Finland The
Finnish Civil War "offered a concrete arena for violent struggle, and the reprisals and purges following the war gave an opportunity to try to create a new society through redemptive violence": Finnish proto-fascists were invariably members of the anti-communist
White Guard. The White Guard ideologue and proponent of eugenics
Martti Pihkala (1882–1966) is considered a clear example of proto-fascism. Fascism researcher
Roger Griffin also described the
Finnish irredentist Academic Karelia Society as proto-fascist.
France French proto-fascism emerged from late-19th-century
Fin de siècle nationalist, xenophobic and anti-liberal currents that prefigured interwar fascist
leagues. The
Dreyfus affair galvanized antisemitic and anti-parliamentary forces, offering rhetoric and organizational models for the far right. Thinkers like
Georges Sorel created an anti-bourgeois cult of violence and myth, while
Charles Maurras's
Action Française fused integral nationalism, monarchism and hostility to the French Republic. After
World War I, the proto-fascist movements of the
Weimar Republic included the
Freikorps militias, which combatted the leftists between the
German Revolution of 1918 and the
Nazi seizure of power (
see Political violence in Germany in 1918–1933), the
Stahlhelm, a revanchist and
authoritarian nationalist World War I veteran organization, the
German National Association of Commercial Employees (, DHV), the
German National People's Party (, DNVP) from 1931 onwards.
Japan According to some scholars,
Japan, which has a tradition of
obedience,
cooperation, and
solidarity, already had at least a proto-fascist and proto-totalitarian spirit, so unlike Italy and Germany, it was able to adopt a totalitarian attitude without radical change in the late 1930s. During the
Meiji era, there was a clash between liberal
Ōka shugi (欧化主義), which advocated for Western-style
modernization, and nationalist/anti-Western
Kokusui shugi (国粋主義), which was critical of modernization; the latter later became the ideological foundation of
Japanese fascism or
Kokka shugi (国家主義) and is regarded as proto-fascism.
Kokusui shugi is based on the theory of
kokutai (国体論) and absolutizes the Emperor of the
ikkei and the people/nation (国民) as a historical community. ''
Gen'yōsha'' (founded in 1879), and the
Black Dragon Society (founded in 1901), are representative proto-fascist organizations.
Spain The historians
Paul Preston and
Julián Casanova, who treat
Francoism as a Spanish variant of fascism, note that "Spanish fascism" was established by the unity of the right-wing groups and parties and the military rebels, which formed the
Nationalist faction of the
Spanish Civil War. According to them, the Spanish anti-republican right which would later support the rebellion, including the cultural association
Acción Española which propagated the idea of an anti-republican military uprising, the nationalist authoritarian corporatist party
CEDA, the organization
Spanish Renovation, and the
Carlist Requetés, shared a political culture, similar to the Italian proto-Fascism and the German
Völkisch movement. In the Civil War, the Spanish right, including the military rebels, underwent further political radicalization and fascisation; as Preston writes, "throughout the Civil War, the politics of the army were indistinguishable from contemporary fascisms." , a French
national syndicalist and later self-identified French fascist of France's first official fascist party, the
Faisceau Russia In the
Russian Empire, pro-Tsarist
reactionary groups have been viewed as proto-fascist in nature, especially the
Black Hundreds movement and the
Union of the Russian People (; СРН/SRN).
United States Proto-fascism in the United States dates back to the 19th century with roots in
slavery in the
Antebellum South and the
Confederacy, the subsequent passage of
Black Codes and
Jim Crow laws in the
American South, the rise of the
eugenicist discourse in the U.S., and the intensification of
nativist and
xenophobic hostility towards
immigrants. During the early 20th century, several groups that contemporary historians have classified as fascist organizations were formed in the United States – a prominent group is the
Ku Klux Klan. == Historical individuals ==