ABSTRACT
As we noted in Chapter 1, the place of Italian fascism in any discussion of totalitarianism has proved to be especially tricky. Although Mussolini’s regime attracted much interest abroad at the time, its outcomes not only discredited it but even suggested that, whatever its pretenses, it was not really totalitarian.1 Still, reductionism, teleological thinking, and uncertainties over how to locate and characterize whatever radical or totalitarian thrust it contained have made it especially difficult to get a handle on this, the first fascism-its origins and the shape of the ensuing regime. Whatever the potential at the outset, one step after another has long been taken as the definitive defeat for radical or totalitarian Fascism.2
