Fascism elevates the State above all other authority, both religious and civil. French jurist Jean Bodin of the 16th century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes of the 17th, as well as 18th- and 19th-century German philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Heinrich von Treitschke, all glorified the State. Hegel taught that the State occupies a position of supremacy and that the individual’s supreme duty is to be its loyal supporter.

By their very nature, all governments must exercise authority. But Fascist states are designed to exercise it to the utmost, demanding blind obedience. Viewing humans as little more than slaves of the State, Treitschke said: “It does not matter what you think, so long as you obey.” Typically, Fascism replaced the cry, “Liberty, equality, fraternity,” heard during the French Revolution, with the Italian slogan, “To believe, to obey, to fight.”

Fascism, German Style

“Despite the coincidence of their paths to power,” says the book Fascism, by A. Cassels, “Italian Fascism and German Nazism were markedly different in temperament and in their vision of the future.”

Besides the aforementioned German philosophers who served as forerunners of Fascist thought, others, like 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, helped create a brand of Fascism uniquely German. Not that Nietzsche was a Fascist, but he did call for a ruling elite, a race of supermen. In doing so, however, he had no one race or nation in mind, least of all the Germans, for whom he had no particular liking. But some of his ideas were close to what National Socialist ideologists considered ideally German. So these ideas were appropriated, while others, not agreeing with Nazi doctrine, were discarded.