Nacionalismo was a mainly far-right Argentine nationalist movement that around 1910 grew out of the "traditionalist" position, which was based on nostalgia for feudal economic relations and a more "organic" social order. It became a significant force in Argentine politics beginning in the 1930s. Nacionalismo was typically centred upon the support of order, hierarchy, a corporative society, militant Catholicism, and the landed estates (latifundia), combined with the hatred of liberalism, leftism, Freemasonry, feminism, Jews and foreigners.Sandra McGee Deutsch, Ronald H. Dolkart. The Argentine right: its history and intellectual origins, 1910 to the present. SR Books, 1993. Pp. xvi. It denounced liberalism and democracy as the prelude to communism. The movement was also irredentist, declaring intentions to annex Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and some southern and eastern parts of Bolivia and even the British-held territory of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and its dependencies.
Nacionalismo was strongly influenced by Maurassisme and Spanish clericalism as well as by Italian fascism and Nazism. After the 1930 Argentine coup d'etat, Nacionalistas firmly supported the entrenchment of an authoritarian corporatist state led by a military leader. Nacionalistas often refused to participate in elections because of their opposition to elections as a derivative of liberalism. Its advocates were writers, journalists, a few politicians, colonels, and other junior military officers; the latter supported the Nationalists largely because, for most of their existence, they saw in the military the only potential political saviour of the country.
Ideology
Nacionalismo supported a "return to tradition, to the past, to sentiments authentically Argentine, ... [to] the reintegration of the nation with these essential values"; these essential values included Roman Catholicism, claiming that to the Church "the Nation should be linked as the body to the soul".David Rock. Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History and Its Impact. Berkeley, California, USA: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. 100. Nacionalismo opposed secular education, accusing it of being "Masonic laicism", and supported clerical control of education.
Nacionalismo based its twin policy of opposition to liberalism and socialism, which it combined with its promotion of social justice, on the papal encyclicals of 1891 (Rerum novarum) and 1931 (Quadragesimo anno). Nacionalismo supported improving relations between the social classes to achieve the Catholic ideal of an organic, "harmonious" society.
History of ideology If the nationalists had reached the 1930 coup without a defined ideology, throughout the 1930s they formalized their ideas and their programme for political action and government. They adopted corporatism, reaffirmed the reasons for their contempt for party politics and democracy, and shaped the other concepts that defined their thought.Navarro Gerassi, 1968, p. 91.
All these groups exalted youth, energy and masculinity; the role of women in the society they aspired to create was highly subordinate, limited to keeping the home and family functioning. They were, almost without exception, fanatical Catholics, who aspired to a strong government elected by the corporations and attacked Congress. Their proposals supported a certain degree of statism, upheld corporatism and proclaimed a return to the traditions that preceded the liberal triumph, which they placed in the mid-19th century. Unlike almost all previous generations since Independence, they claimed Spain as a source of civilization and opposed the dogma of indefinite progress based on scientism.Lvovich, 2006, pp. 48–51.
With regard to their Catholicism, it was inevitable: the 1930s were a period in which the Catholic Church was at its height, and believed it had restored the "Catholic nation", leaving behind the atheism and agnosticism that in previous decades had been reflected both in most conservative leaders and in almost the whole of radicalism. In practice, that identification was not always sincere and was used only as a resource in support of traditions prior to liberal constitutionalism. And it was not even well received by the Catholic authorities and organizations themselves: Argentine Catholic Action rejected the magazine Crisol'''s belonging to Catholicism, declaring that Catholicism was incompatible with Nazism.Lvovich, 2006, pp. 49–51.
Nationalism advocated a "return to tradition, to the past, to authentically Argentine feelings, ... to the reintegration of the nation with these essential values". These essential values included Roman Catholicism, affirming that the Church and "the Nation must be united as the body to the soul". Nationalism opposed secular education, accusing it of being Masonic laicism, and supported clerical control of education.Bethell, 1992, pp. 33–34. It based its twin policy of opposition to liberalism and socialism, together with the promotion of social justice, on the papal encyclicals of 1891 (Rerum novarum) and 1931 (Quadragesimo anno). Nationalism supported improving relations between social classes in order to achieve the Catholic ideal of an organic and "harmonious" society.Bethell, 1992, pp. 33–34.
One of the most widespread topics among these groups was anticommunism: while in the previous decade it had not received attention because it was considered harmless to the Argentine state, during the 1930s warnings abounded about the imminence of a communist revolution; communists were discovered everywhere, and anything that was not openly corporatist had to be considered a possible path to communism.Lvovich, 2006, p. 51.
One of the points on which the different nationalisms clashed was the interpretation of minorities and leaders: while some of the most prominent groups advocated the need to submit to the leadership of absolute, patriotic and strong chiefs, or to be guided by a tiny minority of determined men, others sought to found mass movements, capable of winning through numerical superiority. If it were necessary to participate in elections, the latter considered themselves better prepared after extending the movement to the masses. The former, by contrast, needed to justify their position by clarifying that they intended to seize power, but by no means through electoral means.Lvovich, 2006, p. 52.
The vast majority of these movements advocated an interventionist state, capable of regulating and directing economic activity in order to secure the rights and subsistence of those who had the least; the general situation of the country during the 1930s, amid a great advance of poverty and unemployment, forced them to define how they would solve it. In any case, beyond strong interventionism, at no point did they think of questioning the "natural" right to private property, more because of a reflex conditioned by the desire to appear in positions opposed to the left than out of conviction. What they questioned was "illegitimate capital", that is, any activity that made profits without producing anything or contributing to the growth of society. They also opposed the country's dependence on British capital.Lvovich, 2006, p. 54.
Right-wing and left-wing Nacionalismo Authors such as Rosa de Diego and Rafael Cuevas Molina distinguish within nationalism two major ideological currents: the first seeks to strengthen national self-determination against colonial, imperialist or neocolonial powers, a current that has been characterized as "liberating nationalism", or "anti-imperialist nationalism" while the second seeks to promote the supremacy of one nation over others, described by Memmi as "the nationalism of the colonizer", and characterized by Rosa de Diego as "exclusionary and dominating nationalism". Other thinkers argue that there is no difference or contradiction between these two strands, but rather that they are different manifestations of the same impulse underlying all nationalism: the reaffirmation of one's own cultural values and their imposition over others. This impulse may appear as "independence-oriented" or "imperialist" depending on external circumstances such as geopolitical balance of power, rather than distinct ideological premises. Thus, in the words of Fernando Savater:
Aside from this idea, and regardless of the validity attributed to situations of domination or dependence between different states, a distinction is often made between left-wing nationalism or "popular" nationalism, which, rather than being based on the traditional family and its rights, is grounded in philosophical concepts shared with sectors of the political left, such as social justice, popular sovereignty and national self-determination (both political and economic). By contrast, right-wing nationalism is understood as one that especially favors the nuclear family and its rights, as it sees the family as the primary means of promoting the nation and the processes it undergoes. From the perspective of conservative nationalists, the family is the structure that connects past events to promote a better future. This form of nationalism defends traditional social values and promotes social stability. According to Austrian political scientist Sieglinde Rosenberger, "national conservatism praises the family as the home and center of identity, solidarity and emotion". In some cases, it seeks to exclude dissenters from national identity, rejecting multiculturalism and immigration as threats to the identity it aims to preserve. Historically, it has often embraced strong anti-communism, opposing left-wing movements and labeling their ideas as "foreign".
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, right-wing nationalism came to oppose democracy and equality, as well as the value of diversity. Among the forms of equality it rejected was universal, equal, and secret suffrage, proposing instead corporative representation as a decision-making system. This implied a shift toward a capitalist mode of production of a corporatist type, based on the creation of corporations inspired by the guilds of pre-industrial societies, in which employers and workers would be integrated to achieve "social harmony" (in contrast to the class struggle of Marxism). "Corporatism sought to implement new mechanisms of regulation of labour relations that would eliminate the uncertainty and conflict inherent to the liberal model, while leaving intact the core of capitalist social relations, particularly property rights and the subordination of labor to capital". Corporatism reached its peak during the interwar period when Catholic corporatism was joined by "authoritarian corporatism", exemplified by the corporatism of Mussolini's Italy (and the guild-inspired ideas of Émile Durkheim) and applied in several non-democratic European countries such as Portugal, Austria, Germany, and Spain (the National Corporate Organization of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the later Organization Syndicate of the Franco dictatorship).
After World War II, corporatism became completely discredited due to its association with defeated fascisms.
Right-wing Nacionalismo