[.ca] The Anatomy of Fascism (ISBN 1400033918)

Thoughtful and Thorough Analysis:
This very thoughtful book is aimed at understanding the basic features of fascism. Paxton is very concerned with rescuing the term from its present status as a convenient insult. As Paxton points out, though not until relatively late in the book, all modern democracies contain nascent fascist elements. Given the incredibly destructive consequences of successful or even partially successful fascist movements, we should have a good understanding of fascism so as to be able to recognize fascist threats. Paxton departs somewhat from prior literature in that he does not concentrate on fascist ideology. Paxton is careful also to look at a broad spectrum of facsist movements, both successful and unsuccessful, rather than falling into the trap of using Nazism as an archetype. Looking at other features of fascism than ideology makes considerable sense. Fascist movements had important differences in ideology and fascism in general, with its appeal to intense nationalism and exclusionary sense of identity, shouldn't be expected to have a uniform ideology. Italian fascism, at least in its original form, lacked the virulent anti-semitism and social darwinist preoccupations of Nazism, while the fascist movement in Romania was aggessively Christian in ideological content. Paxton provides instead a structural analysis and definition of fascism by pursuing a careful examination of how fascist movements functioned. Some of Paxton's important points are Fascism appears in failed or highly stressed democracies, that fascism involves mass politics, that fascism emerges as a reaction to perceived threats from the socialist threat, that fascism depends on charismatic leadership, and that fascism always contains a cult of violent action. A particularly important point is that the successful fascist movements, Italian Fascism and Nazism, were invited into power by traditional conservative elites seeking to coopt fascist mass mobilization in support of their own ends. In authoritarian societies where the conservative elites were more powerful or confident, such as Spain, Romania, or Hungary, fascist movements were consigned to the sidelines or actually suppressed. Paxton's analysis is thorough, largely convincing, and based on a remarkable knowledge of the huge literature on this topic. This is actually an extended essay, 220 pages of text, but the book contains also a superb annotated bibiography and outstanding footnotes which add considerably to the length of the book. I disagree with Paxton on some points. He describes fascism as the major political innovation of the 20th century, assigning liberalism, socialism, and conservatism to the 19th century. Perhaps, but I suggest that the Leninist version of Marxism is sufficiently different from 19th century socialism to constitute a new phenomenon in political life. Paxton states that an essential feature of fascism in power is the existence of parallel governmental structures. When fascism came to power in Germany and Italy, it did do in presence of intact state structures and civil institutions. Fascist party organization became a parallel structure of government and way to impose control, often competing with "normative" government. This is true but not unique to fascism. Erection of parallel bureaucracies is a common response of leadership concerned about the reliability of their formal governmental structures. The considerable expansion of American Presidential power over the last century has been accompanied by expansion of the size and power of the White House staff and its allied structures. Similarly, when the Qing conquered Ming China, they governed in parallel through both the traditional scholar-bureaucrats and through a parallel system of officials owing direct loyalty to the Qing emperors. Paxton correctly states that violent action was a necessary component of fascism and that pursuit of war was integral to Nazism and Italian Fascism maintaining their essential momentum and solving internal problems. It is worth noting however, that this is not unique to fascist states. Authoritarian states have commonly used external aggression as a way of addressing internal problems. Think of the invasion of the Falklands by the military dictatorship in Argentina or the similarly reckless and self-defeating attempt by the Greek dictators to annex Cyprus. There is a particularly strong tradition of these types of actions in German history and this was probably one of the causes of the First World War. Paxton errs also, I think, in downplaying (though not disregarding) the convergent features of fascism in power with Marxist-Leninism in power. I think the concept of totalitarianism has more power than he is willing to concede.

Whose Reich Is It Anyway?:
The Marquis de Morés, returning to 1890s Paris after his cattle ranching venture in North Dakota failed, recruited a gang of men from the Parisian cattle yards as muscle for his "national socialism" project -- a term Paxton credits Morés' contemporary Maurice Barres, a French nationalist author, with coining. Morés' project was potent and prophetic: his national socialism was a mixture of anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism. He clothed his men in what must have been the first fascist uniform in Europe -- ten-gallon hats and cowboy garb, frontier clothes he'd taken a shine to in the American West. (Author Paxton suggests the first ever fascist get-up was the KKKs white sheet and pointy hat). Morés killed a French Jewish officer in a duel during the Dreyfus affair and later was killed in the Sahara by his guides during his quest to unite France to Islam to Spain. Morés had earlier proclaimed: "Life is valuable only through action. So much the worse if the action is mortal." Here assembled together are all of the elements of what Paxton would classify as first stage fascism: "the creation of a movement." Most fascist movements stall in this first stage he notes -- think, for instance, of the skinheads, the American Nazi Party and Posse Comitatus. Paxton's other stages are 2) the rooting of the movement in the political system; 3) the seizure of power; 4) the exercise of power; and 5) the duration of power, during which the regime chooses either radicalization or entropy. He notes that although each stage "is a prerequisite for the next, nothing requires a fascist movement to complete all of them, or even to move in only one direction. The five stages permit plausible comparison between movements and regimes at equivalent degrees of development. It helps us see that fascism, far from static, was a succession of processes and choices: seeking a following, forming alliances, bidding for power, then exercising it. That is why the conceptual tools that illuminate one stage may not necessarily work equally well for others." pg. 23. Paxton also tentatively offers a definition of fascism, but only after tracing the rise of various movements from their beginnings in the 19th century through the present day. Other historians and philosophers, he suggests, have written brilliantly on fascism, but have failed to recognize that their analyses apply to only one stage or another. He also notes that often definitions of fascism are based on fascist writings; he maintains that fascist writings while valuable were often written as justification for the seizure of power, or the attempted seizure, and that what fascists actually did and do is more critical to understanding these movements. Indeed, the language of fascism has changed little since the days of the Marquis De Mores. He hesitates in offering both his definition and his analytical stages, saying that he knows by doing so he risks falling into the nominalism of the "bestiary." He demonstrates that this is a common failing of definitions of fascism which are often incomplete or muddled as they typically describe only one or two typically late stages. Other historians, for instance, split fascism into Nazism or Italian fascism, avoiding the problem of understanding their common elements by concentrating on their differences, insisting that they are incommensurable. Finally in the last pages, Paxton offers up this fairly comprehensive and useful definition: "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." Paxton is particularly strong in showing how the circumstances in post WWI Germany and Italy -- the demobilized mobs of young soldiers, sent to war by elites who had no conception of the destruction and suffering they had unleashed upon the younger generation -- were ripe for fascism's appeals. For many, liberalism, conservatism and socialism all seemed equally complicit in the crack-up of Europe in the Great War. Fascism, rising from the ashes, employed the socialistic tools of mass marches, the military techniques of terror learned in the war, and as they gained power, the new tools of mass communication and propaganda developed in the US during WWI. Fascists also reacted astutely to public discomfort toward the mass migrations from southern and eastern Europe coming in the wake of political and economic distress in those regions, using that fear to increase their power through scapegoating and its attendant rhetoric of purity. Fascism is both charged and blurry word these days, used by both the left and the right to assail their critics and enemies. The Nazi remains the evildoer par excellence in popular and political culture, invoked for a thrill of fear or the disciplinary scare or emotional incitement. In this masterful synthesis of writings in politics, history, philosophy and sociology, Paxton untangles the vast literature fascism has generated, establishes some essential ground rules for coming to grips with its many expressions, stages, and manifestations, and clears a space for further, better focused research. Although academic in its orientation, it is well and clearly written. Finally, for the reader who is not familiar with modern European history, it is a very useful and informative text as it takes into its scope by necessity much of European and American history over the past one hundred years. Absolutely required reading.

Good single volume introduction to fascism:
Fascism is the genus to which Nazism, Falangism, Francisme, the Arrow Cross, the Order of the Archangel Michael, the Ustasha, and possibly also certain strains of militant Islam belong. The book provides a very useful primer to the subject (which, by the way, goes well beyond a standard insult for supposed right wingers). It is, however, addressed to college students and won't be much fun for those with an occasional interest, nor very informative for those who have already read on the subject. But even people familiar with the subject can always use a single refresher source. The bibliographic essay is excellent, and the copious footnotes are very rewarding (who ever knew that Iceland had fascists?). The book is not as fulfilling as Payne's, but it is much shorter and up to date. Although these things should be obvious to any college-educated person, it is still useful to assert that third world dictatorships (such as Pinochet or Mobutu) are not fascist, that Fascism's symbols must be rooted in a country's culture (so that Swastikas and Roman salutes are quite useless in most countries), that Fascism could achieve power only with the support of existing elites but was not a mere tool of those elites, and that Fascism was authentically democratic (this is a good lesson who believe democracy is always good no matter what its consequences), although it never came to power via an election. Paxton is intriguing when he refers to his opinion that the USA, at the end of the '60s, was ripe for a fascist takeover. He refers to the revulsion many Americans felt for the counterculture of the time, the fear of many lower middle class white males at being left behind by women and blacks after the Civil Rights movement, and the likelihood that Vietnam War veterans might fail to be integrated into the new scheme of things and thus could perform a role similar to the fascist squadristi or the Nazi SA, and allow themselves to be used to frighten the electorate into a strong-arm fix to the crisis. He doesn't elaborate on this scenario, but it might have been viable if the American political system had failed to recover from the Nixon resignation. This would have been particularly likely after the oil crises of the 1970s if the two main parties had fallen apart. Remember that Wallace, then a racist, captured in 1968 13% of the popular vote, and 5 Southern states. This is an interesting "What If" that the author could have explored further, although he probably chose not to in order not to bulk out the book excessively. Thus, it retains its sense of urgency and provides abundant interesting information on most pages. In spite of these merits The book does make a serious blunder, when, in the final chapter, it compares Fascism to Communism and concludes that Nazism was far worse because it persecuted people for who they were, whereas Communism persecuted them because of what they did or had, and these things could be changed. This is blatantly untrue. When Stalin ordered the kulaks to be liquidated as a class, he did not mean that those who gave up their excess property would be left alone. He meant that anyone classed as a kulak should be liquidated irrespective of what he did or didn't do. Indeed, many kulaks were not richer than their neigbours, and were classified as such only to fulfil the quotas imposed by the Vozhd. When the Soviet Union or China created the groups "Enemies of the People", it included the children or spouses of such enemies of the people, who clearly couldn't have done anything to prevent it. "Enemies of the People" were persecuted, incarcerated and often killed. And when Stalin ordered that the families of soldiers who did not stand their ground in battle should be punished (read: executed) he wasn't giving them any choice: how could the families prevent a relative from behaving cowardly? So, it is wrong, and not just factually, to state that Communism punished people only because of what they did. The implication that people under Communism could save themselves by changing their behaviour is also false, and deeply offensive. In reality Communism killed people for who they were, and for who their parents, or spouse, or children, or siblings were, or for the actions of their neighbours, and even for their own nationalities: witness the cruel deportation of the Chechens and other peoples during WWII. When top Bolsheviks ordered the murder of tens of thousands of Poles at the Katyn Massacre because these people were leaders in their communities (priests, teachers, nobles, etc.), just what could these victims have done to survive? When Mao, during the cultural revolution, sent urban students to "learn from the peasants" and live for years in unimaginable squalor, just what was he punishing? I don't have a clear and articulated opinion on whether communism or fascism was worse (although I do know that in fascist states one would usually be left alone unless one belonged to a persecuted group- see Eric Johnson's "Nazi Terror"-, whereas in commuist states one could be swept along by the periodic purges irrespective of what one was and what one did- see Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror", inter alia), but I am certain that Paxton belittles the awfulness of Communist rule, and somehow assumes that its victims were to blame for what they suffered (since they wouldn't have been punished if they had changed their behaviour). To anyone who might be misled by Paxton's opinion, I can only recommend enduring texts such as Anne Appleabum's "Gulag: A History", or Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archpielago". I still give Paxton 3 stars because this dubious opinion is marginal to his analysis (he clearly didn't think it through and might choose to elaborate the point in a further edition) and other than that the book is pretty good if slightly wooden.

Autopsy of Socialism & the "Roman Salute":
Splendid book. Could use more info on whether U.S. socialists created the straight-armed "Roman salute" and caused WWII, the Holocaust and the Wholecaust? In 1892, Francis Bellamy was a national socialist in the U.S. and created the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag using a straight-armed salute. Bellamy wanted the government to takeover all schools and create an "industrial army" of totalitarian socialism as described in the book "Looking Backward" (a bestseller written in 1887 by Edward Bellamy, cousin of Francis Bellamy). Government-schools spread and they mandated racism and segregation by law and did so through WWII and beyond. Edward Bellamy's best-selling book was translated into 20 different languages, including Russian, German, Italian, and Chinese. It was popular among the elite in pre-revolutionary Russia, and Lenin's wife was known to have read the book, because she wrote a review of it. John Dewey and the historian Charles Beard intended to praise the book when they stated that it was equaled in influence only by Das Kapital. 25 years later, Bellamy's totalitarian ideas continued. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began in 1917. The National Socialist German Workers' Party came into existence in 1920 (with electoral breakthroughs in 1930 and dictatorship in 1933). In 1922, Mussolini gained power. The People's Republic of China began in 1949. The socialist Wholecaust followed shortly after the worldwide impact of Bellamy's totalitarian ideas. While the Holocaust was monstrous, it was part of the bigger Wholecaust. Under the industrial army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 62 million people were slaughtered; the People's Republic of China, 35 million; and the National Socialist German Workers' Party, 21 million (numbers from Professor R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999)). Benito Mussolini was the leader of the Socialist Party of Italy. Like many modern media Mussolinis, he was a socialist and a journalist. Between 1912 and 1914 he was the editor of the Socialist Party newspaper, "L'Avanti." In 1914 he started his own socialist newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia" ("The people of Italy"). He was considered by socialists to be a great writer about socialism. He was a staunch proponent of revolutionary rather than reformist socialism, and actually received Lenin's endorsement and support for expelling reformists from the Socialist Party. He was in fact first dubbed "Il Duce" (the Leader) when he was a member of Italy's (Marxist) Socialist Party. When Mussolini differed with some Socialists it was over participation in World War I, not over abstract theory, or economic doctrine. Many socialists were neutralists in the First World War, whereas Mussolini correctly foresaw that the Austro/German forces would not win the war and therefore wanted Italy to join the Allied side and thus get a slice of Austrian territory at the end of the war. During World War I, Mussolini publicized what he admitted was his new brand of socialism. On October 28, 1922, Mussolini led his "March on Rome", which brought him to power for 23 years. In late 1937, Mussolini visited Germany and pledged himself to support the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In 1938, he introduced his 'reform of customs.'" Hand-shaking was suddenly banned as unhygienic: a salute was to be used instead - the right forearm raised vertically. He imposed a new march on the Italian Army which was simply the goose-step of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to the book "A Concise History of Italy" by Christopher Duggan, these reforms were introduced mainly to underline ideological kinship with the National Socialist German Workers' Party and to impress it's leader. The so-called "Roman salute" (saluto romano) is as much of a fiction as the so-called "Roman step" (passo romano) as is the idea that the National Socialist German Workers' Party emulated Mussolini and not vice versa. The most notorious instance of Italy imitating the National Socialist German Workers' Party was in the racist laws imposed in November 1938. Before and during it all (from 1892), children in the U.S. attended government-schools where racism and segregation were mandated by law, and where they performed a straight-armed salute to the U.S. flag, and were forced to robotically chant a Pledge written by a national socialist who wanted to produce an "industrial army" for totalitarian socialism as popularized worldwide in a best-selling novel. WWII began in 1939 when Poland was invaded by the National Socialist German Workers' Party and by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as allies in their scheme to divide up Eastern Europe. The raised-arm salute is one of the best-known symbols of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and supposedly used by Mussolini from a classical Roman custom. According to Martin Winkler in "The Roman Salute on Film" of the American Philological Association, no Roman work of art displays this salute, nor does any Roman text describe it. Winkler notes that well before Mussolini and the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the salute frequently occurs in films set in antiquity. What Winkler fails to realize is that every film he cites was produced after 1892 and thus after the widespread use of the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, and it's original straight-arm salute. Winkler cites the American Ben-Hur (1907) or the Italian Nerone (1908), although such films did not yet standardize the salute or make it exclusively Roman. In Spartaco (1914), even Spartacus used it. Winkler states "In imitation of such historical films, self-styled "Consul" Gabriele D'Annunzio appropriated the salute in its now familiar form as a propaganda tool for his political aspirations upon his occupation of Fiume in 1919. Earlier, D'Annunzio had been closely involved in Giovanni Pastrone's colossal epic Cabiria (1914), in which variations of the salute occur several times." Notable other examples of the salute, by then a standard part of ancient iconography in the cinema, appear in Ben-Hur (1925) and in Cecil B. DeMille's Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934), although the gesture was still variable.

A needed introduction:
Fascism is frequently referred to but almost never understood. As a movement it came on the world stage as a socialist alternative to Communism. Fascism saw the state as a nationalist vehicle for combating the excesses of communism, preserving the status quo while mobilizing the people to achieve 'higher things'. For 18 years Fascism in Italy thrived, although launching the state on two imperial wars, it left minorities well enough alone. Fascism in Spain likewise didn't create the horrors of Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, perhaps, Nazism is what Fascism has been associated with. Yet fascist movements existed in other places to, throughout Latin America, and also in Lebanon and even among Jabotinsky's followers in Zion. This book tries to give a rendition of Fascism as it was theorized all the way through to its bloody conclusion. It focuses mostly on Italy and Germany, although writings of others are weaved together to show the Fascist mosaic. In the end Fascism has far worse a connotation then communism even though Communism clearly exterminated millions more people then Fascism. What was so abhorrent about Nazi Fascism was its obsession with racial purity, nevertheless Communist regimes in places such as Cambodia employed similar racial ideas to prosecute their destruction of society. The importance of this work cannot be underestimated. Academia frequently gives students a 'communist' interpretation of certain events, asking people to look at things through a 'marxist' lens and to analyze events through the rubric of Marxist thought. Thus many of us have a pretty good notion of what Communism is and was. Yet most of us will hear the word fascism frequently without any guidepost as to exactly what the movement was or how it ever captured peoples imaginations. Here is an excellent analysis of the birth, growth and death of fascism. Any student of politics, political philosophy or European history will enjoy this lively intellectual account. And, of course, the book certainly isn't sympathetic to Fascism, its merely an introduction. Seth J. Frantzman