ABSTRACT
In modern society, secularization has not produced a definitive separation between the spheres of religion and politics. With the development of mass politics, the boundaries between these two spheres have often become confused, and on these occasions politics has assumed its own religious dimension. At the same time as this process of secularization within both the state and society, there has also been a ‘sacralization of politics’, which reached its highest point in the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. Nazism, fascism and romantic nationalism all made decisive contributions to the ‘sacralization of politics’; but democracy, socialism and communism have also contributed to the birth of new secular cults. The religious aspects of mass movements such as nazism have already been studied, whilst we do not yet have an in-depth study of fascism from this point of view. This article does not claim to provide such a study; merely to put forward some considerations on the importance and function of political religion within fascism.
