Fascism appropriated the Hegelian idea of a national spirit to justify state power

Evidence

Many of the classic themes of the Althusserian intervention are resumed in and through his various uses of this term: for example, his argument that Marx’s “unity” is not the essentialist “expressive unity” to be found in Hegel, and that, therefore, Marx’s dialectic is not merely an inversion, but a theoretical advance over Hegel. … Marx’s “complex unity,” Althusser argues, is neither that in which everything perfectly expresses or corresponds to everything else; nor that in which everything is reducible to an expression of “the Economic.” It operates, instead, on the terrain of articulation. … Such conjunctures are not so much “determined” as overdetermined, i.e., they are the product of an articulation of contradictions, not directly reduced to one another. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 617 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The dialectic may at first sight seem to be the discourse of the universal and historical movement of contradiction and war, but I think that it does not in fact validate this discourse in philosophical terms. On the contrary, it seems to me that it had the effect of taking it over and displacing it into the old form of philosophico-juridical discourse. Basically, the dialectic codifies struggle, war, and confrontations into a logic, or socalled logic, of contradiction; it turns them into the twofold process of the totalization and revelation of a rationality that is at once final but also basic, and in any case irreversible. The dialectic, finally, ensures the historical constitution of a universal subject, a reconciled truth, and a right in which all particularities have their ordained place. The Hegelian dialectic and all those that came after it must, I think and as I will try to demonstrate to you, be understood as philosophy and right’s colonization and authoritarian colonization of a historico-political discourse that was both a statement of fact, a proclamation, and a practice of social warfare. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 75 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: The ethical State concept was borrowed by fascism from Croce; Fascist school reform aimed to synthesize Italian high culture around the national ideal; Hypernationalist rhetoric served to justify a supranational monopoly of power (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Althusser rejected the Hegelian ‘expressive totality’ conception of society #complicates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 617
• Western scholarship’s Hegelian grid cast Africa as manufactured barbarism #exemplifies (0.75)
• Hypernationalist rhetoric served to justify a supranational monopoly of power #qualifies (0.72)
• The Hegelian dialectic colonized war discourse into philosophy #complicates (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 75
• The ethical State concept was borrowed by fascism from Croce #expands (0.70)
• Fascist school reform aimed to synthesize Italian high culture around the national ideal #exemplifies (0.70)