He meant the title ironically

He meant the title ironically · Sharing, with some Reservations

The Christian Origins of Fascism
Brian Holdsworth | 28 Febr. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7zTPQhbhKU

3:25 "several photos"

I know mainly two photos. On one, we have actual Catholic clergy, who are getting around a provocation to the Nazi salute by doing a Dollfuss salute instead (right arm stretched at 90° from the vertical, like a flag in mourning, Dollfuss was killed, by Nazis).

Pax Alotin

@Pax--Alotin

Such a mash up - pictures of Hitler a Nazi with the label Fascist -
Then there is the Nazi Salute that was borrowed from Mussolini - who in copied it from the French painter David's famous 'Oath of the Horatii' 😉🙂😊

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Pax--Alotin Indeed, Hitler's salute is a pretty flashy thing in a painter.

He should have remained one.

4:04 On this one, I think it may be Fr. Schachleiter who is seen looking down, a bit sadly, while the man enthusiastically shaking the Führer's hand is the Protestant bishop ... looking up, yes, it's the Reichsbischoff Ludwig Müller.

In case you think Schachleiter (if it's he) was in any way a bad look for Catholicism, look at how pained he looks, and recall, his bishop in Munich revoked his faculties for celebrating Mass.

(Yes, it's Albanus)

Now, while Ludwig Müller was not sceptic of Nazism at the time and may have committed suicide after it fell (this is not certain), Schachleiter died a natural death of old age in 1937, before the Anschluss, before WW-II and even so he was somewhat iffy of National Socialism.

4:28 Fun fact, the photo you showed is in archives noted as featuring Schachleiter and Müller, but more so, it's from my birthday ... the year midway between my own birth and my grandpa's.

6 September 1934
Hitler greets Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller and Abbott Albanus Schachleitner as Honorary guests at the Reich party rally for Unity and Strength

I'm born 6 Sept, but 1968 (and my grandpa, 1900).

6:09 Austrofascism clearly is compatible with Catholic Christianity.

Exhibit A) It's roots in Christian Social movement (previously Christian Socialist I think, but changed name in response to Socialist coming to mean Marxist) commence with a certain Dr. Johannes Immanuel Veit, friend of St. Clemens Maria Hofbauer, convert from Judaism, Young Earth Creationist, Catholic priest and ... well, part originator of Christian Socials.

Exhibit B) the Christian Social chancellor just preceding Dollfuss was Mgr Ignaz Seipel, who had written Wirtschaftsethische Lehre der Kirchenväter (Econom-ethic doctrine of the Church Fathers).

Exhibit C) On the issuing of Quadragesimo Anno, Dollfuss promised to make Austria a "Quadragesimo Anno state" and Pope Pius XI never contradicted him.

Exhibit D) When Dollfuss had been murdered (a bit like Charlie Kirk) and lay bleeding to death, he forgave his murderer. The murderer in question was a Nazi.

Exhibit E) You probably agree that the von Trapp family singers are Catholics and their opposition to Hitler was politically rooted in Dollfuss and Schuschnigg (whose fate after the Anschluss they pitied, and rightly so, Nazis had him harrassed by shrink personnel supposedly for being suicidal).

hundefar

@hundefar

Dollfuss wasn't a fascist.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hundefar He at least tolerated the term.

Schuschnigg later specified they tolerated the term.

For reasons of general usage, and because he fits certain minimal criteria as I see them for fitting the common usage, I accept that usage.

@hundefar I can add, Schuschnigg perhaps had more reason than Dollfuss to be picky about it, since Mussolini was a good friend of Dollfuss, hence the Italians at the Brenner to stop an Anschluss from happening in 1934, but none more later on when Schuschnigg was on the line.

Dollfuss also had some illness requiring baths, and Mussolini hosted him, as I recall.

7:00 Wait, are you bringing up Mussolini and Gentile as founders of Fascism?

Mussolini was founder and Gentile co-theorician of one Fascism, the Italian one.

But not of Austro-Fascism or of any strain of Spanish Fascism, whether Carlists, or Falangists proper or JONS (from most to least Catholic).

If we go back to Mussolini, one can mention, his mother* was a devout Catholic:

Rosa Maltoni (Predappio, 1859-1905), la mamma del duce, fu una maestra elementare. Contrariamente al marito Alessandro, un socialista mangiapreti, Rosa era una devota cattolica che fece battezzare i figli e li conduceva alla messa tutte le domeniche. Forse per questo, dopo morta, nel Ventennio, gli italiani andavano a trovarla al cimitero. Venerata per 20 anni come una madonnina, l’avrebbero probabilmente anche fatta santa, se non altro per fare un favore a Mussolini, ma poi la guerra, la Resistenza, la Liberazione e tutto il resto: grazie a Dio non se ne fece più nulla. Ora la sua è una tomba poco più che qualunque, la sua una figura “di culto” minore, relegata praticamente sullo sfondo della sorprendente gloria post mortale del sepolcro del figlio, sepolto morto a S. Cassiano di Predappio, in provincia di Forlì, e ancor oggi visitato da neofascisti, nostalgici e curiosi di ogni genere ad ogni ricorrenza utile, per esempio il 28 ottobre, anniversario della marcia su Roma, ma anche – e per sfregio- il 25 aprile, festa della Liberazione Nazionale dal nazi-fascismo etc etc.

So, a bit like one can find overlap between Socialism and Catholicism around Doris Day, dito in the background of Benito.

Spooky TreadXIII

@spookytreadxiii

I thought about this also... while I do believe Actual Idealism would be realizing that God is external and internal with natural law being in rule which a lot of aspects of government and state mirrors heaven even in pagan times. Also, if we go off of the Old and New Testament there are nations and some sense of keeping parts of the church or religion pure over mixing or allowing too much outside influence. Then why Socialism when localism and distributism can work at National and is the Bridge between Capitalism and Syndicalism (GOATd systems). Which means in a way Christo-Fascism can work and does make sense, especially if we're not going for old or 100% of someone else's idea which are we even taught that or is it just propaganda from the victors that in WW1 destroyed kingdoms and WW2 destroyed Authoritarianism, which the church used in order to guide nations and peoples.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@spookytreadxiii "Actual Idealism would be realizing that God is external and internal with natural law being in rule"

That's how C. S. Lewis converted from Hegel's Absolute to a personal God.

"especially if we're not going for old"

Lots of what Fascism did was in response to circumstances. Blackshirts were in response to Red Terror, and Dollfuss changing the constitution (constitutionally) was in response to a Civil War which had just been quenched in blood, and one wanted to avoid a return to it.

7:10 Come on, Gentile is maybe the philosopher of Fascism, but Fascism existed well before him.

Fino al 1922 Gentile non mostra particolare interesse nei confronti del fascismo.

So, three years after the Sansepolcro declaration, Gentile is drafted to become Minister of Education by Il Duce and suddenly discovers Fascism. And that's not because he was young and inexperienced, no, his career was already in swing. In 1922 he was 47 years old.

7:58 The Doctrine of Fascism — 1932. Fascism had been Fascist for 13 years and Gentile for 10 years before this was published.

It's comparable to Stalin and Kubnov (People's Commissar for Education) co-writing a book on Communism and calling that the foundation of Soviet Communism (obviously, the difference is, Stalin was just successor to Lenin, Kubnov just successor of Lunacharsky, and Lunacharsky had become a Marxist well before the Russian Revolution).

8:17 I would say that defining features of Fascism are things that:

A) contributed to the March on Rome
B) are shared with other movements also labelled Fascism by analogy.

Obviously, the Austro-Fascist theorician Mgr. Seipel was not agreeing with Gentile, nevertheless his disciple and successor is labelled a Fascism like Mussolini.

I would say there are three features.

1) Corporativism. Opposition to both Communism and Laissez-Faire Capitalism, solved by promotion of a very specific Syndicalism that included the employers.
2) Indifference or hostility to Parliamentarian Democracy.
3) Being prepared to take up violence for these goals, if needed.

None of these are bad or incompatible with Catholicism. Items 2 or 3 can go wrong, pretty easily, but are not wrong in and of themselves, it's the judgment about when Parliamentarianism is to get out (in Austria it was in fact a constiutional act) and when violence is needed that can easily go wrong. Item one is the reason why Dollfuss spoke of Austria as a Quadragesimo Anno state.

8:36 Yes, I'll proceed to make that claim!

Before Italian Fascism got into power there already was a French Fascism that didn't get into power (and was actually divided during the occupation), namely Action française.

It's founder Maurras was an Agnostic. But Maurras was influenced by one René de la Tour du Pin who was a Christian.

And the influence is not doubtful. Maurras had already founded Action française before René died. Now, one came to note a similarity in positions taken, so, Maurras got the question: "does de la Tour du Pin belong to the Action française" and please note the answer: "no, it's Action française which belongs to de la Tour du Pin"

The number one of Action française, an Agnostic, made himself the number two in relation to one outside the club, and that one was a Christian.

The name was also given to a journal associated with the movement, L'Action française, sold by its own youth organization, the Camelots du Roi. The movement and the journal were founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois in 1899, as a nationalist reaction against the intervention of left-wing intellectuals on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus. The royalist militant Charles Maurras quickly joined Action Française and became its principal ideologist. Under the influence of Maurras, Action Française became royalist, counter-revolutionary (objecting to the legacy of the French Revolution), anti-parliamentary, and pro-decentralization, espousing corporatism, integralism, and Roman Catholicism.

1899 is 20 years before the Sansepolcro programme by Mussolini, which in turn is, as mentioned, 13 years before Gentile's book. So, Action française is 33 years older than Gentile's work.

In case you doubt the label Fascism, note the fact that it was anti-parliamentary (item 2 on my checklist) and corporatist (item 1).

I

Catholic American Nationalist

@Cathnat-Amnat

Maurras was not the founder of Action Francaise. However, he was one of its chief ideological proponents. He was reconciled to the Church before he died. At any rate, it's a shame Action Francaise was condemned. Regrettable decision that was reversed later, but too late after all...

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Cathnat-Amnat I'm afraid the personal reconciliation is a false news, but anyway, if Maurras wasn't the founder, he was close enough after them in joining AF.

Did you know the surviving big sister of Ste Thérèse Martin asked for the lifting of that ban?

II

Pax Alotin

hglundahi ---- quote 'If we go back to Mussolini, one can mention: his mother was a devout Catholic'
Quote 'So, a bit like one can find overlap between Socialism and Catholicism around Doris Day, ditto in the background of Benito'
The Left especially - Stalinists were such good propagandists. In 1949 - they had us believing Nazism was spawned by a man who was half Jewish.
Fascism begins and ends at the borders of Italy. Nothing to do with Nazism, Peronists - Francoists - all of which were built around their own historical roots.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Pax--Alotin That's one way of viewing the word, not mine.

Are you saying Rudolf Jung was according to some half Jewish?

9:31 Would you mind telling me exactly how Gentile's secularism contributed to the March on Rome, which anyway happened before Gentile was a Fascist?

Wait, it actually helped to recruit a lot of Jews to Fascism.

Up to 1934, Jews were overrepresented in Italian Fascism, and one Mayor (Geremìa Brizi, of Assisi) actually helped to save Jews from Nazi deportations under the Salò Republic in memory of those days. It's not as if they were totally marginal to Fascism either, like the mistress of Mussolini, Margherita Sarfatti, or Aldo Finzi:

In 1921, he was one of the nine Jewish deputies elected to the Italian Parliament for the Fasci italiani di combattimento. Having reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, in January 1923 he was appointed Vice Commissioner for the Air Force (the titular commissioner being Benito Mussolini himself, who however delegated all matters to Finzi), a post he held until 1925, being one of the founders of the Regia Aeronautica in 1923.

He died as a partisan against the Germans. He was not involved in the Via Rasella attack, but was one of those shot in retaliation for it.

9:59 Rosenberg was as little a founder as Gentile. However, he was an exponent ...

But before that, you have an actual founder, Rudolf Jung.

Now he was influenced by the rival Czech National Socialism (the one that later drove Sudet Germans into the arms of Hitler), which was inspired by John Hus and his violent successor John Zizka of Trocnov.

Not Orthodox Christianity, but Christian heresy of the Pre-Reformation with some overlap to Radical Reformation.

10:22 Positive Christianity is not too far from certain trends within Evangelicalism.

Like not seing God as lawgiver but seing Him as Father.

There are some ex-Nazis who had not too much trouble getting an Evangelical career after that.

Schachleiter had a reason to fear the Protestant influence on Nazism.

10:44 I think Adolf von Harnack, famed Liberal Theologian, also shared the fad for Marcion.

Positive Christianity is not simply Nazism with Christian veneer, it's Idealism with Christian veneer, as much as so much other "Christianity" in classical Reformation based Protestantism by well before 1900, and it happened to join hands with Nazism.

11:31 Sure, if you go to Nazism, you find people as Anticatholic as John McArthur and as Uncatholic as Joel Osteen.

That's why I like to call myself Fascist, but not Nazi.

11:56 Italian Fascism prior to 1938 in interior politics and to the Ethiopian War didn't act contrary to the Natural law.

Whatever Mussolini may have said with Gentile in 1932.

(For the record, I don't think the killing of Matteotti was a Fascist vendetta for his criticism of the new voting law, I think it was a royal one, for his criticism of the King's petrol deal with England or English companies).

But again, Action française did not reject the Natural law and Austrofascism certainly didn't.

Nor did the Carlists and as far as I can tell, nor did the Falangists.

12:04 You are aware that some schools of Protestantism deny this?

Most Calvinists would agree the moral law is known even after Adam's sin, but some take Total corruption one step further.

You may have heard of a certain Kevin Annett, right?

What he said indistinctly about Christian hospitals in Canada, well, it was not true about Catholic ones, but it was true about United Church of Canada ones and some more.

12:23 What you just stated about Italian Fascism is not even necessarily a denial of Natural law, since on Hegelian views (the one CSL believed before his conversion) the Natural law is known by the rational self determination of the Absolute including in history.

The Natural Law does not necessarily come as "external" since the proof text actually speaks of it as written on hearts:

Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another,
[Romans 2:15]

I'm not a fan of Gentile, but I think some people in English culture risk getting him wrong in making his views wronger and other than they are. I saw Lotus Eaters misconstrue his view on Corporatism, for one.

12:37 I recall an Orthodox bishop in Serbia praising Positive Christianity on the theory that each nation had its own moral character and therefore needed the Church adapted to itself.

I suppose he would not have gone to Mass in a Greek Orthodox service ...

Again, yes, Nazism was very Anticatholic, but it was so in ways shared by Anticatholics often seen (in Ecumenism) as "fellow Christians"

13:39 I'm about as inclined to trust Leo Strauss, who probably (like his disciples in the US, including you by now) as I am to trust Gentile on Catholicism.

Modernity is not necessarily more and more breaking away from Catholicism, so, the Hippie era is more recent than Progressive era, but also more Catholic.

14:09 Holy Roman Empire was at this time trilingual.

1) High German, or what we call German.
2) Low German, which has a debased modern version in Plattdeutsch
3) South East Gallo-Romance to North Italian dialects. Well, 4) some French in Hainaut as well.

But compared to it, France, Norse countries, Poland, Hungary, all functioned as nation states.

Action française doesn't deny this state of affairs, but it overemphasises the degree to which Luther destroyed Christendom, and considers Nation states as what's left of it.

14:13 Liechtenstein was the 343:rd State of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, just like the US has sth that looks like a Federal level, the Holy Roman Empire had an Imperial level.

14:21 Localism ... did I mention that one tenet of Action française was Decentralisation?

14:44 Thank you, Communism more so than Nazism, Nazism more than Italian Fascism, Italian Fascism more than Austro-Fascism.**

Did you know Austro-Fascism was so decentralised, that when there was a decision to allow putting beggars in camps (1936 I believe)*** the only one of the 9 Länder that implemented this was Upper Austria? Nowhere else.

15:56 "both the rich and the poor"

Sounds nice and Fascist to me. Rejection of Klassenhass. OK, Fascist compatible.

16:06 "there is no common good"

Sorry, but that's clear misrepresentation. Even in Gentile, the idea is that rich and poor have a common good.

16:29 You are totally out of touch with what Fascism, even Nazism, teaches about the poor.

In 1933 beggars were in Nazi Germany put in camps. Those were basically very rough boot camps. The idea was that through harsh discipline people should be pushed to habits from which they would be able to take up normal lives.

I disagree with priorising "helping" someone over respecting his freedoms, perhaps more than you do. But that was what Nazism did, as long as the poverty was one of situation or of habits associated with the situation.

In most of Austria even this didn't happen.

In 1926 Mussolini decided to block non-Italian Gipsies from entry into Italy. Why would Gipsies have wanted to enter Italy if it had been harsh to the poor? Think of that for a moment.

16:57 You are treating Fascism as a synonym for the political ideas you don't like in Nazism.

Heschmeyer claimed that the Church has condemned "Fascism and Nazism".

Now, if you mean "the school of Gentile", I think that work might be on the Index, certainly Rosenberg is. But if you mean documents aimed at régimes, the NS one was condemned in Mit brennender Sorge, but Fascism overall had no similar condemnation. Non abbiamo bisogno is not a wholesale condemnation of Mussolini's régime. It's a complaint about breaches from the Concordat.

These may or may not be incidental to Italian Fascism at its core essence (which shifted), but they are certainly incidental to Fascism as a broader movement.

17:48 You are speaking of the "Founders of Fascism" (being aware of an incompatibility and so having to) "Create their own (per)version of Christianity" ...

You are somehow mixing up Positive Christianity, a Nazi thing, with Italian Fascism or maybe even Spanish such?

That's careless use of language.

---

* Amnesia Vivace : 1. la Madre del Fascio
https://web.archive.org/web/20071029004122/http://www.amnesiavivace.it/sommario/rivista/brani/pezzo.asp?id=227

** His view: "Fascism and especially Communism are all about" what? Centralisation in nation states.

*** Unlike Nazi Germany no strict obligation to work and no risk of sterilisation.