Civil War, but subsequently became a declining influence within the Franco
regime. Subsequent movements of a similar nature have either adopted, or
been christened with, the label ‘falangist’: the most important being the
Christian Falange in Lebanon.
Likepopulism, which it resembles in some respects, it is difficult to give a
tight definition to a falangist movement. Essentially, the term denoted a social
and political movement in which historical traditions and ideas of national
character or destiny are coupled to right-wing andauthoritarianpractices for
running a state. The most important of these traditional elements is undoubt-
edly the Church. Not only is the Christian Falange in the Lebanon clearly
Church-based, but the acquiescence and at times enthusiastic, support of the
Roman Catholic hierarchy in Spain was vital to Franco’s success. The move-
ment is populist in as much as it aims for cross-class support, in which the
religious and national identities are claimed to be vastly more important than
mere differences in economic status. However, while populism can be said to
be working-class in origin, and most probably based on organized labour, a
falange rests more on the middle class, looking to the working class for support,
but also relying on institutions, especially the Church, for its authority, and
lacks the minimum degree of economic redistribution to be found in populism
and some forms of fascism. Falangism, consequently, is considered likely to
diminish as a political force as secularization reduces the influence of organized
religion throughout the world.
False Consciousness
False consciousness is a concept that comes from the theory ofideology, and
especially from arguments on this subject withinMarxism. It refers to a state
in which people’s beliefs, values or preferences are seen as ‘false’, that is,
artificially created by their culture or society. For example, a conflict between
trade unions inside a work-force might be seen as a false consciousness on the
grounds that workers ‘ought’ to realize that unity in the face of capitalists is in
the ‘true interests’ of all workers. Similarly, affluent workers who see a
government that might increase their taxes to pay for welfare benefits to the
less affluent as less in their interest than one which might reduce taxes would
also be suffering from a false consciousness, because they ‘ought’ to realize that
ultimately all workers are exploited by capitalist society. A ‘true consciousness’
would have them supporting their less affluent fellow workers. Clearly it is an
evaluative concept, and one that requires a very powerful theory to support it.
Otherwise we can all describe anything someone else wants as a ‘false’ interest.
Nevertheless, there are clear examples of people suffering false consciousness,
believing that some policy will help them when it will not, or holding values
and attitudes that one can easily trace to ideological conditioning or media
False Consciousness