ABSTRACT
Fascism was a channel for a radical political culture, a sort of interpersonal media experience, a political “community of experience”. The introduction considers a range of Political theorists, cultural critics, sociologists and thinkers who continue to be fascinated by the dark magic of fascism. The line leading the inquiry in the introduction is the sociological and cultural phenomenon of the group experience, the experience which connects the members of a group. This experience does not need any common ideological values but derives its strength from a radicalism without content, an energy without a purpose. Hatred of the “other” was more a pretext for a collective sense of frustration than a prominent ideological characteristic. I strike the foreigner, therefore I am. The historical “locus” of the phenomena which will be examined is in the public's disappointment with the post-war Europe, with the weak republics, the economic crisis, the decline of the west, the “morning after”, and in response to all this they offered an “authentic human type” and a political community from which a “new man” would emerge.
