By DEMIAN BEZERRA DE MELO*
Foreword to the book newly edited de David Renton
Fascism according to the dialectical approach
In the future, this last decade of Brazilian history will be seen as a period of profound political crisis, and one of its important symptoms will be the impregnation of the lexicon in public debate with terms that indicate the depth of this crisis, such as the very notion of crisis, but also coup d'état, militarization, political fanaticism, populism, etc. In addition to these words, it is possible to verify the regular use of the word fascism, and it is no exaggeration to point out that this inflation is, on the other hand, a global phenomenon.
The rise of figures like Donald Trump in the United States, the growth of parties with roots in interwar fascism, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, or the constant presence of neo-Nazis or rhetoric normalizing Nazism among politicians from the Alternative for Germany party have brought the issue of fascism into the public debate in recent years. In the Global South, phenomena such as Bolsonaroism in Brazil, the Modi regime in India, the government of Javier Milei in Argentina, etc., have led numerous analysts to draw parallels with the political movements and processes led by Mussolini and Hitler a century ago in Europe.
As on countless occasions since the end of World War II (when historical fascism was militarily defeated), the use of the epithet fascism has been imprecise, often alarmist or merely a dirty word. For scholars of the subject, this indiscriminate use is disturbing, but we know that fascism is not a merely academic subject. For most Marxists, for example, it is a political problem embedded in capitalist sociability.
And for anyone interested in living in an environment where democratic freedoms exist (not just Marxists, of course), fascism is an enormous political challenge, especially when, although imprecise usages are constant, the existence of something that can seriously be considered fascist looms on the political horizon.
In this context, the publication of the book in Brazil is of enormous importance Fascism – history and theory, by Marxist historian David Renton. Firstly, because it is a book by a serious scholar of the subject, with relevant intervention in the academic debate, but also with a very clear anti-fascist political position.[I] Secondly, due to the density of the book itself, which goes beyond a simple rescue of the recognized relevant analyses of contemporary Marxists of historical fascism, such as Clara Zektin (1857-1933), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and Daniel Guerin (1904-1988).
With a deep knowledge of historiography, David Renton is also able to point out the relevance of these authors in light of the development of research in recent decades, as well as directing criticisms of some influential academic approaches.
Marxists facing fascism
These pages do not reduce fascism to the generic statement by the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949), according to which fascism “is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most chauvinistic and imperialist elements of finance capital”. This book helps us understand how this schematic formula merely served as a justification for the adoption of broad fronts by the Communist International after its VII Congress in 1935, after this same International had instructed the German communists to avoid any plan of struggle with social democracy, classified as “social fascist”.
David Renton demonstrates that the contribution of Marxism to this subject was linked to some authors who managed to understand the nature of this particular form of counterrevolution in its historical processuality, producing a consistent and undoubtedly current analytical tool. However, he does not fail to direct severe criticism at other Marxists whose interpretations were relatively flawed either because they were leftist or, conversely, more to the right. Opposite in several aspects, both produced, in addition to erroneous analyses, the basis for mistaken political positions that ultimately facilitated the work of the fascists.
In defense of Marxism as a theory capable of providing the best tools for explaining the subject, David Renton exposes important aspects of Marxist political theory, seeking to inform the reader that this theory goes far beyond a vulgar economic determinism.
In addition to important aspects for understanding politics in the capitalist world, present in the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), David Renton also explores the imagination of the socialist novelist Jack London (1876-1916), who died before fascism properly emerged, but who prefigured some of its aspects in his novel The iron heel.
It is very interesting that before entering into the elaborations on fascism itself, he recovers Vladimir Lenin's (1870-1924) analysis of the Black Hundreds, an anti-Semitic paramilitary movement that emerged in Russia after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution and which practiced pogroms (massacres) of Jews, giving support to the Tsarist regime. In articles published in that context, the future leader of the Soviet Revolution pointed out the relationship of collusion between the repressive structures of the Tsarist regime, especially the police, and the Centuries movement. However, the future leader of the Soviet Revolution also pointed out the degree of autonomy of this Russian phenomenon, as well as its ability to gain popular support, prefiguring a situation that would be seen in fascism tout court.
David Renton’s aim is to demonstrate that Marxists already had a theoretical arsenal capable of producing consistent analyses of the political process, even before fascism itself appeared on the horizon of the 1889th century. Vladimir Lenin, who died shortly after the triumph of the Italian fascists, sought to mobilize the Communist International to prepare an analysis of this new phenomenon. He was immediately disappointed by the report given by the then representative of the Italian communists in the International, Amadeo Bordiga (1970-1857), who simply considered fascism to be indifferent in the history of Italy and its liberal ruling class. For this reason, he delegated the task of preparing a report on the subject to the German revolutionary Clara Zektin (1933-XNUMX).[ii]
Clara Zetkin is a pioneering author of a dialectical interpretation of fascism, distant from the leftism of Amadeo Bordiga and the subsequent vulgate published by the Communist International after the VI congress of 1928, which re-edited aspects of Bordiga's short-sighted scheme and culminated in the idea that social democracy was a kind of “twin sister of fascism” (the aforementioned theory of “social fascism”).
David Renton discusses how this dialectical interpretation developed among a certain strain of Marxist authors, but points out that the Marxism that predominated in the Communist International and the Socialist International (by different paths) produced extremely poor readings that would end up disarming the workers' movement which, for this very reason, was unable to resist the consolidation of the fascist dictatorship in Italy, and later the rise of Nazism in Germany.
Following the classic David Beetham classification,[iii] David Renton therefore points out the existence of three tendencies among the Marxists of that time: (i) a leftist theory, which dominated the Communist International mainly from 1928 to 1935; (ii) a right-wing theory, which would end up predominating in German social democracy and in the Socialist International; (iii) and the dialectical theory, which is precisely the one valued by David Renton.
The reconstruction of the Marxist debate on fascism is one of the great contributions of Fascism – history and theory. Authors such as the Hungarian Marxist Giulio Sas (1893-1943), the Italian reformist socialist Giovanni Zibordi (1870-1943), and the English Labourite John Strachey (1901-1963) are brought to light by Renton, who finds space to comment, albeit laterally, on some of the elaborations of anarchist revolutionaries who fought fascism in Italy, with Luigi Fabbri (1877-1935), and in Spain, with the historic leader of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936), pointing out the similarities and (obviously) the differences that these libertarian authors had with Marxists regarding this common enemy.
It discusses the impoverished theories produced by Soviet bureaucrats, which made the use of the term fascism a mere political instrument, a tendency that continued after the end of the Second World War. In contrast, even in that part of the world where Marxism was presented as a mere state ideology, Marxist authors produced important contributions.
David Renton highlights the seminal elaborations of the great Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács (1885-1971), and his influence on notable historians such as Mihálvy Vajda (1935-2023), who fled from the economistic schemes predominant in Soviet manuals, and sought explanations for fascism in its philosophical and cultural bases.[iv]
In the same vein, he values the works of authors who sought inspiration in the fruitful dialogue between Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and who animated extremely interesting works such as The Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) or by authors linked to the Frankfurt School, such as Erich Fromm (1900-1980), who discussed the perverse joy of fascists in inflicting suffering on their enemies.
Finally, in this new edition, the author expands the scope of Marxist authors who can contribute to the understanding of fascism, incorporating the seminal reflections of the poet, anti-colonialist activist and theorist of the black movement Aimé Césaire (1913-2008). The main point of this author's contribution is the illumination of the root of fascist violence in that used by European imperialism against colonial peoples, a point that David Renton explores in another section of the book where he discusses the line of continuity between the massacre of German imperialism against the Herero people in Namibia and having constituted the Nazis' conviction about the adequacy of that method of genocide.
Contribution to historiography: criticism of the culturalist consensus
In defense of the relevance of the Marxist approach, especially the aforementioned dialectical approach, David Renton begins the book by delving into several important historiographical debates in the field of studies on fascism, discussing topics that have been explored in depth by historians in recent decades and some controversies. For example, regarding the reasons for the Holocaust of Jews in World War II, the authors are divided between what the great British historian Tim Mason classified as intentionalists versus functionalists: the former, who understand the event as a result of the place of anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology; the latter, as an unplanned reaction to events (although anti-Semitism is not denied).
However, the main target of his criticism is one of the most influential currents in the field of fascism studies in recent decades, which has directed its research towards the study of fascist ideas and ideology. Represented by authors such as Roger Griffin, Roger Eatwell and Stanley Payne (who are in some ways tributaries of the pioneering studies of the German Ernst Nolte and the Israeli Zeev Sternhell), it is undoubtedly the most influential historiographical strand in the dominant English-language academic literature.[v] Although these authors do not agree on all points, as Renton points out, some of them have gone so far as to proclaim the existence of a “consensus” around the definition of fascism as a political ideology.
This strand sought to establish a basic, minimal definition of what fascism would be based on its discursive characteristics. In the most influential of these attempts, the British historian Roger Griffin defined fascism as “a genre of political ideology whose mythical core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.” [vi] the term “palingenetic form” referring to the feeling of decline of the nation that fascists promise to regenerate.
This, like other (Weberian) ideal types developed by these historians, is based on the discourses produced by the fascists themselves, where we observe the constant presence of these mythical visions about the national past (as in the myth of Romanity, in Italian fascism, or in the cult of the Teutonic Knights as part of a supposed Germanic national origin, in the case of the Nazis) that must be restored by a new political elite not contaminated by the corruption intrinsic to the “system”.
This heuristic tool may be useful, even if its results may be biased. For example, in this definition proposed by Griffin, the elements against which fascists fight (communism, the workers' movement, the rule of law, the political aspects of liberalism, democracy, etc.) are excluded, and it is worth asking whether a typology that excludes contradictions has any scientific utility.[vii]
In some authors of this tendency, such as the Israeli Zeev Sternhell, the study of fascist discourse leads him to overvalue a reference present in the formulations of some of them: the ideas arising from the revisionism of Marxism proposed by George Sorel (1847-1922), a French theorist who was an important influence on the current of the workers' movement that became known as revolutionary syndicalism.[viii]
It is a fact that followers of this current joined fascism in Italy, France and Belgium, combining in a particular way their syndicalist conceptions with ultranationalist views.[ix] It is possible to affirm that Sternhell's great contribution is linked to one among other ideological drifts that provided elements for fascist discourse, and which, by the way, is an element absent in Nazism, which (not by chance) is excluded by the Israeli historian from his concept of fascism.
In the case of this historian, the preference for the study of ideas reaches a paroxysm: he preferred to study the ideas of the French fascists who never came to power precisely because they did not contaminate their ideology with the demands of political practice. Going to the extreme, Sternhell buys into the discourse of the sources to the point of proposing that fascism was “beyond right and left,”[X] a position widely rejected in the vast majority of historiographical production and in political science, where the location of fascism on the extreme right is basically a consensus.
More cautious in this historiographical trend, Griffin, Eatwell and Payne sought to prove their concepts by testing them in the cases of the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But in any case, by remaining trapped in the discourse of their sources, historians participating in this trend tend to disregard the practices of fascists before and after they came to power.
It should be said in passing that what this influential historiographical current calls political ideology has little to do with the way Marxists treat the notion of ideology, whether as a necessary discourse that inverts reality, or as a set of ideas produced by material life.[xi] It is merely a descriptive and classificatory notion.
By the way, if it is true that David Renton was one of the pioneers in criticizing this historiographical trend, around the same time the (non-Marxist) historian Robert O. Paxton published an article in a similar direction,[xii] and within a few years he published a book in which he extensively developed his explanation of fascism based on its historical development.[xiii] Using mainly the two most emblematic cases, the Italian and the German, Paxton discusses how fascism developed since it first organized itself as a movement, was later normalized in the political system until it reached power with the support of traditional political elites, and then established a dictatorship, etc.
The American historian's explanation lies in this entire historical movement where many original fascist ideas and convictions were abandoned at certain stages of their development, while other ideas were incorporated along the way, in an explicit criticism of the method that was predominant in historiography.
David Renton strongly dialogues in the final considerations of this second edition of the book with this reading of Paxton, but it is possible to say that since the first edition of Fascism – history and theory from 1999 that Renton and Paxton, in different ways, emphasized the importance of fascist practices beyond their ideas, thus representing a kind of “counter-trend” in this field of studies. [xiv]
Paxton's main book on the subject having already been published in Brazil many years ago, the publication of Renton's book now makes another important author on this controversy available to interested Brazilians. And it is certainly curious that this should happen before the most influential authors in English-language historiography have been translated!
In any case, in this second edition of his book, David Renton is more willing to incorporate certain contributions that the same strand of culturalist consensus historiography has added to this field of study. In the final summary, specifically in the section dedicated to defending the reactionary character of fascism, Roger Griffin's reflections on the alternative modernity represented by fascism are explicitly incorporated by the author, who concludes that this phenomenon is a reactionary modernism. [xv]
Anti-Marxism and Marxism in the field of fascism studies
At this point, a potential reader of these lines may ask: after all, what happened to the Marxist influence in this historiography of fascism? Having presented some of the best readings among the contemporaries of fascism, where are the Marxists in this professional historiography?
In this academic field, Marxists are quite a minority, with a predominance of historians leaning towards liberal positions (e.g. Sternhell and Griffin) and conservative ones (e.g. Nolte and Payne), and it would not be an exaggeration to point out a pronounced anti-Marxism. There are possible explanations for this, among them the hostile academic environment towards critical perspectives, but also the effort that academic authors dedicated to publishing their research, their internal merit, etc. It would be beyond the purpose of this preface to explore this in depth, but given this book's place in this historiography, I would like to suggest a few notes.
At some point in the process of professional formation of this field of study, some historians sought to identify themselves as anti-antifascists, in the sense that they set themselves the task of deconstructing the memory that opponents of fascism had constructed about it. The goal would be to construct an objective reading of the phenomenon. “And Marxists (you know) are all ideological,” goes the adage from theory classes at the best universities!
Let's look at two cases of repercussion.
In Italy, the great historian Renzo De Felice, author of a monumental biography of Mussolini, has sometimes faced a kind of official memory of fascism, such as when in the 1970s he published a volume dedicated to the period between 1929 and 1935, when the fascist regime and Mussolini himself Duce enjoyed great popular support. The republican regime founded after the defeat of Italian fascism and the abolition of the monarchy in 1946 had a good part of its political forces interested in a kind of forgetting of what had been the twenty years, the twenty-year period of fascist rule. This was combined with the official image of a Republic built by anti-fascists, an idea shared even by liberal democrats, and certainly by those identified with Marxism, especially the Communist Party.[xvi]
On the other hand, for the right, talking about Mussolini's popular support recalled, for example, the agreements between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI that created the Vatican, and the Church's support for the plebiscite held by the regime in 1929. For Christian Democracy, the political formation that dominated the political scene until the early 1990s, this issue caused discomfort. But sectors of the left were also bothered by the portrayal of the brutal fascist regime as a dictatorship based on broad popular consensus. For different reasons, more pragmatic sectors of the alliance policy of the Communist Party of Italy were bothered by the idea that not only small sectors of the elite supported Mussolini. [xvii]
Nevertheless, today the question of consensus under the fascist regime is considered a contribution of De Felice to the field, although more recently it has also been exploited politically by the far right to normalize its own ideological position in the tottering Italian democracy.[xviii]
Renzo De Felice himself, a devoted anti-antifascist historian, made an even more explicit contribution to this process of normalization of the extreme right: in the last volume of the aforementioned biography of Mussolini, published posthumously in 1997, the fascist leader is even glorified by the Italian historian as a “true patriot”, while the opposition to fascism and particularly the Resistance is disqualified. All this was written and published in a political context in which the Silvio Berlusconi government had as an allied party in its coalition the heirs of historical fascism, the self-declared neo-fascists of the Alleanza Nationale by Gianfranco Fini!
Before that, in West Germany, historian Ernst Nolte had already provoked the ire of progressive intellectuals (and any sensible person) by trying to normalize the Third Reich and all its crimes in the historical identity of Germans. The debate that began with an article by Nolte and the response by Jürgen Habermas – which involved some of the most important German historians of Nazism – became known as the Historikerstreit, and brought to the fore the question of past public uses.[xx] To the extent that their research objects have implications for present-day politics, the claim to neutrality of certain academics occasionally clashes with their own practices, as demonstrated by the public interventions of Renzo De Felice and Ernst Nolte.[xx]
Anti-fascist by nature, the figure of the Marxist historian of fascism has come to be represented more commonly as that of a militant than as a scholar. To break through this ideological blockade, it is necessary to combine anti-fascist convictions with serious research, and in this regard David Renton values the work of the British historian Tim Mason, one of the greatest scholars of the German working class in the context of the Third Reich, and whose influence is recognized among the most important (non-Marxist) experts on Nazism, such as Ian Kershaw, Adam Tooze and Richard Evans.
Contrary to the caricatures about (and of) Marxists, Tim Mason finds reasons to affirm that during Hitler's regime the interests of German capitalists (the same ones who supported Nazism) were often subordinated to the political decisions of the Nazis. In a word: contrary to the most vulgar notion of what Marxism would be, in which the economic sphere “ultimately” determines politics and the entire superstructure, in the way the most radical fascist regime operated, economic reasons were subordinated to political decisions.
In the final summary of the book, where he defines fascism as a specific form of a reactionary mass movement, David Renton also delves into some important controversies that divide both the professional academic field and Marxists in particular. This is the case of the characterization of the Spanish Franco regime, considered by the author to be a case of conventional military dictatorship, and not a fascist regime. While important historians such as Julián Casanova continue to consider Francoism an example of fascism, David Renton argues in the opposite direction and, in his own way, converges towards a position that is now the majority in historiography.[xxx]
The relevance of fascism today
In its first edition, in 1999, the author was concerned about the electoral growth of European far-right parties, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National in France, Jörg Haider's Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria and the neo-fascist Alleanza Nationale in Italy,[xxiii] He was concerned that they could serve as a basis for fascist regimes. Twenty years later, David Renton puts his assessment into perspective to explain what happened: contrary to his intuition, the parties mentioned were “deradicalized”, “abandoning their militias and transforming themselves into conservative parties, albeit of an aggressive type”. According to the author, the truly fascist tendencies have remained in a political marginal situation since then.
Certainly the context of Donald Trump’s rise in the United States has driven the reasons why David Renton’s book has received this new edition. But surprisingly the current global wave of far-rightism of which Trumpism is a beacon is not perceived by the author as predominantly fascist.
This reflection is explored in depth in another book by David Renton, still unpublished in Portuguese, which he considers a complement to this one.[xxiii] Regarding the global rise of the far right, he insists on two points: firstly, the need to distinguish between a fascist far right and one that is not; secondly, and more strategically, to perceive the realignment of the political-party system towards the far right in the last decade, which has allowed a new authoritarian convergence resulting from the alliance between the traditional right and the far right in several countries around the world.
We can understand that this is a pertinent hypothesis in the analysis of Trumpism, for example, which is constituted as an extreme right that colonizes the great traditional right-wing party in the United States. This is also the case with the experience of Boris Johnson's cabinet, which also emerged within the traditional right-wing party. And the same can be applied to the case of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who comes from a traditional right-wing party (Fidez) and experienced a radicalization to the right from 2010, when he took advantage of a significant victory to change the Constitution.
This seems to be a really interesting key to understanding these scenarios, but it may not be completely applicable in cases where the far right asserts itself by liquidating the traditional right (as is the case with Brazilian Bolsonarism), or when the roots of historical fascism are recreated after the collapse of post-colonial modernization, as is the case with fascism in India under Narendra Modi's BJP.
David Renton seeks to ensure with Fascism – history and theory that the concept be handled appropriately by Marxists in their political analyses. Because fascism is too serious a problem for the word to be vulgarly used in the face of every police arbitrariness, of any dictatorial regimes, and at the limit as a mere insult.
As a regime of exception, fascism created dictatorships with specific characteristics that also left behind specific problems. Let us consider: when a fascist regime is overthrown, it is recommended to ban the fascist party and all its organizational structures. On the other hand, at the end of a military dictatorship, except in cases of revolutionary overthrow, the Armed Forces continue to operate as a state institution in times of liberal democracy.
While military dictatorships tend to be conservative regimes that demobilize societies, fascist regimes operate with the objective of permanently mobilizing the masses politically. Both are counterrevolutionary and therefore reactionary, based on the implementation of political violence justified as capable of preventing historical change, an ongoing or sketchy revolution. But they carry out this task in different ways.
For its exact understanding, the revolutionary rhetoric of the fascists must be taken seriously, treated as an ideology in the Marxist sense, even if the fascists are only “the revolutionaries of the counterrevolution”, as Eric Hobsbawm defined it, because the “great difference between the fascist right and the non-fascist right was that fascism existed by mobilizing masses from the bottom up”.[xxv]
*Demian Bezerra de Melo is a professor of contemporary history at Federal Fluminense University (UFF).
Reference
David Renton. Fascism: history and theory. Rio de Janeiro. Publishing House. 2024, 228 pages. [https://amzn.to/4fUt6LP]
Notes
[I] In addition to his work as a writer and academic, David Renton works as an employment lawyer.
[ii] Cf. TABER, Mike; RIDDELL, John. Introduction. In. ZETKIN, Clara. Fighting Fascism – How To Struggle and How To Win. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017, p.8.
[iii] BEETHAM, David (ed). Marxists in the Face of Fascism. Writings by Marxists on Fascism From the Interwar Period. Manchester University Press, 1983, p.1-62.
[iv] Published in 1954, The destruction of reason by Lukács is undoubtedly this philosopher's greatest contribution to understanding the phenomenon of fascism.
[v] See GRIFFIN, Roger. The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (Or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies. Journal of Contemporary History, v.37, n.1, p.21-43, Jan.2002. GRIFFIN, Roger. Studying Fascism in a Postfascist Age. From New Consensus to New Wave? Fascism – Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, n.1, 2012.
[vi] GRIFFIN, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. London: Routledge, 1991, p.48.
[vii] In the typologies successively developed by Ernst Nolte and Stanley Payne there is a primordial place for anti-Marxism as a defining characteristic of fascism, alongside other negations. Cf. NOLTE, Ernst. Three faces of fascism. Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. New York: Mentor Books, 1969. PAYNE, Stanley. Fascism. Comparison and Definition. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1980.
[viii] In general, Marxist debates on revisionism highlight the controversies in German social democracy since the intervention of Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932). However, there is a revisionism that is more present in the Latin world and that involves the name of Sorel, who, unlike Bernstein, was skeptical about parliamentary politics, proposing a revolution created around the myth of a general strike. On this subject, see the study by GALASTRI, Leandro. Gramsci, Marxism and Revisionism. Campinas: Associated Authors, 2015.
[ix] In Germany, Sorel's work influenced a generation of young leftists who, on the contrary, were victims of fascism. Cf. VIEIRA, Rafael Barros. Walter Benjamin: Law, Politics and the Rise and Collapse of the Weimar Republic (1918/9-1933). Doctoral thesis in Law. Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, 2016.
[X] Sternhell's publication of Ni Droite ni Gauche – L'ideologie du fascisme en France, in 1983 generated heated debate and disapproval of the author. Cf. TRAVERSO, Enzo. Interpreting fascism. Notes on George L. Mosse, Zeev Sternhell and Emilio Gentile. Yesterday, n.4(60), 2005. COSTA PINTO, Antonio. The Nature of Fascism Revisited. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
[xi] Cf. EAGLETON, Terry. Ideology – An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1997.
[xii] Cf. PAXTON, Robert O. The Five Stages of Fascism. The Journal of Modern History, v.70, n.1, Mar.1998.
[xiii] PAXTON, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2007.
[xiv] It would be beyond the scope of this presentation to go into this subject further, but Griffin himself admits that such consensus is not observed among scholars outside the English-speaking world, but even in this environment we could add the work of American social scientists Michael Mann and Daniel Woodley, or historian Dylan Riley, who follow a very different path.
[xv] On the other hand, the avowedly liberal Roger Griffin has recently sought to incorporate aspects of the Marxist contribution into his prolific output. Cf. GRIFFIN, Roger. Notes towards the definition of fascist culture: The prospects for synergy between Marxist and liberal heuristics. Renaissance and Modern Studies, 42:1, 2009. GRIFFIN, Roger. Exploding the Continuum of History. A Non-Marxist's Marxist Model of Fascism's Revolutionary Dynamics. In. FELDMAN, Matthew (org.). A Fascist Century. Essays by Roger Griffin. 2010, p.46-68.
[xvi] NATOLI, Claudio. Fascism and antifascism in historiography and in the public sphere of republican Italy. History of the present, n.6, 2005, p.156-157.
[xvii] Cf. LEDEEN, Michael A. Renzo De Felice and the controversy over Italian Fascism. Journal of Contemporary History, n.11, 1976.
[xviii] CORNER, Paul. Italian Fascism: Whatever Happened to Dictatorship? The Journal of Modern History, v.74, n.2, Jun.2002. Elsewhere I have explored how some Italian Marxists have thought about this question. MELO, Demian. Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti and the consensus under fascism. October, v.26, 2016.
[xx] Cf. POGGIO, Pier Paolo. Nazism and historical revisionism. Madrid: Akal, 2006.
[xx] For a consideration of the place of these debates in their respective political contexts, cf. TRAVERSO, Enzo. The past, ways of using it. History, memory and politics. Porto: Unipop, 2012, especially p.157-160.
[xxx] Since the intervention of the Weberian sociologist Juan Linz in the 1960s, and of the historian Stanley Payne (criticized by Renton in the first section of this book), most historiography has stopped considering Francoism as a variant of a fascist regime. One of the topics of this position is the fact that Francoism was a demobilizing regime, unlike the characteristic of permanent mobilization of the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. Cf. LINZ, Juan. In Authoritarian Regime: Spain. 1964. PAYNE, Stanley. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, New York: Routledge, 1995, p.3-19. CAMPOS, Ismael Saz. Fascism and Francoism. University of Valencia, 2004.
[xxiii] Renton is referring to the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the neo-fascist organization that in 1994 joined with other groups to create the Alleanza Nationale.
[xxiii] RENTON, David. The New Authoritarians – Convergence on the Right. London: Pluto Press, 2019.
[xxv] HOBSBAWM, Eric. age of extremes. The Short Twentieth Century (1914-1991). New York: Routledge, 1995, p.121.
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