ABSTRACT
Fascism and nazism appeared in 1919 as movements that brought together diverse groups of political and cultural dissidents without imposing a high degree of party discipline or a demand of exclusive membership. Only at a second stage – after 1921 for the National Fascist Party (PNF) and after 1925 for the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP) – did the movements become true parties. The outsiders constituting the Fascist and Nazi movements shared many values. Above all, they were alienated from the direction that modern industrial culture was taking at the end of the nineteenth century. They believed (quite clearly in the case of the Italian Futurists) that different conclusions from those of progressive democrats and socialists might be drawn without completely rejecting industrial society. Their views were expressed as a radical repudiation of the liberal and parliamentary political order that took the form of anti-materialism and the search for new spiritual values, anti-socialism, appreciation of the irrational forces in modern society and glorification of instinct and violence in political life.1
