>Robert Paxton: "A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass->based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
Yes, this is from where Paxton cops out in the eighth chapter. It's curious - as a liberal, he writes one of the best marxist books on fascism I've yet read, but his conclusions are oddly inapposite to his material.
> Ernst Nolte: 6 points--antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, the aim of totalitarianism.
Well, I don't buy the totalitarianism thesis, but inasmuch as some Islamist movements wish to make a total claim over the behaviour of citizens, I can see the logic of comparison - but it remains analogical rather than identical. For instance, Al Qaeda doesn't seem to have an operating 'leadership principle' or a party to speak of. Hezbollah may be antimarxist, but not enough to stop it working with and admiring marxists. Khomeini may have advocated a leadership principle, but his milieu tended to oppose the vilayet e-faqih and he actually had to be very surreptitious about implementing it.
Also: one weakness with Nolte's definition is that there is little indication of what the leadership principle, party army and total control are all for! There are three antis, but not a single pro.
>Roger Griffin: "[Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the 'people' into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence."
I think Griffin's is a terribly weak definition: revolutionary nationalism need not be fascist. For instance, the early ideas of the Ba'ath movement were distinguished by revolutionary nationalism, ideas of redemption or rebirth (hence Ba'ath), cross-class unity under a new military elite... but I don't think it's fair to say that, for instance, Michel 'Aflaq was a fascist or that the Ba'ath had fascist aims. The parties and regimes that issued from the Ba'ath movement were autocratic because of the means by which the obtained and retained power rather and (pace Nolte's definition) often worked with communists, Kurds etc (before outmaneouvring and successfully destroying them - fascists would simply destroy them up front) while advancing some liberalising reforms for women (something fascist regimes tend not to do).
For my money (and I don't have much), one of the best accounts of fascism is Ian Kershaw's 'The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation' - it's a much more materialist analysis than Griffin's.
> I have two published articles where I make the argument that certain militant Islamic movements can be called neo-fascist:
> Chip Berlet. (2005). "When Alienation Turns Right: Populist Conspiracism, the Apocalyptic Style, and Neofascist Movements." In Lauren Langman & Devorah Kalekin Fishman, (eds.), Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.> _______. (2003). "Terminology: Use with Caution." Fascism. Vol. 5, Critical Concepts in Political Science, Roger Griffin and Matthew Feldman, eds. New York, NY: Routledge.
Cheers, I'll look em up.
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