Introduction

Abstract

Once upon a time, there was a very vibrant discussion on the nature and origins of fascism. The debate began with the publication in 1963 of Ernst Nolte’s Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Fascism in Its Epoch), which appeared two years later in English as Three Faces of Fascism, a title that overly personalized and obscured the complex meaning of the book. Two decades later, Nolte would become lauded and reviled for his efforts to relativize and diminish the Holocaust. But in the 1960s, his work had an inspiring and creative impact. The term “Fascism” had first been coined by Benito Mussolini to identify the extreme right-wing movement he headed in Italy. A “fascismo” literally refers to a bundle of wheat and was adopted in order to associate the Italian party and state with the glories of the Roman Empire. From the 1920s into the early 1950s the term had wide currency. Fascist intellectuals like Giovanni Gentile sought to endow the word with philosophical significance; those individuals and movements around Europe seeking to mimic Mussolini’s success openly embraced the label. Yet “fascist” was also the term of vilification adopted by those on the left and in the center who fought against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the many other extreme right-wing movements and states that arose in the wake of World War I. In its famous 1933 definition, the Communist International (Comintern), for example, labeled fascism as “the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”²