sunstone reviewed The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton
Excellent introduction to fascism
4 stars
This book takes an interesting approach to defining fascism by dissecting its historical manifestations and then finding what they all have in common. He makes a distinction between fascism and authoritarianism that I hadn’t thought about before. He argues that fascism isn’t simply a subset of authoritarianism because of some key factors like counterrevolutionary tactics and relationships to other institutions.
I’m not a scholar in this field but my main criticism would be that if we define fascism to be so narrow, then it becomes a little unwieldy to fight against. It’s impractical but maybe for the interests of researchers and historians, this is the right move.
