A wide-ranging history of the term “fascism,” what it has meant in the past, and what it means today.
 
The rise of political figures like the United States’ Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Argentina’s Javier Milei has spurred debates on the meaning of the term “fascist” and when and whether it is appropriate to use it. The landmark study Fascism: The History of a Word takes this debate further by tackling its most fundamental questions: How did the terms “fascism” and “fascist” come to be in the first place?; How and in what circumstances have they been used?; How can they be understood today?; And what are the advantages (or disadvantages) of using “fascism” to make sense of interwar authoritarianism as well as today’s predicament?
 
Exploring the writings and deeds of political leaders, activists, artists, authors, and philosophers, Federico Marcon traces the history of the term’s use (and usefulness) in relation to Mussolini’s political regime, antifascist resistance, and the quest of postwar historians to develop a definition of a “fascist minimum.” This investigation of the semiotics of “fascism” also aims to inquire about people’s voluntary renunciation of the modern emancipatory ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity.

Federico Marcon is professor of East Asian studies and history at Princeton University. He is the author of The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Preface

Introduction: The Advantages and Disadvantages of “Fascism” for History (and for Life)

Part I: The Invention of “Fascism”
1. “Fascism” before Fascism
2. The Advent of “Fascism”
3. The Semantic Consolidation of “Fascism,” 1922–1945
4. The Language of Fascism

Part II: Antifascists’ “Fascism”
5. Contexts: The Global Reception of Fascism and the Invention of “Antifascism”
6. Liberals’ “Fascism”
7. Marxists’ “Fascism”
8. The Liberals’ Genericizations of “Fascism”
9. The Marxists’ Genericizations of “Fascism”

Part III: “Fascism” since 1945
10. Contexts: “Fascism” between the Postwar Era and the Cold War
11. The Search for a “Fascist Minimum”
12. Historical Knowledge and the Unbearable Fuzziness of “Fascism”

Conclusions: On the Advantages and Disadvantages of “Fascism,” Again

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index