable. Two final compromises were adopted, creating the official stance of the Fascist International:

[T]he Jewish question cannot be converted into a universal campaign of hatred against the Jews [...] Considering that in many places certain groups of Jews are installed in conquered countries, exercising in an open and occult manner an influence injurious to the material and moral interests of the country which harbors them, constituting a sort of state within a state, profiting by all benefits and refusing all duties, considering that they have furnished and are inclined to furnish, elements conducive to international revolution which would be destructive to the idea of patriotism and Christian civilization, the Conference denounces the nefarious action of these elements and is ready to combat them.

Relation to religion

The attitude of fascism toward religion has run the gamut from persecution, to denunciation, to cooperation, but is typically anticlerical. Stanley Payne notes that fundamental to fascism was the foundation of a purely materialistic "civic religion" that would "displace preceding structures of belief and relegate supernatural religion to a secondary role, or to none at all", and that "though there were specific examples of religious or would-be 'Christian fascists,' fascism presupposed a post-Christian, post-religious, secular, and immanent frame of reference."

According to Payne, fascisms own myth of secular transcendence only gains hold where traditional belief is weakened or absent, since fascism seeks to create new non-rationalist myth structures for those who no longer hold a traditional view. The rise of modern secularism in Europe and Latin America, and the incursion and large-scale adoption of western secular culture in the mid-east, leave a void where this modern secular ideology, sometimes under a religious veneer, can take hold.

Many fascists were anti-clerical in both private and public life. Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anti-clerical, they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely; though possibly inevitable in the future, such clashes were put off while they dealt with other enemies. Hitler had a general plan, even before the Nazis' rise to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich. Many Italian Fascists were disgusted by Mussolini's decision to abandon Fascism's anti-clericalism in favour of reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

The leader of the Hitler Youth stated, "the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement" from the start, but "considerations of expedience made it impossible" publicly to express this extreme position. In Mexico, the Red Shirts were vehemently atheist, renounced religion, killed priests, and on one occasion gunned down Catholics as they left Mass.

According to a biographer of Mussolini, "Initially, fascism was fiercely anti-Catholic" — the Church being a competitor for dominion over the people's hearts. Mussolini, originally an atheist, published anti-Catholic writings and planned for the confiscation of Church property, but eventually moved to accommodation. Mussolini endorsed the Roman Catholic Church for political legitimacy; during the Lateran Treaty talks, Fascist Party officials engaged in bitter arguments with Vatican officials and pressured them to accept terms that the regime deemed acceptable. Protestantism in Italy was not as significant as Catholicism, and the Protestant minority was persecuted. Mussolini's sub-secretary of Interior, Bufferini-Guidi, issued a memo closing all houses of worship of the Italian Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses and imprisoned their leaders. In some instances, people were killed because of their faith.

The Ustaše in Croatia had strong Catholic overtones, with some clerics in positions of power. The fascist movement in Romania, known as the Iron Guard or the Legion of Archangel Michael, preceded its meetings with a church service, and their demonstrations were usually led by priests carrying icons and religious flags. The Romanian fascist movement promoted a cult of "suffering, sacrifice and martyrdom."

In Latin America, the most notable fascist movement was Plinio Salgado's Brazilian Integralism. Built on a network of lay religious associations, its vision was of an integral state that "comes from Christ, is inspired in Christ, acts for Christ, and goes toward Christ." Salgado criticised the "dangerous pagan tendencies of Hitlerism".

Hitler and the Nazi regime attempted to found their own version of Christianity called Positive Christianity, which made major changes in its interpretation of the Bible, saying that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but was not a Jew. They further claimed that Christ despised Jews, and that the Jews were solely responsible for his death. By 1940, however, it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.

The Catholic Church was suppressed by Nazis in Poland. In addition to the deaths of some 3 million Polish Jews, 2 million Polish Catholics were killed. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 polish clergy (18%) were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps. In the annexed territory of ''Reichsgau Wartheland'', churches were systematically closed, and most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government.

The Germans also closed seminaries and convents, persecuting monks and nuns throughout Poland. Eighty percent of the Catholic clergy and five of the bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; in Chełmno, 48%. Of those murdered by the Nazi regime, 108 are regarded as blessed martyrs. Among them, Maximilian Kolbe was canonized as a saint. Not only in Poland were Christians persecuted by the Nazis. In the Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed.

One theory is that religion and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic weltanschauung" claiming the whole of the person. Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible, and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion. Such political religions vie with conventional, actual religions, and try to replace or eradicate them.

Variations and subforms

Movements identified by scholars as fascist hold a variety of views, and what qualifies as fascism is often a hotly contested subject. The first movement to self-identify as Fascist was the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini. Strains which emerged after the original fascism, but are often placed under the wider usage of the term, self-identified their parties with different names. Major examples include Falangism, Integralism, Iron Guard, and Nazism.

''Para-fascism'' is a term used to describe authoritarian regimes with aspects that differentiate them from true fascist states or movements. Para-fascists typically eschew radical change, and some view genuine fascists as a threat.

Europe

Italian Fascism and German Nazism were the two most significant fascist movements in Europe during the 1920s and 30s.

Gyula Gömbös' Hungarian National Defence Association was created in the Hungarian city of Szeged in 1919. Its "Szeged fascism" has been considered a form of proto-fascism in its origins, but consolidated its fascist characteristics in the 1920s and 30s. It came under the control of Miklós Horthy and was merged with Nazi and other far-right Hungarian groupings. Horthy allied with Germany and Italy during World War II but, after his support faltered in 1944, Germany invaded and installed the Arrow Cross Party in government.

The Iron Guard was a fascist movement and political party in Romania from 1927 to 1941. It was briefly in power from September 1940 until January 1941.

Falangism was a form of fascism founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1934 during the Second Spanish Republic. Following the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic, General Francisco Franco, already the leader of the rebel Nationalists, became leader of the Falangists. A merger between the Falange and the Carlists took place in 1937, creating the FET y de las JONS, a more traditionalist, conservative party than the original Falagnists, and one which was considered by some "authentic" Falangists as a move away from the party's original fascist position. Franco balanced several different interests of elements in his party in an effort to keep them united, especially in regard to the question of monarchy.

"Austrofascism" is a controversial category encompassing various para-fascist and semi-fascist movements in Austria in the 1930s. In particular it refers to the Fatherland Front, which became Austria's sole legal political party in 1934 and promoted corporatism, but not along secular and totalitarian lines.

The Estado Novo ("New State") regime in Portugal from 1933 to 1974 has been described as having close similarities to fascism as well as significant differences. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar rose to power in Portugal as Prime Minister in an army coup in 1932, creating an authoritarian conservative nationalist. Salazar also instituted economic corporatism and substantial state control over the economy, and, like fascist leaders, he denounced democracy as detrimental to nations.

Greece from 1936 to 1941 was a constitutional monarchy whose government was controlled by General Ioannis Metaxas. He created an authoritarian state based loosely on German national socialism.

During World War II, a number of countries that came under Nazi occupation had fascist puppet regimes installed. In France, the French State controlled part of the country from 1940 to 1944. Part of Yugoslavia was ruled by the Ustaše from 1941 to 1945.

Fascist movements emerged in other European countries in the 1920s and 1930s without gaining significant political power. These included the Lapua Movement in Finland, the National Socialist Workers Party in Sweden, the British Union of Fascists in the United Kingdom and the parafascist Blueshirts in the Republic of Ireland. The traditionalist Croix de Feu in France and the Rexists in Belgium are also sometimes regarded as fascist.

East Asia

The Kokuhonsha was a Japanese fascist movement of the late 1920s and early 1930s, led by the prominent politician Kiichirō Hiranuma. Hiranuma ordered it dissolved after the February 26 Incident.

The Imperial Rule Assistance Association (''Taisei Yokusankai'') was a Japanese coalition of fascist and nationalist political movements, such as the Imperial Way Faction (''Kōdōha'') and the Society of the East (''Tōhōkai''), formed in 1940 under the guidance of Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe. Konoe's successor, Hideki Tōjō, entrenched the IRAA as the country's ruling political movement and attempted to establish himself as the absolute leader, or ''Shogun'', of Japan. The IRAA created ''Tonarigumi'' (Neighbourhood Association) and youth organisations, in which participation was mandatory. After 1942, Japan became a single-party state which promoted Japanese expansionism and imperialism.

The Blue Shirts Society was a secret faction within the Chinese army which existed under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek in the early 1930s. It was heavily influenced by European fascism.

A number of left-wing anti-Communists in China during the late 1930s, including Wang Jingwei, spoke and wrote positively of European fascism.

Latin America

Brazilian Integralism (Ação Integralista Brasileira) was a form of fascism founded by Plinio Salgado in Brazil in 1932. By 1937 they were one of the most important parties in Latin America, with around one million members. Integralist principles included corporativism and Catholicism, and, like other fascist movements, they exhibited an anti-capitalist and anti-communist agenda. They also formed armed squads, nicknamed Greenshirts. During the later years of the Vargas Era, from 1937 to 1945, Brazil was governed according to principles that drew heavily on fascism.

Falangism, due to its Spanish origins, also composed much of the fascist ideology prevalent in Latin America, particularly South America.

Peronism in Argentina is often characterized as being fascist or at least para-fascist in nature, as encompassed by many of the economic and social policies pursued, encouraged and enacted by Juan Peron, his wife Eva Peron and other leading members. Juan Peron expressed an admiration for the fascist systems of such nations as Italy, openly praising Benito Mussolini following a state visit there. Following WWII, Peron also provided asylum to several Nazis, and habilitated the underground organization ODESSA, composed of former members of the SS.

Tomás Garrido Canabal, the Governor of Tabasco, founded an anti-Catholic fascist organization and paramilitary known as the Red Shirts in the state of Tabasco, Mexico in 1931.

The National Socialist Movement of Chile was established in 1932 and merged into the Popular Freedom Alliance in 1938. There was an attempt to revive it during the 1970s.

Middle East

Phalangism (or Falangism) was a significant influence in Lebanon through the Kataeb Party and its founder Pierre Gemayel, who won national independence in 1943.

In British Mandate Palestine, the Brit HaBirionim was a fascist faction of the Revisionist Zionist Movement, active in the early 1930s. It opposed liberal Zionism and proposed the creation of a fascist Jewish state.

In the late 1930s, the Iraqi and pan-Arab Al-Muthanna Club became a significant pro-fascist force and was linked to the Golden Square, whose failed coup attempt of 1941 provoked the Anglo-Iraqi War. It had a youth wing, the Futuwwa.

The founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Antun Saadeh, came under criticism in the 1930s as being influenced by Nazism, which he strongly denied.

References

Notes

Primary sources

Gentile, Giovanni. 1932. ''The Doctrine of Fascism''. Enciclopedia Italiana.

de Oliveira Salazar, António. 1939. ''Doctrine and Action: Internal and Foreign Policy of the New Portugal, 1928–1939.'' Faber and Faber.

Mosley, Sir Oswald. 1968. ''My Life''. Nelson Publications.

de Rivera, José Antonio Primo. 1971. ''Textos de Doctrina Politica''. Madrid.

Mussolini, Benito. 1998. ''My Rise And Fall ''. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306808641

Ciano, Galezzo. 2001. ''The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943''. Simon Publications. ISBN 1931313741

Mussolini, Benito. 2006. ''My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism"''. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486447774

Secondary sources

Cyprian Blamires. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006.

Costa Pinto, Antonio, ed. ''Rethinking the Nature of Fascism: Comparative Perspectives'' (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 287 pages

Evans, Richard J, ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939'', The Penguin Press HC, 2005

De Felice, Renzo. 1976. ''Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice''. Transaction Books. ISBN 0878556192

De Felice, Renzo. 1977. ''Interpretations of Fascism''. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674459628.

Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2005. ''Pour une étude scientifique du fascisme''. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-11-7.

Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2006. ''Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme''. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-46-X.

Ben-Am, Shlomo. 1983. ''Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198225962

Payne, Stanley G. 1987. ''The Franco Regime, 1936–1975''. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299110702

Vatikiotis, Panayiotis J. 1988. ''Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936–1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas''. Routledge. ISBN 0714648698

Payne, Stanley G. 1995. ''A History of Fascism, 1914–45''. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299148742

Costa Pinto, António. 1995. ''Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation''. Social Science Monographs. ISBN 0880339683

Griffiths, Richard. 2001. ''An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism''. Duckworth. ISBN 0715629182

Lewis, Paul H. 2002. ''Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes''. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 027597880X

Payne, Stanley G. 2003. ''Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism''. Textbook Publishers. ISBN 0758134452

Paxton, Robert O. 2005. ''The Anatomy of Fascism''. Vintage Books. ISBN 1400033918

Eatwell, Roger. 1996. ''Fascism: A History.'' New York: Allen Lane.

Nolte, Ernst ''The Three Faces Of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism'', translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.

Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism''. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Seldes, George. 1935. ''Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism''. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

Seldes, George.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel ''Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism'', London, CSE Bks, 1978 ISBN 0906336007

Kallis, Aristotle A.," To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 237–260.

Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. ''Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany''. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505780-5

Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) ''Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560–1991'', Routledge, London.

Laqueur, Walter. 1966. ''Fascism: Past, Present, Future,'' New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X

Sauer, Wolfgang "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404–424 from ''The American Historical Review'', Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967. + -

Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. [1989] 1994. ''The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution.'', Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. + *Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp. 227 – 250

Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pages 227 – 250

Griffin, Roger. 1991. ''The Nature of Fascism''. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. ''Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century,'' New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)

Gentile, Emilio. 2005. ''The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918–1925: The First Complete Study of the Origins of Italian Fascism,'' New York: Enigma Books, ISBN 978-1-929631-18-6

Alexander J. De Grand Routledge, 2004. ''Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: the 'fascist' style of rule''

External links

The Doctrine of Fascism

Readings on Fascism and National Socialism by Various – Project Gutenberg

Category:Anti-capitalism Category:Anti-communism Category:Anti-intellectualism Category:Dictatorship Category:Nationalism Category:Political ideologies Category:Political systems Category:Syncretic political movements

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Name	Gerald Celente
Birth date	November 29, 1946
Birth place	The Bronx, New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Trend forecaster
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	White
Parents	}}

Gerald Celente (born November 29, 1946) is an American trend forecaster, publisher of the ''Trends Journal'', business consultant and author who makes predictions about the global financial markets and other events of historical importance. Celente has described himself as a "political atheist" and "citizen of the world". He has appeared as a guest on television news shows such as ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', ''The Today Show'', ''Good Morning America'', ''CBS Morning News'', ''The Glenn Beck Show'', ''NBC Nightly News'', ''The Alex Jones Show'' and ''Russia Today''.''

Background

Celente was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York. He had early political experience running a mayoral campaign in Yonkers, New York and served as executive assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate, which Celente called the worst job he ever had. From 1973 to 1979 Celente traveled between Chicago and Washington D.C. as a government affairs specialist. In 1980 Celente founded The Trends Research Institute (at first called the Socio-Economic Research Institute of America), now located in Kingston, New York, publisher of the ''Trends Journal'' which forecasts and analyzes business, socioeconomic, political, and other trends.

Forecasting

His forecasts since 1993 have included predictions about terrorism, economic collapses and war. More recent forecasts involve fascism in the United States, food riots and tax revolts. Celente has long predicted global anti-Americanism, a failing economy and immigration woes in the U.S. In December 2007 Celente wrote, "Failing banks, busted brokerages, toppled corporate giants, bankrupt cities, states in default, foreign creditors cashing out of US securities ... whatever the spark, the stage is set for panic in the streets" and "Just as the Twin Towers collapsed from the top down, so too will the U.S. economy ... when the giant firms fall, they’ll crush the man on the street." He has also predicted tax revolts. In November 2008 Celente appeared on Fox Business Network and predicted economic depression, tax rebellions and food riots in the United States by 2012. Celente also predicted an "economic 9/11" and a "panic of 2008."

In 2009 Celente predicted turmoil which he described as "Obamageddon" and he was a popular guest on conservative cable-TV shows such as ''Fox News Sunday'' and Glenn Beck's television program. In April 2009 Celente wrote, "Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation." He appeared on the ''Glenn Beck'' show and criticized the U.S. stimulus plan of 2009, calling government controlled capitalism "fascism" and saying shopping malls in the U.S. would become "ghost malls." Celente has said, "smaller communities, the smaller groups, the smaller states, the more self-sustaining communities, will 'weather the crisis in style' as big cities and hypertrophic suburbias descend into misery and conflict," and forecasts "a downsizing of America."

Revolution in the USA

On Russia Today, he predicted that the USA would face a revolution.

Neosurvivalism

Celente's website has stated that:

Predictions

2009

"The Crash of '09 was as dramatic as the crash of '29. The New Depression had begun." (Trends Journal, Summer 2008, pg. 12)

2010

Some areas of the U.S. are experiencing resurgences in real estate values due to highly localized factors, and some investors profit from this. However, the rises will almost all stop and reverse with time, and the overall national trend in real estate values is downward. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 8)

Ghost malls have become a common sight across America. Especially hard-hit are big chain stores (Sears, Home Depot, etc.). (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 8)

2011

Developers have begun rehabbing some of the ghost malls for more productive uses. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 9)

2012

The economic policies of the U.S. government over the past few years have failed to fix America's fundamental problems and have merely papered over them and in fact made them worse. By 2012, the "American Empire" is collapsing. In the U.S., basic staple goods like quality food and water are too expensive for most people to afford,(T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) and "food riots" happen across the country (T.J. Summer 09, pg.1). Major American cities look like disaster zones, and mass homelessness exists across the country. Crime is rampant, with much of it being directed at the rich. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) Kidnappings and ransomings of rich people are on the rise. Average people fed up with big government, high taxes and out-of-control spending join tax revolts. (T.J. Summer 09, pg. 1) The world is also experiencing major environmental problems and "the blackest of plagues." The global financial system has also "melted down" and the situation is very bad outside the U.S.(T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) The advanced industrial economies collapse first, and their sagging consumer spending drags down the export-based economies of emerging economies next.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 2) The economy is as bad as it was during the Great Depression in many ways. In spite of all this, the U.S. government, power elites, and mainstream media continue to insist that the fundamentals of the world economy are sound, and that official policies can lead to a recovery. A growing number of average people, however, doubt this. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1)

While the Mayan and Hopi prophecies of global destruction do not come to pass, 2012 is indeed a watershed year that sees the death of an ailing and unsustainable global economic system and lifestyle and its replacement with something better. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 2)

By 2012, Obama is viewed by most as a stale president who sold himself as a fresh, visionary candidate in 2008 and instead proved to be a servant of the big corporations and the military-industrial complex like his predecessors.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 5) His economic policies only delayed disaster and in fact have made the situation worse: Expansionary monetary policy and the various government bailouts and stimulus programs create a "Bailout Bubble" that invariably bursts in a cataclysm for the U.S. and world economy.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 11) Obama blames other factors for this and might have even tried to start a war by 2012 to distract attention from the domestic misery.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 12) Obama's foreign policy has also failed to accomplish anything significant on the world stage, and Pakistan is a mess and the Afghan war continues to drag on without hope of conclusion.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 12)

In the 2012 U.S. elections, online news sites, bloggers and independent journalists wield as much influence on voters as mainstream media outlets (TV, cable, magazines, newspapers) for the first time. This breaks the corporate and moneyed stranglehold on American politics and allows a third party to attain nation-level recognition. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 5)

Broad future trends

Americans will adapt to lower standards of living and will travel less, both on a daily basis and for vacations. Higher fuel costs, advances in telecommuting and an aging American population will push many more people to work from home or close to home. Walking-distance communities will be constructed and will become popular. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 7)

Geographically isolated resort destinations like Las Vegas will wither due to higher fuel costs, lower American incomes and increased overseas competition while vacation spots closer to population centers will revive. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 9)

Government-run lotteries, on the other hand, will thrive. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 9)

In America and to a lesser extent overseas, consumer spending habits will be motivated out of fear and escapism. Businesses that capitalize upon this will succeed. (T.J. Summer 09, pg. 24)

Publications

''Trend Tracking: The System to Profit from Today's Trends'' (1991), ISBN 978-0446392877

''Trends 2000: How to Prepare for and Profit from the Changes of the 21st Century'' (1997), ISBN 978-0446519014

''What Zizi Gave Honeyboy: A True Story about Love, Wisdom, and the Soul of America'' (2002), ISBN 978-0066212661

References

External links

trendsresearch.com

geraldcelente.com

Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:American economics writers Category:Futurologists Category:People from the Bronx

de:Gerald Celente fr:Gerald Celente pl:Gerald Celente fi:Gerald Celente sv:Gerald Celente

name	Woody Guthrie
background	solo_singer
birth name	Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
born	July 14, 1912Okemah, Oklahoma, United States
died	October 03, 1967New York City, New York, United States
instrument	Guitar, Vocal, Harmonica, Mandolin, Fiddle
genre	Folk, protest song
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	1930–1956
influences	Joe Hill, Will Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Lead Belly
influenced	Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Joe Strummer, Bruce Springsteen
notable instruments	Martin 000-18, Gibson Southern Jumbo, Gibson J-45 }}

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan ''This Machine Kills Fascists'' displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Woody Guthrie was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 1997.

Biography

Early life: 1912–30

Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Nora Belle Tanner and Charles Edward Guthrie. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate soon to be elected President of the United States.

Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the county. When Charles was making stump speeches, he would often be accompanied by his son. Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson. His son wrote three songs about the event and said that his father was later a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan.

Guthrie's early family life was affected by several fires, including one that caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah. His sister Clara later died in a coal-oil (used for heating) fire when Guthrie was seven, and Guthrie's father was severely burned in a subsequent coal-oil fire. The circumstances of these fires, especially that in which Charley was injured, remain unclear. It is unknown whether they were accidents or the result of actions by Guthrie's mother Nora, who was afflicted with Huntington's disease, although the family did not know this at the time. It leads to dementia as well as muscular effects.

Nora Guthrie was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, where she died in 1930 from Huntington's disease. Judging from the circumstances of her father's death by drowning, researchers suspect that George Sherman suffered from the same hereditary disease.

When Nora Guthrie was institutionalized, Woody Guthrie was 14. His father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support. The 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine booth. Before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. In another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed he learned how to play harmonica from a boyhood friend, John Woods, and that his earlier story about the shoe-shining player was false.

He seemed to have a natural affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins. Guthrie easily learned old Irish ballads and traditional songs from the parents of friends. Although he did not excel as a student (he dropped out of high school in his fourth year and did not graduate), his teachers described him as bright. He was an avid reader on a wide range of topics. Friends recall his reading constantly.

Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas, but little changed for the aspiring musician. Guthrie, then 18, was reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa and spent much time learning songs by busking on the streets and reading in the library at Pampa's city hall. He was growing as a musician, gaining practice by regularly playing at dances with his father's half-brother Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. At the library, he wrote a manuscript summarizing everything he had read on the basics of psychology. A librarian in Pampa shelved this manuscript under Guthrie's name, but it was later lost in a library reorganization.

1930s: traveling

At age 19, Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children, Gwendolyn, Sue and Bill, all of whom would later die prematurely. With the advent of the Dust Bowl era, Guthrie left Texas, leaving Mary behind, and joined the thousands of Okies who were migrating to California looking for work. Many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by these working class people.

California

In the 1930s, Guthrie lived on Preston Avenue at Ewing St. in Echo Park, California; a Los Angeles, California neighborhood nicknamed "Red Hill" for the concentration of political radicals living there. During the late part of that decade, he achieved fame with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music. Guthrie was making enough money to send for his family, who were still living in Texas. While appearing on the commercial radio station KFVD, owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat Frank Burke, Guthrie began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually appear on ''Dust Bowl Ballads''.

It was at KFVD that Guthrie met newscaster Ed Robbin. Robbin was impressed with a song Guthrie wrote about Thomas Mooney, believed by many to be a wrongly convicted man who was, at the time, a leftist ''cause célèbre''. Robbin, who became Guthrie's political mentor, introduced Guthrie to socialists and communists in Southern California, including Will Geer. He remained Guthrie's lifelong friend, and helped Guthrie book benefit performances in the communist circles in Southern California. Notwithstanding Guthrie's later claim that "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party", he was never a member of the Party. He was noted as a fellow traveler—an outsider who agreed with the platform of the party while not subject to party discipline. Guthrie requested to write a column for the Communist newspaper, ''The Daily Worker''. The column, titled "Woody Sez", appeared a total of 174 times from May 1939 to January 1940. "Woody Sez" was not explicitly political, but was about current events as observed by Guthrie. He wrote the columns in an exaggerated hillbilly dialect and usually included a small comic; they were published as a collection after Guthrie's death. Steve Earle said of Guthrie, "I don't think of Woody Guthrie as a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political times".

With the outbreak of World War II and the nonaggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939, the owners of KFVD radio did not want its staff "spinning apologia" for the Soviet Union. Both Robbin and Guthrie left the station. Without the daily radio show, his prospects for employment diminished, and Guthrie and his family returned to Pampa, Texas. Although Mary Guthrie was happy to return to Texas, the wanderlusting Guthrie soon after accepted Will Geer's invitation to New York City and headed east.

1940s: building a legacy

New York City

Arriving in New York, Guthrie, known as "the Oklahoma cowboy", was embraced by its leftist folk music community. For a time, he slept on a couch in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie made what were his first recordings—several hours of conversation and songs recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress—as well as an album, ''Dust Bowl Ballads'', for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey.

Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for "God Bless America", he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", in February 1940; it was subtitled "God Blessed America for Me." The melody is adapted from an old gospel song, "Oh My Loving Brother." This was best known as "When The World's On Fire", sung by the country group The Carter Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment, "All you can write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.". He protested against class inequality in the fourth and sixth verses:

:''As I went walking, I saw a sign there,'' :''And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing."'' [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"] :''But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!'' :''That side was made for you and me.''

:''In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;'' :''By the relief office, I'd seen my people.'' :''As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,'' :''Is this land made for you and me?''

These verses were often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie. Although the song was written in 1940, it was four years before he recorded it for Moses Asch in April 1944., Sheet music was not produced and given to schools by Howie Richmond until later.

In March 1940, Guthrie was invited to play at a benefit hosted by The John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers, to raise money for migrant workers. There he met the folksinger Pete Seeger, and the two men became good friends. Later, Seeger accompanied Guthrie back to Texas to meet other members of the Guthrie family. He recalled an awkward conversation with Mary Guthrie's mother, in which she asked for Seeger's help to persuade Guthrie to treat her daughter better.

Guthrie had some success in New York at this time as a guest on CBS's radio program ''Back Where I Come From'' and used his influence to get a spot on the show for his friend Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. Ledbetter's Tenth Street apartment was a gathering spot for the leftwing musician circle in New York at the time, and Guthrie and Ledbetter were good friends, as they had busked together at bars in Harlem.

In September 1940 Guthrie was invited by the Model Tobacco Company to host their radio program, ''Pipe Smoking Time''. Guthrie was paid $180 a week, an impressive salary in 1940. He was finally making enough money to send regular payments back to Mary. He also brought her and the children to New York, where the family lived briefly in an apartment on Central Park West. The reunion represented Woody's desire to be a better father and husband. He said "I have to set [''sic''] real hard to think of being a dad". Guthrie quit after the seventh broadcast, claiming he had begun to feel the show was too restrictive when he was told what to sing. Disgruntled with New York, Guthrie packed up Mary and his children in a new car and headed west to California.

Pacific Northwest

In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family north to Washington state on the promise of a job. Gunther von Fritsch was directing a documentary about the Bonneville Power Administration's construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, and needed a narrator. Alan Lomax had recommended Guthrie to narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was expected to take 12 months, but as filmmakers became worried about casting such a political figure, they minimized Guthrie's role. The Department of the Interior hired him for one month to write songs about the Columbia River and the construction of the federal dams for the documentary's soundtrack. Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest. Guthrie said he "couldn't believe it, it's a paradise", which appeared to inspire him creatively. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including three of his most famous: "Roll On Columbia", "Pastures of Plenty", and "Grand Coulee Dam". The surviving songs were released as ''Columbia River Songs''. The film was never completed and was released only in a limited form.

At the conclusion of the month in Oregon and Washington, Guthrie wanted to return to New York. Tired of the continual uprooting, Mary Guthrie told him to go without her and the children. Although Guthrie would see Mary again, once on a tour through Los Angeles with the Almanac Singers, it was essentially the end of their marriage. Divorce was difficult, since Mary was a member of the Catholic Church, but she reluctantly agreed in December 1943.

Almanac Singers

Following the conclusion of his work in Washington State, Guthrie corresponded with Pete Seeger about Seeger's newly formed folk-protest group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to tour the country as a member of the group. The singers originally worked out of a loft in New York City hosting regular concerts called "hootenannys", a word Pete and Woody had picked up in their cross-country travels. The singers eventually outgrew the space and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was that World War II was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the group wrote anti-fascist songs. The members of the Almanac Singers and residents of the Almanac House were a loosely defined group of musicians, though the 'core' members included Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell and Lee Hays. In keeping with common socialist ideals, meals, chores and rent at the Almanac House were shared. The Sunday hootenannys were good opportunities to collect donation money for rent. Songs written in the Almanac House had shared songwriting credits among all the members, although in the case of "Union Maid", members would later state that Guthrie wrote the song, ensuring that his children would receive residuals.

In the Almanac House, Guthrie added authenticity to their work, since he was a "real" working-class Oklahoman. "There was the heart of America personified in Woody....And for a New York Left that was primarily Jewish, first or second generation American, and was desperately trying to get Americanized, I think a figure like Woody was of great, great importance", a friend of the group, Irwin Silber, would say. Woody routinely emphasized his working-class image, rejected songs he felt were not in the country blues vein he was familiar with, and rarely contributed to household chores. House member Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, another Okie, would later recall that Woody, "loved people to think of him as a real working class person and not an intellectual". Guthrie contributed songwriting and authenticity in much the same capacity for Pete Seeger's post-Almanac Singers project ''People's Songs'', a newsletter and booking organization for labor singers, founded in 1945.

''Bound for Glory''

Guthrie was a prolific writer, penning thousands of pages of unpublished poems and prose, many written while living in New York City. After a recording session with Alan Lomax, Lomax suggested Guthrie write an autobiography. Lomax thought Guthrie's descriptions of growing up were some of the best accounts he had read of American childhood. During this time Guthrie met Marjorie Mazia, a dancer in New York who would become his second wife. Mazia was an instructor at the prestigious Martha Graham Dance School, where she was assisting Sophie Maslow with her piece ''Folksay''. Based on the folklore and poetry collected by Carl Sandburg, ''Folksay'' included the adaptation of some of Guthrie's ''Dust Bowl Ballads'' for the dance. Guthrie continued to write songs and began work on his autobiography. The end product, ''Bound For Glory'' was completed due to the patient editing assistance of Mazia and was first published by E.P. Dutton in 1943. It is vividly told in the artist's down-home dialect, with the flair and imagery of a true storyteller. ''Library Journal'' complained about the "Too careful reproduction of illiterate speech." But Clifton Fadiman, reviewing the book in the ''New York Times'', paid the author a fine tribute: "Some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession like Yellowstone and Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world." A film adaptation of ''Bound for Glory'' was released in 1976.

The Asch recordings

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land". Over the next few years, he recorded "Worried Man Blues", along with hundreds of other songs. These recordings would later be released by Folkways and Stinson Records, which had joint distribution rights. The Folkways recordings are available (through the Smithsonian Institute online shop); the most complete series of these sessions, culled from dates with Asch, is titled ''The Asch Recordings''.

World War II years

Guthrie believed performing his anti-fascist songs and poems at home was the best use of his talents; Guthrie lobbied the United States Army to accept him as a USO performer instead of conscripting him as a soldier in the draft. When Guthrie's attempts failed, his friends Cisco Houston and Jim Longhi pressured Guthrie to join the U.S. Merchant Marine. Guthrie followed their advice: he served as a mess man and dishwasher, and frequently sang for the crew and troops to buoy their spirits on transatlantic voyages. Guthrie made attempts to write about his experience in the Merchant Marine, but was never satisfied with the results. Longhi later wrote about these experiences in his book ''Woody, Cisco and Me''. The book offers a rare first-hand account of Guthrie during his Merchant Marine service. In 1945, Guthrie's association with communism made him ineligible for further service in the Merchant Marine, and he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

While he was on furlough from the Army, Guthrie and Marjorie were married. After his discharge, they moved into a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, and over time had four children. One of their children, Cathy, died as a result of a fire at age four, sending Guthrie into a serious depression. Their other children were Joady, Nora and Arlo. Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a singer-songwriter. During this period, Guthrie wrote and recorded, ''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child'', a collection of children's music, which includes the song "Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin')", written when Arlo was about nine years old.

A 1948 crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland, California in deportation back to Mexico inspired Woody to write "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)".

Mermaid Avenue

The years living on Mermaid Avenue were among Guthrie's most productive periods as a writer. His extensive writings from this time were archived and maintained by Marjorie and later his estate, mostly handled by Guthrie's daughter, Nora. Several of the manuscripts contain scribblings by a young Arlo and the other Guthrie offspring.

During this time Ramblin' Jack Elliott studied extensively under Guthrie, visiting his home and observing how he wrote and performed. Elliott, like Bob Dylan later, idolized Guthrie and was inspired by his idiomatic performance style and repertoire. Due to Guthrie's suffering Huntington's disease, Dylan and Guthrie's son Arlo later claimed they learned much of Guthrie's performance style from Elliott. When asked about Arlo's claim, Elliott said, "I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, If you want to learn something, just steal it—that's the way I learned from Lead Belly."

1950s and 1960s

Deteriorating health

By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was declining, and his behavior was becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952, it was finally determined that he was suffering from Huntington's disease, a genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie suggested he return to California without her; they eventually divorced.

Upon his return to California, Guthrie lived in a compound owned by Will Geer; with blacklisted singers and actors, he waited out the anti-communist political climate. As his health worsened, he met and married his third wife, Anneke Van Kirk. They had a child, Lorinna Lynn. The couple moved to Fruit Cove, Florida briefly. They lived in a bus on land called Beluthahatchee, owned by his friend Stetson Kennedy. Guthrie's arm was hurt in a campfire accident when gasoline used to start the campfire exploded. Although he regained movement in the arm, he was never able to play the guitar again. In 1954, the couple returned to New York. Shortly after, Anneke filed for divorce, a result of the strain of caring for Guthrie. Anneke left New York and allowed friends to adopt Lorina Lynn. Lorinna had no further contact with her birth parents and died in 1973 at the age of nineteen in a car accident in California. After the divorce, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, re-entered his life; it was Marjorie who cared for him and assisted him until his death.

Guthrie, increasingly unable to control his muscles, was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961, at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966, and finally at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center until his death. Marjorie and the children visited Guthrie at Greystone every Sunday. They answered fan mail and played on the hospital grounds. Eventually a longtime fan of Guthrie invited the family to his nearby home for the Sunday visits. This lasted until Guthrie was moved to the Brooklyn State Hospital, which was closer to where Marjorie lived.

When Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie and whose early folk career was deeply inspired by him, learned that Guthrie was hospitalized in Brooklyn, he was determined to meet his idol. By this time, Guthrie was said to have his "good days" and "bad days". On the good days, Dylan would sing songs to him, and at the beginning Guthrie seemed to warm to Dylan. When the bad days came, Guthrie would berate Dylan. Reportedly on Dylan's last visit, Guthrie didn't recognize him. Dylan said that he made his trek to New York City primarily to seek out his idol. At the end of his life, Guthrie was largely alone except for family. Due to the progression of Huntington's, he was difficult to be around. Guthrie's illness was essentially untreated, due to a lack of information about the disease. His death helped raise awareness of the disease and led Marjorie to help found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America. None of Guthrie's three remaining children with Marjorie has developed symptoms of Huntington's. Two of Mary Guthrie's children (Gwendolyn and Sue) suffered from the disease. (Her son Bill died in an auto-train accident in Pomona, California, at age 23.) Both died at 41 years of age.

Folk revival and Guthrie's death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These "folk revivalists" became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie's visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie's repertoire: "The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them." After learning of Guthrie's whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington's disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Family

Married: Mary Esta Jennings (1933–1943), Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia (1945–1953), Anneke van Kirk (1953–1954)

Children (8): Gwendolyn Gail (1935–1976), Sue (1937–1978), Bill (1939–1962), Cathy Ann (1943–1947), Arlo Davy (1947-), Joady Ben (1948-), Nora (1950-), Lorinna Lynn (1954–1973)

Musical legacy

Foundation and archives

The Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. The archive houses the largest collection of Guthrie material in the world. Guthrie's unrecorded written lyrics housed at the Archives have been the starting point of several albums including the Wilco and Billy Bragg albums ''Mermaid Avenue'' and ''Mermaid Avenue Vol. II'', created in 1998 sessions at the invitation of Guthrie's daughter Nora. The Native American (Diné) trio Blackfire also interpreted previously unreleased Guthrie lyrics at Nora's invitation. Jonatha Brooke's 2008 album, "The Works" (RELEASE: August 26, 2008, LABEL: Bad Dog Records) includes lyrics from the Woody Guthrie Archives set to music by Jonatha Brooke.

Folk Festival

The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to commemorate Guthrie's life and music. The festival is held on the weekend closest to Guthrie's birth date (July 14) in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. Planned and implemented annually by the Woody Guthrie Coalition, a non-profit corporation, the goal is simply to ensure Guthrie's musical legacy. The Woody Guthrie Coalition commissioned a local Creek Indian sculptor to cast a full-body bronze statue of Guthrie and his guitar, complete with the guitar's well-known inscription: "This machine kills fascists". The statue, sculpted by artist Dan Brook, stands along Okemah's main street in the heart of downtown and was unveiled in 1998, the inaugural year of the festival.

Jewish songs

Marjorie Mazia was born Marjorie Greenblatt and her mother, Aliza Greenblatt, was a well-known Yiddish poet. With her, Guthrie wrote numerous Jewish lyrics. Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Guthrie (the Oklahoma troubadour) and Greenblatt (the Jewish wordsmith) often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor, classic socialist activism. Guthrie was inspired to write songs that came directly out of this unlikely relationship, both personal and political; he identified the problems of Jews with those of his fellow Okies and other oppressed peoples.

These lyrics were rediscovered by Nora Guthrie and were set to music by the Jewish Klezmer group The Klezmatics with the release of ''Happy Joyous Hanukkah'' on JMG Records in 2007. The Klezmatics also released ''Wonder Wheel — Lyrics by Woody Guthrie'', an album of spiritual lyrics put to music composed by the band. The album, produced by Danny Blume, was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.

Tributes

Since his death, artists have paid tribute to Guthrie by covering his songs or by dedicating songs to him. One of the first artists to do so was Scottish folk artist Donovan, who covered Guthrie's "Car, Car (Riding in My Car)" on his 1965 debut album ''What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid''. On January 20, 1968, three months following Guthrie's death, Harold Leventhal produced ''A Tribute to Woody Guthrie'' at New York City's Carnegie Hall. Performers included Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Odetta, and others. Leventhal repeated the tribute on September 12, 1970 at the Hollywood Bowl. Recordings of the two concerts were eventually compiled as an album. The legendary Irish folk singer, Christy Moore, was also strongly influenced by Woody in his seminal 1970 album ''Prosperous'', giving renditions of "The Ludlow Massacre" and Bob Dylan's "Song to Woody". Bob Dylan also penned, ''Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie'' as a later tribute song to Guthrie. Bruce Springsteen also performed a cover of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" on his live album ''Live 1975-1985''. In the introduction to the song, Springsteen referred to it as "just about one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

In September 1996 Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Case Western Reserve University cohosted ''Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie'', a 10-day conference of panel sessions, lectures, and concerts. The conference became the first in what would become the museum's annual American Music Masters Series conference. Highlights included Arlo Guthrie's keynote address, a Saturday night musical jamboree at Cleveland's Odeon Theater, and a Sunday night concert at Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. Musicians performing over the course of the conference included Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the Indigo Girls, Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave, Ani DiFranco, and others. In 1999, Wesleyan University Press published a collection of essays from the conference and DiFranco's record label, Righteous Babe, released a compilation of the Severance Hall concert, '''Til We Outnumber 'Em'', in 2000.

From 1999 to 2002 the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service presented the traveling exhibit, ''This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie''. In collaboration with Nora Guthrie, the Smithsonian exhibition draws from rarely seen objects, illustrations, film footage, and recorded performances to reveal a complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist, itinerant hobo, and folk legend.

In 2003, Jimmy LaFave produced a Woody Guthrie tribute show called ''Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway''. The ensemble show toured around the country and included a rotating cast of singer-songwriters individually performing Guthrie's songs. Interspersed between songs were Guthrie's philosophical writings read by a narrator. In addition to LaFave, members of the rotating cast included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Joel Rafael, husband-wife duo Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's granddaughter) and Johnny Irion, Michael Fracasso, and The Burns Sisters. Oklahoma songwriter Bob Childers, sometimes called "the Dylan of the Dust", served as narrator. When word spread about the tour, performers began contacting LaFave, whose only prerequisite was to have an inspirational connection to Guthrie. Each artist chose the Guthrie songs that he or she would perform as part of the tribute. LaFave said, "It works because all the performers are Guthrie enthusiasts in some form". The inaugural performance of the Ribbon of Highway tour took place on February 5, 2003 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The abbreviated show was a featured segment of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', yet another tribute concert to commemorate the music of Woody Guthrie held during the Folk Alliance Conference. The cast of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', a benefit for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, also included Arlo Guthrie, Marty Stuart, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Janis Ian, and others.

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie were honored at a musical celebration featuring Billy Bragg and the band Brad on October 17, 2007 at Webster Hall in New York City. Steve Earle also performed. The event was hosted by actor/activist Tim Robbins to benefit the Huntington¹s Disease Society of America to commemorate the organization's 40th Anniversary.

Copyright controversy

In his recordings in the early 1940s Woody Guthrie included the following “Copyright Warning”:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” Currently the copyright in much of Woody's songs is claimed by a number of different organizations.

When JibJab published a parody of Woody's song This Land Is Your Land to comment on the US 2004 Presidential election, Ludlow Music attempted to have this parody taken down, claiming it breached their copyright. JibJab then sued to affirm their parody was Fair Use, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acting for them. As part of their research on the case they found that the song had actually been first published by Woody Guthrie in 1945, although the copyright was not registered until 1956. This meant that when Ludlow applied to renew the copyright in 1984 they were 11 years too late, and the song had in fact been in the public domain since 1973 (28 years from first publication). Ludlow agreed that JibJab were free to distribute their parody. In an interview on NPR Arlo Guthrie said that he thought the parody was hilarious and he thought Woody would have loved it too. Ludlow still claims copyright in this song; however, it is not clear what the basis of this claim is.

Posthumous honors

Pete Seeger had the Sloop ''Woody Guthrie'' built for an organization he founded, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. It was launched in 1978. Now operated by the Beacon Sloop Club, it serves to educate people about sailing and the history and environs of the Hudson River.

Although Guthrie's catalogue never brought him many awards while he was alive, in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the same year Bob Dylan was inducted (much of Dylan's initial folk music work was heavily influenced by Guthrie), and in 2000 he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1987 "Roll On Columbia" was chosen as the official Washington State Folk Song, and in 2001 Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" was chosen to be the official state folk song of Oklahoma.

On September 26, 1992, The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center located in Sherborn, Massachusetts, awarded Guthrie their Courage of Conscience Award for his social activism and artistry in song which conveyed the plight of the common person.

On June 26, 1998, as part of its Legends of American Music series, the United States Postal Service issued 45 million 32-cent stamps honoring folk musicians Huddie Ledbetter, Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Josh White. The four musicians were represented on sheets of 20 stamps.

In July 2001, CB's Gallery in New York City began hosting an annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash concert featuring multiple performers. This event moved to the Bowery Poetry Club in 2007 after CB's Gallery and CBGB, its parent club, closed.

In 2005, the Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys recorded "I'm Shipping Up to Boston". The song's lyrics are from a poem written by Guthrie, and the music was composed by the band. The song was released in 2005 on the album ''The Warrior's Code'' and gained fame when it was used as part of the soundtrack for the 2006 movie ''The Departed''.

In 2006, The Klezmatics set Jewish lyrics written by Guthrie to music. The resulting album, ''Wonder Wheel'', won the Grammy award for best contemporary world music album.

On April 27, 2007, Guthrie was one of four Okemah natives inducted into Okemah's Hall of Fame during the town's Pioneer Day weekend of festivities.

On February 10, 2008, ''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949'', a rare live recording released in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie Foundation, was the recipient of a Grammy Award in the category Best Historical Album. Less than two years later, Guthrie was again nominated for a Grammy in the same category with the 2009 release of ''My Dusty Road'' on Rounder Records.

Selected discography

Many Guthrie tracks have been repeatedly repackaged and reordered. Items here are listed in order of the most recent published date, not original recording date.

!Year	!Title	!Record Label
1940	''Dust Bowl Ballads''	Folkways Records
1972	''Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie''
1987	''Columbia River Collection''	Rounder Records
1988	''Folkways: The Original Vision'' (Woody and Leadbelly)	Smithsonian Folkways
1988	''Library of Congress Recordings''	Rounder Records
1989	''Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs''	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	''Struggle''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Cowboy Songs on Folkways''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child''	Smithsonian Folkways
1992	''Nursery Days''	Smithsonian Folkways
1994	''Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944–1949''	Smithsonian Folkways
1996	''Almanac Singers''	UNI/MCA
1996	''Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti''	Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1998		Smithsonian Folkways
1999		Smithsonian Folkways
2007	''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949''	Woody Guthrie Publications
2009	''My Dusty Road''	Rounder Records

See also

Arlo Guthrie

List of songs by Woody Guthrie

List of albums by Woody Guthrie

Lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson

Pete Seeger

References

Citations

Printed sources

Further reading/listening

Hogeland, William (March 14, 2004), Emulating the Real and Vital Guthrie, Not St. Woody, New York Times.

Down Home Radio Show. LeadBelly & Woody Guthrie live on WNYC Radio, Dec. 1940. Audio re-broadcast of a 1940 radio show. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Earle, Steve. Woody Guthrie. ''The Nation'', July 21, 2003. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Scanned images of some of Woody Guthrie's original works. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Jackson, Mark Allen. ''Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie''. University Press of Mississippi, January, 2007. ISBN 978-1-60473-102-6

La Chapelle, Peter. Is Country Music Inherently Conservative? History News Network. Nov. 12, 2007. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

La Chapelle, Peter. ''Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California''. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-520-24888-5 (hb); ISBN 978-0-520-24889-2 (pb)

Library of Congress. Timeline of Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Marroquin, Danny. Walking the Long Road. PopMatters.com. Aug. 4, 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Public Broadcasting Service. ''Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home''. Documentary from PBS' American Masters series, July 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Oregon. ''Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration''. Video documentary. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Virginia. Guthrie singing "This Land Is Your Land". MP3 recording. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Symphony Silicon Valley Concert Recordings. David Amram's ''Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie'' Recorded September 30, 2007. Audio recording. Retrieved on January 11, 2008.

WoodyGuthrie.de. Woody Guthrie Related Audio. Miscellaneous Real Audio files featuring Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

External links

The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives

''Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950'', Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. American Memory presentation of archival correspondence written by Woody Guthrie to the staff of the Archive of American Folk Song. Retrieved August 31, 2009

Woody Guthrie in NYC, 1943 - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Woody Guthrie's Discography on Smithsonian Folkways

Songfacts interview with Anna Canoni (Guthrie's granddaughter)

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Guthrie, Woody

Voices of Oklahoma interview with Nora Guthrie. First person interview conducted with Nora Guthrie speaking about her father, Woody Guthrie, on October 7, 2010. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.

Category:1912 births Category:1967 deaths Category:American autobiographers Category:American buskers Category:American folk singers Category:American folk-song collectors Category:American male singers Category:American sailors Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American socialists Category:Cub Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Woody Category:Industrial Workers of the World members Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Echo Park, Los Angeles Category:People from Okemah, Oklahoma Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Shack dwellers Category:Squatters Category:Songster musicians Category:Songwriters from Oklahoma Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Vanguard Records artists Category:Anti-fascists Category:American folk guitarists Category:American harmonica players Category:American mandolinists Category:American violinists Category:Rounder Records artists

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Name	Billy Bragg
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Stephen William Bragg
Born	December 20, 1957Barking, London, England
Instrument	Vocals, guitar
Genre	Folk punkFolk rockAlternative rock
Years active	1977–present
Associated acts	The BlokesRiff-RaffWilco
Website	billybragg.co.uk
Notable instruments	}}

Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957), better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes. His music career has lasted more than 30 years.

Early life

Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex, the son of Dennis Frederick Austin Bragg, an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap and hat maker, and his wife, Marie Victoria D'Urso. Bragg was educated at Barking Abbey Secondary School in Barking.

Career

In 1977, Bragg formed the punk rock/pub rock band Riff Raff, and toured London's pubs and clubs. The band released a series of singles, which did not receive wide exposure. He also worked in Guy Norris Records in Barking. Bragg became disillusioned with his music career, and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After three months, he bought his way out of the army for £175 and returned home, having attended basic training but having never served in a regiment as a soldier.

Bragg began performing frequent concerts and busking around London, playing solo with an electric guitar. His roadie at the time was Andy Kershaw, who became a BBC DJ (Bragg and Kershaw later, in 1989, appeared in an episode of the BBC TV programme, "Great Journeys", in which they travelled the Silver Road from Potosí, Bolivia, to the Pacific coast at Arica, Chile).

Bragg's demo tape initially got no response from the record industry, but by pretending to be a television repair man, he got into the office of Charisma Records' A&R; man Peter Jenner. Jenner liked the tape, but the company was near bankruptcy and had no budget to sign new artists. Bragg got an offer to record more demos for a music publisher, so Jenner agreed to release them as a record. ''Life's a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy'' was released in July 1983 by Charisma's new imprint, Utility. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played a song from ''Life's a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy'' although at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.

Within months, Charisma had been taken over by Virgin Records and Jenner, who had been laid off, became Bragg's manager. Stiff Records' press officer Andy Macdonald – who was setting up his own record label, Go! Discs – received a copy of ''Life's a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy''. He made Virgin an offer and the album was re-released on Go! Discs in November 1983. In 1984, he released ''Brewing Up with Billy Bragg'', a mixture of political songs (e.g., "It Says Here") and songs of unrequited love (e.g., "The Saturday Boy"). The following year he released ''Between the Wars'', an EP of political songs that included a cover version of Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down" – the EP made the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and earned Bragg an appearance on ''Top of the Pops''. Bragg later collaborated with Rosselson on the song, "Ballad of the Spycatcher". In 1985, his song "A New England", with an additional verse, became a Top 10 hit in the UK for Kirsty MacColl. After MacColl's early death, Bragg always sang the extra verse in her honour. In 1984–1985 he toured North America.

In 1986, Bragg released ''Talking with the Taxman about Poetry'', which became his first Top 10 album. Its title is taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky and a translated version of the poem was printed on the record's inner sleeve. ''Back to Basics'' is a 1987 collection of his first three releases: ''Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy'', ''Brewing Up with Billy Bragg'', and the ''Between The Wars EP''. Bragg released his fourth album, ''Workers Playtime'', in September 1988. With this album, Bragg added a backing band and accompaniment. In May 1990, Bragg released the political mini-LP, ''The Internationale''. The songs were, in part, a return to his solo guitar style, but some songs featured more complicated arrangements and included a brass band. The album paid tribute to one of Bragg's influences with the song, "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", which is an adapted version of Earl Robinson's song, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", itself an adaptation of a poem by Alfred Hayes.

The album ''Don't Try This at Home'' was released in September 1991, and included the song, "Sexuality", which reached the UK Singles Chart. Bragg had been persuaded by Go! Discs' Andy and Juliet Macdonald to sign a four-album deal with a million pound advance, and a promise to promote the album with singles and videos. This gamble was not rewarded with extra sales, and the situation put the company in financial difficulty. In exchange for ending the contract early and repaying a large amount of the advance, Bragg regained all rights to his back catalogue. Bragg continued to promote the album with his backing band, The Red Stars, which included his Riff Raff colleague and long-time roadie, Wiggy.

Bragg released the album ''William Bloke'' in 1996 after taking time off to help raise his son. Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album ''Mermaid Avenue'' in 1998, and ''Mermaid Avenue Vol. II'' in 2000. A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.

In 2004, Bragg joined Florida ska-punk band Less Than Jake to perform a version of 'The Brightest Bulb Has Burned Out' for the ''Rock Against Bush'' compilation.

At the 2005 Beautiful Days Festival in Devon, Bragg teamed up with the Levellers to perform a short set of songs by The Clash in celebration of Joe Strummer's birthday. Bragg performed guitar and lead vocals on "Police and Thieves", and performed guitar and backing vocals on "English Civil War", and "Police on my Back".

In 2007, Bragg moved closer to his English folk music roots by joining the WOMAD-inspired collective The Imagined Village, who recorded an album of updated versions of traditional English songs and dances and toured through that autumn. Bragg released his album ''Mr. Love & Justice'' in March 2008. This was the second Bragg album to be named after a book by Colin MacInnes. In 2008, during the NME Awards ceremony, Bragg sang a duet with British solo act Kate Nash. They mixed up their two greatest hits, Nash playing "Foundations", and Bragg redoing his "A New England". Bragg also collaborated with the poet and playwright, Patrick Jones, who supported Bragg's Tour.

In 2008, Bragg played a small role in Stuart Bamforth's film "''A13: Road Movie''". Bragg is featured alongside union reps, vicars, burger van chefs and Members of Parliament in a film that explored "the overlooked, the hidden and the disregarded."

He was involved in the play ''Pressure Drop'' at the Wellcome Collection in London in April and May 2010. The production, written by Mick Gorden, and billed as "part play, part gig, part installation", featured new songs by Bragg. He performed during the play with his band, and acted as compere.

Bragg curated the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury Festival 2010.

He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project ''Sixty Six'' where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.

Politics

Bragg has been involved with grassroots, broadly leftist, political movements, and this is often reflected in his lyrics. Bragg has recorded and performed cover versions of famous socialist anthems ''The Internationale'' and ''The Red Flag''. Bragg said in an interview: "My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter. I try and write honestly about what I see around me now." In another interview, Bragg said: "I don't mind being labelled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter." In an interview with ''Bullz-Eye'', Bragg said:

I would then say that I am Mr. Love and Justice, and to check out the love songs. That’s how I capture people. People do say to me, “I love your songs, but I just can’t stand your politics.” And I say, “Well, Republicans are always welcome. Come on over!” I would hate to stand at the door, saying to people, “Do you agree with these positions? If not, you can’t come in.”

Bragg expressed support for the 1984 miners' strike, and the following year he formed the musicians' alliance Red Wedge, which promoted the Labour Party and discouraged young people from voting for the Conservative Party in the 1987 general election. Following the defeat of the Labour Party and the repeated victory of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government, Bragg joined Charter88 to push for a reform of the British political system.

Also during the 1980s, Bragg travelled to the Soviet Union a few times, after Mikhail Gorbachev had started to promote the policies of perestroika and glasnost. During one trip, he was accompanied by MTV, and during another trip he was filmed for the 1998 mini-documentary ''Mr Bragg Goes to Moscow'', by Hannu Puttonen.

In 1999, Bragg appeared before a commission that debated possible reform of the House of Lords.

During the 2001 UK general election, Bragg attempted to combat voter apathy by promoting tactical voting in an attempt to unseat Conservative Party candidates in Dorset, particularly in South Dorset and West Dorset. The Labour Party won South Dorset with their smallest majority, and the Conservative majority in West Dorset was reduced.

Bragg has developed an interest in English national identity, apparent in his 2002 album ''England, Half-English'' and his 2006 book ''The Progressive Patriot''. The book expressed his view that English socialists can reclaim patriotism from the right wing. He draws on Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness. Bragg has participated in a series of debates with members of the Socialist Workers Party who disagree with his argument. Bragg also supports Scottish independence.

Bragg has been an outspoken opponent of fascism, racism, bigotry, sexism and homophobia, and is a supporter of a multi-racial Britain. As a result, Bragg has come under attack from far right groups such as the British National Party. In a 2004 ''The Guardian'' article, Bragg was quoted as saying:

The British National Party would probably make it into a parliament elected by proportional representation, too. It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street – which I'm also in favour of.

Also in 2004, Bragg collaborated with American ska punk band Less Than Jake to record a song for the ''Rock Against Bush'' compilation album.

During the 2005 general election campaign in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, Bragg supported Oona King, a pro-Iraq war Labour candidate, over George Galloway, an anti-war Respect Party candidate, due to a belief that splitting the left-wing vote would allow the Conservatives to win the seat. Galloway overturned King's 10,000-strong majority to become his party's only MP.

In March 2006, journalist Garry Bushell (a former Trotskyist who ran as a candidate for the English Democrats in 2005) accused Bragg of "pontificating on a South London council estate when we all know he lives in a lovely big house in West Dorset".

In January 2010, Bragg announced that he would withhold his income tax as a protest against the Royal Bank of Scotland's plan to pay bonuses of approximately of £1.5 billion to staff in its investment banking business. Bragg set up a Facebook group, made appearances on radio and television news programmes, and made speech at Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park. Bragg said,“Millions are already facing stark choices: are they willing to work longer hours for less money, or would they rather be unemployed? I don’t see why the bankers at RBS shouldn’t be asked the same.”

On the eve of the 2010 general election, Bragg announced that he would be voting for the Liberal Democrats because "they've got the best manifesto". He also backed the Lib Dems for tactical voting reasons. Bragg later expressed disappointment with the party, stating that 'the Lib Dems had failed democracy'.

Bragg was also very active in his hometown of Barking as part of Searchlight's Hope not Hate campaign, where the BNP's leader Nick Griffin was standing for election. At one point during the campaign Bragg squared up to BNP London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook, calling him a "Fascist Racist" and saying "when you're gone from this borough, we will rebuild this community". The BNP came third on election day.

Bragg is a board director and key spokesman for the Featured Artists Coalition, a body representing the rights of recording artists. Bragg founded the organisation Jail Guitar Doors, which supplies instruments to prisoners to encourage them to address problems in a non-confrontational way.

Bragg is a regular at the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival, an annual event celebrating the memory of those transported to Australia for founding a union in the 1830s.

In January 2011, news sources reported that 20 to 30 residents of Bragg's Dorset hometown, Burton Bradstock, had received anonymous letters viciously attacking Bragg and his politics, and urging residents to oppose him in the village. Bragg claimed that a BNP supporter was behind the letters, which argued that Bragg is a hypocrite for advocating socialism while living a wealthy lifestyle, and referred to him as anti-British and pro-immigration.

In July 2011 Billy joined the growing protests over the News of the World phone hacking affair with the recording of "Never Buy the Sun" which references many of the scandals key points including the Milly Dowler case, police bribes and associated political fallout. It also draws on the 22 year Liverpool boycott of ''The Sun'' for their coverage of the Hillsborough Disaster.

Discography

''Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy'' (1983)

''Brewing Up with Billy Bragg'' (1984)

''Talking with the Taxman about Poetry'' (1986)

''Back to Basics'' (1987)

''Workers Playtime'' (1988)

''The Internationale'' (1990)

''Don't Try This at Home'' (1991)

''William Bloke'' (1996)

''Bloke on Bloke'' (1997)

''Mermaid Avenue'' (1998) (with Wilco)

''Mermaid Avenue Vol. II'' (2000) (with Wilco)

''England, Half-English'' (2002) (with the Blokes)

''Mr. Love & Justice'' (2008)

Further reading

Billy Bragg, ''The Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging'' (London: Bantam Press, 2006) ISBN 978-0-593-05343-0

Billy Bragg, ''How we all lost when Thatcher won'': (guardian.co.uk, 5 March 2009)

See also

Red Wedge

Charter88

George Gimarc

References

External links

Braggtopia

Billy Bragg collection at the Internet Archive's live music archive

Billy Bragg's Big Busk At Lincoln Center, 27 July 2011

Category:1957 births Category:Alternative rock musicians Category:Anti-corporate activists Category:Anti-fascists Category:British socialists Category:English activists Category:English buskers Category:English-language singers Category:English male singers Category:English political writers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English socialists Category:English tax resisters Category:Living people Category:People associated with Oxford Brookes University Category:People from Barking Category:Folk punk musicians Category:Live Music Archive artists

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