Mises saw European fascism as a temporary savior of liberal civilization against Bolshevism.

Evidence

A decade earlier, Mises had been cautiously optimistic that fascist movements had saved Europe from the crisis of Bolshevism. ‘It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization’, he wrote – adding that the ‘merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history’. Although he warned that fascism was no more than an ‘emergency makeshift’, he stressed that it emerged not among ‘barbarians’, as had Bolshevism, but in Europe, where ‘the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization cannot be destroyed at one blow’. Fascist movements would therefore always remain under the influence of liberalism, he predicted and, once the indignation at Bolshevik ‘murders and atrocities’ had passed, fascism would become more ‘moderate’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 105

Categorization

• SEED: A compelling angle: the liberal-right’s 1930s embrace of fascism as ‘emergency makeshift’ against communism, and how this prediction of fascism’s moderation proved spectacularly wrong.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone who studies the intellectual lineages of the market right or the Mises-Hayek circle.
• XREF: connects to: Mises privately welcomed fascism as a temporary bulwark against Bolshevism and European decline — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 105

Broader Connections

• Mises privately welcomed fascism as a temporary bulwark against Bolshevism and European decline #corroborates (1.00) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 105