Summary
Title: Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Kevin Passmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192801554
Pro:
• Part of a great series of introductory books on many topics and this is one of the best
• Fascism is a tough subject, but Passmore clarifies a lot of things for readers
Con:
• I think his definition of fascism is a bit cumbersome and misses some key points
Description:
• Short overview of the nature and history of fascism
• Explores how fascism worked, succeed, or failed in several different countries
• Argues that fascism has more in common with the right than the left of politics
Book Review
How and why fascism can appeal to people all over the political spectrum the topic of Kevin Passmore's book Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. A Lecturer in History at the University of Wales, Cardiff, Passmore offers an overview of fascism past and present in an effort to draw out enough commonalities from the diverse movements in order to construct a general understanding of just what fascism is all about.
Fascism is not like most modern conservative movements in that it isn't try to "conserve" any traditional institutions or values nor is it trying to reestablish any past ways of ordering and structuring society. Fascism also isn't like any modern liberal movements in that it isn't trying to promote liberty and democracy, it isn't striving for greater equality, and it isn't seeking a more pluralistic order.
Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University defines fascism in his book The Anatomy of Fascism:
- ''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.''
This is a much shorter definition than Passmore's and, I think, a better one than what he uses. At the same time, Passmore's emphasis that fascism is a political movement that has more in common with the Right than the Left, something absent in Paxton's definition, is significant and worth remembering.
