I first summarize my explanation of the rise of fascism. Then I ask whether fascism is just history or whether it may return to haunt the world again. Are all the fascists dead ones?

DEAD FASCISTS

I offered a two-part explanation of the rise of fascism. The first part concerns the forward surge of a broader family of authoritarian rightists who swept into power across one-half of interwar Europe, plus a few swaths in the rest of the world. In Europe the surge carried regimes further across the spectrum I identified in Chapter 2, from semi-authoritarianism to semi-reactionary and thence to corporatist. A few then went further, to fascism.

Authoritarian rightism was a response to both general problems of modernity and particular social crises left by World War I. Modernization was consciously pursued by most authoritarians: industrial growth and restructuring, more science and economic planning, more national integration, a more ambitious state, and more political mobilization of the masses. After some initial hesitation, most rightists embraced most of the modernist package while rejecting democratic mass mobilization. However, their embrace was also pressured by a series of crises – economic, military, political, and ideological – brought on or exacerbated by the war. Without these crises, and without the war itself, there would have been no major authoritarian surge, and fascism would have remained a series of sects and coteries rather than a mass movement.