Third Position

The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc. Between the 1920s and 1940s, various dissident groups presented themselves as part of a movement distinct from both capitalism and Marxist socialism. This idea was revived by various political groups following the Second World War. The rhetoric of the "Third Position" developed among Terza Posizione in Italy and Troisième Voie in France; in the 1980s, it was taken up by the National Front in the United Kingdom. These groups emphasize opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right" while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and left-wing economic views. The term "Third Position" was coined in Europe and the main precursors of Third Position politics were Italian fascism, Prussian socialism, National Bolshevism (a synthesis of far-right ultranationalism and far-left Bolshevism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action, worker-based, socialist form of Nazism, advocated by the "left-wing" of the Nazi Party by brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934). Neo-fascist, neo-Nazi author Francis Parker Yockey had proposed an alliance between communists and fascists called the red-brown alliance (red being the color of communism and brown being the color of Nazism). Yockey lent support to Third World liberation movements as well. Querfront Querfront ("cross-front") was the cooperation between conservative revolutionaries in Germany with the far-left during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. Ernst Niekisch and others tried to combine communist and anti-capitalist nationalist forces to overthrow the existing order of the Weimar Republic.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (22)

Italian fascism

Italian fascism (fascismo italiano), also known as classical fascism or simply fascism, is the original fascist ideology as developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini. The ideology is associated with a series of two political parties led by Benito Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR) that ruled the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945.

Strasserism

Strasserism (Strasserismus) is a strand of Nazism calling for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of the ideology, espousing economic antisemitism above other antisemitic forms, to achieve a national rebirth. It derived its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, two brothers initially associated with this position. Otto Strasser, who opposed on strategic grounds the views of Adolf Hitler, was expelled from the Nazi Party in 1930 and entered exile in Czechoslovakia, while Gregor Strasser was murdered in Nazi Germany on 30 June 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives, a violent operation against many of Hitler's opponents, including the Strasserist elements nationwide.

National Bolshevism

National Bolshevism, whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks and colloquially as Nazbols, is a syncretic political movement committed to combining ultranationalism and communism. National Bolshevism as a term was first used to describe a faction in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) which wanted to ally the insurgent communist movement with dissident nationalist groups in the German army who rejected the Treaty of Versailles.