Fascism's Return: Scandal, Revision, and Ideology since 1980 (review)

Abstract

At first sight, Fascism's Return would seem to belong in the distinguished company of such influential collections of essays on fascism as Woolfe's The Nature of Fascism, Laqueur's Fascism: A Reader's Guide, Hagtvet et alia's Who Were the Fascists, and Mosse's International Fascism. All these managed to contain some seminal essays despite lacking a shared conceptual framework for approaching the topic. Indeed, outside the Marxist camp, it would have until recently needed a draconian act of editorial Gleichschaltung to avoid such a book becoming precisely what it was received wisdom to accuse fascism's ideology of being: a hotchpotch; a ragbag. The absence of a unifying concept of fascism which (mis)informs Golsan's book, however, is now an anachronism. Moreover, this scholarly failing is compounded by a main title and cover design which would constitute a breach of the Trade's Description Act if it applied to books.