"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline...a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
—Robert Paxton, “The Anatomy of Fascism”, Random House, 2004
—Robert Paxton, “The Anatomy of Fascism”, Random House, 2004
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html
In 2021, Paxton wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in which he stated that he now believed Donald Trump was a fascist, after insisting for several years that he was instead a right-wing populist. Trump's incitement of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was the deciding factor in him changing his view.
“If Trump wins, it’s going to be awful. If he loses, it’s going to be awful too.” Paxton scoured his brain for an apt historical analogy but struggled to find one. Hitler was not elected, he noted, but legally appointed by the conservative president, Paul von Hindenburg...In Italy, Mussolini was also legitimately appointed. “The king chose him,” Paxton said, “Mussolini didn’t really have to march on Rome.” Trump’s power, Paxton suggested, appears to be different. “The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social base,” Paxton said. “Which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.”
—Robert Paxton, from interview with Elisabeth Zerofsky "Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind”, New York Times magazine, October 23, 2024
In 2021, Paxton wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in which he stated that he now believed Donald Trump was a fascist, after insisting for several years that he was instead a right-wing populist. Trump's incitement of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was the deciding factor in him changing his view.
“If Trump wins, it’s going to be awful. If he loses, it’s going to be awful too.” Paxton scoured his brain for an apt historical analogy but struggled to find one. Hitler was not elected, he noted, but legally appointed by the conservative president, Paul von Hindenburg...In Italy, Mussolini was also legitimately appointed. “The king chose him,” Paxton said, “Mussolini didn’t really have to march on Rome.” Trump’s power, Paxton suggested, appears to be different. “The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social base,” Paxton said. “Which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.”
—Robert Paxton, from interview with Elisabeth Zerofsky "Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind”, New York Times magazine, October 23, 2024
PHOTO: Robert Paxton (b. June 15, 1932) Credit: Erik Madigan Heck for The New York Times
