Fascism
A History
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Fascism is one of the most destructive and influential political movements of the twentieth century. Its imagery - of mad dictators and nihilistic violence - haunts our imaginations, and its historical legacy is almost too momentous to be understood. At the same time it is curiously elusive: how do we define fascism? What is the basis of its appeal? Why did it take root so successfully in Germany and Italy, and not in France or Britain?
Fascism: A History - a sweeping, enthralling study - tackles theses questions, and considers fascism in the round. It draws together its different strands, in Italy, Germany, France, and Britain, looking at its evolution up and during World War II; and it assesses post-war fascism, and examines its future in a Europe whose boundaries continue to change. Along the way, Fascism provides vivid portraits of Mussolini, Hitler, Oswald Mosley and other key figures within the movement. Lucid, dramatic, challenging, Fascism is a definitive book of its kind.
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.
