Customer Reviews

Fascism: A History

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Fascism is a subject that always seems to fascinate a lot of people, whether their interest is historical or ideological. This is not surprising given its impact on the twentieth century world.

The basis of Eatwell's book lies in the thesis that fascism is a coherent political and social ideology. While the media usually associates fascism with rampaging skinheads or soccer hooligans, Eatwell points out that there is more to the movement than mere street thuggery. This point is becoming increasingly pertinent as the fascist parties of Europe gain ever increasing support. (For example, Austria last year elected a fascist party as coalition partner to their Government.) Eatwell also shows that historically, like Communism, fascism has taken many different strands, such as the Fascism of Mussolini, the Nazism of Hitler, Strasserism, etc. etc. While broadly similar in aims, the streams of fascism often differed in key respects.

Well written in a clear and jargon-free manner, Eatwell surveys the intellectual origins of fascism and charts its history in Europe both in the past and more recently. He concentrates on Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom.

This is an absorbing book and an excellent introduction to further reading on this subject.

I picked this book up wanting to find the answer to a question I've long wondered about: just what is fascism? Everyone talks about it, uses the term "fascist" as both an adjective and a noun, but when I ask, no one seems to be able to tell me just what differentiates fascism from other ideologies. After finishing this book, I found that it did help some in answering the question, but in the end it left more things vague than it managed to clarify.

The best parts of the book are the first chapters where it does make an attempt both to define the points where fascism differs from other ideologies and to show the evolution of fascism in a philosophical and historical context. One point it makes is that fascism was promoted as a "third way" for those who wanted an alternative to both communism and capitalism. Another point is that fascism is generally based on a rather narrow definition of who qualifies as a proper citizen, generally limiting it to a specific race, culture or region. It is anti-republican in its approach, seeking to exclude rather than to include, and it tends to cast everything in an us-vs-them perspective. And another point is that fascism believes radical change is necessary, and to that end the state must be "totalitarian" (a word first coined to describe the goal of Italian fascism), meaning that the state must totally remake its citizenry, shaping their lives from cradle to grave, with dissent or non-participation not an option.

The parts of the book dealing with the history of past fascist states (Germany and Italy), movements in other states (France and Britian) and the later neo-fascist movements in those same states, are disappointing because the book loses its focus and fails to fit the events into the ideological context presented in the first part of the book. And though the history presented is accurate in terms of facts and chronologies, it fails to get down to the personal level, never really showing the effects of fascism on the lives of individual people as part of the fascist state, which I very much would have liked to have seen it do.

One last worthwhile point the book makes, however, particularly relevent to the conditions we find ourselves in now, is that fascism generally only takes root when people have lost faith in their existing institutions. At a time when people are increasingly voicing their disillusionment and disgust with both political parties, this is a caution worth bearing in mind.

The reviewer from Redondo Beach, California is correct -- Eatwell's thesis that fascism is a unified political philosophy is not terribly believable. The fascists were power-hungry thugs who changed their rhetoric to gain votes, in both cases, Italy and Germany.

That being said, I still strongly recommend this book as a good introduction to the roots of fascism. Eatwell's writing is lucid and his research of the behind-the-scenes politics is impressive.

While I would have appreciated more on the ideology rather than the politics of fascism, apparently the ideology was almost a facade, so no deep philosophical questions need be raised.

I liked the book and its explaination on how fascism came to power during the inter-war period of the 1920's to 1930's. The author tries establish fascism as a clear form of political thought, but in the end all his examples of fascism just point to a populist movement that will change ideaology in the hopes of rising to power. I was never truly convinced that the author had estblished fascist thought as truly a new "third way" of political action and thought.