According to the French historian, François Furet, “there is a mystery of evil in the dynamics of the political ideas of the twentieth century”.52
After the Soviet revolution of 1917, the birth of the Komintern contributed to the world expansion of the new Bolshevik doctrine. The attempts at violent Communist revolution in the world, beginning with the so-called “red biennium” (1919-21), did however provoke a strong anti-Communist reaction. It was on the wave of this reaction that the “Fascist” movements were born and consolidated.
Bolshevism and Fascism thus entered the scene almost at the same time. The dynamic European and world history, between 1917 and 1945, was determined, according to Ernst Nolte, by the great “European civil war” waged between communism and national socialism and therefore, between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.53 Furet wrote:
“What renders inevitable a comparative analysis of fascism and communism is not only the fact of their date of birth and appearance being simultaneous, as well as meteorite from an historical point of view, but also their mutual dependence.”54
This intimate dependent relationship which today is on the way to becoming an acquired historiographic datum, was understood by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, who, in absolute loyalty to the Christian model of society, refused to take the side of one or other of the contenders who occupied the stage.
He saw a concept in communism that was diametrically opposite to that of Catholicism, but he considered Nazism to be a similarly dangerous false alternative. He wrote:
“It is undeniable that communism is the antithesis of Catholicism. Nazism, in its turn, is another antithesis of Catholic doctrine, and is much closer to communism than either of them is to Catholicism.”55
The refusal of “middle-class” life in the name of a mystical-heroic conception of existence and the call to the warrior tradition of Germany and of Europe could, and in fact did, constitute an appealing call for many young people who were incapable of discerning the sinister aspect of an ideology saturated with socialism and paganism. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira understood that the best way of warning the young people of his country against the Nazi pseudo-mysticism, as well as denouncing its errors, was that of proposing an heroic and supernatural vision of Catholicism. It was this flag, opposed to Nazism and Communism, that the Legionário raised high in Brazil.
Notes:
52. F. Furet, Le passé d’une illusion, p. 44.
53. Ernst Nolte, Der europaeische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus, Berlin, Propyläen Verlag, 1987. even Stuart J. Woolf (edited by), European Fascism, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968; George L. Mosse, Masses and Man. Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality, New York, Howard Ferty Inc., 1980.
54. F. Furet, Le passé d’une illusion, p. 39.
55. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A margem da crise”, O Legionário, no. 315, 25 September 1938.