ABSTRACT
The word fascism took on more pejorative tones through the early 1920s, as observers came to realise that Mussolini had actually provoked much of the violence he claimed to have quashed and that he was ruthlessly eliminating his rivals. Despite the chaotic and unstructured way in which fascism emerged across Europe, historians have been good at imposing their own unifying theories onto these movements, whether as palingenetic ultranationalism or with lists of attributes that comprised a 'fascist minimum'. The transnational reach of fascism is visible even in the intellectual roots of these movements in the nineteenth century. Organised antisemitic movements emerged in France and across East-Central Europe in the late 1870s. The Italian diplomat Eugenio Coselschi did manage to bring fascists together for an international conference at Montreux in December 1934, but individual movements resisted his attempt to herd them into a single collective organisation.
