Summary of Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Fascist politics was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain. It was the unexpected combination of dictatorship and popular enthusiasm that fascism was able to put together one short generation later.
#2 The word fascism is derived from the Italian word fascio, which refers to a bundle or sheaf. It was originally used in the late 1800s to describe the solidarity of committed militants, but was later used by Mussolini to describe the mood of his band of nationalist ex-soldiers and pro-war syndicalist revolutionaries.
#3 Mussolini’s first followers were demobilized war veterans, pro-war syndicalists, and Futurist intellectuals. They were anti-intellectual and contemptuous of established society.
#4 After World War I, Europe was full of aspiring dictators and marching squads who thought they were on the same path to power as Mussolini and Hitler.

Sujets

• Politique
• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Totalitarianism
• Fascism

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822508774
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Fascist politics was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain. It was the unexpected combination of dictatorship and popular enthusiasm that fascism was able to put together one short generation later.

#2

The word fascism is derived from the Italian word fascio, which refers to a bundle or sheaf. It was originally used in the late 1800s to describe the solidarity of committed militants, but was later used by Mussolini to describe the mood of his band of nationalist ex-soldiers and pro-war syndicalist revolutionaries.

#3

Mussolini’s first followers were demobilized war veterans, pro-war syndicalists, and Futurist intellectuals. They were anti-intellectual and contemptuous of established society.

#4

After World War I, Europe was full of aspiring dictators and marching squads who thought they were on the same path to power as Mussolini and Hitler.

#5

Fascist movements varied so strikingly from country to country that some even argued that the term fascism had no meaning other than as a smear word.

#6

The most visual of all political forms, fascism presents itself to us in vivid primary images: a chauvinist demagogue addressing an ecstatic crowd. However, when examined more closely, these images reveal a more complex reality.

#7

What fascists did in power was to enforce their anticapitalist promises, but once in power, they did not follow through with those threats. Instead, they enforced the very same system of property distribution and social hierarchy that they opposed during the election.

#8

Fascist Italy redrew the boundaries between private and public, between individual and community, and between the executive and legislature. They expanded the powers of the executive in an attempt to gain total control. They released aggressive emotions previously only found during war or social revolution.

#9

The solution to the problem of modernity and fascism is not to set up binary opposites, but to follow the relationship between modernity and fascism through its complex historical course.

#10

The history of fascist movements shows that they could never grow without the support of ordinary people, even conventionally good people. Fascist movements always required the complicity of traditional elites.

#11

Definitions are inherently limiting. They frame a static picture of something that is better perceived in movement, and they often fail to take into account the process nature of something that is better understood as a program.

#12

The term fascism is used to describe the ideology of many different political systems, from conservatism to liberalism to socialism. But fascism was a new invention created for the era of mass politics. It sought to appeal mainly to the emotions by the use of ritual, carefully staged ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric.

#13

The truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man to dominate others, and whatever made the chosen people triumph. fascism did not rest on the truth of its doctrine, but on the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people.

#14

The intellectuals who helped create a space for fascist movements by weakening the elite’s attachment to Enlightenment values also made it possible to imagine fascism. They helped operate a seismic emotional shift in which the Left was no longer the only recourse for the angry and inebriated.

#15

Every strategy for understanding fascism must come to terms with the wide diversity of its national cases. The major question is whether fascisms are more diverse than the other isms. They are, because they reject any universal value other than the success of chosen peoples in a Darwinian struggle for primacy.

#16

I will not be interested in finding similarities between different regimes. Instead, I will search for the reasons behind differing outcomes.

#17

There have been three responses to fascism’s variety. Some scholars, exasperated with the sloppy use of the term, have proposed limiting it to Mussolini’s particular case. Others have accepted fascism’s variety and compiled an encyclopedic survey of its many forms.

#18

We must understand that fascism’s two principal coalition partners were liberals and conservatives. While many liberals might find fascists useful or even essential in their fight against dominant conservatives, some were keenly aware of the different agenda of their fascist allies and felt a distaste for them.

#19

The five stages of fascism are the creation of movements, their rooting in the political system, their seizure of power, the exercise of power, and finally, the long duration during which the fascist regime chooses either radicalization or entropy.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Hungary was another fertile setting for the spontaneous growth of something that did not yet call itself fascism, but bears a strong family resemblance. Hungary suffered the most calamitous territorial losses from World War I of any participant, and its government began to draw support even from some army officers by its promise that Bolshevik Russia would be a better bet than the Allies to help Hungary survive.

#2

The Hungarian counterrevolution was led by the traditional elite, but supported by young officers who wanted to mobilize a mass base for a nationalist movement. They wanted to replace traditional authority with something more dynamic.

#3

The defeat in 1918 shook German leaders, but the emotional impact was especially severe because German leaders had been trumpeting victory until a few weeks before. The plummet in German fortunes from the bold Great Power of 1914 to the stunned, hungry loser of 1918 shattered national pride and self-confidence.

#4

After the war, many veterans were footloose and unable to find work or food. They were available for extremism of either Left or Right.