Jonathan Morese wrote:
"I add my vote to those in favor of Alastair Hamilton's _The Appeal of
Fascism_. It's an excellent book. But it was published way back in 1971,
and we need something more up to historiographic date. Ideas, anyone?"
 
        I believe I have previously recommended Zeev Sternhell, THE BIRTH OF
FASCIST IDEOLOGY (Princeton 1994). He is an Israeli scholar who is largely
responsible for reinvigorating Fascist studies, which had pretty-well died
out for lack of a determinate object.
        Sternhell traces the origin of fascism to French socialist thought of the
late nineteenth century -- Proudhon, and, above all, Sorel. After 1870 or
thereabouts, he says (uncontroversially) that Marxism faced a crisis
because capitalism had adapted itself sufficiently that the expected class
consciousness of the proletariat was not coming about to the extent
necessary for Marxist theory.
        Here is what he says (249-50)about scholarly attention to Fascism:
"The marginalization of fascism relieves those that deal with the necessity
of relating to the broad cultural context, which was its true intellectual
seedbed. Those who choose the easy path are spared the need to answer many
perplexing questions, including that of the intellectual, emotional, or
political connection that existed in a given period between broad circles
of the intelligentsia and the Fascists or Nazis, or other advocates of a
`national revolution.' The apologetic interpretation of events consciously
disregards the cultural history of Europe in the last hundred years, the
fact that toward the end of the nineteenth century the opposition to
optimism, universalism, and humanism developed into a general struggle that
affected all areas of intellectual activity. At that time, an alternative
political culture came into being; it sought to rescue Europe from the
heritage of the Enlightenment, and naturally, when the crisis reached its
peak [np] at the beginning of the twentieth century, the attack was
directed first against rationalism and humanism."
        That is something worth chewing on, I think.
 
 
Leon Surette
English Department
University of Western Ontario