ABSTRACT
What is anti-fascism? For that matter, what is fascism? The starting points for this volume are the understandings that neither fascism nor anti-fascism is monochromatic, and that there may be some variation in values defended by one or another anti-fascist movement just as there may be some variation in the values advanced by one or another fascist regime or fascist movement. Roger Griffin has provided what might be the most useful definition of generic fascism. In his words,
Fascism is a revolutionary species of political modernism originating in the early twentieth century whose mission is to combat the allegedly degenerative forces of contemporary history (decadence) by bringing about an alternative modernity and temporality (a ‘new order’ and a ‘new era’) based on the rebirth or palingenesis of the nation…[Concretely,] fascism is a form of programmatic modernism that seeks to conquer political power in order to realize a totalizing vision of national or ethnic rebirth…and usher in a new era of cultural homogeneity and health. 1
