ABSTRACT
The historiography of generic fascism has come of age in the past three decades. The pioneering work of Ernst Nolte on the origins and nature of interwar fascism in the 1960s was taken in novel and fruitful directions by others-amongst them Walter Laqueur (1979 & 1995), Juan J Linz (1979, 1980, & 2000), Stanley G Payne (1980, 1997), Emilio Gentile (1975, 1993, 2001), Roger Griffin (1993, 1998, 2002, 2007b), Robert O Paxton (1998, 2004), and Roger Eatwell (1992, 1996, & 2003). These and other disciples of generic fascism have produced interpretations and analytical frameworks of stirring conceptual sophistication and breathed fresh air in the fray of fascist studies (Bauerkämper 2006). As a result, fascism emerged out of the historiographical confusion of the first postwar decades to occupy a distinct position amongst the other contemporary ‘isms’ (Paxton 1998: 3-5; Griffin 2002). The precise contours of ‘fascism’ may still be debated and fiercely contested, so that a ‘consensus’ of sorts remains largely elusive (Roberts, De Grand, Antliff, & Linehan 2002). The fact, however, that we can fathom a fundamental analytical convergence in spite of individual scholarly perceptions is the most fruitful legacy of the tendency to ‘take fascism seriously’ (Spackman 1996: x), as ideology, system of rule, and historical experience.
