THE APOCALYPTIC LITURGY OF A SECULAR POLITICAL MOVEMENT: DECRYPTING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE IRON GUARD Cover Image

LA LITURGIE APOCALYPTIQUE D’UN MOUVEMENT POLITIQUE SÉCULAIRE. DÉCHIFFRER L’IDÉOLOGIE DE LA GARDE DE FER
THE APOCALYPTIC LITURGY OF A SECULAR POLITICAL MOVEMENT: DECRYPTING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE IRON GUARD

Author(s): Mihai Chioveanu
Subject(s): History
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: fascism; political religion; Iron Guard; ultra-nationalism; Orthodoxy

Summary/Abstract: Over the last six decades, a significant number of Western scholars approached the Legion – Archangel Michael as one of the most popular and yet inconsistent variant of European fascism, and portrayed it as too mystical, religious, fanatic, violent, irrational, rabid anti-Semitic, obsessed with an atavistic cult of death and the idea of sacrifice. The article aims to point out that the Legion, a variant of European fascism in its epoch, only made politics religious, supplied (some of) the Romanians with a new political ideology but also with a new religion, political and quasi-secular, that took birth from disillusions and despair as to give men (and women) energy and hope, a religion that encapsulates the European spirit of that time and has less to do with Romania‘s Christian Orthodox heritage.

  • Issue Year: XIV/2012
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 47-62
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: French
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