Systematic Theology – The State

The Theology of Fascism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 12

Dictation Name: 12 The Theology of Fascism

Year: 1970’s

In this session, our concern is The Theology of Fascism. Why consider fascism when it is ostensibly a dead faith? Fascism, some would hold, died with Mussolini and Hitler, but did it? First of all, what is fascism? Fascism is simply Marxism under the guise of a capitalistic facade. Mussolini was a Marxist. As a Marxist, he began to realize very early that Marxism was unpopular with the masses, that while people might like all the things Marxism promised, they did not like the abolition of private property, nor the abolition of freedom, nor the abolition of many other things that were essential to Marxism, and so he saw the future in terms of giving the people the facade of a free society while actually socializing it. In Fascism, people retain title to their homes, or their businesses, but they are so regulated and so controlled, that they are simply owned by the state, but held by individuals in their own name.

Now, this is what we have today in this country and all over the world in varying degrees. The Soviet Union is becoming a Fascist, rather than a communist society. Everywhere, the façade of freedom, the façade of private ownership is maintained, but we have today a regulatory society which takes away the essence of private ownership and of freedom while retaining the façade. After all, the Soviet Union has elections with between 90-100% turnout, but with one candidate only, so they’re a society that believes in democracy and free elections. You are free to vote, but you’re not free not to vote, and you’re not free to vote for anyone except the communist party candidates.

Every social order reflects the life of a people. It reflects their faith. The laws on the statute books are meaningless unless they are also written in the hearts of the people, but men do not like a consistent faith. All men are born children of Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve, in Genesis 3, saw themselves as victims, not as sinners. They refused to say, “I, even I, have sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight.” Instead, Adam blamed the woman and God, and the woman blamed the Tempter. They saw themselves as victims, not as sinners. Now, if environmentalism prevailed with Adam and Eve after the Fall, much more so it prevails now, and removing sin from man and placing it on something else is basic to anti-Christianity. Every social order reflects the religion of a people. If we have a false religion, we have a false social order, and 20th century man is humanistic, whether he is in the church or out of the church.

Humanism today is not as rationalistic as during the Enlightenment, but it is no less humanistic, and its patron saint should be Mussolini, even though today he is reviled. He is reviled because writers about Mussolini don’t want to admit their debt to him. There is not one good book in the English language on Mussolini, because if they were to write honestly about him, they would have to say the United States, Great Britain, every country today is following Mussolini’s pattern. The postal service is a Fascist organization. It is supposedly an independent entity, but it is actually a federal entity. Amtrak and so on. All these things are copied from Mussolini’s Italy, plus the fact that regulatory agencies govern our utilities, govern us, govern the environment, and we have no say-so about them. The essence of Fascism is its hypocrisy. Fascism gives you Marxism in the name of freedom, because people are unwilling to come out openly for freedom, or openly for Marxism, and as a result, you have Fascism. An either/or faith, however much men may claim to hold it, is what men refused to have. They want to have their cake and eat it, too.

And so we have Atheistic churchmen in the pulpit. We have free market advocates who receive subsidies. We have people who claim to be free, but are welfare slaves. This is the mentality of Fascism. Fascism is growing all over the world because men hate to be faced with an antithesis.

Now, what is an antithesis. It used to be when I was a boy, you could hear a lot of the old farmers in the valley talk about, “He doesn’t like an antithesis.” That language has disappeared from the churches. What does it mean? An antithesis means you’re confronted with an either or an or. You choose this or that. You cannot combine the two. Good or evil, right or wrong, but men don’t want an antithesis. They fight shy of it. They do everything to evade an antithesis, a clear-cut choice. Men halt between two opinions as they did in the days of Elijah. They refuse to make the choice called for by Joshua when he said in Joshua 24:14-15, “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

That is confrontation with the antithesis. Fascism thus, is a philosophy of compromise and hypocrisy, with the façade of property and freedom retained without reality. The form without the substance. When Paul in 2 Timothy 3:5 said of some they have a form of godliness but without the power thereof; from such turn away,’ such men will call false pastors{?}. They will vote for politicians who, in the name of freedom, will institute socialism or Fascism. Fascism is the faith of a people who want syncretism but under another label. Syncretism means bringing two things that are in contradiction together as though they did not contradict one another.

We had a worldwide socialist movement in 1917. Then, the compromise, Fascism. The word Fascism is now discredited, but the reality is with us and growing. Fascism is socialism for hypocrites.

As I said, a social order is the expression of the life and the faith of a people, and a people who live in compromise will always choose it. It is interesting that this is the kind of faith that precedes destruction unless a nation turn and repent. In the days before their collapse, the people of Judea were very much given to this kind of compromise. They affirmed the Lord and the temple of the Lord, but their hearts were elsewhere. They were pagan in their hearts. They spoke of them as a free people, free of Egypt, free of Assyria, free of Babylon, free of every one of the nations that threatened them, but they were slaves, and they were destroyed by their own slavery.

One of the interesting aspects of the life of that time was that first, Assyria and then Babylon had a pattern whereby they enslaved peoples. Before their armies began to march into any area, first of all, Assyria and then Babylon would send out their tamkaru, their merchants. Their merchants would go out with all kinds of goods on easy credit terms. They would tie up an entire nation on credit, so that everyone was in debt and was living in terms of debt, head over heels in debt, living way beyond their means, and the net result was that very soon, while they maintained the façade of a godly and a free people, they were no longer godly nor free. This was the case with Israel and then with Judah. Before their downfall, they had become debt-ridden peoples. You can read a reference to the tamkaru in Nahum 3:16.

And so today, we have a like condition. We have a world of slaves, a world of people who are in debt, contrary to God’s word, and who are continually oppressed by debt, and who therefore, are ready for the hypocrisy of saying, “I am a free man” when God says the debt-ridden man is a slave, who are ready to advocate Fascism, who are ready for compromise. Whether it be red or dead, or whether it be maintaining a façade of Christianity while being, at heart, a pagan. This is the world of Fascism, and it is all around us.

We will wait until the end of our next session, which will start immediately for questions, both on Fascism and our next subject, which is Cities of Refuge.

End of tape