Brit HaBirionim was a clandestine, self-declared fascist

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 faction of the Revisionist Zionist Movement

Revisionist Zionism

Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...

 (ZRM) in the British Mandate of Palestine, active between 1930 and 1933. It was founded by the trio of Abba Ahimeir

Abba Ahimeir

Abba Ahimeir was a Jewish journalist, historian and political activist. One of the ideologues of Revisionist Zionism, he was the founder of the Revisionist Maximalist faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement and of the clandestine Brit HaBirionim....

, Uri Zvi Greenberg

Uri Zvi Greenberg

Uri Zvi Grinberg was an acclaimed Israeli poet and journalist who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.-Biography:Uri Zvi Grinberg was born in Bialikamin, Galicia, then Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg . Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published...

 and Dr. Joshua Yeivin.

Background

The 1929 Arab riots

1929 Palestine riots

The 1929 Palestine riots, also known as the Western Wall Uprising, the 1929 Massacres, , or the Buraq Uprising , refers to a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 when a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence...

 and the Haganah

Haganah

Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

's inability to successfully prevent the 1929 Hebron massacre

1929 Hebron massacre

The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven Jews on 23 and 24 August 1929 in Hebron, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of Muslim holy places...

 and the Safed massacre led to the creation of the first militant organization characterized by its complete disassociation from the existing Zionist establishment dominated by the Labor Zionist movement

Labor Zionism

Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...

.

Ideology

The organization's official ideology, was Revisionist Maximalism

Revisionist Maximalism

Revisionist Maximalism was a Jewish fascist ideology which was part of the Brit HaBirionim faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement created by Abba Ahimeir. Revisionist Maximalists strongly supported the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and wanted the creation of an Israel based on...

 which was modeled upon Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

. It sought to create a fascist corporatist

Corporatism

Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...

 state. It is also influenced by the Canaanite

Canaanism

Canaanism was a cultural and ideological movement founded in 1939 that reached its peak in the 1940s among the Jews of Palestine. It has significantly impacted the course of Israeli art, literature, and spiritual and political thought. Its adherents were called Canaanites...

 ideology of Yonatan Ratosh

Yonatan Ratosh

Uriel Shelach , better known by his pen name Yonatan Ratosh , was an Israeli poet and the founder of the Canaanite movement.-Biography :...

 and the theories of Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...

 in The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West , or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918...

(1918). It called for the Zionist Revisionist Movement (ZRM) to adopt the fascist principles of the regime of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

 in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 to create an integralist

Integralism

Integralism, or Integral nationalism, is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups...

 "pure nationalism" amongst Jews. Revisionist Maximalism rejects communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

, humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, internationalism

Internationalism (politics)

Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...

, liberalism

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, pacifism

Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

 and socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

; condemned liberal Zionists

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 for only working for middle-class Jews rather than the Jewish nation as a whole. Revisionist Maximalism's minimal goals were presented in 1932 where Ahimeir officially called for the leadership of the Zionist Revisionist Movement to be redesigned into the form of a dictatorship, called for the creation of an independent Zionist federation, called for a "war on funds" to end corruption in the Zionist movement, and called for a war on anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

. The movement's psychology was emphasized in its motto of "conquer or die".

Activities

Members of Brit HaBirionim carried out several operations, including demonstrations against visiting British dignitaries, rallies against the British arrest and deportation to Europe of Jewish refugees who overstayed their tourist visas, attempts to interrupt a census conducted by the British, and other illegal activities intended as public provocations such as blowing the Shofar

Shofar

A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...

 at the Western Wall

Western Wall

The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel is located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount...

 (forbidden to Jews at that time), and removing the Nazi flags from two German consulates.

In 1933, the British Mandatory Authority arrested several members, including Ahimeir, and charged them with the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff

Chaim Arlosoroff

Haim Arlozoroff was a Zionist leader in Palestine during the era of the British Mandate for Palestine and head of the political department of the Jewish Agency. Arlosoroff was assassinated while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv in 1933....

. Though acquitted of the charges in 1934, the trial tarnished the group's reputation and led to its isolation by former political supporters among the Jewish populace, and eventually to its demise.