Fascism was a modern political ideology that sought to recreate the social, economic and cultural life of a nation by rooting it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. It is a political ideology that rejects liberal notions of freedom and individual rights, and works against the tenets of democracy. Fascism was an ideology that had significant influence in Europe in the early twentieth century. Fascist political parties emerged in the face of intense patriotism that grew as a result of widespread social and political uncertainty after World War I and the Russian Revolution. Fascism gained relevance in many European countries including Romania and Hungary. This essay will examine how fascism grew in these two countries, and from this it will be clear that fascism in Romania and Hungary could not grow because this political ideology was denied the political space in which to take root.
[...] The middle classes and the upper classes looked back to the past, a past in which it was their birthright to rule the dejected masses. This they were not prepared to surrender to the change which was in the making. Fascism has been shown to be a modern political ideology that had great influence in many parts of Europe, Romania and Hungary especially. This essay has examined how fascism grew in these two countries, and from this it is clear that fascism in Romania and Hungary could not grow [...]
[...] Not being hampered by any commitment to a holy mission in this area, the Germans did not wish to experiment during the war, and their traumatic experience with the Legion only strengthened them in this determination. But there is little in common between the unconditional, disreputable subservience of the Hungarian March Men and Romanian relations with Germany. As far as any possible cooperation between the two middle-class Fascist camps was concerned, there could not be any. The one in Romania was an updated oligarchy; that in Hungary was the Hungarian Nation supposedly rejuvenated through the spirit of the age. [...]
[...] Perhaps in the industrialized West, fascism could be considered as such, but during the interwar years democracy did not have a chance in Hungary and Romania; consequently there can be little talk of its disintegration, or of fascism as the by-product of this process. (Talavera-Nagy 1970: 256). The similarities between Hungary and Romania are often deceiving. First, and most importantly, the line separating Rome and Byzantium runs between the two nations, this division being the clearest in Transylvania where the two cultures come to blows. [...]
[...] The situation was further aggravated by the presence in Hungary of an all- powerful, historic ruling class, and in Romania by an adroit oligarchy; consequently, the people were quite inexperienced in the art of self- government. (Zimmer 2003: 156). After World War Romania belonged to the satisfied nations, but the Russian menace, combined with Hungarian and Bulgarian revisionist claims, gave her a feeling of insecurity, and she sought security for the maintenance of the status quo in the West which meant France. [...]
[...] This social protest was carried out in the very name of these two factors which Marxism denied, two factors all-important for common Hungarians and Romanians alike: nationalism and religion. To call such phenomena rightist or leftist would seem meaningless, and to identify these currents with the classical definition of the left or the right would be to take them out of context. Such identification might serve certain contemporary political interests (as it did at the time), but it would be a small contribution to understanding. [...]
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