Robert O.Paxton: The anatomy of fascism

Résumé du document

Many authors have proposed definitions for the question "what is Fascism?", but most of them failed to give a complete definition. The historian Robert O. Paxton answered this question for the first time by focusing on the concrete: what the Fascists did, rather than what they said. To explain the notion of Fascism, Robert O. Paxton proposed in this book to arrive to a concept at the end of this quest, rather than to start with one. To do so, he analyzed minutely each steps of the Fascism evolution; it is to say the way the Fascists movements were created, how did it take roots, how did it get the power and how it exerted the power. Moreover, the historian explored whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century and outside Europe. First, Robert O. Paxton reminds us the invention and the images of Fascism. Italian revolutionaries used the term "fascio" in the late nineteenth century to evoke the solidarity of committed militants.

Extraits

[...] Paxton defined what he named Fascist revolution”. The Fascists regimes left the distribution of property and the economic and social hierarchy largely intact. Despite their frequent talk about revolution, Fascists did not want a socioeconomic revolution. Fascist economic policy responded to political priorities and not to economic rationale. For the historian Fascist regimes functioned like an epoxy: an amalgam of two very different agents, Fascist dynamism and conservative order, bonded by shared enmity toward liberalism and the Left and a shared willingness to stop at nothing to destroy their common enemies. [...]

[...] Enemies were central to the anxieties that helped inflame the Fascist imagination. Fascism is a complex notion to define, notably because the roots of Fascism are difficult to trace. Fascism sought out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilizing a mass movement of regeneration and unification. Mass politics preconditions were also very important: Fascism could not really exist before the citizenry had become involved in politics. This was permitted by the crisis of liberal institutions and politics directed against the Left. [...]

[...] As he wrote in its introduction, Robert O. Paxton finished its book by giving its definition of Fascism. First, he tried to delimitate the boundaries between Fascism and authoritarism. Authoritarians would rather leave the population demobilized and passive, while Fascists wanted to engage and excite the public. Authoritarians wanted a strong but limited state. They hesitated to intervene in the economy, as Fascism did readily, or to embark on programs of social welfare. They cling to the status quo than rather proclaim a new way. [...]

[...] To do so, he analyzed minutely each steps of the Fascism evolution; it is to say the way the Fascists movements were created, how did it take roots, how did it get the power and how it exerted the power. Moreover, the historian explored whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century and outside Europe. First, Robert O. Paxton reminds us the invention and the images of Fascism. Italian revolutionaries used the term in the late nineteenth century to evoke the solidarity of committed militants. At the end of World War One, Mussolini coined the term “fascismo” to describe the mood of the little band of nationalist ex-soldiers and pro-war syndicalist revolutionaries that he was gathering around himself. [...]

[...] Robert O. Paxton's contribution in the historical field The American historian is known to be the reference in a complete and innovative vision of the Fascism and Occupation during the World War II. The Anatomy of Fascism had a lasting impact on our understanding of modern European history, just as Robert O. Paxton's classic Vichy France redefined our vision of World War II. His book, translated in French in 1972, deeply renewed the historians' and the public opinion's views on the 1930's. [...]