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Overview
The epic battle between communism and liberal democracy ended with breathtaking ease, and the first few euphoric years of democracy's triumph seemed to hold out the promise of a world at last entering a political consensus around the rights and values of an individualistic society. But the closing years of the twentieth century have proved the resilience and extent of the century's third great political force: fascism. The success of fascist parties in European elections, the appearance of fascist-inspired groups in the United States, and the recurrence of fascistlike political behavior in the numerous nationalist-inspired wars now consuming the former communistic bloc have provoked a reevaluation of the political movement once thought utterly defeated and discredited. In fact, fascism has never received the serious attention and sustained scrutiny that has been trained on both communism and liberalism. Only a detailed, objective, and dispassionate approach to the question of what fascism is, and how and why it has been both a success in some countries and a failure in others, will begin to provide useful and constructive answers.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Eatwell is an astute observer of fascism's insidious appeal to workers and intellectuals alike. Far from being a mere opportunistic tool of reaction or a nihilistic movement lacking a coherent ideology, fascism, he argues, had underpinnings in a distinct set of ideas drawn from both the right and the left. Its fanatical nationalism celebrated the holistic community over the individual as it sought to forge a radical "third way" between capitalism and communism under charismatic, totalitarian rule. Hitler and Mussolini, he points out, were driven by strong ideological motives, a warped division of the world into good and evil. An important, engrossing study, his vivid analytical history examines how British and French libertarian traditions helped defuse fascism's appeal, although the interwar years saw the emergence in Britain of Arnold Leeser's virulently anti-Semitic Imperial Fascist League and Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, while many French intellectuals embraced fascist ideology. Eatwell, a British social scientist, concludes with a chilling look at neo-fascist groups in Germany, Italy, France and Britain. (Aug.)Library Journal
Eatwell (Univ. of Bath, England) offers here a short, well-crafted overview of the origins and development of Fascism in Western Europe through the neo-Fascist movements of today. He focuses on two countries where Fascism was successfulGermany and Italyand compares them with two important countries where Fascism played a major but less successful role in electoral politicsFrance and Great Britain. In such a relatively brief comparative treatment, the author succeeds well in selecting the high points for his narrative and explaining the differing and often-muddled Fascist ideologies. The sections dealing with postwar Fascism and the development of neo-Fascism are particularly valuable, since these issues are often overlooked in introductory treatments. Although there is a large literature devoted to Fascism, the brevity, clarity, and inclusiveness of this book make it a valuable addition to any library that covers European studies. Although it appears to be aimed at a university student audience, it is potentially interesting to high school students on up and general readers.Barbara Walden, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., MinneapolisKirkus Reviews
An eminently readable survey of the history of fascism.Works on fascism continue to proliferate, demonstrating the public's continuing fascination with the subject. Eatwell (Social Sciences/Univ. of Bath, England) offers a broad introduction, covering fascist movements in France, Italy, Germany, and England. These four countries provide the basis for a comparative analysis seeking to identify what fascism was and why it succeeded in Italy and Germany but was a failure in France and England. Eatwell chronicles fascism's roots, its growth between the world wars, its triumph and decline, and its lingering presence after 1945. He depends on secondary sources, but as this is a wide-ranging work of synthesis rather than an original analysis, this is not a great defect. (The notes reveal the author's familiarity with the latest interpretations.) Eatwell's theoretical framework is outlined in the introduction: Popular images of fascism in our culture, defined mostly by how it functioned rather than what it advocated, tell only part of the story. According to Eatwell, behind the irrational facade there lay "a coherent body of thought" with roots in the late 19th century, which drew from the theories of both the left and the right and claimed to offer an intensely nationalistic, radical " `Third Way' which was neither capitalist nor communist." Fascism, he reminds us, appealed to some of the seminal intellectuals of the 20th century, including Martin Heidegger in Germany and Giovanni Gentile in Italy (although, contrary to Eatwell's claim, support from a philosopher does not automatically confer rationality), and a failure to take fascism seriously makes it more difficult to understand how this ultimately corrosive ideology took hold. He concludes by tracing the resurgence in recent years of openly fascist political parties and the proliferation of "Holocaust denial" material, noting grimly that "the fascist tradition remains very much alive and kicking."
An important contribution to the subject, useful to both the general reader and the specialist.