Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and
anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths,
emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian
Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading
experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an
alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may
have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less
irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth century.
Gregor makes this case by presenting for the first time a chronological
account of the major intellectual figures of Italian Fascism, tracing
how the movement's ideas evolved in response to social and political
developments inside and outside of Italy.
Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology
about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a
leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate
body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along
the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's
major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco
(Mussolini's Minister of Justice), and Julius Evola, a bizarre and
sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism."
Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist
thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips
with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth
century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious
intellectual as well as visceral roots.
