ABSTRACT
Interpretations of fascism are numerous ranging from Marxist, structural, psychological-historical, modernization and fascist minimum approaches (Kitchen 1976; Lipset 1960; Adorno et al. 190; Gentile in Mora 1991; De Felice 1977). Juan Linz (1976) broke with the negative definition of fascism in the literature to argue that fascism combined hypernationalism, the planned destruction of political enemies and the positive aim of “national social integration through a single party and corporative representation” (Linz in Blamires 006, 37) Sternhell, Mosse, Gregor, Griffin and others attempted to supersede the focus on the “anti-” dimension of fascism or the fascist negations, which included anti-communism, anti-capitalism, anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism, anti-individualism, anti-parliamentarism, etc. (Griffin in Blamires 006, 36-7). In the emerging “new consensus” in fascist studies, “the ‘inhuman’ negative effects of fascism are now interpreted as the direct product of its bid to achieve, what in its own perception, are positive goals, rather than of its inherently destructive or nihilistic nature” (Griffin in Blamires 006, 37). Despite fascism’s destruction of the working class, chilling elimination of racial and ideological enemies and abolition of the parliamentary system, from this perspective fascism is seen as a revolutionary ideology designed to bring a total rebirth of man (woman), society and nation or racial community along secular, modern lines.
