Product Description

What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? This book argues that it is both: fascism unleashes violence against the left and ethnic minorities, but also condemns the bourgeoisie for its 'softness'. Kevin Passmore opens his book with a series of 'scenes from fascist life' - a secret meeting of the Romanian Iron Guard; Mussolini meeting the king of Italy; a rally of Hungarian doctors calling for restrictions on the number of Jews entering the profession; the shooting of 1800 Jews by Reserve Police Battalion 101 at Jozefow in Poland in July 1942. He then looks at the paradoxes of fascism through its origins in the political and social crisis of the late nineteenth century, the history of fascist movements and regimes in Italy and Germany, and the fortunes of 'failed' fascist movements in Romania, Hungary and Spain. He shows how fascism used and uses propaganda and popular culture to propagate itself and how it exported its ideas outside Europe, through Nazi and Spanish post-war escape routes to Latin America, for instance. The book concludes with a discussion of the recent revival of the extreme right in Austria, Italy, France, and Russia.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64016 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-22
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? This book argues that it is both: fascism unleashes violence against the left and ethnic minorities, but also condemns the bourgeoisie for its 'softness'. Kevin Passmore opens his book with a series of 'scenes from fascist life' - a secret meeting of the Romanian Iron Guard; Mussolini meeting the king of Italy; a rally of Hungarian doctors calling for restrictions on the number of Jews entering the profession; the shooting of 1800 Jews by Reserve Police Battalion 101 at Jozefow in Poland in July 1942. He then looks at the paradoxes of fascism through its origins in the political and social crisis of the late nineteenth century, the history of fascist movements and regimes in Italy and Germany, and the fortunes of 'failed' fascist movements in Romania, Hungary and Spain. He shows how fascism used and uses propaganda and popular culture to propagate itself and how it exported its ideas outside Europe, through Nazi and Spanish post-war escape routes to Latin America, for instance. The book concludes with a discussion of the recent revival of the extreme right in Austria, Italy, France, and Russia.

About the Author
Kevin Passmore is Lecturer in History at the University of Wales, Cardiff. His books include From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province (CUP, 1997), Writing National Histories: Western Europe Since 1800 (Routledge, 1999), The French Right: A History (Routledge), and Women, Gender and the Extreme Right in Europe, 1919-1945 (Macmillan).

Customer Reviews

Scholarly endeavour, focus on ideology and peace time fascism
This book deals primarily with how fascism emerged and how it competed in the fledgling democracies of inter war Europe (1918-39). The chapters are divided up neatly, one analysing the appeal of fascism to women, the other looking at how fascism appealed to social class. There are also frequent mentions of how on the one hand conservatives can neuter fascism with tough policies, but sometimes instead legitimise fascism with these same policies. There is also an analysis of neo-fascism in Europe, with a focus on individual nations like France, Russia and Italy which have experienced far-right revivals. One feature is the author's academic rigour and discipline. He continuously reminds us of the fluidity of defining fascism, and urges readers to analyse fascism through an academic rather than a moral lens in order to best appreciate it. One weakness of the book is its emphasis on fascisms "day-to-day" running in preparing the population for a total war, but we don't read much about how it operated when that total war finally came. The book also is clearly aimed at a reader with a fairly good, broad knowledge of European history and contemporary politics, and therefore may not be well suited to a general reader. All in all, a good introduction to the history of fascism in inter-war Europe, but not much on the war itself. Still, a good introduction nonetheless.

From the Burning Ashes - The Phoenix Rises !!!,

......and I think it is carrying a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle.


Oh, this guy is good. Now he has some weird quirks in his writing. He contradicts himself, has some flawed statements and weirdly connects the feminine and racial issues on an elementary level. Some jargon in this book is also incomprehensible. And, I bet $100 this guys a romanticist (far above his other personality levelers of realist and classicist creativity stabilizers - the three are balanced out in one way or another) - like for example Jean-Jacque Rousseau.

All right, all the above does not matter. ALL the time that I see crap like this, I automatically throw it out. Nevertheless, this guy comes up with some incredible insights and very original outlook and reasoning beyond even the above average humanities writer (he is a history lecturer at Cardiff - with some good horse sense of politics and philosophy). He also injects parts of history that other authors have not made of certain unique connections. He has totally analyzed this subject - Fascism - and gives you different and in-depth angles to look at. He takes you across "paths" that have never been crossed before.

Read this with tongue-in-check mentality. You can easily see and discard some (but very little) nonsense. There is highly valuable information here. This person has made a (small) book of only 158 pages, but he jams it full of Great information on Fascism. I would have sworn, after reading this, that I had just finished a large book. There is no real filler here (except for the quirks mentioned above).

Oxford Press does it again - but the other "very short introductions" series are not as high of caliber as this is.

These three books will give you THE best insight on Fascism. No others come close to the brilliance of the material.


1) Fascism by Roger Griffin (edited by Roger Griffin) This is the best general book on Fascism. There is no better way to truly understand something unless to go to the SOURCE(S).
2) Fascism A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore
3) The Nature of Fascism edited by S.J. Woolf (NOT the book by R. Griffin on the same title)

In conclusion, Oxford University Press (UK) and the University of Chicago (USA) crank out some great books on political philosophy etc. Although, some of them are out of print. Alibris will get them for ya!