Les Nouveaux visages du fascisme: Conversation avec Régis Meyran

by Enzo Traverso

Fascisme : que recouvre ce terme qui surgit spontanément – que l’on évoque la vague montante des droites extrêmes ou le terrorisme islamiste – pour désigner les menaces qui pèsent sur la démocratie ?
Enzo Traverso répond à la question grâce à une fine analyse comparative entre le fascisme du xxe siècle et ses nouveaux visages en ce début du xxie siècle.
Il démontre comment le fascisme a muté en une idéologie mouvante qui s’empare de la souffrance sociale face à l’extrême violence de la mondialisation néolibérale, mobilisant un style populiste et désignant des ennemis.
Née dans la matrice coloniale, l’islamophobie structure en effet aujourd’hui les nationalismes européens.
Pour Enzo Traverso, la menace post-fasciste est une réponse régressive dans un monde désenchanté en panne d’utopies, qui se nourrit de promesses fantasmées d’un retour à un passé mythifié.
Traverso fournit des clés indispensables pour déjouer ces dangereux usages de l’histoire.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Political Science, Far Right, 21st Century, France

160 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 2017

About the author

Enzo Traverso is an Italian scholar of European intellectual history. He is the author of several books on critical theory, the Holocaust, Marxism, memory, totalitarianism, revolution, and contemporary historiography. His books have been translated into numerous languages. After living and working in France for over 25 years, he is currently the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University.

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rise of the radical right is probably THE defining feature of our current time. The world has not experienced a similar growth of the radical right since the 1930s. I think this is also why I find so much ‘inspiration’ in the artwork on the interwar years. The eerie feeling of being very close to the brink just resonates.

So, how close are we to actual fascism? Is Trump a fascist? The book ‘The New Faces of Fascism. Populism and the Far Right’ (VERSO, 2019) argues that the best way to conceive of the Trumps as ‘post-fascism’ which is neither a reproduction of old school fascism (this is not to say that this kind of neo-fascism does not exist these days) nor something entirely new and unrelated to previous fascisms. Today’s post-fascism – which belongs to a particular regime of historicity, the beginning of the 21st century - is a kind of eclectic cocktail of right-wing populism, identitarianism, Islamophobia, and regressive and nationalist anti-globalization.

There’s a neat review of academic debates of concepts of fascism which is not a very straight forward concept. What I find most useful about the concept of ‘post-fascism’ for making sense of today’s far right, is fascism’s economic and class base, in a sense of fascism as a class dictatorship aimed at defending the interests of capitalism in a time of economic crisis, in Europe and the US this became particularly evident after the 2007/2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent radical abolishment of democracy (oligarchy in the US, financial technocracy in the EU) thereafter.

There’s a very interesting chapter on how the EU does not provide a barrier to the growth of the far right but fuels it (think Brexit). I think what happened after the global financial crisis, when the unelected EU troika dictated politics and policies in Greece and elsewhere is kind of the moment when the financialization of politics ‘post-ideoloigcal pragmatism’ lost its façade of democracy. When very literally German and French banks decided over the futures of countries against the very explicit will of the people and their democratically elected leaders. I guess in 50 years or so, this look much more important in the larger scheme of things than maybe now.

Funny enough, we have reached such a low point in democracy that any criii of the neoliberal status quo from either the right or left is ‘populist’ The very idea to propose a programme that is popular with the people rather than financial elites and technocrats has become offensive. Ranciere (as quoted in the book) probably summarized it best:

Populism is the convenient name under which is dissimulated the exacerbated the contradiction between popular legitimacy and expert legitimacy, that is, the difficulty the government of science has in adapting itself to manifestations of democracy and even to the mixed form of representative system. This name at once masks and reveals the intense wish of the oligarch to govern without people, in other words, without any dividing of the people; to govern without politics.

In a nutshell, in the 30s as now, the far right and its fascist version exists in a context of class interests. If we want to fight Trump, we need Bernie not Wall Street.

(The book is much less simplistic than my summary, so yeah, read it, comrades.)

[Harooon · Rating 2 out of 5]

To what extent are the resurgent populisms of Europe fascist? This is the question Enzo Traverso takes up in The New Faces in Fascism. And it doesn’t deliver.

Partly it’s because the terms involved are rather slippery. Traverso does a good job summarising the historiography of fascism – and there have been a staggering number of ways to understand it. Perhaps this is because of the relatively short-lived nature of the fascist regimes, or the tendency to employ the term well beyond its actual designation, either as a political pejorative or a moral condemnation.

Traverso follows the usual line in understanding populism as “above all a style of politics rather than an ideology.” It is “a rhetorical procedure that consists of exalting the people’s ‘natural’ virtues and opposing them to the elite—and society itself to the political establishment—in order to mobilise the masses against the system.” (15-6).

Yet Traverso is careful to note that populism is often used in a pejorative sense. It has been applied to a wide range of figures: Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen, Evo Morales, Bernie Sanders, Viktor Orbán. It’s hard to see what they all have in common. He cautions us against trying to do this too much; we should not limit populism to an “abstract category formalised in a set of general features.” (17).

He therefore zooms in on the far-right populisms and identitarian movements of Europe. He is particularly interested in France, Italy, and Germany, and the associated movements of the far right within them: Brothers of Italy, Lega Nord, National Rally (formerly the National Front), Pegida, Alternative for Germany, and others. It’s nice to see continental Europe given centre-stage in a scholarly work about populism. His analysis is sometimes very specific to a particular country though, and therefore lacks generality.

These populisms are not, on Traverso’s analysis, strictly fascist, because they do not continue the fascist project. Those kinds of parties exist, but they are not populist. They are parties like Jobbik in Hungary or Golden Dawn in Greece, which Traverso calls neofascist. The populists are best described as postfascist:

In most cases, it does indeed come from a classical fascist background, but it has now changed its forms... In trying to define them, we cannot ignore the fascist womb from which they emerged, insofar as these are their historical roots, but we should also cosnider their metamorphoses. They have transformed themselves, and they are moving in a direction whose ultimate outcome remains unpredictable. When they have settled as something else, with precise and stable political and ideological features, we will have to coin some new definition. Postfascism belongs to a particular regime of historicity—the beginning of the twenty-first century—which explains its erratic, unstable, and often contradictory ideological content, in which antinomic political philosophies mix together. (6-7).

Discussing these populisms in their historical moment rather than as a unified political ideology avoids some of the cruder comparisons that are drawn between populism and fascism. But it also dilutes the book’s thesis. While postfascism is understood as being, in some sense, a progression or succession of fascism, it’s not always clear how it is so. And about halfway in, the book loses sight of its original thesis and drowns you in historiography.

Traverso does make comparisons between fascism and populism, describing how a fascist ideal has mutated into a populist one. When there are counterexamples, he unconvincingly handwaves them away by appealing to the inherent vagueness of postfascism. Whether postfascism is vague as such because it’s an historical moment in flux, or because its pronouncements are by their nature incoherent or contradictory, it’s never really clear.

To take an example: homosexuality embodied moral and masculine weakness in fascist regimes. In Nazi Germany, homosexuals were arrested, imprisoned, castrated, and put in concentration camps. On the other hand, there are several prominent populists who are gay, or who “often claim to be defending women’s and gay rights against Islamism.” (31). Some examples include Alice Weidel, Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, Florian Philippot, and Renaud Camus. Some of these politicians are also opposed to gay marriage and/or gay civil unions or partnerships (the possibility of being against gay marriage without being homophobic is never addressed).

Traverso believes that the populisms are like fascism in their view of homosexuality, even if they differ by degrees. Any pronouncement of gay rights is merely fascism “shedding its skin”, an example of a movement adopting social practices “which do not belong to its genetic code” in order to “stay relevant.” (32). It’s the same reason why Marie Le Pen has cleaned up her party and turned it into a more mainstream political vehicle. On Traverso’s account, there can be no genuine concern for gay rights or moderate politics among the populists; only shapeshifting fascists assuming a new guise in a different era.

Yet this is unconvincing. There is still a world of difference between opposition to gay marriage and throwing gay people into concentration camps. One can point to individual cases of political opportunism. Traverso may even be correct in his final judgement on the postfascist “defence” of gay rights. What he’s doing isn’t historical analysis though, but political bickering, the equivalent of telling someone else that they are lying instead of responding to what they are saying.

Too often Traverso weasels out of the discrepancies between fascism and populism by throwing up his hands and declaring that it is the populists who are being contradictory and that postfascism – the supposed bridge between them – is vague and shadowy. Postfascism is, of course, a term he invented in the first place. Shouldn’t the onus be on him to more firmly conceive the idea before writing a book about it?

In the case of racism, the anti-Semitism of the fascists has transmogrified into the Islamophobia of the populists. The historcial force sustaining both is colonialism, in particular the imperialism and white supremacy that drove the Scramble for Africa, as well as the cultural memories of the postcolonial wars, such as the Algerian War (veterans of whom founded National Rally). To understand the roots of the holocaust, we might look to such events as the Italian-Ethiopian war, in which chemical weapons were deployed on an “inferior” race, or the Herero genocide, in which tens to hundreds of thousands of Hereros and Namaquas died.

In a later chapter, Traverso examines the extent to which political Islamism and fascism have an affinity. The answer is: none, really. They may both have totalitarian aspects, but exercising absolute power over all spheres of life says nothing of the idelogical and historical currents driving a regime; their “internal logic” is different.

A good deal of this discussion is, for some reason, taken up with Israel and anti-Semitism. Traverso explains that Islamophobia is today institutional and endemic to Europe in a way that anti-Semitism no longer is. “The memory of the Holocaust has become a republican civic religion, while the memory of colonial crimes is still denied or repressed...” (81). Anti-Semitism is still around, but Traverso calls it – somewhat dismissively – “the new Judeophobia.” And while considering if the “nationalism” of ISIS has something to do with the fascist nationalisms, he concludes that it is actually far more similar to the nationalism of Israel.

This was all far too edgy for me to take very seriously. The comparison between Israel and ISIS is almost irrelevant to the wider point, poorly argued, and overall in bad taste. This chapter is not really an examination of Islam as fascism, but Israel as fascist.

That’s not the only vulgar comparison. In order to evaluate how useful the concept of totalitarianism is for historical understanding, Traverso compares the violence of the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. While both were terrible, he concludes that the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany was qualitatively different, for its internal logic sought rational means for an irrational end – the extermination of “inferior” peoples (irrational here means lacking in military or economic utility).

On the other hand, Stalin’s modernization programme was “not irrational itself.” Gulags did not exist to kill their inhabitants, but to employ slave labour to build roads and mine metals. Contrast this with Auschwitz, where “death was not a by-product of forced labour, but the camp’s very purpose.” (166).

Of the purging of the kulaks, Traverso writes: “The ‘liquidation of the kulaks’ was the result of a ‘revolution from above’ conceived and realized with authoritarian and bureaucratic methods that were far more improvised than they were rigorously planned (and, indeed, had uncontrollable consequences).” (168). Of the Holodomor: “the death of civilians was not the purpose of military operations, but it was accepted as inevitable ‘collateral damage,’ like in Ukraine in 1930-33.” (168). The policies of collectivization should not be seen as genocidal attempts, but as famines, like the Irish potato famine or 1943 Bengal famine. Traverso is also quick to remind us that Churchill was more racist than Stalin.

His overall point is that totalitarianism is a politically loaded term, often unfit for precise historical analysis, but as it contains within itself all the moral lessons of the twentieth century, it’s not something we can dispense with. There were many differences in the internal logic of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, even though both were totalitarian.

Yet in all of this there is an obvious whiff of Stalinist apologia. The suggestion that the liquidation of the kulaks somehow “spiralled out of control” is really undercooking it. And the Holodomor does seem qualitatively different from the Potato famine and the Bengal famine. The potato famine’s proximate cause was potato blight. A variety of human factors caused the Bengal famine, but these were in response to a war being fought, not a purposeful re-ordering of domestic agriculture. Though aid to the Bengali people was insufficient and ineffective, it was not denied like in the Holodomor. And whether Churchill was more racist than Stalin is pure whataboutism.

Traverso’s argument here is very thin, and even if it were established beyond all doubt, it somehow makes little difference to say that the purpose of the Holodomor was to collectivise the land, not to starve the peasants. This is a psychological claim more than an historical analysis. To minimise the actions of the Soviet Union by saying there was some amount of foresight but not a sufficient degree of intent is to do nothing more than mitigate them and soften the moral culpability of the Soviet Union.

I just don’t see any value in making such comparisons between the Holodomor and the Holocaust. Whether the Holodomor was “better”, “about the same”, or “worse” is of little consolation to those who had to eat their children to survive. Genocide, horror, and tyranny are not events at the Olympics; it’s not a contest. To look at and compare historical tragedies in this way dehumanises and belittles their victims.

If these were inartful comparisons in the service of a well thought out point, I would perhaps have been easier on this book. They aren’t though. Traverso is ultimately more interested in telling you that Israel is worse than you think and the Soviet Union better than you think, in a book about neither.

Ultimately, The New Faces of Fascism does a poor job of explaining the connection between fascism and populism. This despite being packed with footnotes and citations, most of which fly past without much serious discussion. A good deal of this book could have been cut-out and the remainder fleshed out.

Yet the book does ultimately contain a bit of value, and that’s in the simple idea of populism being postfascist. Too often we want to view contemporary politics through the prism of 1945. Yet as Traverso points out, we have, quite simply, moved beyond those times. Populism may or may not be a kind of fascism. In the end, does it really matter? If it’s bad, we should say so on our own terms. Our study of the past should illuminate the present. Obsessing over which technical label applies to whom is, after a certain point, little more than a kind of pointless taxonomy, a way of endlessly naming and renaming things in the world without actually understanding them better. Postfascism is not a political ideology, but a new horizon of historical study, one we may need to take seriously if we ever truly want to grasp populism.

[Tanroop · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The radical right is no longer represented by ultra-nationalists marching in uniform through the streets of European capitals. If the National Front addresses the working class in a different way than it used to, this is because one of the structural divisions of the 20th century – the opposition between fascism and communism – has declined...As postfascism is a transitional phenomenon, so the radical left will accomplish the passage from the twentieth century to new ideas and political forms. We know that things are coming to a boil, and the lid is about to come off. Big changes are going to take place, and we need to be prepared for them. When they do, the right words will come."

A collection of interviews and essays that reflect the sense of being in an interregnum in which- at the risk of being cliche- the old is dying/dead and the new is being born. The book is less a systemic analysis of the European far-right than a historiographical survey of fascism, the (mis)uses of the concept of totalitarianism, and a look at the contemporary- "transient and unstable"- radical right (some of which Traverso describes as 'postfascist'; "we cannot ignore the fascist womb from which they emerged, insofar as these are their historical roots, but we should also consider their metamorphoses") in a time of transition and (re)formation. It feels consciously constructed as an invitation to begin thinking through some of these questions rather than a comprehensive account. It helps set the ground for the debates we need to have. Some of the book's eclecticism, of course, has to do with the nature of the texts as collected writings rather than being a planned monograph. Still, I found it very useful and stimulating both historiographically and methodologically.

[Pinkyivan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incoherent leftist ranting. The kind that defines fascism on one page as an extreme reaction of the bourgeois and on another speaks of how fascist Trump is because people from rural places voted for him. It's really not possible to differentiate the Roman Republic from medieval France and Mussolini's Italy based on such wide, ahistoric and emotivist suppositions. The intellectual equivalent of a slightly above average Guardian column. For readups on fascism go to Nolte and Arendt. Have not encountered a contemporary equivalent of those unfortunately.

[Alberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una obra mínima para entender un concepto apabullante, el ascenso de una nueva derecha que Traverso denomina posfascista y explica su peso, especialmente en Francia. Muy bueno.

[Adrián · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro muy recomendable por el acertado análisis que realiza. Se centra principalmente en el caso francés, pero permite obtener una perspectiva amplia.

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clareza, precisão de conceitos, rigor intelectual - Enzo Traverso vale demais a pena.

[Lazaros Karavasilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enzo Traverso is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking historians of our time. I became acquainted with his work a few years ago, when I read ‘Fire and Blood’, which details and understands both world wars and the interwar period as a 30-year-old European war (a theory that I do not necessarily adapt). I was immediately captivated by his writing and by his immense knowledge of the historical reality of the period.

After that short love letter to Traverso, I can safely say that I enjoyed this book more than I expected. Having seen the term ‘populism’ being turned into a buzzword and thrown around in abandon, I was very cautious when I started reading the book, thinking that it would be just another book that tries to be in fashion.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Traverso’s analysis starts with addressing the issue and drawing parallels with fascism but not creating connections between the two concepts. If populism is thrown around and used for everything then it stops having any use, same with the term of fascism. Starting with that, Traverso discusses populism rather briefly and goes into the further extent to what he calls the ‘new fascism’ juxtaposing it to the old fascism of the 1930s.

Traverso examines the various theories, their pitfalls and their advantages, in a rather fair light. He is not afraid to become critical and dismiss parts of theories on fascism and explains how his ‘new fascism’ is compared to them.

Equal parts contemporary political analysis, intellectual history and political polemic, Traverso’s book manages to be quite interesting and possibly a useful guide for those that want to understand contemporary fascism a little bit better.

Extra bonus the discussion on totalitarianism, a term that has been also overused.

[Μιχάλης Παπαχατζάκης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το βιβλίο του σύγχρονου Ιταλού φιλοσόφου Έντσο Τραβέρσο είναι ένα βιβλίο που θα σύστηνα ευχαρίστως, να μην πω επιτακτικά, σε όποιον προβληματίζεται για τα σύγχρονα κοινωνικά φαινόμενα. Γιατί πιάνει δυο τέτοια για τα οποία έχουν γραφτεί άπειρες αναλύσεις που όμως συνήθως συσκοτίζουν παρά φωτίζουν τις αιτίες και τις εκδηλώσεις τους: την άνοδο της ακροδεξιάς στην Ευρώπη και την εξάπλωση του Ισλαμικού Κράτους. Συσχετίζει μάλιστα κατά κάποιο τρόπο αυτά τα δυο, ως βασικό προϊόν της πολιτικής που ακολουθούν οι Δυτικές δυνάμεις, εσωτερική και εξωτερική αντίστοιχα. Αλλά και την απουσία προοδευτικής-επαναστατικής εναλλακτικής διεξόδου-ουτοπίας, όπως λέει.

[Dan Gauna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pantallazo al estado politico y social de Europa y la replica mundial.

[Ricky Bevins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is clearly very knowledgeable and there are gems of analysis to be found but the book as a whole is let down by its structure.

Beginning with very lucid observations and sharp analysis of current political trends, the second half of the book takes the reader back 100 years to look at the genealogy and origins of fascism and its variations. This section is well written and interesting, but this also means that by the conclusion, the punchy relevance of the book has long been forgotten. This was compounded by a very general and shallow conclusion that failed to bridge the gap between the book's two halves.

The book's scope and scale should have been delivered chronologically, which would have likely provided a much more accessible and well-paced analysis with an astute conclusion.

Beyond structure however, the author is sometimes distracted by ramblings that lack evidence and justification, which can betray his personal blindspots. A good example is the author's rapid dismissal of a feminist critique of Islam, specifically the wearing of a burkha. His argument more or less boiled down to, 'Some women wear burkhas out of choice, so therefore it is islamophobic to critique the burkha as a tool of patriarchal oppression.'

Videos of what Muslim men do to their wives who refuse to wear headscarves can be easily found online, which I recommend Enzo see. Whenever a male author so casually dismisses feminist analysis, it should give readers pause. Enzo avoids asking difficult questions about whether the choice of a few priveleged women trumps the reality of millions of oppressed women, for what can only be a refusal to engage in legitimate criticisms of Islam. In his analysis of the far-right's predilection for Islamophobia, Enzo becomes allergic to nuance.

This isn't to dismiss the brilliant and illuminating passages found elsewhere, but these moments are good examples of where Enzo falls down, where it becomes apparent that a narrative is being followed regardless of evidence or reference.

These shortcomings don't take away from the strength of analysis found elsewhere however, and I believe this book is one I'll return to in time.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A messy text from a messy intellect.

Traverso conveniently ignores the fact that Europe is the homeland of Fascism and Socialism. That Germany was the only country where the de-nazification was ever attempted and quickly dropped. That Socialism has been the only political system in Europe for the whole century.

It is a smearing book. It's a book about the "extreme right", not to be confused with the exact same thought, only more politically correct, as exposed by the "moderate right" and the "center right".

To push his political agenda, Traverso starts splitting hairs or what populist might mean, although even by using his examples populism is another name for representative politics, or "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine".

And to gather a more general appeal, Trump, Chavez, anybody can be thrown in to explain. Traverso goes as far as identifying "the historians who contributed most to renewing the interpretation of fascism".

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tremendously clear, nuanced, and thoroughly-researched analysis of fascism’s complex cultural, political, and ideological history, alongside a helpful and illuminating discussion of how it extends in various contradictory ways into the present. The writing is a little clunky at times, possibly due to translation issues.

[Özgür Sevgi Göral]

Bir mülakat metni olmasına rağmen Enzo Traverso'nun karşılaştırmalı, tarihsel ve geniş perspektifi sayesinde, yeni faşizmler, hafıza rejimleri, 20. yüzyıl ve 21. yüzyıl sağcılıkları ve devrimci hareketleri arasındaki farklar üzerine insanı uzun uzun düşündüren, bol referanslı ve okuması çok zevkli bir metin. Traverso temel olarak 20. yüzyıl faşizmlerini karakterize eden birkaç şeyin altını çiziyor: Çok güçlü bir anti-komünizm, yaygın ve geniş bir kitle hareketine dayanmak, güçlü ve politik hareketleri şekillendiren bir ideolojik arkaplan, kitle hareketlerinin lideri olarak faşist liderler. Bugünkü yeni aşırı sağ hareketlere/farklı faşizmlere ise bu temel özelliklerden ayrıldıkları için post-faşizm adını veriyor. Post faşizmler, Traverso'ya göre, eklektik ve ideolojik alanı belirleyen bir politikalar zeminiyle, güçlü bir işçi sınıfı hareketinin ve komünist ütopyanın öldüğü bir dönemde kaygan bir yabancı düşmanlığı/islamofobi ve özgün millet sevgisiyle, illa kitle hareketine dayanmayan yapılarıyla karakterize oluyor. Daha gevşek ve siyasi konjonktüre göre daha kolay şekil alan, politika ve dil değiştiren, ideolojik çizginin ikincil olduğu esnek yapılar. Burda Traverso tabi esasen Avrupa'daki 21. yüzyılın aşırı sağ hareketlerine bakarak bu tanımı getiriyor ve analizi yapıyor. Özellikle göçmen ve yabancı düşmanlığının, İslamofobinin, sömürgeci geçmişin ve şimdidin bugünün post faşizmlerini karakterize eden noktalar olduğunu söylüyor. Kitabın temel tezi bu.

Yanı sıra 60'ların hareketlerinin enternasyonalizmi ve bugünün k��resel dünyasına rağmen mevcut toplumsal hareketlerinin şaşırtıcı ilişkisizliği, Avrupa'da Holokost hafızasının sömürgecilik hafızasını kapatan ve steril bir rol oynar hale gelmesi, bugünün en önemli problemlerinden biri olarak politik ve toplumsal hareketlerin tutarlı bir politik programdan/ütopyadan yoksunluğu, bütün çürümüşlüğüne rağmen reel sosyalizmin çöküşünün dünya çapında nasıl muazzam sonuçları olduğu, Fransa'daki cumhuriyetçilik övgüsünün sömürgecilik ve ırkçılığın üstünü hem sağ hem de sol siyasi hareketlerde nasıl kapattığı ve Koselleckçi anlamda bi beklenti ufkunun kaybolduğu, görece ütopyasız bir zamanda devrimci politika içinde olmanın sorunları da kitabın değindiği ve benim çok ilgimi çeken pek çok meseleden biri. Her değerlendirmesine katılmıyorum belki ama benim için nefis bir düşünme güzergahı oldu bu kitap, Marksist tarihçilik formasyonuna sahip ve politik olarak derdi olan Traverso'yu okumak her zaman bu etkiyi yaratıyor. Kitap boyunca da bizi uyarıyor, güzel sözler beklemeyin diyor Traverso, parlak bir beyinden güzel sözler gelmeyecek, toplumsal hareketler düşe kalka bata çıka mücadele ederken yeni politik kavramları bulacak. Sonu o kadar güzel ki, son iki cümleyi serbestçe çevirip eklemeden duramayacağım: 'Yine de tencerenin fokurdadığını ve kapağı devireceğini biliyoruz. Köklü değişiklikler olacak, bunlara hazırlanmak gerekiyor. Kelimeler ise kendiliğinden gelecektirler.'

[Alistar Flofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Intense Wish of the Oligarch: to govern without politics

According to Jacques Rancière: Populism is the convenient name under which is dissimulated the exacerbated contradiction between popular legitimacy and expert legitimacy, that is, the difficulty the government of science has in adapting itself to manifestations of democracy and even to the mixed form of representative system. This name at once masks and reveals the intense wish of the oligarch: to govern without people, in other words, without any dividing of the people; to govern without politics.

The Priveleged of Knowledge

The conventional discourse on populism today is the work of intellectuals fancying themselves as counsellors to the Prince. Naturally, those who produce it do not regard themselves as part of the “people”, to whom they adopt a paternalistic attitude, surveying them at times with benevolence, more often with impatience and exasperation, not to speak of alarm.

The sacralisation of secular institutions

Modern politics consisted of the sacralisation of secular institutions—first of all the state sovereign power, then the Parliament and the Constitution—as a substitute for the old monarchy based on divine right. The emblems and the liturgies of absolutism were replaced by republican rituals and symbols. In this vision, political forces embody values; political representation has an almost sacred connotation and pluralism expresses a conflict of ideas, a powerful intellectual commitment. Today’s statesmen universally consider themselves good pragmatic (and, most important, ‘postideological’) managers. Politics has ceased to embody values and has instead become a site for the pure ‘governance’ and distribution of power, of the administration of huge resources. In the political field, they no longer fight for ideas, but instead build careers.

The collapse of the Democratic vote

Because Clinton’s victory was considered so inevitable, Trump’s success seemed like the violation of a ‘law of history’. For an Italian, this was rather less surprising, after our own twenty years of Berlusconism. We were already rather blasé, despite the obvious recognition that Trump’s victory will have much more fundamental effects. If we look more closely at the results of the US election, the conclusion we have to draw is clear: what the media failed to predict was not some enormous wave of neoconservatism, which did not in fact take place, but rather the collapse of the Democratic vote.
[...] Trump's victory owed to Clinton’s collapse in a series of traditional Democratic strongholds. We are not seeing the ‘fascistisation’ of the United States, as if the country had been hypnotised by a new charismatic leader; rather, we are seeing a deep rejection of the political and economic establishment, with mass abstention and a protest vote captured by a demagogic and populist politician.

Trump - A neoliberal anthropological model

Fascism emerged in an age of strong state intervention in the economy, a characteristic shared by the Soviet Union, the fascist countries, and the Western democracies, starting with Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’. It was born in the era of Fordist capitalism, of assembly-line production and mass culture. Trump has emerged in the age of neoliberalism, in the age of financialised capitalism, of competitive individualism and endemic precarity. He does not mobilise the masses but attracts a mass of atomised individuals, of impoverished and isolated consumers. He has not invented a new political style; he does not want to look like a soldier and does not wear a uniform. He shows off a luxurious, terribly kitsch lifestyle that resembles the backdrop of a Hollywood TV series. He embodies a neoliberal anthropological model.

Fascism

Fascism was simultaneously a revolution, an ideology, a Weltanschauung, and a culture. As a revolution, it wished to build a new society. As an ideology, it reformulated nationalism as a rejection of Marxism that served as an alternative to conservatism as well as to liberalism. As a Weltanschauung, it inscribed its political project within a philosophy that saw history as a realm for building a ‘New Man’. And as a culture, fascism tried to transform the collective imagination, change people’s way of life, and eliminate all differences between the private and public spheres by fusing them into a single national community (delimited along ethnic or racial lines). Fascism was a ‘revolution of the right’, whose social engine was the middle classes and whose ambition was to create a new civilization. In other words, it was a simultaneously anti-liberal and anti-Marxist ‘spiritualist’ and ‘communitarian’ revolution.

PostFascism

Postfascism no longer has the ‘strong’ values of its 1930s ancestors, but it purports to fill the vacuum that has been left by a politics reduced to the impolitical. Its recipes are politically reactionary and socially regressive: they involve the restoration of national sovereignty, the adoption of forms of economic protectionism, and the defense of endangered ‘national identities’. As politics has fallen into discredit, the postfascists uphold a plebiscitary model of democracy that destroys any process of collective deliberation in favour of a relationship that merges people and leader, the nation and its chief.

Critical Historian v/s ‘Anti-antifascist’ historian

Today, the time has come for critical history writing. A critical historian is neither a defence counsel nor a public prosecutor. He certainly will not deny the existence of the gulag—a recognition which implicitly demands a moral and political condemnation of Stalinism—and he will try to elucidate its origins, purposes, and functioning. He will try to contextualize, compare, and put the gulag into a diachronic perspective. He will investigate the roots of Stalinism in Russian absolutism or the consequences that both World War I and the civil war had on Soviet society in terms of its brutalization and adaptation to violence. An ‘anti-antifascist’ historian, for his part, does not need any such thorough investigation. For him, history holds no mysteries, and he already knows the answer: the Gulag existed because the Soviet Union was totalitarian, and the Russian civil war took place because it corresponded with the dogmas of Bolshevik ideology. This is the core of the histories of the Soviet Union written by scholars such as Martin Malia, for whom ‘in the world created by October we were never dealing in the first instance with a society; rather, we were always dealing with an ideocratic regime’.

Stalin - a hybrid synthesis of Bolshevism and Tsarism

For Isaac Deutscher, Stalin was a hybrid synthesis of Bolshevism and Tsarism, just as Napoleon had embodied both the revolutionary wave of 1789 and the absolutism of Louis XIV. Similarly, Arno J. Mayer depicts Stalin as a ‘radical modernizer’ and his rule as ‘an uneven and unstable amalgam of monumental achievements and monstrous crimes’. As for the deportation of the kulaks during the agricultural collectivization of the 1930s, Peter Holquist suggests that it fundamentally repeated the resettlement of more than 700,000 peasants in the 1860s, at the time of Alexander II’s reforms, which were inscribed in a broader project for the Russification of the Caucasus region.

The Communist experience - a prismatic, multifaceted, and contradictory phenomenon

The fall of the Soviet Union definitively inscribed the communist experience into a historical perspective that focuses almost exclusively on its criminal dimension (mass deportations, mass executions, concentration camps) and simultaneously eclipses its once-exalted emancipatory potential. Rather than a prismatic, multifaceted, and contradictory phenomenon combining revolution and terror, liberation and oppression, social movements and political regimes, collective action and bureaucratic despotism, communism was reduced to the accomplishment of a murderous ideology.

A synoptic outline of the history of ‘totalitarianism’

A synoptic outline of the history of ‘totalitarianism’ can distinguish eight different moments: the birth of the concept in Italy in the 1920s; its spread in the 1930s among political exiles and the fascists themselves; its scholarly recognition in 1939, after the German–Soviet pact; the alliance between anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism after 1941; the redefinition of anti-totalitarianism as synonymous with anti-communism during the Cold War; the crisis and decline of the concept between the 1960s and the 1980s; its rebirth in the 1990s as a retrospective paradigm through which to conceptualize the past century; and finally, its remobilization after 11 September 2001, in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism. This rough periodization reveals both the strength and the remarkable flexibility of a concept permanently mobilized against different and sometimes interchangeable targets.

Totalitarianism — both useless and irreplaceable

Totalitarianism—and this is its paradox—is both useless and irreplaceable. It is irreplaceable for political theory, which defines the nature and forms of power, and useless for historical research, which tries to reconstitute and analyse a past made up of concrete and multifaceted events. Franz Neumann defined it as a Weberian ‘ideal type’, an abstract model that does not exist in reality.79 As an ideal type, it is much more reminiscent of the nightmare described by George Orwell in 1984, with its Big Brother, its Ministry of Truth, and its Newspeak, than ‘actually existing’ fascism and communism. Totalitarianism is an abstract idea, whereas historical reality is a concrete totality.

A historical cycle has come to an end and that it is necessary to go further

Creative minds gifted with powerful imaginations may pop up at any moment to propose some alternative, but a new utopia will not spring forth from the genius of some visionary: ideas cannot take root on their own but depend on a social force that is able to seriously advance them. In fact, social forces are also necessary to their creation, insofar as visionaries are themselves the product of a given social context, whatever the myriad mediations in between. Today many hints suggest that a change is afoot, that a molecular process underway could eventually produce a qualitative leap. But it has not happened yet. As postfascism is a transitional phenomenon, so the radical left will accomplish the passage from the twentieth century to new ideas and political forms. We know that things are coming to a boil, and the lid is about to come off. Big changes are going to take place, and we need to be prepared for them. When they do, the right words will surely come […] That does not mean turning away from the left’s history, but rather recognising that a historical cycle has come to an end and that it is necessary to go further.

[Oriol Alegria]

"Vivimos una época de transición: el siglo XX ha terminado; tuvimos una muestra del nuevo con el 11 de septiembre, varias guerras que devastaron el mundo árabe, una crisis financiera global, los atentados de Europa [...] Frente a nuevos escenarios desconocidos, sólo disponemos de un vocabulario antiguo, herencia del siglo terminado. Sus palabras están desgastadas, pero aún no hemos formado otras."
Con estas palabras, y muchas otras, concluye Traverso su breve análisis del auge de los posfascismos y las nuevas formas de ultra-derecha. De ellas se ha de extraer también una preocupación más: esta inquietud y este descontento que sigue al fin de las utopías, incluso ahora con la crisis del COVID, que Traverso no pudo predecir tres años atrás, supone un caldo de cultivo de sentimientos que se vieron hace justo un siglo. Y este, el nuevo, que no acaba de llegar, que nos aguarda y que parecemos recorrer en silencio como un fantasma, nos depara una hibridación entre varios instrumentos bien distintos a los del siglo pasado: las formas exaltadas del populismo tradicional son aplicadas a los mecanimos de espectacularización de la cultura neoliberal y sus premisas de individualismo y fe ciega en el mercado se enlazan con un nacionalismo que les es contradictorio. Todo, en cierto modo un sucedáneo de lo ya visto en el siglo XX, para funcionar como el nuevo mecanismo de secularización: una redención y un consuelo no ligados ya a una religión teológica, sino a una forma de religión débil, esa "religión sin cultura", ese rito sin espíritu, esa nueva lectura de la "forma sin contenido" que anunciaba Weber, causada ahora por la propia estructura austericida neoliberal y que sirve exclusivamente de alivio ante los padecimientos que este mismo sistema crea.

[Eleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Εξαιρετική ανάλυση της εξέλιξης των φασιστικών κινημάτων του 20ου αιώνα μέχρι τον επικίνδυνο μετα-φασισμό της σημερινής ακροδεξιάς. Ο Traverso εξηγεί με μεγ��λη σαφήνεια την έννοια του όρου "μετα-φασισμός", που χρησιμοποιείται για να δηλώσει τον δομικό μετασχηματισμό του φασισμού του παρελθόντος, που δυστυχώς δεν έχει ολοκληρωθεί ως διεργασία ώστε να ξέρουμε με βεβαιότητα με τι είμαστε αντιμέτωποι.
Ταυτόχρονα, ρίχνει και 5-6 γερές φάπες στην ανιστόρητη θεωρία των δύο άκρων, αποδεχόμενος όμως την εγκληματική λειτουργία του σταλινισμού. (Και εκεί ακριβώς έγκειται και η επιτυχία της επιχειρηματολογίας του, σε αντίθεση με άλλα κομμάτια της Αριστεράς που εξακολουθούν να τρομοκρατούνται στην ιδέα τη�� κριτικής του Στάλιν).
Μοναδικό μειονέκτημα η - σε μεγάλο βαθμό - γαλλοκεντρική προσέγγισή του, την οποία όμως εξηγεί στις πρώτες σελίδες, καθώς το βιβλίο ξεκίνησε από μία δημοσιογραφική συζήτηση για το φαινόμενο Λε Πεν και στη συνέχεια επεκτάθησε χρονικά και γεωγραφικά και αλλού.

[Rocio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esta bien.
Un poco quedado en el tiempo, considero que es una combinación de: por un lado, que el escenario político ha cambiado demasiado en estos años; pero además, es también porque Traverso hace un análisis completamente acotado temporalmente y hasta espacialmente. Leí una reseña que decía que el libro tendría que haberse llamado "Las nuevas caras de la derecha en Europa", yo agregaría una mención sobre que por nueva derecha se refiere únicamente a la islamofobia y a los ataques terrorista del Estado Islámico. Supongo que, en conclusión, es un pequeño libro que no deja de quedarse corto en todo lo que plantea. Hoy hay muchos análisis mejores tanto para el caso europeo como para el latinoamericano, iría por cualquiera de ellos.

[Pinky 2.0 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incoherent leftist ranting. The kind that defines fascism on one page as an extreme reaction of the bourgeois and on another speaks of how fascist Trump is because people from rural places voted for him. It's really not possible to differentiate the Roman Republic from medieval France and Mussolini's Italy based on such wide, ahistoric and emotivist suppositions. The intellectual equivalent of a slightly above average Guardian column. For readups on fascism go to Nolte and Arendt. Have not encountered a contemporary equivalent of those unfortunately.

[Jack Stewart · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tries to contextualise the contemporary far right in the wider conceptual discourse of fascism. Personally, I found that it didn't really say all that much. Traverso introduces the concept of 'post-fascism', but barely explains it. For a better explanation please see David Renton's 'New Authoritarians'.

[YVAN NOIR · Rating 3 out of 5]

El título completo debería ser "Las nuevas caras de la derecha en Europa", más específicamente Francia.
Esta especie de ensayo-entrevista tiene varias ideas interesantes que vale la pena explorar más, sobre todo cuando Traverso habla de la necesidad de ver la política con un vocabulario nuevo para el siglo XXI, y no con conceptos ya gastados, propios de las utopías del siglo XX.

[Mauricio Prado Jaimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está bueno, muy centrado en Europa y particularmente en Francia, incluso es una buena introducción para comprender qué pasa por allá, pero peca mucho de eurocéntrico y muchas de sus observaciones no aplican para las derechas latinoamericanas. Igual siempre es bueno leer a Traverso.

[Gonza · Rating 1 out of 5]

Es una verga. Se nota que lo hizo alguien que sabe una bocha y todo eso, pero el libro en sí, en particular después de la primera parte, me pareció infumable. Tiene una bocha de cosas rescatables que ya mencioné (creo), pero no recomendaría leer más que el primer capitulo.

[Alejo Radelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though unfocused on the final chapters, the book manages to draw a line between the old fascist movements and the new far right movements appearing throughout Europe.

[Fact100 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enzo Traverso, totalitarizm, marksizm, faşizm gibi kavramların yanı sıra devrim, çağdaş tarih ve bellek üzerine eserler vermiş İtalyan asıllı bir tarihçi. Faşizmin günümüze sirayet eden uzantılarını ve mevcut aşırı sağ politikaların geçmişle ilişkilerinin ne boyutta olduğunu irdeleyen "Faşizmin Yeni Yüzleri", objektif ve derin bir röportajın metne aktarılmış haline ilaveten konuyla ilgili olarak Traverso tarafından Covid sürecinde yazılan bir metni içeriyor.

"Yirmi birinci yüzyılın başında Avrupa'nın 1930'ların Avrupa'sıyla aynı olmadığı açık fakat nefret mekanizması, tarihsel bağlam değişmiş olmasına rağmen aynı şekilde işliyor."

Günümüzde, neredeyse küresel anlamda artış gösteren aşırı sağ, yabancı düşmanlığı ve korku(tma) politikalarını, ideolojik kökenleriyle yorumlayan Traverso, totaliterleşen Batı medeniyetlerinin geçmişe yönelik seçici belleklerini ve dürüstlükten uzak tutumlarını da örnekleriyle ortaya koyuyor.

"Dünyada tüm sosyal ve insani ilişkiler ticari hale geliyor ve tüm davranış ve arzularımız piyasa tarafından şekilleniyor. Bugünün totaliterliği, zihinlerimizin ve bedenlerimizin bireyselcilik ve rekabetçilik ile uydurulan bir "yaşam tarzı"na göre yönelim kazandığı sosyal, hatta neredeyse "antropolojik" bir model."

Yazarın, on dokuzuncu yüzyılın sonlarına doğru, Avrupa'da tarihsel olarak süregelen Yahudi düşmanlığının daha ideolojik bir yapı kazan(dırıl)arak anti-semitizm formuna evrilmesi ile (kökeni haçlılar dönemi ve sömürgeci geçmişe dayansa da) yirmi birinci yüzyılda ivmelenerek art(ırıl)an islamofobi arasında Avrupa'nın belleği ve davranış biçimleri üzerinden yaptığı mukayeseyi oldukça aydınlatıcı buldum.

"Siyasi liderlerin, antisemitizmi ittifak halinde ve sert bir dille kınarken, yabancı düşmanlığını ve İslamofobiyi görmezden gelmeleri Holokost'u hatırlamanın erdemlerini boşa çıkarıyor."

Günümüzden ele alınan olaylar, Traverso'nun uzmanlık alanı olması itibarıyla genel olarak Avrupa ve ABD örnekleriyle ilerlese de, eserde, İslamofobinin kökenleri ve müsebbibleri de objektif ve empatik bir biçimde yorumlanmaya çalışılıyor.

"Davranış eşitsizliğinin ciddi sonuçlara yol açabileceği anlaşılmak zorunda. Acı dolu bir hafızanın rahatlatılması başka bir tanınmamış hafızanın acılarını keskinleştirebilir."

Geçmişi unutmak, bireysel anlamda bazen bir lütuf, bazense lanet. Toplumsal unutuş ve anlamsızlaştırılmış kavramlar ise her zaman yeni sorunlara alan açmakta. Bu nedenle hangi ideoloji olursa olsun, bugünü daha iyi anlamak ve geleceği daha yaşanılır hale getirmek için sormamız, irdelememiz ve anlamaya çabalamamız gerektiğine inanıyorum.

"Faşizmin Yeni Yüzleri"ni, çok yönlü düşünce adına ideolojik aidiyetlerinden uzaklaşabilen, yorum ve eleştirinin tekamül için elzem olduğuna inanan ve kurgu-dışı tarih/inceleme kitaplarından hoşlanan yetişkinlere öneririm.

[Left_coast_reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Traverso, the far right today shares some features of historical fascism, but its essence lies precisely in the contradictory coexistence of these features with new 21st century ones. For this reason he calls it "postfascism." Their rhetoric has made a subtle shift from "nation" to "national identity." Some of them have softened their stance on women's rights and same sex marriage. Fascism was more willing to get the state involved in economic matters. And antisemitism was a key feature. Postfascism still prefers markets. And Muslims have replaced Jews as the key target of their hatred.

He looks at the work of historians who focused on fascism. Much of their work is valuable, but lacks a materialist basis or causal mechanism for explaining fascism. Some historians underestimate the importance of colonialism and fascism's cooperation with conservatives because they emphasize its revolutionary nature. I'm inclined to agree with Traverso here, but I still benefitted tremendously from learning their perspectives.

Fascism as "reactionary modernism" is a powerful concept. I'm surprised I haven't come across it before! Fascism can be understood as a combination of instrumental reason and modern industrial technology with a desire for a mythologized past. Enlightenment tools used in an attempt to destroy Enlightenment society.

Traverso picks apart the political concepts of populism and totalitarianism, arguing persuasively that both are too superficial and vague to be really useful for historians. They function chiefly as a way to lump the far left and far right together. That's not to say that these concepts are incoherent, just that they don't really deepen our understanding of the relevant phenomena.

Overall I like the book. But I think Traverso falls into the same trap he criticizes by defining postfascism by its ideas and not finding a clear materialist explanation. He also has some confusing tangents about things like Charlie Hebdo that left me feeling ambivalent. He uses lots of terms in their original language without translation which could be an additional challenge for readers.

[Eduardo Lima Águila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Había escuchado de Traverso en algún lado y, quizás por lo eufónico del nombre se me quedó grabado. A lo largo del libro, estructurado a modo de entrevista lo cual le da un tono más ameno, me quedó claro que es un tipo con una lucidez tremenda.
Rescataría algunos puntos: el primero, y creo más importante, es lo necesario que es agudizar nuestros análisis y discursos sobre las derechas, en particular las ultras. Vengo de un círculo social en que “fascista” es una palabra usada con mucha facilidad como descalificativo político, cuando esa realidad política es mucho más compleja y como tal exige mejores análisis como punto de partida. No todas las ultraderechas son fascistas, incluso aquellas que tengan una matriz en el fascismo. Traverso pone sobre la mesa el término “posfascismo” para referirse a estas nuevas ultra derechas, como las de Le Pen en Francia o Trump en EUA, pues, aunque compartan rasgos y se aglutinen el mismo espectro político, no son fascismos, pues guardan importantes diferencias, que el autor comenta a lo largo del libro, y señalar eso no es en ninguna forma disculparlas (el autor además no está para hacer una valoración moral de ellas, aunque claramente no simpatice en lo más mínimo, sino para hacer un análisis de la realidad que ve), sino agudizar la visión sobre qué está pasando con dichas ultra derechas. Y, agregaría yo, para poder responderles mejor. Sin esa mayor agudeza, retóricas actuales de las ultraderechas libertarias, que incluso intentan despojarse del fascismo para achacarlo a la izquierda en su idea de que Estado=izquierda, nos resultarían incomprensibles: “Hoy en día, la principal característica del posfascismo radica en una coexistencia contradictoria entre la herencia del fascismo antiguo y el injerto de nuevos elementos que no pertenecen a su tradición”
Como bien señalan, el principal error del libro es su eurocentrismo, que le hace olvidar fenómenos muy interesantes en Latinoamérica: ¿cómo se vería una nueva edición a la vista de Bolsonaro y Milei?
Por ultimo no dejan de parecerme simpáticas las malas reseñas de personas en inglés que, la neta, muestran una muy pobre capacidad intelectual política.

[Maik Civeira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uno de los mayores expertos contemporáneos en el fascismo clásico nos da algunas claves para comprender el nuevo fascismo. Es él quien marca una diferencia importante entre neo-fascismo y post-fascismo. Los neofascistas son los cabezas rapadas, kukluxklanis y demás, que reivindican el fascismo clásico, sus narrativas, ídolos y símbolos.

El postfascismo es mucho más peligroso, porque no se asume públicamente fascista, aunque sus políticas sigan claramente una agenda autoritaria y supremacista. Mientras los fascistas clásicos exaltaban al Estado, renegaban de los valores burgueses, y llamaban decadente a la democracia, la nueva ultraderecha exalta el libre mercado y llega al poder mediante elecciones democráticas.

Además de ofrecer un panorama de la ultraderecha moderna, en especial la europea, se toma el tiempo de analizar el fenómeno del islamismo radical, y advierte sobre los riesgos de considerarlo una especie de “fascismo islámico”, pues, aunque tiene muchos puntos en común con el fascismo occidental, también hay grandes diferencias entre ambos. Por último, hay un muy interesante análisis sobre el concepto de “totalitarismo”, su validez y limitaciones.

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro es la transcripción de dos conversaciones que tuvo Enzo Traverso con Régis Meyran sobre las "nuevas derechas" en 2016. Las conversaciones fueron editadas posteriormente y enriquecidas con las referencias bibliográficas, para ser publicado como libro. En este sentido no es un libro per se, con un argumento y estructura tradicional. Se divide en 4 secciones más una conclusión, que son secciones estructuradas en función de las preguntas que le realizan a Traverso.

En la conversación discute sobre muchos aspectos de las nuevas derechas o posfacismos en Europa, pero con énfasis principal en Francia. Describe las diferencias históricas con sus antecesores fascistas, así como las comparaciones erradas que se hacen con islamismo radical Así como habla de los problemas que tienen las izquierdas en Europa para construir nuevos proyectos.

Estas conversaciones son ricas en referencias y sin duda ayudan a clarificar mucho de lo que son las "nuevas derechas", así como el integrismo islámico.

[Vadim Yapiyev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a good read, but the ending was anticlimax. The author provided a good critique of the italian fasism and german nazims and their relevance to the recent resurgence of far right in Europe. I found this book a bit too academic for a more general reader. Though, it is obvious that Traverso is on far left, he provide a critical appraisal of the socialist movements. He also sees to appraise the Islamism in "fascism" context, refuting their links in terms of genesis and functioning. My main objection is that he contradics capitalism and communism, while capitalism is not a ideology, but the economic modus of liberalism (rights of an individual). He critiques Totalitarism as a concept, that was interesting. Overall, the books seems to be a good discussion of important things. In the conclusion, Traservos posits that postfascims replaced the left political alternative (communism) to working class cause as the current establishment (both left and right) are mostly neoliberal. That's good insight.