For me something of a classic - by a noted British political theorist.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TbYVsrl8L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
The Nature of Fascism draws on the history of ideas as well as on political, social and psychological theory to produce a synthesis of ideas and approaches that will be invaluable for students.
Roger Griffin locates the driving force of fascism in a distinctive form of utopian myth, that of the regenerated national community, destined to rise up from the ashes of a decadent society. He lays bare the structural affinity that relates fascism not only to Nazism, but to the many failed fascist movements that surfaced in inter-war Europe and elsewhere, and traces the unabated proliferation of virulent (but thus far successfully marginalized) fascist activism since 1945.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nature_of_Fascism.html?id=544bouZiztIC&source=kp_book_description
More on Griffin here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Griffin
Griffin's theory of fascism, set out first in The Nature of Fascism in 1991 and more recently in Fascism: An Introduction to Comparative Fascist Studies (2017) suggests that a heuristically useful ideal type of its definitional core is that it is a form of revolutionary organic nationalism, or palingenetic ultranationalism. In other words, it seeks, by directly mobilising popular energies or working through an elite, to eventually conquer cultural hegemony for new values, to bring about the total rebirth of the 'ultranation', whether conceived as a historic nation-state or a race, from its present decadence, whether the nation is conceived as a historically formed nation-state or a racially determined 'ethnos'. Conceived in these terms, fascism is an ideology that has assumed a large number of specific national permutations and several distinct organizational forms. Moreover, it is a political project that continues to evolve to this day throughout the Europeanized world, though it remains highly marginalised compared with the central place it occupied in inter-war Europe, and its central role in identity politics has been largely replaced by non-revolutionary forms of radical right-wing populism.
Griffin's approach, though still highly contested in some quarters, has had an enduring impact on the comparative fascist literature of the last 25 years, and draws on the work of George Mosse, Stanley Payne, and Emilio Gentile in highlighting the revolutionary and totalising politico-cultural nature of the fascist revolution (in marked contrast with Marxist approaches). His book Modernism and Fascism locates the mainspring of the fascist drive for national rebirth in the modernist bid to achieve an alternative modernity, which is driven by a rejection of the decadence of 'actually existing modernity' under liberal democracy or tradition. The fascist attempt to institute a different civilisation and a new temporality in the West found its most comprehensive expression in the 'modernist states' of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Since 1945 fascism has diversified and can no loner gain the critical mass to form a mass movement of populist charismatic, so that it is reduced to terroristic attacks to live out its war on liberal democratic society and those it sees as 'enemies' of the 'true' nation/race and its rebirth.
view the rest of the comments →
[–] Helena73 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Recall that any member of the jewish race, even someone who’s ancestry have not lived in the levant for 1500 years or more, can automatically obtain citizenship. And although some Israelis live fairly liberal or decadent lives even, the state props up the orthodox community(it’s also a theocracy imo) who are truly living to achieve the palingenetic utopia. Let me know if he touches the third rail. Maybe some islamic regimes fit the bill.
[–] Joe_McCarthy [S] 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago (edited ago)
If we look to something like citizenship based on some kind of right of return - a number of European countries would probably come closer to an ancestral, or at least racial standard, than Israel would, yet I would not call, say, Ireland a fascist state of any sort. But in places like Ireland, or Norway, or Italy, it is possible to obtain citizenship in those countries if one has ancestry from there going back a few generations.
[–] Helena73 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Ya like 2 generations. I think you can get Irish citizenship if your grandparents were citizens. That is a very different thing from ashkenazic jews— who have not lived in Israel for thousands of years—getting citizenship, while Palestinians, whose grandparents were born and raised in Israel cannot. And anti-micegenation laws. Jews cannot marry non-Jews in Israel. I think you can get around this by converting, although the Orthodox don’t recognize it.