ABSTRACT
The phenomena presented by the Fascist states preserve a certain regularity of rhythm of obvious importance to their understanding. Fascism is power built upon terror and organized and maintained by the fear of terror and the hopes to which conquest gives rise. The central problem of fascism is a very different one. It is the problem of what; conditions in a society will enable the outlaw, like Mussolini or Hitler, to attempt the seizure of supreme coercive power, to make himself, in a word, the state. Fascism is the rising of the underworld. That it should have the capacity to rise is already important evidence that a whole epoch in human history is drawing to its close. For the very fact that it would not merely rise but impose its authority on so large a part of European civilization is itself the proof of a fatal weakness in its structural foundations.
