Movements with an exotic foreign look won few followers, however.

Smith, vanished after a heckler was killed at one of his rallies) and a host of others. Winrod’s openly pro-Hitler Defenders of the Christian Faith with their Black Legion William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (the initials “SS” were intentional) the veteran-based Khaki Shirts (whose leader, one Art J. In the crisis-ridden 1930s, as in other democracies, derivative fascist movements were conspicuous in the United States: the Protestant evangelist Gerald B. Indeed, antidemocratic and xenophobic movements have flourished in America since the Native American party of 1845 and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s.

The United States itself has never been exempt from fascism. Later on page 201, Paxton discusses American political history and how fascism specifically fits into a U.S. The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success.The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external.The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it.A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.On page 41, for example, Paxton outlines features common to all fascist movements: And check out these excerpts from Paxton’s most famous work. To learn more, read the Slate article here. Paxton is an American historian and the author of the 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, which examines the causes and characteristics of history’s most ominous political classification. In February, Slate interviewed Robert Paxton and asked whether Donald Trump is a fascist. David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving

Robert paxton the anatomy of fascism