The Political Economy of Fascism: Evidence from Greece

Abstract

ABSTRACT Prevailing theories of fascism reject the proposition that fascism offers a distinct outlook on political economy. Contemporary fascist political parties, I argue, belie this claim. Neofascism has constructed a distinct approach to political economy in response to a unique circumstance: fighting for power in parliamentary democracies whose histories include the overcoming of democracy by fascists. Understanding fascist political economy mean re-conceiving it as an every-day practice of movement building. I use Greece’s Golden Dawn as a case study. Making use of a previously untapped resource – the Golden’s Dawn’s regularly published on-line newspaper – I show how the party connected its organizing activities with its ideology during its 2012–2014 ascendance. The article sets an agenda for studying twenty-first century neofascism in democratic countries: movement-building by connecting economic sovereignty in theory to every-day forms of political practice.