Introduction to Political Theory

Defining fascism Fascism is sometimes used as a word of abuse – against movements or individuals who are intolerant or authorita ...

an aristocrat, city dweller, peasant, or a graduate ‘from being susceptible to fascist myth’ (1995: 7). Fascism is particularly ...

Fascism and liberalism Fascism is hostile to the liberal tradition, and its dislike of the notion of reason makes it difficult t ...

a fascist party was formed. In October 1922 Mussolini persuaded the king, Victor Emmanuel III, by means of a threatened putsch ( ...

which ‘have taken effect miraculously and mysteriously in the soul of the Italian people’. War is ‘the sole hygiene of the world ...

racism. It is a myth to think that racism was only developed by the Italian fascists at the insistence of the Nazis. The invasio ...

As far as Pareto was concerned, human action is mostly non-logical in character, and stems from non-rational sentiments and impu ...

A brief history The collapse of the German war effort saw the creation of a republic in 1919: an uprising of the left had been s ...

want to deny the justification of the workers’ movements’. Indeed, he had complained in 1926 that Hitler wanted to ‘compensate t ...

By the beginning of 1942 over 500,000 Jews in Poland and Russia had been killed by the SS, and at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 ...

concordat was signed with the Pope (the Catholic Church could continue if it did not ‘interfere’ in politics) and Himmler (1900– ...

state, argued Carl Schmitt, transcends diversity: every atom of its existence is ruled and permeated by the principle of leaders ...

Nazism is better understood by seeing it as a variant of fascism – of course, with its own particular features. The idea that ra ...

underway. ‘It is not only Jewish capitalists we will hang, but all capitalists!’ declares a poster in the museum at the Dachau c ...

Fascism, liberalism and the Enlightenment The year ‘1789 [of the French Revolution, and the inauguration of the era of Liberty, ...

fascism sees the community as somehow prior to the individual (an inversion of the liberal abstraction), so it sees the nation a ...

is woven into social analysis. Leaders are outstanding individuals who dictate to and mould the formless and ignorant masses. It ...

Fascism today One of the objections that Kitchen makes to the German thinker Ernst Nolte’s theory of fascism is the view that fa ...

The Holocaust deniers Some fascists try to undercut the argument of their critics by denying that the Nazis had in fact brought ...

Nationalist salvation Some fascists have turned to nationalism, arguing that a national revolution is necessary as a ‘cleansing ...