FASCISMO 2

PAXTON, Robert D., The Anatomy of Fascism, London, Penguin Books, 2005
“Can Fascism still exist? Clarly Stage One mouvements can still be found in all major democracies. More crucially, can they reach Stage Two again by becoming rooted and influencial? We need not look for exact replicas, in which fascists veterans dust off their swastikas. Collectors of Nazi paraphrenalia and hard-core neo-Nazi sects are capable of provoking destructive violence and polarization. As long as they remain excluded from the alliances with the establishment necessary to join the political mainstream or share power, however, they remain more a law and order problem than a political threat. Much more likely to exert an influence are extreme right mouvements that have learned to moderate their language, abandon classical fascist symbolism, and appear “normal”.
It is by understanding how past fascisms worked, and not by checking the color of shirts, or seaking echoes of the rethoric of the national-syndicalist dissidents of the opening of the twentieth century, that we may be able to recognize it. The well-known warning signals – extreme nationalist propaganda and hate crimes – are important but insufficient. Knowing what we do about the fascist cycle, we can find more ominous warning signals in situation of political deadloock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for their allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery. Fascist are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their “mobilizing passions” and try to co-opt the fascist following.Armed by historical knowledge, we may be able to distinguish todday’s ugly but isolated imitations, with their shaved haeds and swastiks tatoos, from authentic functional equivalents in the form of a mature fascist-conservative alliance. Forewarned, we may be able to detect the real thing when it comes along.