I recently reread part of
The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. It's a really good book. I'd reread the whole thing, but I think I'm at the point where I just want to move on to something else.
I originally read the entire book in 2012 for a university "History of Nazi Germany" class, although not as assigned reading. It was published in 2004 when "fascism" was a just a historical curiosity (and an occasional slur by punk kids) and not a serious concern. Even in 2012 it wasn't really a thing that seemed particularly relevant or threatening for the potential future. Perhaps not coincidentally it was one of my classmates who was the first person I ever heard declare that "communism and fascism are the same thing" which has now become gospel truth among the right wing.
The book focuses on Germany and Italy (the two unquestionable examples of not only fascism, but it's ascent to official national control) and puts much more emphasis on what the parties of Hitler and Mussolini actually did
in practice that what they said. Unlike Marxism, fascism isn't an intellectual ideology full of complex theory. Identifying how Hitler and Mussolini succeeded and what they did, especially commonalities between the two, gives a practical definition of what fascism really is and how it succeeded.
Along the way the book looks in brief at a variety of unsuccessful fascist and quasi-fascist political parties in other countries, and the other regimes that did rule countries which are sometimes called fascist. Paxton argues that while there have been other real fascist parties, there has never been another truly fascist country. Other alleged fascist regimes had some similarities to fascism and borrowed ideas from them, but weren't really fascist.
Some of the foundations of fascism (pg 41):
- overwhelming crisis beyond traditional solutions
- "belief that one's group is a victim" thus justifying extreme action against perceived enemies
- "dread of the group's decline"
- "need for closer integration of a purer community" - by violence, if necessary
- "need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny"
- "superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason"
A curious thing about true fascists is that the anti-capitalism rhetoric of their early days (much if which was soon discarded when it became apparent Leftists weren't interested in fascism, and little of which was actually carried out once in power) stemmed from the belief that bourgeois materialism was damaging to The State. My observation is that this is the greatest contrast between classic fascism and modern quasi-fascist right wing ideology: explicitly pro-capitalism. Instead of bourgeois materialism being a threat, it is now a goal to be celebrated, an example of greatness. I think what we have today, in a way that I'm not sure anyone has quantified, is an amalgamation between between libertarianism and fascism, mostly by people who have never identified as either.
Robert Paxton was interviewed in early 2016 about Trump and fascism:
To discuss Trump’s rise and its historical echoes, I called Robert Paxton, a leading authority on the history of fascism.
slate.com
He wrote an op-ed in early 2021 as a followup:
After last week the label seems not just acceptable, but necessary.
www.newsweek.com
