ABSTRACT
Fascists were distinguished from other political movements via their proclaimed 'access to the crowd'. That crowd was won by a public dramaturgy of spectacle and publicity, and the exercise of charismatic authority; disciplined via paramilitary organisation; and deceived by the substitute of plebiscite for democratic electoral caprice. The packaging was an important part of the instrumentality of Fascism: Fascism could well seem to offer to the opponents of the Left efficacious new techniques for controlling, managing, and channelling the nationalisation of the masses, at a moment when the Left threatened to enlist a majority of the population around two non-national poles: class and international pacifism. The Nazis were self-presented as coming not as conquerors but as friends; their journalism focused on the fiction of an everyday world unaffected by the imperium of the Third Reich and the granite face of its ambition.
