독재와 정치종교 : 독일 나치즘과 일본 파시즘의 상징의 정치

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to present the concept of political religion as a method of comparing cultural and symbolic politics of various forms of mass dictatorship. For this purpose, it compares the political religions of Nazism and Japanese Fascism which appeared in the 1930s. Both of them were a cultural and symbolic politics both dictatorial regimes implemented to reshape the existing nation state into a fraternal community unified by one political creed. Their political religions functioned as an invasive instrument of building consent to this end. Both of them used traditional religious cultures which molded the pattern of thought, emotion and attitude as well as social moral and political norm of the masses. Despite such similarities, the political religion of Nazism is classified as new revolutionary nationalistic religion based upon its own solid political and religious credo, and that of Japanese Fascism as conventional nationalistic religion formed already in the phase of Japanese nation state building. Thus, without such a new exclusive credo, the latter was more integrative than the former : The latter used more consistent and effective traditional religious culture of its own than the former whose ethno- religious credo contributed to causing a conflict with main religious subcultures. While the Former was only one version of various forms of competitive nationalistic religions based upon various social morals and political norms, the latter meant only a totalitarian practice of existing nationalistic political religion, so that there was no serious antagonism among those who were hostile to Fascists, insofar they were nationalistic and royal. Moreover, while the latter depended on the traditional myth in order to claim the exceptional value of national leader, the former relied on the myth of a living person, which was easy to be proved as a fiction.