ABSTRACT
While fascism may have negated the principle of mass political rule, is it not possible that it accommodated itself to the masses as far as culture was concerned? Many have regarded fascism and continue to regard it, especially National Socialism, as a manifestation of mass culture, a brutal uprising against Western civilization and the heritage of high culture. Nazism, it is often claimed, represented an attack on culture on the part of the uneducated or half-educated (as in the frequent complaint, in the German context, against Halbbildung). This chapter critically examines such line of argument. It addresses some of its most characteristic charges, such as the recurrent claim, from Klaus Mann to George Mosse, that the Nazi spirit can be traced back to the pages of Karl May’s immensely popular westerns, where violent German heroes are glorified. What such denunciations of May ultimately accomplish is an act of diversion, drawing attention away from the flaws of German canonic culture. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the distinctive character of “culture industries” under fascist regimes. In contradistinction to prevalent views of a significant similarity between mass culture as it existed before fascism and under fascism, it is argued that such continuity is largely deceptive. While quantitatively expanding the operations of the culture industry, fascism drained mass culture of what makes it truly an affair of and for the masses, domesticating and eviscerating it.
