Fascist Apocalypticism: "Judeo-Bolshevism" and Divine Kingship in Romanian Ultranationalism (1927-1941)

Apocalyptic themes formed a central part of the rhetoric of The Legion of the Archangel Michael (1927-1941), Romania’s interwar mystico-fascist movement. Key to the Legion’s propaganda was the Satanically conceived threat of “Judeo-Bolshevism” from the East. Although the Legion’s founder and Căpitan, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was executed by King Carol II in 1938 and the Legion was ultimately crushed at the hands of Marshal Ion Antonescu in 1941, the notion that the apocalypse was at the gates and that only an ultranationalist government with a supreme leader at its head could save the nation continued to be mobilized by Antonescu’s genocidal personal dictatorship. I argue that the success of this apocalyptic propagandizing to the Romanian people heavily relied on mythical ideation. In addition to the self-evidently operative myth of “Judeo-Bolshevism” itself, I specifically analyze the workings of the politico-theological myth of divine kingship within this context of mystico-fascist apocalypticism.