How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance

by Paul Mason

How can we stop the spread of fascism? The author of PostCapitalism offers a guide to resisting the far right.

The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again—and we need to find a better way to fight it.

In How to Stop Fascism , Paul Mason offers a radical, hopeful blueprint for resisting and defeating the new far right. The book is both a chilling portrait of contemporary fascism, and a compelling history of the fascist its psychological roots, political theories, and genocidal logic. Fascism, Mason powerfully argues, is a symptom of capitalist failure, one that has haunted us throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. History shows us the conditions that breed fascism, and how it can be successfully overcome. But it is up to us in the present to challenge it, and time is running out.

From the ashes of Covid-19, we have an opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society. To do so, we must ask what kind of world do we want to live in? And what are we going to do about it?

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Current Affairs, Society, Academic, Political Science

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 2021

About the author

Note: Paul^^Mason

Paul Mason is an English journalist and broadcaster. He is economics editor of the BBC's Newsnight television programme and the author of several books.

Reviews

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely essential reading in the 2020s - we must defeat fascism but first we must see and recognise fascism, understand why it appeals even to people who can seem rational and reasonable, and learn from the past the strategies that work against it.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, Paul Mason, always came across as a thoughtful presenter on the TV, but released from the constraints applied to broadcast news, his unashamed Marxist viewpoint shines through in this history and analysis of the threat of fascism.

I found the historical aspects really interesting - we did the Second World War as part of history when I was at school, but there was very limited material on what drove the rise of Fascism and how it operated. I also found Mason's expectation of a second major rise of Fascism and analysis of what to do about it interesting, but in a different way - here it was more an opportunity to see how an intelligent person's thinking can be painted into a corner by his ideology.

For example, Mason spends a considerable amount of time exploring why the left failed to stop the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany - but doesn't touch on the more useful potential of why fascism failed to take off in the UK, which would be a far better source of lessons - one probably being the lack of Marxism in mainstream UK politics. Similarly, Mason links the right wing with violent language on social media leading to fascist action, yet this does not fit with the reality that you are much more likely to find hateful language on social media from the left aimed at the right than vice versa. The left tell us they hate Tories, the right that they disagree with Labour. And Mason rightly berates the far right for its antisemitism, conveniently forgetting that the left has had more problems that the right with antisemitism of late.

Occasionally I found Mason's views distinctly amusing. He tells us 'The ideas of these self-styled "philosophers" of the far right are not simply grotesque: they would not last five minutes if subjected to the rigours of logic and analysis in an actual philosophy department. That's why they communicate in obscure, long-winded and unintelligible prose. However, they are persuasive.' Leaving aside how anything unintelligible can be persuasive, no doubt what he says about right wing extremists is true - but has he ever read the obscure, long-winded prose produced by many academic philosophers? It's hardly a discipline that specialises in a clear, comprehensible writing style.

Another hilarious lack of understanding came when Mason says 'At this stage Thiel, despairing of a political solution, urged libertarians to create communities of survival not resistance; this is the rationale for Silicon Valley's obsession with building undersea cities and space travel.' No, it's because they're science fiction fans.

One final quote that produced a raised eyebrow. Mason tells us 'Large numbers of people experienced the years after 2008 not just as economic dislocation but as a crisis of identity. They asked: if I am no longer a consumer, or an atomized individual in a competitive marketplace, defined by the brands I wear, the car I own and the credit card in my wallet, who am I?' It does make you wonder if Mason has ever spoken to a real person outside academia. I can honestly say I have never met anyone who has asked this.

Underlying the issues with this book is a problem I see all the time in undergraduate essays - stating 'A therefore B' without presenting any evidence that A causes B. For example, he repeatedly over-simplifies developments such as Brexit, linking them to Trump in the US and racism without having good justification for this. Sometimes this results in statements which it's hard to link to reality such as 'Tory leaders openly celebrate Britain's history as a slave power.' Like those undergraduates he can be quite poor about defining terms before he uses them. For example, he refers to the 'working class' all the way through the book, but it's only about three-quarters of the way through that he defines what it means in a modern world, where the original concept is a very poor fit to the reality.

All in all an interesting book that is thought provoking, but it would have been better written by someone who doesn't still believe that Marxism has the answer to everything.

[Rainer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 Sterne. Keine unparteiische Darstellung. Der englische Autor ist eine Art unorthodoxer moderner Marxist, aber vielleicht auch deswegen ist das Buch spannend. Man weiss ja, worauf man sich einlässt, und ist besonders angespornt, kritisch zu lesen. Jedenfalls macht das Buch klar, wie ernst die Lage ist.

Er sagt, dass politische Bewegungen des Rechtsextremismus, des Rechtspopulismus und des autoritären Konservatismus, obwohl sie sich in ihrer Organisation und Sprache unterscheiden, philosophische Wurzeln mit dem Faschismus gemeinsam haben. Und diese philosophischen Wurzeln stellt er gut dar. Das Buch mag auch in diesem Teil nicht wissenschaftlich sein, aber es ist sicher informativ.

Eine faschistische Denkweise befürchtet, dass Gruppen, die untergeordnet sein sollten (Frauen, People of Color, LGBTQ+-Personen, Immigranten), kurz davor stehen könnten, Freiheit und Gleichheit zu erlangen. Faschismus sei die Angst vor der Freiheit, die durch einen flüchtigen Blick auf die Freiheit ausgelöst wird. Interesant wie er hier die Paralellen zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart darstellt.

Auch der Bericht über die Entstehung des Faschismus in den 20er Jahren in Italien ist interessant, ebenso seine Darstellung der Ereignisse in  Frankreich und Spanien in den 30ern. (In beiden Ländern bildete die Linke, Radikalen und Liberalen, eine Volksfront, um faschistische Parteien zu bekämpfen, und gewann schließlich die Wahlen.) 

Schwächer wird das Buch dann leider im (nach "Ideologie" und "Geschichte") dritten Teil "Widerstand": Übertragen in die Gegenwart erfordere der Kampf gegen den Faschismus ein Bündnis der Mitte und der Linken, um die Demokratie gegen den Faschismus zu verteidigen. Dieses Ziel könne nur durch Kämpfe von unten und Zwangsmaßnahmen des Staates erreicht werden. Schon recht verkürzt. Wenn man wie er die Gesellschaft in Sozialisten, Neoliberale und Faschisten aufteilt, dann mag das aufgehen. Nur, Große Koalitionen können schließlich Rechtsextremismus auch Vorschub leisten - und Zwangsmaßnahmen des Staates können auch krachend scheitern. Da hätte ich mehr erhofft.

Sehr gut gefällt mir dann wieder das letzte Kapitel, in dem er den Filmklassiker „Casablanca“ herrlich moralisch interpretiert. 

[Mark Pedlar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best on the history of 20th century fascism, least good on how to resist today. Still not sure whether it's useful to label today's hard right as fascism and still not sure whether or not 20th century fascism was a unique manifestation brought on by particular economic conditions and the desire for restitution post-WWI.

Equally or more useful would be to identify European countries where fascism didn't take off e.g. UK, Scandinavia, and examine what were the features of resilience in those countries.

To resist fascism we need positive development of democracy and participation, not simply banning things like anonymity on the Internet, though that would help.

[Dorin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is so good and well-written that it is hard to summarize.

Paul Mason fights fascism. He is a Marxist, but he is not afraid to criticize the left and what it has historically done wrong in the fight with fascism (for the main battle of the 1930s was between fascism and Marxist ideologies).

So, what we thought is a thing of the past is not back in our lives: fascism. Instead of fighting it, we are hoping it will go away. People look at fascism now like they did after WW2, as a failed movement. They try today to analyse it using the same frameworks they did 50-60-70 years ago. But fascism now is very much different because the world we live in has changed. We have technology, the internet, rights, freedoms, an economic model that is dying, divided societies. Paul Mason is trying to tell us what to do. But before he does that, he tells us how to recognise fascism and how it came to be in the interwar period.

How to we recognise fascism? The fascist mythology nowadays, according to Mason, is spread through five key narratives: the great replacement theory (which wraps together racism, anti-feminism and hostility to the left: the left is promoting immigration and feminism, immigration leads to ‘genocide’ of the white race, feminists contribute to it by refusing to have children); liberalism is the enemy (this includes disdain to liberal democracy which promotes rights, immigration, which makes it hard to expel the ‘invaders’, meaning that democracy is bad and must be replaced); ‘cultural Marxist’ is destroying the West because it promotes free speech, homosexuality, immigration, women’s rights and so on; spread these ideas in the networks populated by people angry with their own lives, easily manipulated and converted; and wait for Day X, a catastrophe that will purify society and traditional gender roles (this day will come after multiple crises that will trigger a decisive phase: a civil war, an insurrection etc).

Why is this mythology spreading? Because society now faces multiple crises, which interact in unexpected ways. We have an economic model that no longer works, evaporating support for democracy, a crisis of technological control, meaning that some states and businesses are using information networks to suppress the truth and deter rational thinking, we have a post-Covid world and, looming above it all, a coming climate catastrophe.

People can’t understand the world they live in anymore. Before 2008, people could buy a house, pay their mortgage in three years, have a decent wage and a nice life. They had a predictable, secure life. Now, the same things are almost unaffordable. They have no one to blame, because those who control aspects of their lives are unreachable; they can’t protest their corporation, can’t yell at some multi-billion company for increasing their rent, can’t stop using Google or Facebook when they spread lies, so they take out their anger on groups that are reachable: women, minorities, immigrants. They feel that these groups, who are now becoming free, are the reason for the decline in their living standards. For Mason, fascism now is a fear of freedom driven by a glimpse of freedom, by which he means that fascists fear the freedom of others. But they also fear their own freedom, showing that most fascists would welcome a strongman leader or an authoritarian regime.

From the dawn of capitalism to the mid-1980s, workers’ lives were dominated by a single economic relationship – that with their boss. Today there are multiple relationships of exploitation which overlap and collide. As a result, it has become much harder to identify who is exploiting us. The top 0.1 per cent in every country are part of a globalized, super-rich stratum whose wealth is based primarily on rent-seeking and finance – and most of our lives do not bring us into any form of contact with them.

Instead it has become easier to identify somebody lower down the ladder as responsible for your own poverty and powerlessness: the buy-to-let landlord, the staff at the benefits office, the call centre worker at your bank; the person in the queue at the doctor’s surgery who speaks a foreign language; the security guard at the supermarket telling you to wear a face mask.

The answer to what we should do to stop the spread of fascism is simple: we should act and not stay idle. It won’t go away just by hoping it would. Fascists are active, vocal, so we should be too. We should take it to the streets and to the internet to show that we disagree, that we are not complacent. Online, we should fight the anonymous disinformation, hate speech and calls for crime and genocide. In the streets, if necessary, we should literally fight the fascists.

We live in atomized societies. We have different interests, principles, values. It is hard for large numbers of people to coagulate around a common goal but we should try. We should also pressure our politicians to do so. In the 1930s, different parties could not find common ground to cooperate. They were too stuck in their ways and their ideologies. But against fascism, cooperation is worthy, because if we/they fail to come together, we can lose everything.

The book is more detailed than that. The chapters on history, on the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, are very clear and well-structured. From there, it is easier to come to the present and understand the similarities, and, more importantly, the differences between then and now.

I hope this gets translated in my country and becomes mandatory reading.

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this is 4.5 / 5 and so could have easily been a 5-star rating.

There are three parts covering the ideology of Fascism, the History of Fascism, and how Fascism can be resisted.

The first part talks about how violence is symbolic for fascists and how the idea of an Ethno-state is their dream. Part 2 covers the origins of Fascism in mainly Italy and Germany in the period between the world wars and also discusses how Mussolini and Hitler could have been stopped.

The resistance is perhaps the most interesting part as the message from the author is that no one can remain neutral in the face of Fascism and that people on the left and in the centre of the political spectrum must forget their differences and all become anti-fascist. Otherwise they'll be sidelined at best and either killed, disappeared, or exported at worst. Democracy could cease to exist.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an excellent summary of the origins of fascism in the 20th century. Mason argues persuasively, within the context of the 2008 financial crash and its repercussions, for an updated definition of fascism in the 21st century.
His summaries of the emergence of Fascism/Nazism in inter-war Italy and Germany are clearly explained, as are the failures (and limited successes) of other parties, particularly the socialists and communists in Western Europe.
Mason's focus on the centrality of misogyny to 21st century fascism is convincing, and another big takeaway from this book is his insistence that a 21st century version of a Popular Front is required to ensure the defeat of Fascism, whether it be in India, Turkey, Hungary, the USA or the UK.
Tellingly, Boris Johnson is named alongside Modi, Bolsinaro, Erdoğan, Trump and Putin as the most likely gatekeepers to allow the re-emergence of a reinvigorated Fascism in the next few years. It's down to all of us!!
An essential read!

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful, detailed and clear examination of fascism's history and present.
This goes a long way towards providing an explanation to the mystery of why so many, seemingly ordinary people are now espousing radical views, it also convincingly links the rise of far right theory with the manosphere.
At no point does Mason try to hide that this is fascism from the point of view of an old school leftist agitator, however the overall conclusion is that the left needs to learn to compromise and to recognise where there true dangers lie. If you want a detailed look at the rise of fascism throughout Europe, and a clear eyed look at the conditions that are helping it rise again now then this is a must read book.

[Rob Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mason argues in great detail that the threat from 21st century fascism is not of a modern day beerhall putsch. It's far more insidious. The former journalist correctly identifies the fundamental problem. In fact, he defines it in excruciating detail. But frustratingly he offers little in the way of a workable solution. I gave in after about 2/3 of the book. It was frustrating to say the least. Several times it feels like he's building towards an answer, then it just fizzles out.

[Bagus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Mason’s latest book would make a nice compliment to Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning. Whereas Albright’s book speaks from her professional experience as former US Secretary of State and her personal experience of migrating from her native Czechoslovakia after Hitler’s advance to Prague, Paul Mason offers a richly detailed analysis on the nature of fascism which analyses the past- and the present-form of fascism. One thing that is particularly intriguing in Mason’s book and not in the main agenda of Albright’s book is the time limit that we currently have to stop fascism with climate change and the need to reach net-zero before 2050. In this regard, Mason’s project is also an extension of Bill Gates’ mission in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. And with the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow next month, this topic might be highly relevant. So what is the relation between climate change and modern fascism?

The perspective that Mason echoes throughout this book about fascism is “the fear of freedom, triggered by a glimpse of freedom. It is the violent mobilization of people who do not want to be free, around the project of destroying freedom.” In the word of the Italian antifascist Enzo Traverso, it is condensed into the view of fascism as ‘a revolution against the revolution’. What Madeleine Albright’s stated as a warning in 2018 in lieu of Trump’s presidency finally changed with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. The current situation triggers people to differentiate between ‘before’ and ‘now’, such was the case in the 1930s when people took the First World War and the Great Depression as ‘before’. Covid-19 pandemic with its myriad of implications and the ticking clock of climate change might push us to put fascism into the table as a problem to solve more than ever before.

Despite the fact of his leftist political opinion, Paul Mason in this book could break free from the Orthodox Marxism which views the historical inevitability of the collapse of capitalism as a given fact and suggests a temporary coalition between the liberals and the lefts to destroy a common enemy. Many scholars have provided some factual accounts and analyses of why fascism offers an alternative solution for most people who feel that the system they believed in slowly collapsed. The myths embraced by the fascist movements in Italy to recreate the great Roman Empire and in Germany to build a thousand years Third Reich provided alternatives for people with their doctrines, albeit with their irrationalities. Mason asserts the view that fascism comes from the total break from ideologies that we used to believe—democracy, market forces, globalism, science and the rule of law—to form a set of disconnected theories that make sense for people feeling hopeless with the crumbling of our systems.

The digital platform has become the new battleground for fascists of the twenty-first century. Mason outlines that disinformation has become the main tool to sabotage digital platforms with trolls, doxxing, threats, hate speech, etc. Internet used to be a platform based on writing where people exchanged thoughts and ideas. In the past decade, the move towards mobile devices has changed the way we interact on the internet into pictures- and short texts-basis which offer ease for people who want to manipulate the platforms with misinformation to create as much content as possible in just a short span of time.

No example is more striking than the one given by Carole Cadwalladr in her 2019 TED Talk about Facebook’s role in Brexit — and the threat to democracy in which she conducted small research based on the fact that sixty-two per cent of people in her hometown in South Wales Valleys voted to leave the European Union, despite the fact that there were several large construction projects in that county with the sign ‘Funded by the European Union’. She interviewed several people to get more insights. One of them noted the fear of immigrants and refugees (she didn’t meet any immigrants or refugees in the whole county, only a woman from Poland). The other commented on Turkey’s entrance into the EU, which was not true since the decision for Turkey to enter the EU was not even on the table in the EU parliament. The connecting dots corresponding to the source of information from the people she interviewed, Facebook. All traces of the disinformation could be traced back to ‘Vote Leave’ ads on Facebook which specifically targeted a sliver number of people that the ads identified as ‘persuadable’.

The failure to mitigate fascism in the past has been attributed to the failure of the left and the liberals to work together to suppress the common enemy. Instead of seeing fascism as a threat, Stalin and the Comintern had embedded the view that the social democrats are ‘social fascists’, while the liberals also saw the lefts as their nemeses and refused to cooperate or form a coalition in the government. Paul Mason seems to be fond of the idea of forming Popular Fronts, to contain fascists such was the case in 1936 France when the working class worked together to push back the Croix de Feu and subscribes to Karl Loewenstein’s idea of militant democracy to outlaw some basic features that give way for fascism to thrive (uniform, banner, hate speech, etc), something reasonable at this stage of development. Despite the fact that this book is hardly able to provide detailed historical accounts of fascism and is highly sporadic in quoting sources, I still find most of Paul Mason’s ideas insightful. For people who don’t subscribe to Marxist ideas, the book might give an eyebrow here and there, however, the point that there is the need to act now due to the pressing issue of climate change is relevant for all of us today.

[Michele Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly chilling and clear account of our need to adapt to a changing world and the consequences for humanity and our planet if governments and global systems continue to deny the unsustainability of capitalism. A highly recommended read.

[Mik Mulder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Mason offers a great analysis of fascism and resistance against it from a historical perspective. He then attempts to translate this history into the modern age to offer us a roadmap to modern anti-fascism.
Mason is first of all very critical of what he considers the traditional Marxist view of fascism, as simply the reactionary agents of the bourgeoisie in a declining capitalist system, and attempts to dive deeper into what fascism means ideologically and spiritually by actually listening to what the fascists say and mean. His inquiry is strongly focused on the ideologies and philosophies that he sees as foundational in proto-fascist history, as he touches on Wagner, Nietzsche, irrationalism, vitalism and the Russian revolution to find the origin of fascist ideology.
The most compelling section of Mason's historical analysis is found in part 2 (chapter 4-6) where he sets the scenes of Italy and Germany during the decades leading up to the fascist power grab in both countries, and asks us the main question of this book: Why was the left unable to stop it and at what points could it have been stopped? His answers are manifold: the Italian socialists were unwilling to commit to political power, the German communists held on to false ideas given to them by Stalin in Moscow, conservatives, capital owners, and even liberals were too willing to collaborate with the fascists to stamp out left-wing gains in power, etc.
His solution, which he also views as necessary in a modern context, hinges on three main ideas: forming a coherent and simple to understand anti-fascist ideology (based on imagery rather than endless academic argumentation), opposing, silencing, and uprooting fascism wherever it appears, if necessary by (violent) use of state power, and the formation of a popular democratic front, consisting of leftists and liberals. These ideas are all commendable but since they aren't developed in much detail in my opinion, some questions still remain: How do we gain control over the mechanisms (both state and private) by which we could stop the spread of fascism? Would we ever be able to control or regulate internet forums and social media platforms and even if yes, would this not backfire against leftists? Is a popular front possible in a modern context?
In my country, Belgium, for example, a popular front headed by the communist, socialist and liberal parties seems highly unlikely, (as the socialist party seems to abandon all ideology in favor of more form-based progressivism, while the communist party stubbornly holds on to Marxism and regularly calls out the socialists for what they view as opportunism and a betrayal of the working class.) Fascists are already de facto banned from gaining political power through electoral means, through a "popular" cordon sanitaire upheld by all parties, but this agreement seems to become more and more fragile by the day. Moreover, it is hardly practiced on the streets, in our homes or on the Internet, where the ideology is more and more normalised.
All in all, similar to Mason's 'A clear bright future', this book gives us a glimpse of what a true modern progressive movement might look like, which is now more important than ever in the context of rising fascism. Though the details are still left quite open, it could serve as the ideological base for such a movement, and as such it is a highly recommended read for any leftist looking to fight fascism today.

[Ken Bell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Paul Mason is one of those interesting characters who now seem to pop up everywhere telling the rest of us what to believe. In his student days, he was a member of Workers’ Power, a Trotskyite grouplet that never had any actual workers in it. After a period as a teacher, he moved into the media, first as economics editor of BBC Newsnight, then switching to Channel 4 in a similar role. He is now a freelance writer who pops up far too often in the Guardian and his work seems to influence today’s left, which is probably why Labour keeps losing elections.

His latest offering, How to Stop Fascism, is a case in point. It argues that there is a new, fascist menace in Britain that must be rooted out. However, he presents no evidence to back up that claim, but it is quite likely that he doesn’t need any. Mason’s works are clearly aimed at a particular middle-class readership; people who are convinced that working people are a racist tribe to be overcome.

That does not stop him from looking around to find evidence of this threat, and funnily enough his working class enemies always turn up to illustrate and confirm everything he is saying to his readership. So, in the 2019 general election, he went back to his home town of Leigh to campaign for the Labour candidate in that division, and on the doorsteps he heard “men my own age openly fantasizing about the ethnic cleansing of Romanian migrants.” Of course, you did, Paul. My experience of canvassing is that if you can get people away from the TV long enough to open the door they tell you just what you want to hear to get rid of you, before going back to Coronation Street. The last thing you get is anything approaching a political debate.

Fast forward to June 2020 and our hero is in London, “an obviously multicultural city.” On the day that he was there, the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square had recently been defaced by the Black Lives Matter rabble, so understandably, groups of British working people had turned up to protest at that outrage to one of the nation’s heroes. Mason was just outside the square and found that he had “entered a zone of white monoculture. Suddenly there were no students, no people of colour, no tourists, no out-gay people. I was back in the world I grew up in. White men, working-class… shouting profanities and swilling lager.” It really is amazing how this author manages to keep bumping into working-class men who confirm his colourful thesis. He even managed to see a postman in the crowd, and you can’t get prolier than that.

He ropes in Donald Trump to help bolster his case, even though he admits that “Trump is not a fascist.” However, he then goes on to say that “there is a plebeian mass base for American fascism, and Trump has chosen to lead it”. It is hard to know what to make of that concept, which reads as if Trump is a sort of Schrödinger’s Politician, simultaneously in two states of being at the same time. I was also taken with his “plebeian mass base” line: presumably, he feels that the problem with today’s world is that patricians like him do not rule it. Mason goes on to write “Trump’s victory in 2016 was a turning point. It confirmed that there is a massive constituency in the United States for economic nationalism and isolationism, and forced all other countries to accept deglobalisation as a strategic reality.”

Now, given that for most of its history up to the advent of the Progressive Era in the 1890s the USA had been firmly isolationist and had protected its nascent industries behind a massive tariff wall, a very good case can be made for arguing that all Trump wanted to do was to restore the status quo ante, which is hardly the mark of a fascist. More importantly, Mason claims to be a socialist, and since when have socialists been in favour of globalisation? It should be remembered that globalisation is not the same as internationalism. I can remember when Communist shop stewards in British factories collected money to buy bicycles that were shipped to Vietnam. There they were used on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to carry war supplies to the South, as part of Vietnam’s war of national liberation. The aim was not the globalist one of opening Vietnam’s borders to all and sundry, or seeing Vietnamese people flooding over here to provide cheap labour in nail bars. It was the internationalist one of providing help to a people who wanted to govern themselves without interference from outside. (A bit like us with Brexit, perhaps?)

Mason is clearly a great fan of globalisation, since the politicians he hates, specifically Trump and Johnson, are “authoritarian nationalists” who “broke with the globalist consensus in the 2010s.”It is difficult to imagine either man as being authoritarian, with Boris in particular anguishing over the lockdown to try and control the coronavirus and Trump leaving all that up to the states. However, both men did break with the “globalist consensus” and since Mason is all in favour of that consensus it must mean that they are authoritarians. Or something; you can never tell with this author.

He never gets close to actually pointing his finger at any real fascists, or explain what fascism is, so that we can recognise its followers if we ever see them. To get around that problem he tells us that, “Once we move beyond sterile definitions and understand fascism as a process of social breakdown,” then “we can see the nit-picking formalism among some historians and the left as an obstacle to comprehension.”I hope that is clear to you because it reads like gibberish to me. The best I can come up with from a reading of the text is that fascists are the socially conservative, perhaps economically radical, “plebeian mass” who refuse to listen to Paul Mason.

Do I recommend this book to my readers? Surprisingly enough, I do. If you are a Tory worried by the shenanigans of Boris and his surreal cabinet, then you may be worried that your party will lose the next election, so read Mason’s book and put your mind at ease. On the other hand, if you are a Labour man who hopes that your party will win the next election, you should probably have your hopes dashed now, so you will be emotionally prepared for defeat at the next election. People like Mason obviously detest traditional British values and the people who uphold them, and they now control the Labour Party, especially at the local level. They are the ones who read works like this and believe the arguments in them because they tie in with views that the readers already hold. Come the next election, all Boris has to do is point out the contempt and disdain so many Labour intellectuals have for ordinary people – the plebeian mass – and then ask if they want Paul Mason types ruling over them?

I think that the answer to that question is obvious.

An edited version of this review has appeared in The Brazen Head, an online political and literary quarterly journal. https://brazen-head.org/

[André Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book lacks evidence for very essential premises in it, mainly those related to causes, motivations and desires of fascism/fascists. This impacts the trust that can be placed upon the conclusions drawn in the book. Nevertheless, it stands as a great account of the history of fascism, an insightful analysis of historical fascism and a convincing string of arguments on why we should worry about the return of fascism.

[Toby Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been suitably impressed by Mason's multi-discipline analysis on the modern political climate in 'Clear Bright Future', I was intrigued to see what he'd make of the modern far-right, with the benefit of a few years and the book being very up-to-date (as in, it had only been out for a few weeks or so when I bought it, if that). And, upon finishing, I'm impressed - mostly.
I felt the comparisons he drew between the fascism of the 30s and the modern far-right were very on-point and enlightening. There isn't just continuity in aesthetics or rhetoric, but also in actions, the way its ideas can find life beyond and evolve beyond their original source, the situations in which fascism arises, and, most importantly for this book, how it treats its enemies and vice versa. Mason has handily convinced me that socialists and liberals refusing to put aside their differences, not blame each other for fascism and work together is one of the biggest barriers we face when it comes to effectively defeating the far-right, and this was done by using examples from history, and, I would argue, has shown to be effective today (e.g., the left and centre of the Democratic Party rallying behind Biden in 2020 to defeat Trump; all German federal parties refusing coalitions with the AfD etc). He rightly highlights how fascism is multifaceted, and, in its early manifestations, easily gets conservatives, traditionalists, and populists on its side.

Perhaps the biggest challenge this book faced, however, was the difficulty it acknowledged in effectively defining fascism in a way that encompassed by the 1930s movements and the modern alt-right movement, and in this, I feel the book may have let itself down to a degree. There were so many points in the definition Mason eventually selected, that I feared it would have been one difficult to effectively use in rhetorical points, as it was preceded by a lot of coverage of competing definitions and analysis of why some definitions are less effective than others. In the end, even though we as the readers did have something of a grasp on the concept of fascism (enough to identify the commonalities between such disparate movements as the Identitarian movement, Hindutva, Han chauvinism in China, and Christian nationalism in the Americas), it was much easier to define it by what it wasn't. It isn't just the violent wing of the ruling class, it isn't just another form of totalitarianism, it isn't just palingenetic ultranationalism (Mason rightly points out that a lot of modern far-right movements are more obsessed with ethnicity and ambiguously-defined culture than they are actual nation-states), and it is very historically contingent on crises that are existential psychologically and socially, and not just economically. This is also put to us whilst juggling smaller definitions put into soundbites: 'The fear of freedom when given a glimpse of freedom,' 'The revolution against the revolution,' 'The mirror-image of Marxism, but anti-humanist.' The bottom line of it all was: whilst we were definitely given some important food for thought as far as how fascist movements begin, what the believe in, and how they differ from both left-wing socialist and centrist capitalist movements, they way it was all laid out meant it felt as though we had some pieces missing.

I'm also not sure how to feel about Mason bringing psychoanalysis into it, from various Freudo-Marxist humanists. Again, very interesting reading, but ambiguous in how accurate they were. I felt it would have been better to back up these insights with modern psychological research on totalitarian mindsets, how humans cling to traditional insights in times of crisis and how this can evolve into dehumanizing. And I think there was a bit of this, but it doesn't stick in your mind.

Also, it felt like there were gaps in Mason's case in how to actually stop fascism - uniting the left and the centre is an excellent point, but some of the more technical legal aspects raised questions. One might be able to disband far-right groups and drive them underground, but so malleable is fascism that I feel it would inevitably exploit loopholes. Much more understandable measures mentioned were good though - a ban on paramilitary-style gatherings (as specific and distinct from measures against protest in general) as well as a proper separation of powers in modern states, potentially enforced by constitutional police.

Finally, Mason also invites anti-fascists to produce a counter-narrative to pervasive fascist one, one that transcends economics and embraces humanity, its achievements, and its potential for liberation. Though I very much agree with this, once again, it feels as though the answers to what form that narrative would take have to be drawn from various points in the book rather than just laid out as a single piece. Maybe I'd need to read Clear Bright Future again for a better look at such a narrative. All the same, he does manage to simplify it for us in a very effective ending, noting that faced with the realities the came to him upon visiting an old Nazi death camp for the first time, he just 'felt anti-fascist.'
And with all that in mind - so do I, Paul. So do I.

[Puppet · Rating 3 out of 5]

good if you like history. not so good if you like solutions.

[Beatriz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8 ⭐️

[Eric Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalist and author Paul Mason turns to the past to see what worked — and what didn’t work — in the fight against fascism in the twentieth century. He confronts head-on the staggering failure of the German Left (both the Social Democrats and the Stalinists) to block the Nazis, even though the Left had millions of supporters and their own armed detachments with many thousands of members.

He finds inspiration in the experience both of Spain and France in the 1930s when fascism was stopped — at least temporarily — by Popular Fronts uniting the Left with parties of the liberal centre.

Mason is quick to acknowledge the failures of the orthodox Marxists and seeks insights in some unusual places, including Hannah Arendt and Wilhelm Reich, whose masterpiece, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, deserves a wide readership.

I finished reading this book on a weekend when Italian fascists stormed a national union headquarters in Rome, so the timing could not have been better.

[Harry Tear · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provided a fascinating overview of the trajectory of fascism in Europe during the 1930s and 1920s. It also delves into the philosophy of fascism and makes some great points about why the left has a problem dealing with fascist rhetoric which tends to be mystic, completely unconcerned with facts and deeply symbolism-based. I loved his description of fascism as an ideal of anti-freedom caused by a fear of freedom. This translates to fury when people who 'aren't supposed to be free' seek their freedom. His call to act couldn't come at a more pressing time for many countries.

[Richie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very timely. Great read.

[Jacob Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really, really good in some places. It's strong and clear-headed on the political dangers of the moment (which was, admittedly, now a few years in the past), seems foresighted on the specific places where there is a real risk of fascism gaining power in the world (mostly focused on the Western world) and is uncompromising with its diagnosis of the current political climate and the rise of fascism. I do like Mason's succinct description of fascism as "the fear of freedom triggered by a glimpse of freedom", or, a backlash against social progress that aims to not just rollback that social progress but to keep going to some imagined past glory. And it's a breath of fresh air to read someone who's looked at the last few years of politics - well, back to the 2008 crisis, in some respects - and isn't saying 'nah, you're over-reacting, it's fine'. Mason understands, for example, what it means that Donald Trump tried to violently overturn the results of the election he lost. It is slightly funny that he foresaw the 2024 threat of a 'Trump-like figure' marshalling the Republican party, but apparently didn't consider that it would just be Trump again...

Frustrating in other places, not always in a bad way - sometimes I felt like I was debating with the book, and the book was able to come up with counter-counterpoints, or I would reach the end of a section that I was quibbling with and the conclusion would make me think 'okay, if this is the point you were driving at, I guess I agree'. But sometimes I felt like I wasn't fully understanding the purpose of the arguments being made. Mason spends an entire chapter on his 'theory of fascism', which includes summarising a lot of historical attempts to come up with the same thing, and mostly he just disparages these attempts. Arendt, Nolte, Linz, Payne, Griffin, and others who have attempted to define and describe and explain fascism - Mason isn't happy with any of these, saving a lot of condescension for Griffin and his contemporaries who he says "took a turn away from reality altogether". I don't really understand why this chapter exists in this book? In the end, Mason takes two pages to 'summarise fascism' and another ten to list apparently the 'ten processes' that fascism goes through - is this actually giving us more clarity or more utility than any other political philosopher or political scientist who has studied fascism? And to some extent, to paraphrase Michael Hobbes: do we need to care if it fits a strict definition of fascism, when we should instead care that it's self-evidently bad?

And I guess that I didn't actually expect a book called How To Stop Fascism to come up with a simple way to, well, do that. The title is obviously to grab attention and to focus the reader on the fact that fascism needs to be stopped. But it's undeniably weaker on the topic of actually stopping fascism in the modern day, than it is on looking at historical fascism with some interesting insight, or taking a step to the abstract and discussing the theory of fascism and anti-fascism (although Mason seems to really dislike ever talking about politics in the abstract - which I do have some sympathy for). If I tried, I guess I could extract something like: 'leftists and liberals need to work together, and compromise if needed, to pro-actively and passionately combat fascist beliefs and ideas'. I think that's okay, but a lot of the book seems to be aimed at leftists, giving the implication that the advice is for leftists to compromise with liberals. Which seems at odds with other parts of the book, where Mason admits that fascism (and right-wing movements in general) benefit from the fact that the political centre is almost always more afraid of the left than of the right. Is Mason's advice really that the left needs to compromise with the centre to stop fascism, and that it's the responsibility of the left to do so unilaterally? I don't think, even in the book, that he convincingly argues that that's the lesson to take from history, or that that's how fascism could have been stopped in the past. By the end he feels confused about whether he's fully supportive of e.g. Black Lives Matter, or whether he is concerned that such movements might be splitting the anti-fascist movement. And the book ends on, to be honest, a complete damp squib.

Overall, a decent read and a decent addition to my library, but not something revelatory - which is a shame, as I had high hopes for the book from how it began - and not a load-bearing pillar of an anti-fascist theory.

[Anirudh · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to Stop Fascism is a book from the journalist Paul Mason, mainly analysing the return of fascism in the world, with several authoritarian leaders around the world taking power in the last decade, such as Donald Trump in the US, Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, etc. who rose to power largely by exploiting the insecurities of the majority from a ‘perceived external threat’ of the country. There are three parts to the book, with the author first introducing fascism and its ideology, then moving on to its history and finally on how we can resist it today.

To cite from the book, here is one example of the type of rhetoric employed by the above stated leaders:

‘The ideas of the these self-styled ‘philosophers’ of the far right are not simply grotesque, they would not last five minutes if subjected to the rigours of logic and analysis in an actual philosophy department. That’s why they communicate in obscure, long-winded and often unintelligible prose. However, they are persuasive.’

This is a very important topic given with rise of new technology, political ideologies that were earlier in the fringes have found effective means to reach the mainstream. Taking France for instance where I am from, the party which was earlier considered a pariah, the Rassemblement National led by Marine Le Pen, is today seen as a normal ‘opposition party’ often platformed in the mainstream media. Similar trends could be observed in other countries. The author takes the example of the 2020 Delhi riots in India (my country of origin), where there was open violence initiated against Muslims of the city following provocative speeches by the leaders of the Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The author then talks about the history, how there were similar complacencies about people writing obituaries of Mussolini’s political career in the 20s, or for that matter after Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, there was more infighting among the German left – where the Communist Party (KPD) considered the Socialist Party (SPD) as the bigger threat an ignored Hitler. The author sends us a pertinent warning that we are ignoring the present day fascists and neo nazis at our own peril. The author talked about the mobilisation of these groups, often picking up culture wars, be it on transgender rights or gay rights, as their main rallying points to enthuse their base (as is often seen in Trump rallies).

There were parts where I felt the book was a tad alarmist, where reading it, one could be convinced that fascists are just one election away from taking power from everywhere, but that said, that is also the point of the author’s book, wherein, we should avoid the complacency that good sense will prevail. The author also breaks the myth that people drawn to fascism are often those who are left behind my the establishment / are in a precarious position, rather, in case of both Mussolini and Hitler, barring their base, they had widespread support from the mainstream middle class, which is what made them efficient when they were in power.

The book largely focus on the West, occasionally touching upon India and Brazil, but I felt East Asia was largely ignored, given it has had similar tendencies in the past decade, especially the rule of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Similarly, though the People’s Republic of China is not a democracy, Xi Jinping has become the ‘strongest’ Chinese head of state since Mao Zedong, often stoking up militarist and etho-nationalist sentiment to legitimise his hold on the establishment.

To summarise and conclude, I would say that this book addresses a very important topic, given 2024 has major elections, which effectively have democracy on the ballot – be it in US or India, or for that matter the rise of vote share of authoritarian parties across several member states in EU (such as Vox in Spain). It is also very important for us to keep in mind the history that was involved, which brought fascists to power, so that we can be wary of the same history repeating itself and act accordingly. While the focus was highly on Western Europe and US, it could have concentrated on certain other regions as well. On that note, I would award the book a rating of four on five.

[Lowarn Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hell of a book to read - in a good way, really.

The title is a little bit of a misnomer in that I shall not be single-handedly toppling fascism any time soon, which is a shame. Instead, it analyses the history and philosophy of fascism: its roots in Nietzche, irrationalism, and Futurism; the "perfect storms" that allowed it to develop in the past in different places; and the responses of people and political groups, however they turned out. Mason also looks over the leftist theory at the time in lesser detail - typically more specifically how the prevalent theory and discourse of the time affected the responses of left-wing groups.

I have to say, the whole thing about irrationalism did make the ideology make more sense to me. There are times where I see right-wingers argue points that I believe are abhorrent, but which I can understand in terms of how they got to their perspective; however, often, it all seems very obviously nonsensical and made-up (i.e. whatever is/was going on with QAnon; "women are naturally subservient but I can't get laid because women are too entitled and men are oppressed" incel arguments; "transvestigators" circlejerking about the wrist width of celebrities). That some of the traceable philosophy is quite literally "it is this way because I say so :)" is a much simpler answer than I expected, but it tracks.

That a lot of the philosophy is about leaving behind humanity and becoming objects that simply produce capital is absolutely harrowing, but also kind of makes sense. Of course, any governmental system that scapegoats entire groups of people is going to benefit from dehumanising their targets, but that a lot of it is based around dehumanising themselves is also pretty enlightening.

The history section was pretty frustrating to read because, as ever, the leftists couldn't stop in-fighting. Look, I'm not going to pretend I agree with every leftist out there - quite the opposite. I am a person. But the fact that historical leftists refused to acknowledge the fascist groups of their time as the real enemy, and instead focusing their attacks on each other and anyone else close-but-not-close-enough to their personal political beliefs would sound like a complete joke if I didn't believe that would absolutely happen again. It probably still is! I mean, look at the response to the person who leaked the TSA no-fly list - it was a very important leak, but half of what I saw about it outside of "holy fucking bingle!" memes was people arguing whether or not the labels she used to describe her gender and sexuality were "problematic" or not.

Still, that's kind of the point of the inclusion of it all, isn't it? The successes and failures of anti-fascists in the past need to be taken note of if we're to contain the threat of modern fascism while it's in its infancy. Current politics is taking a dangerous turn, but we're nowhere near the point of no return, thankfully.

Following the spirit of the Popular Front - a short-lived but vitally important alliance of political groups left of centre made to dissolve fascist groups - Mason suggests that a similar attitude of cutting out the in-fighting for five minutes and focusing on the real enemy is probably a good idea. I don't wholly disagree. Those working to remove the rights of minorities will happily team up with just about anyone to bring about their vision, so we should probably be teaming up with others who think that minorities should have rights, actually.

I'll admit, I'm less of a fan of his self-admittedly flawed suggestion of large social media platforms (or the Internet as a whole) requiring ID and such to post. As Mason says himself, people in high-control situations (political, familial, whatever) will be put at a severe disadvantage. Content creators - especially those that make adult content - would be at much higher risk of rogue fans finding their information. Of course, the anonymity of the Internet is exactly what allows people to spread misinformation, pull political strings, and incite violence, so I do see what he's getting at. But god, there's got to be a better way, surely!

My own ramblings aside, though, this is a well-argued, easy-to-understand book that I reckon is worth the read.

[Steven P · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read this book, I could hear the voice of Paul Mason filled with the intensity and full seriousness of a man wholeheartedly committed to the struggles of working-class men and (more crucially as rightly argued in the book) women and fighting for the rights of every human being to be treated as such.

The history of fascism given is fascinating and the current situation is explained quite a lot as well. It struck me how little I knew (and how little was taught at school) about the history 20th century fascism, the events leading up to the Nazis gaining power, the entangled history of the left (from social democratic to communists) and the roles of the different social classes and their cultures and thought. Paul Mason is critical of the left and Marxist thought, pointing out the complacency of the left in their belief in inevitable social justice march of history forever progressing towards a freer world. It’s also highlighted that Marxist theory did not predict fascism and doesn’t account for the middle class rising and claiming power for themselves.

The prescribed actions against fascism are built on the extensive analysis of what went right and wrong last time. There is emphasis put on the need for a more tangible theory of fascism and I found it convincing. As I have mentioned, he finds there was a hole in Marxist theory. He extends this by saying that classical class theory is also insufficient for describing today’s society, for example the working class no longer has a common culture or indeed a common enemy. Essentially a new framework of thought is needed to both understand fascism and unite people against it. Crucially he points out that, as done by previous analyst of fascism, that fascism is an ACTIVE ideology and that the left in mostly offering theory has done and will alienate people seeking action.

The book is packed full of interesting, condensed information on fascism. I would recommend reading it if only for the history which provides crucial context for today’s politics and an aging battle of ideas which seem to be screaming out for resolution. The questions I’m left with is when will fascism resigned to history? What ideological inspiration will put the ghosts of the 20th century to bed? I want to know not what will stop fascism but what will make it completely redundant. For now, this book gives us a good set of tools for understanding what might be required and for tackling the ever-present immediate threat of repeating the horrors of the past.

[Pedro Esteves · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Da alvorada do capitalismo a meados da década de 1980, as vidas dos trabalhadores foram dominadas por uma única relação económica: a que tinham com o patrão. Há hoje múltiplas relações de exploração que se sobrepõem ou colidem. Daí que se tenha tornado muito mais difícil identificar quem nos explora. Os 0,1 por cento de topo em cada país fazem parte de um estrato globalizado ultrarrico cuja riqueza assenta em primeiro lugar na procura de renda e na finança; e a maior parte das nossas vidas não nos proporciona qualquer forma de contacto com eles.

Em vez disso, tornou-se mais fácil identificar alguém abaixo na escada como responsável pela nossa própria pobreza e impotência: o senhorio, que comprou para arrendar; os funcionários da segurança social; o trabalhador do centro de atendimento do banco; a pessoa na fila de espera do médico, que só fala uma língua estrangeira; o segurança no supermercado que nos diz para usar máscara."

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

a tremendously important read in current times, raising many interesting points for thought and transcending theory to arrive at concrete and practical points of action. at times, I've noticed small mistakes in facts regarding the topics I have knowledge about and think that it could have been more sophisticated in general, which is why I have deducted one star (as this put some doubt on the facts I do not have background knowledge on - however, maybe this may be to expected as it is an amass of historical and contemporary information). nevertheless, an important reminder of the significance of history, the entanglement of different spheres of life to explain the world's current situation, and the imminent threat we are faced with today

[Madame Versiera · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best reads on the fascism problem I have ever read. As an italian I feel I learnt more about the italian history from this book than from school.

This is a must read for anyone interested to understand fascism but doesn't want to start from hard and complex academic papers or essays. This one is good for people to understand why the problem of fascism is still relevant today and it might be the most important issues of all.

The book is divided into sections which tells the history, ideology and how to fight against fascism.

[sleeplessdecember · Rating 4 out of 5]

i quite liked this book, even though i picked it up for half off and with no particular intentions. It gives you a well-rounded "explanation" of facism while connecting it to the popular past examples and modern times. only problem at the end is that it gets a little tedious.
and to the people complaining about the fact that you can get from this book that the author is an antifascist: what else did u expect from a book called how to STOP facism?

[Finn Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly rich and in depth analysis of the rise of fascism in 1920's Europe, and it's disturbing parralels in the 2020's. The final chapter is among the most thought provoking pieces of literature I’ve ever read, and one I’ll return to time and again. A deeply unsettling, yet absolutely essential read.

"The only thing that ever defeated fascism in real time… was an alliance of the centre and the left.”

[Gizem Magemizoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, it is one of the most accomplished start books for entrance to fascism. Because it is simple and the author didn't hesitate to highlight the most promising philosophers' contributions on fascism theories. So, we can easily focus on the other resources. A reader should evaluate this book as a guide.