Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Audiobook6 hours

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction

Written by Kevin Passmore

Narrated by Pam Ward

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? Can it be both?

Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology that appeals to streetfighters and intellectuals alike? That is overtly macho in style, yet attracts many women? That calls for a return to tradition while maintaining a fascination with technology? And that preaches violence in the name of an ordered society?

In the new edition of this Very Short Introduction, Kevin Passmore brilliantly unravels the paradoxes of one of the most important phenomena in the modern world-tracing its origins in the intellectual, political, and social crises of the late nineteenth century, the rise of fascism following World War I, including fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, and the fortunes of "failed" fascist movements in Eastern Europe, Spain, and the Americas. He also considers fascism in culture, the
new interest in transnational research, and the progress of the far right since 2002.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 31, 2018
ISBN9781541447318
Fascism: A Very Short Introduction

Related to Fascism

Related audiobooks

History & Theory For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Fascism

Rating: 3.766666714666667 out of 5 stars
4/5

75 ratings6 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A reasonable overview of a very complex and very hard to tackle problem. Exercising a good deal of common sense as well as scholarly judgement it starts off with a description of the issues in dealing with the notion of fascism, followed up by a short history of it.

    The bulk of the work is made up of the description of the operation of fascist regimes and movements in the great western countries of Italy, Germany, the UK, France, with a relatively reasonable amount of attention paid to the Iberian Peninsula, Eastern Europe, the US, and even Latin America, supplemented by shorts remarks of fascism - such as it was - in Asia (although I think Japan, a special case in its own right was not mentioned). Both the scope and depth of the work - as can be seen in the English-language bibliography as well - is what one could expect of a well done "very short introduction". It is probably the strict page limit on the book combined with the depth of that rabbit hole, that forced out a deeper grounding of fascism as a phennomenon in the philosophical, artistic and social environment, as well as representative quotations from seminal thinkers and documents related.

    This is also where the work suffers the most: people who don't really have a picture of the political, social and cultural, as well as economic situation in Giolittian-era (c. 1900-14) and post-war (1919-22) Italy, or the Weimar Republic's last years (1928-1933) will walk away with the picture that conservative/liberal groups accepted Mussolini and Hitler as bridges to the masses, trying to make use of them for their own interests with more (in Italy's case) or less (in Germany's) success and with the conclusion that it could have been otherwise - but without a real understanding of why not the alternatives were chosen, aside from the vague sense that they were discredited by their own performance.

    The reader also does a reasonable, albeit unspectacular job in making the material interesting for the listener.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Decent content, but I don’t care for the shrill narration.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting. The author argues that attempts to define fascism precisely aren't useful, since actual fascist movements vary somewhat depending on historical situation in which they arise.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    It notoriously plays a blind eye on working class or "left wing" fascism e.g. Maoism, Stalinism, Pol Pot, Maduroism, Castrism, etc. which --curiosity enough are responsible for the greatest number of assassinations in world history.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Some clarity on this murky subject; and finally an answer to a question I asked my history teacher 50 years ago.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is clearly a book aimed particularly at students, and seems to achieve its brevity by compressing its contents rather than thinning them out, so it wasn't the easiest thing to listen to as an audiobook whilst busy with other activities. But it overlaps quite heavily with other things I've been reading over the last couple of months, so I think I was able to grasp the essentials...Passmore spends quite a while dealing with the problem of definitions. The two clear historical examples, Italian Fascism and German Nazism, differed in important ways from each other, and both also changed considerably over the course of time. Other right-wing movements in Europe and elsewhere in the inter-war period often borrowed language, labels and ideas from the successful Italian and German movements, but differed considerably on things like the way they came to power (if they did), the extent to which they worked together with church, army, monarchy and mainstream conservatives, and even on whether or not their ultranationalism was based on racism (and if so, against which groups). Since World War II, the label "fascist" has been so tainted that no serious political movement (except the Italian Neo-fascists) has used it to define itself, whilst the rest of us have been happy to attach it to just about any political movement we didn't like. (Since the book was written in 2002 and only partly updated in 2014, it doesn't have much to say in detail about the current crop of far-right parties.) Academic political scientists also use the term in conflicting and confusing ways. Passmore urges us to separate this essentially historical problem of definitions from the more important question of what we find morally repugnant in the programmes of far-right/nationalist/populist parties, which seems a helpful way of looking at things. The other interesting point I took from the book is his identification of the common element between the ways Mussolini and Hitler came to power. In both cases a relatively modest electoral success was backed up by the (perceived) threat of large-scale civil disorder from the party's paramilitary organisations, which was enough to intimidate established parties into putting the extremists in power, and once in power the existing mobilisation of activists allowed the party to eliminate effective opposition very rapidly. None of the other movements of the 20s and 30s achieved this combination, and — so far — most of the modern far-right parties have shown no sign of trying to lock up their opponents and impose a single-party state. As Passmore says, this doesn't make their xenophobic rhetoric any less offensive, but it does mean that it probably isn't helpful to use their perceived similarity to Hitler and Mussolini as the core of our strategy for opposing them. Probably a good book to read if you want to get the historical background clear in your mind, but rather superficial in its treatment of 21st century movements.