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"Metaxas waged war against Italy in the Greco-Italian War and against Hitler in the Battle of Greece, and allied his regime with Britain, so Metaxism cannot be seriously considered equivalent to Fascism or Nazism."
What? Why not? It sounds pretty fascist to me, since when are ideologies defined by who the people following it go to war with? 119.224.76.4 (talk) 08:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Metaxism certainly does sound Fascist and it was influenced by Fascism, but it actually isn't according to the scholarly definition of the term. See details in the section below. Uastyrdzhi (talk) 23:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Fascist Descriptors Inaccurate
I posted the following earlier in the talk page for Golden Dawn (Greece), now I'm posting it here out of sheer laziness:
"Metaxism is not generally considered a form of Fascism by scholars working in the area, although it did borrow some of the trappings of Fascism. Metaxism is considered a conservative-authoritarian doctrine which is traditionalist and actually at odds with Fascism, the latter being a more radical and modernist movement. The Metaxas government is often described as Fascist, but erroneously according to specialists like Stanley G. Payne."
Similar issues have arisen over characterizations of governments such as Franco's Spanish State in which the prevailing academic view has held sway. A more accurate description of regimes such as these would be para-fascist. For this reason, and because this content is unsourced, I will be removing Fascist descriptors from the article and replacing them with sourced descriptors more in line with prevailing academic characterizations of Metaxism (e.g., Authoritarian, Conservative, Reactionary, Traditionalist, Para-Fascist.) I will refrain from removing comparisons to Fascism, I only dispute those descriptors which explicitly label Metaxism as a form of Fascism, as this is technically inaccurate. Uastyrdzhi (talk) 00:46, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I reworked most of the information in the articles introduction. There is some new material and a lot of the old material has been edited; most of my numerous edits were rephrasing or corrections of my own input. Whatever content was already present is largely intact (though much of it is modified.) Basically I tried to make the introduction more professional in tone: I improved the grammar, did some rewording where I felt it was necessary (I suspect the original writer[s] first language was not English), and reorganized the content to improve the flow of the article. As I mentioned above, I've replaced certain phrases such as fascist or totalitarian (authoritarian and totalitarian being two different things) which are inaccurate according to sourced material. I'm retaining the Fascism Sidebar due to Metaxism's para-fascist character and its frequent inclusion in discussions of fascism. I submitted two new sources to substantiate my corrections and input, both of which were written by scholars specializing in the study of European far-right movements and governments of the early 20th century. I hope I haven't stepped on any toes, but with starting articles major content revisions are sometimes necessary and I believe that the article has been improved noticeably by the new introduction. Uastyrdzhi (talk) 21:27, 14 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It may not have been completely fascist, but there is no doubt amongst scholars that Metaxism was influenced by fascism. Its political views were very similar to fascism, except as has been noted, that Metaxism was more conservative than fascism - in that it had a strong emphasis on monarchism.--R-41 (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No disagreements there R-41, and as I mentioned above I've left comparisons to Fascism and mentions of Fascist influence in the article. The only thing I removed was text that described Metaxism as Fascist. Significant differences between these doctrines exist, and in many ways the Fascist agenda ran contrary to the conservatism of the Metaxas government. As a theory, Fascism is usually described as modernist, republican, and anti-clerical. These characteristics are important components of Fascist thought because they're central to the method by which Fascism sought to establish a totalitarian state. Christianity occupies the totality of the individual's worldview, Monarchism encourages loyalty to the royal person which has always put it at odds with nationalism; neither is therefore compatible with the Fascist ideal of a society absolutely committed to the nation-state. I'm just paraphrasing my sources here, but that's basically the reason why academic works differentiate between conservative-authoritarianism and Fascism. Uastyrdzhi (talk) 19:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
