What is it about?
This article examines the ideological trajectory of Ioannis Metaxas and his intellectual Weltanschauung. It argues that he was strongly influenced by several German developments, including the Kultur vs. Zivilisation debate. Furthermore, from the 1920s he explicitly transformed key fascist ideas and drew on those of the ‘Conservative Revolution’. It shows that Metaxas addressed all key historical developments, from the turn of the century, to the establishment of his dictatorship, to the Second World War, through his ideological and intellectual prism: national reconstruction and palingenesis and a new cultural orientation for the Greek nation.
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Why is it important?
Metaxas’s thinking is examined from its formative period in Germany (1899–1903) to his dictatorship (1936–1941).
Perspectives
Metaxas tried to formulate his own ‘sacred canopy’, a new nomos which would solve not just practical issues, but also the problems of modernity as faced by his own country. In his vision for the national rebirth and palingenesis, authoritarian, radically conservative, and fascists elements coexisted. He regarded his dictatorship, which was allegedly based on the spiritual and yet living version of the ‘Megali Idea’, as a revolutionary answer to both ‘illegitimate’ Greek parliamentary democracy and the fear of communism. Although he drew from a general modernist matrix in which the aspirations of liberals, conservatives, and even leftists converged, he attempted to formulate a political and cultural solution that was more radical, stable, modernist and futural in orientation. In doing so, a number of modernist and fascist features prevailed, which can explain Metaxas’s appeal to intellectuals searching for radical solutions to the crisis of liberal democratic civilisation.
VASSILIOS BOGIATZIS
Panteion Panepistemio Koinonikon kai Politikon Epistemon
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This page is a summary of: From the ‘Nobleman’s Sword’ to the ‘Flag of the Fascist Ideals’, Fascism, November 2022, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10043.
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