The five stages of a downhill descent

After defeating two fascist powers in a world war, the citizens of the democratic West have gradually come to throw the label ‘fascist’ around with abandon. Police officers are fascists to the protesters they confront. University administrators are fascists to the students they discipline. Think back: many of you probably had parents who were fascists — at least with regard to your curfew. Alas, the term has come to be used rather freely even in political discourse: to the Left, postwar non-communist dictatorships under generals Franco and Pinochet were fascist, and to today’s pro-war Right, Muslim fundamentalists are Islamo- fascists’, in Christopher Hitchens’ colourful phrase.

Since we seem so fond of the term, it would be nice to know exactly what fascism is. Robert O. Paxton, Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences at Columbia University and the respected author of books on Vichy France and European history, addresses this very question in The Anatomy of Fascism.