Fascism

UnderstandingSociety: Fascist movements

I am trying out something new. The above is supposed to be a link to Daniel Little's post on fascism. Of course, use of the word "fascist" today has degenerated into something like "you are bad." But it is interesting to consider the circumstances of these paradigm cases of fascism, particularly the centrality of nationalism, ethnic purity and hierarchy. He suggests we are seeing a similarity to the crazy stuff coming from the right these days. Here is a quote from one of the books he mentions:

"These crises were exacerbated by an ideological crisis. On the right, though only in one half of Europe, this became a sense that modernity was desirable but dangerous, that liberalism was corrupt or disorderly, that socialism meant chaos, that secularism threatened moral absolutes – and so cumulatively that civilization needed rescuing before modernization could proceed further. So there emerged a more authoritarian rightist view of modernity, emphasizing a more top-down populist nationalism, developmental statism, order, and hierarchy."