ABSTRACT
During the interwar period, the term ‘fascist’ was applied throughout Europe as a pejorative for political opponents; only on a few occasions did some accept it as a badge of honour (Payne, 2004: 55). In Finland, no organisations called themselves fascist, and none called themselves anti-fascist for that matter. By no means, however, does this imply the absence of fascist-type and anti-fascist organisations and actors per se. After all, Finland was one of the countries in Europe that encountered a strong extreme-right surge, and one of the few to suppress it. Despite a major adversary, Finnish liberal anti-fascism was not a clear-cut ‘ideology’ that constituted a uniform set of ideas and practices to defeat fascist or extreme-right objectives. Philip Williamson (2010: 75) has described such diversity among the British Conservative Party, and the same characterisation applies to Finnish liberals. It was perfectly possible to share some ideas with fascists, such as fierce anti-communism, and yet be a true anti-fascist with hostility towards most other fascist ideas and methods. Currently in fascism studies, an ‘ideological’ approach is applied to fascism. The aim is to define the concept in terms of the goals it sets out to achieve, rather than in terms of its negations (Griffin, 2004a: 6). Following this line of thought, Finnish liberal anti-fascism is characterised and analysed in this chapter in a similar fashion. Was it the case that extreme-right or fascist ideals and actions were considered a serious threat, or a passing infatuation? What was the liberal anti-fascist response like, and how did it adapt to the situation?
