In contrast to the likes of U.S. radio stalwart Father Coughlin—who wielded Catholicism to muster sympathy and support for Nazism and American neutrality in World War II—Austrofascists used Catholicism to define themselves in opposition to Nazism. They pathologized Nazism as a vulgar, thuggish outgrowth of north German (i.e., Prussian) militarism and Protestantism, and they saw Nazism as a nearly pagan cult. In Austrofascist calculations, Catholicism made Austrians the “best type” of German and Christian—the most authentic creators, bearers, and defenders of Kultur and Geist. By this logic, their anti-Nazi stance was fulfilling Austria’s historical mission to hold the line of “the West” against nondescript hordes from “the East,” be they Mongols, Ottomans, Soviets, or, in the 1930s, Prussians in Nazi uniforms. Indeed, some Austrofascists disparaged Prussians as east European Slavs masquerading as Germans.
The Catholic Church in Austria went all in on this authoritarian, fascist endeavor. Such eager collaboration has also earned the Austrofascist regime the label of “clerical fascist” among some historians, a modern ideological spin on older notions of theocracy. Ignaz Seipel, the revered leader of the Christian Social Party that later spearheaded the Ständestaat, was himself a Catholic priest. Political rallies featured massive statues of Jesus on the cross, before which Church leaders said Mass. Such iconography and clerical agency would have been unheard of at Nazi rallies, where sacrality was held by the Führer alone. Austrofascists adored their own Führer, Engelbert Dollfuss, as the Austrian David to the German Goliath. When Nazis assassinated him in a 1934 Putsch-attempt, the country saw an outpouring of memorials that framed him as Austria’s messianic leader. Catholicism also framed Austrofascist policies, as Austrian leaders looked to the papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno to guide their economic decisions.
This curious Austrofascist case—while perhaps fringe and short-lived—casts a much longer legacy over the politicization of Catholicism. Mustering Catholicism against Nazism, while a good thing on its own, ought not be a heuristic for ethical and moral behavior. Case in point: Austrofascist leaders themselves committed horrific abuses. They oversaw the dismemberment of Parliament in 1933, warped Austria’s First Republic into their authoritarian dictatorship, violently suppressed opposition, banned other political parties, and established concentration camps for dissidents. Much of this persecution was aimed at the Left, but it was also meant to eliminate the Nazi threat in Austria, which was banned in 1933 and whose remaining members were, ironically enough, sent to such concentration camps.
Likewise, we see the Right of today offering us nothing but the braggadocious rhetoric of a negative politics, in which “owning the libs” has become both the means and ends. Indeed, Deneen attacks liberalism again and again as destructive of a healthy civilization and insists that its replacement through “a raw assertion of power” would allow the right kind of society to come into being. This vision is negative in two senses of the word: it mobilizes populism’s worst impulses, and it’s really just a cathartic tantrum aimed at tearing down the current establishment. All the while, it offers very little of substance that is actually new.
Such political-project-by-negation also rings uncannily familiar to what the Austrofascists had on offer: little to nothing feasible in their own right save for obsessive vitriol against everything else, from political ideologies like Nazism, Marxism, socialism, and liberalism to religious beliefs like Protestantism, Judaism, and atheism. Thus do such right-wing revolutionaries—indeed, Deneen claims to want something more revolutionary than revolution—do the (relatively) easy work of casting aspersions on the status quo. Since radical revolutionaries remain in opposition, usually by definition, they can keep procrastinating the much harder work of delivering new, concrete solutions until “after” they have “won,” even if that first victory is easy, pyrrhic, and short-lived. Trump, for example, was the ultimate tantrum candidate; after winning the White House, his meandering policies were just about slashing budgets, tax rates, and international agreements rather than delivering concrete results. At most, such negative politics just serve to contribute to ongoing confusion. People across the political spectrum must be wary not to fall for this cathartic clamor in the hopes that some better alternative will fall into place.
If we feed such frustration and resentment, then we risk repeating the same mistakes as Catholic Austrofascist activists: alienating, even eliminating, all available allies in the struggle against what was, in actuality, modern humanity’s worst ideology.
