Afterthoughts

Abstract

The concluding contribution to this special issue of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions comprises the invited ‘afterthoughts’ of the author. Following an introductory section in which he explains his own past as a scholar interested in and working on fascism, the main body of the article focuses on the three elements of the conceptual ‘cluster’ which represents this collection's central theme: totalitarianism, political religion and fascism. As far as totalitarianism is concerned, the author concludes that the concept's recent reconfiguration has produced a ‘dynamic’ notion of totalitarianism which sits well with the alleged ‘new consensus’ on fascism and, by virtue of its grasp of historical process, offers useful heuristic opportunities to all historians of fascism. Political religion, however, the author sees as emerging less satisfactorily from the contributions in this special issue; while exploration, specifically in relation to fascism, of relationships between ‘the political’ and ‘the religious’ can certainly be fruitful, a more rigorously consistent understanding and application of the concept ‘political religion’ not only remains elusive but may prove permanently so. With this important caveat, an analytical cluster comprising totalitarianism, political religion (loosely and flexibly defined) and fascism has much to offer within the field of ‘fascist studies’. In the article's final section the author reconsiders the ‘new consensus’ in ‘fascist studies’ and the predominantly ‘intentionalist’ notion of fascism it appears to embrace. While recognising its strengths as a starting point for the study of fascism, he concludes by calling for a more outward‐looking, ‘joined‐up’ approach that would readmit recently unfashionable socio‐economic and structuralist conceptions of fascism.