From the author of Vichy France, a fascinating, authoritative history of fascism in all its manifestations, and how and why it took hold in certain countries and not in others. What is fascism? Many authors have proposed succinct but abstract definitions. The author of this book prefers to start with concrete historical experience. He focuses more on what fascists did than on what they said. Their first uniformed bands beat up "enemies of the nation," such as communists and foreign immigrants, during the tense days after 1918 when the liberal democracies of Europe were struggling with the aftershocks of World War I. Fascist parties could not approach power, however, without the complicity of conservatives willing to sacrifice the rule of law for security. The author makes clear the sequence of steps by which fascists and conservatives together formed regimes in Italy and Germany, and why fascists remained out of power …
From the author of Vichy France, a fascinating, authoritative history of fascism in all its manifestations, and how and why it took hold in certain countries and not in others. What is fascism? Many authors have proposed succinct but abstract definitions. The author of this book prefers to start with concrete historical experience. He focuses more on what fascists did than on what they said. Their first uniformed bands beat up "enemies of the nation," such as communists and foreign immigrants, during the tense days after 1918 when the liberal democracies of Europe were struggling with the aftershocks of World War I. Fascist parties could not approach power, however, without the complicity of conservatives willing to sacrifice the rule of law for security. The author makes clear the sequence of steps by which fascists and conservatives together formed regimes in Italy and Germany, and why fascists remained out of power elsewhere. Fascist regimes were strained alliances. While fascist parties had broad political leeway, conservatives preserved many social and economic privileges. Goals of forced national unity, purity, and expansion, accompanied by propaganda driven public excitement, held the mixture together. War opened opportunities for fascist extremists to pursue these goals to the point of genocide. The author shows how these opportunities manifested themselves differently in France, in Britain, in the Low Countries, and in Eastern Europe, and yet failed to achieve supreme power. He goes on to examine whether fascism can exist outside the specific early twentieth century European setting in which it emerged, and whether it can reappear today. This book, based on a lifetime of research, will have a lasting impact on our understanding of twentieth century history.
Paxton reviews the beginnings of fascism, its rise to power, and how it governed in order to try to suss out the common threads between successful and unsuccessful fascisms. Published in 2004, I hoped the book would explain how regimes with fascist tendencies like that of Donald Trump could be thwarted. Interestingly, Paxton hesitated to call Trump a fascist until Trump's unsuccessful attempt to retain power. Indeed, in the book Paxton makes an attempt to do away with democratic norms with the threat or actuality of a populist uprising one of the key part of fascism during stage 2, when it becomes influential, rather than mere groups of people obsessed with the unity and purity of the national people. Very solid and I recommend it.
