Low-Grade Fascism and High-State Illiberalism: The Choice Before Us?
The historian, Robert Paxton links fascism with · A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solution. · Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences. · The need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny. · The beauty of violence [rhetorical or otherwise] and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success ( The Anatomy of Fascism , p. 219). Stated in narrative form, fascism is: “…a form of political behavior marked by excessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liber