... fascism or there is not and then look for a more accurate way to describe pre-1914 ideas and trends? `There are two ways of viewing the roots of fascism before 1914; its intellectual and artistic development (it is fair to say that our experiences of fascism obscures, as Hayes puts it, the very powerful link between the arts and fascism" ) and the socio-economic movements, the tenets of which fascism incorporated. Whether this combination can be called proto-fascism though, remains to be seen. `It cannot be denied that the latter decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an artistic and intellectual revolution that questioned and challenged the established order of European society. The rise of socialism, irrationalism (especially its literary and artistic impact) and militant nationalism were all components of fascism even though when placed together they contained irreconcilable contradictions. The synthesis of contradictions, the fusion of ideas and their opposites though, is ...

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