There is no single or authoritative political agenda that best defines fascism.

One of the most significant assertions of Paxton’s intellectually fascinating-but occasionally stiff-book on the subject is that fascism lacks a firm ideology.

Although his style differed in some critical ways from that of classical fascism, it is surely strongly indebted both to Mussolini, fascism’s unofficial founder, and to Hitler, whose regime marked its fullest expression. Don’t forget Slobodan Milošević, for example, who in the 1990s embarked upon a bloody policy of national aggrandizement and ethnic cleansing. Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism, a needful corrective to the popular conception of fascism-not merely in the service of historical accuracy, but also as a important reminder that the ghosts of fascism, as a viable electoral current, haunt global politics even to this day. Sometimes, when we freely toss the word ‘fascist’ around, we are referring to only one of these, but I think this gets us in the proverbial ballpark of the degraded, contemporary meaning of ‘fascism.’Įnter Robert O. I am not ‘most people,’ but I am going to guess, in a very half-assed way, that when most people refer to fascists or fascism (with respect not to history, but to contemporary events or persons), they generally intend an accusation (exaggerated or not) of the abuse of authority and power, a contempt for individual rights and liberties, and an irrational fealty to a very particular and narrow view of the way the world should be. But is this really accurate? Or does it further diminish and trivialize the historical sense of fascism? Because when you get right down to it, how many of us really know what we’re talking about when we casually refer to police officers as ‘fascist pigs’? Why fascist? And why pigs? Is it the uniforms-the authority-the right wing implications of issuing a traffic citation? Maybe. Whether you’re a teenager revolting against the ruthless Gestapo comprised of teachers, parents, and Denny’s night shift managers or you’re a fussbudget Berkeley yippie who detects a whiff of the counterrevolutionary even in the most innocuous conventions (‘I will not have a nice day! Fuck you, Big Brother!’), the exaggeration of one’s own paranoid sense of victimization by glibly appropriating the suffering of millions and millions of innocent people during World War II is always good for a larf, right? Sure, calling people ‘fascist’ is lots of fun.

Robert paxton the anatomy of fascism