Belated national development made Latin European states receptive to Church-tolerating Fascism

Evidence

The only countries where to all appearances state idolatry and nation worship were not yet outmoded and where nationalist slogans against the “suprastate” forces were still a serious concern of the people were those Latin-European countries like Italy and, to a lesser degree, Spain and Portugal, which had actually suffered a definite hindrance to their full national development through the power of the Church. It was partly due to this authentic element of belated national development and partly to the wisdom of the Church, which very sagely recognized that Fascism was neither anti-Christian nor totalitarian in principle and only established a separation of Church and State which already existed in other countries, that the initial anticlerical flavor of Fascist nationalism subsided rather quickly and gave way to a modus vivendi as in Italy, or to a positive alliance, as in Spain and Portugal. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 648

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the scaffolded distinction between national and imperial consciousness that Arendt builds across this chapter — nationalism’s survival only where national development was blocked.