Defining Fascism: The “Thin” Method

Abstract

There is an approach, proposed by Roger Griffin that I would like to call the “thin” method. It is the “X-ray method” that I mentioned in the last chapter. It is a method of ultimate abstraction. Instead of accumulating supposed characteristics of fascist systems and bringing them together in an ideal type—one asks: what is the essence of fascist systems or, as Griffin called it: what is the “fascist minimum”? According to Griffin, one had to find “a theory of the fascist minimum, especially if, when reduced to its bare essentials, the resulting definition is more economical and “elegant” than previous ones.”¹ Griffin’s aim was to identify “a common core,” in order “to identify what constitutes its ‘family’ trait.” Griffin came up with the definition that “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythical core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.”² Griffin’s definition stressed that fascism is, essentially, an ideology in which national revival (palingenesis) has a central place, and that it is populist and ultra-nationalist and thereby “precludes the nationalism of dynastic rulers and imperial powers before the rise of mass politics and democratic forces (…), as well as the populist (liberal) nationalism which overthrows a colonial power to institute representative democracy.”³