[lit-ideas] Re: What is Fascism
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 12:08:49 -0800
Lawrence writes:
Further down in his review, Pinto lists a definition by Paxton: "Fascism may
be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive
preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood 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 elite groups, abandons democratic liberties
and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints
goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
This is not all Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism) has to say about
Fascism's distinctive features. Although he's been criticized, even by
some who admire his work, for not giving enough place in it to
'ideology,' and admits that perhaps he should have, nevertheless, I'd
recommend his book highly.
He is, I think, very good on the history of Italy between the wars, as
it bears on Mussolini's rise. One thing that strikes me as silly about
most of these Socratic enterprises is that those who try to answer
questions of the form 'What is x?' already have definitions of x up
their sleeves, i.e., they know beforehand what they will and will not
accept as examples of x, which makes such enterprises more stipulative
than empirical.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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