Notes

Introduction

The chapter epigraphs are from the following sources: Donald J. Trump, quoted in Philip Bump, “A New Peak in Trump’s Efforts to Foster Misinformation,” Washington Post, July 25, 2018; Adolf Hitler, in Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus (London: Tauris, 1990), 2489; Benito Mussolini, in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 19, 114.

1. Max Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 278.

2. See Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker, February 25, 1967; Alexandre Koyré, “The Political Function of the Modern Lie,” Contemporary Jewish Record 8 (1945): 290–300; Agnes Heller, La verità in politica (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2019); Jacques Derrida, Historia de la mentira: Prolegómenos (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1995). See also Martin Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018).

3. “In Texas Gunman’s Manifesto, an Echo of Trump’s Language,” New York Times, August 5, 2019.

4. See Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works (New York: Random House, 2018), 56. On Trumpist language and Nazism, see Michelle Moyd and Yuliya Komska, “Donald Trump Is Changing Our Language. We Need a Vocabulary of Resistance,” The Guardian, January 7, 2017.

5. See Federico Finchelstein, “Why Far-Right Populists Are at War with History,” Washington Post, April 23, 2019; Federico Finchelstein, “Cuando el populismo potencia al fascismo,” New York Times Es, May 21, 2019; Federico Finchelstein, “Jair Bolsonaro’s Model Isn’t Berlusconi. It’s Goebbels,” Foreign Policy, October 5, 2018.

6. Ishaan Tharoor, “Trump Goes Soft on Terrorism,” Washington Post, August 6, 2019.

7. See my preface to the paperback edition of From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), xvii–xix.

8. As Joan Wallach Scott observed, “Trump insists, in typical demagogic fashion, that his lies are self-evident truths. His followers find some inherent, deeper truth in those lies. And he elicits from them a populist energy that lacks any social consciousness or social responsibility.” Joan Wallach Scott, “Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon,” www.politicalconcepts.org/trump-joan-wallach-scott/#ref20.

9. See James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).

10. Jonathan Watts, “Amazon Deforestation: Bolsonaro Government Accused of Seeking to Sow Doubt over Data,” The Guardian, July 31, 2019; Ernesto Londoño, “Bolsonaro Fires Head of Agency Tracking Amazon Deforestation in Brazil,” New York Times, August 2, 2019. Later, at the United Nations, Bolsonaro denied that the Amazon was deeply affected by the massive fires that his own actions (or rather, inactions) provoked. He stopped short of denying the fires themselves, unlike Trump, who invented a hurricane in Alabama in the so-called Sharpiegate.

11. On myth and fascism, see my book El mito del fascismo: De Freud a Borges (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2015).

1. On Fascist Lies

Chapter epigraph: “A alguno de esos mentirosos precisos le di con el puño en la cara. Los testigos aprobaron mi desahogo, y fabricaron otras mentiras. No las creí, pero no me atreví a desoírlas.” Jorge Luis Borges, “El hombre en el umbral,” in Obras completas I (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996), 613.

1. Hitler, and also Goebbels, insisted that propaganda needs constant repetition, but they never argued that they were telling lies. In fact, they believed the opposite, that they spoke in the name of truth. Fascists typically deny what they are and ascribe their own features and their own totalitarian politics to their enemies. Thus, Goebbels never said that repeating lies was central to Nazism, but he did say, in 1941, regarding “Churchill’s lie factory,” that “the English go by the principle that if you lie, then lie, and above all, stick to what you have lied.” In 1942 he wrote in his private diary that “the essence of propaganda is simplicity and repetition.” See http://falschzitate.blogspot.com/2017/12/eine-luge-muss-nur-oft-genung-wiederholt.html. See also Leonard W. Doob, “Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda,” Public Opinion Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1950): 428; Joseph Goebbels, “Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik,” in Die Zeit ohne Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II, Band 3, Januar-März 1942 (Munich: Saur, 1994), 208–13. I thank Claudia Koonz, Nathan Stoltzfus, Sven Reichardt, Nikolai Wehrs, David Motadel, and Richard Evans for their comments and help regarding the history of this Goebbels misquotation.

2. See the excellent biography by Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2015), 70–71, ix.

3. Ibid., 145, 696.

4. See Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 397.

5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Mariner, 1999), 232.

6. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New York: Doubleday, [1946] 1955), 354.

7. Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 13, 45; vol. 7, 98: vol. 34, 117, 126.

8. Ibid, vol. 18, 457, 19, 49, 69.

9. See Benito Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini (Milan: Hoepli, 1934), vol. 2, 345.

10. See Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 1.

11. See Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), 16–17.

12. See Francisco Franco, Palabras del caudillo: 19 abril 1937–31 de diciembre 1938 (Barcelona: Ediciones Fe, 1939), 149, 161, 276, 278.

13. See by Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 2016), 228, 246, 249; and The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian, 1959), 350.

14. See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 52.

15. On the Eichmann trial and the history of witnessing, see Carolyn J. Dean, The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).

16. See Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 252.

17. See Christopher R. Browning, Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer” (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006). For Arendt’s contextual position vis-à-vis emerging Holocaust historiography, see Federico Finchelstein, “The Holocaust Canon: Rereading Raul Hilberg,” New German Critique 96 (2006): 3–48. See also Richard Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Dan Stone, History, Memory and Mass Atrocity: Essays on the Holocaust and Genocide (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006), 53–69.

18. Borges, Obras completas I, 580.

19. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 474.

2. Truth and Mythology in the History of Fascism

1. Hannah Arendt, “The Seeds of a Fascist International,” in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 147.

2. See Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 198.

3. Federico Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 15, 37, 39, 41.

4. See by Jorge Luis Borges: “Thomas Carlyle,” 35; “Thomas Carlyle: De los héroes,” 37–41; and “Definición del Germanófilo,” in Obras completas IV (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996), 442; “Ensayo de imparcialidad,” Sur 61 (October 1939), 27.

5. On the liberal romantic tradition, see Pablo Piccato, The Tyranny of Opinion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 10, 11. See also Elías José Palti, El momento romántico: Nación, historia y lenguajes políticos en la Argentina del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2009); Nadia Urbinati, The Tyranny of the Moderns (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 41, 55, 56.

6. See José Enrique Rodó, Ariel (Montevideo: Biblioteca Artigas, 1964), vol. 44. In Ariel, see especially 18, 19, 20; and in his writings on liberalism, see, e.g., 187, 188. See Leopoldo Lugones, Política revolucionaria (Buenos Aires: Anaconda, 1931), 17–19 and also 12–13, 15, 24–25, 29, 38. See also by Lugones: Estudios helénicos (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Argentina de Buenas Ediciones Literarias, 1923), 18–21; Nuevos estudios helénicos (Buenos Aires: Babel, 1928), 23, 181.

7. Max Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 278.

8. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New York: Doubleday, [1946] 1955), 335.

9. Theodor W. Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” (1951), in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), vol. 8, 429.

10. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian, 1959), 382–87.

3. Fascism Incarnate

1. Giussepe Bottai, “L’equivoco antifascista,” Critica Fascista, April 1, 1924, 30. See also “L’espansione del fascismo,” Universalità Fascista (February 1932): 96.

2. See Benedetto Croce, Scritti e discorsi politici, 1943–1947 (Bari: Laterza, 1963), I, 7; II, 46, 357. See also Renzo De Felice, Interpretations of Fascism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 14–23; Pier Giorgio Zunino, Interpretazione e memoria del fascismo: Gli anni del regime (Rome: Laterza, 1991), 11–142.

3. See Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 104.

4. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Manual del jefe (Munich: Europa, 2004), 5.

5. Mussolini stated in 1929, “Gli osservatori stranieri notano che il popolo italiano parla poco, gestisce meno e sembra dominato da una sola volontà: è la politica del fascismo, la quale insegna che per divenire grandi secondo la màssima della filosofia del superuomo ‘bisogna avere la gioia di obbedire a lungo e in una stessa direzione.’ ” See “Parla il duce del fascismo,” Il Giornale d’Italia, September 15, 1929.

6. “Il mondo e nostro (terribile cosa!) perche que noi quasi inconsciamente ci siamo asunti di creare un mondo.” Camillo Pellizzi, “Imperialismo o aristocrazia?,” Il Popolo d’Italia, May 13, 1923. See also “Il comandamento del Duce,” Il Popolo d’Italia, October 2, 1923; Nino Fattovich, “Sacra religio patriae (Divagazioni sul fascismo),” Il Popolo d’Italia, January 3, 1925; Antonio Pirazzoli, “Mussolini e il fascismo visti da lontano,” Il Popolo d’Italia, March 15, 1925.

7. José Vasconcelos, cited in Pablo Yankelevich, “El exilio argentino de José Vasconcelos,” Revista Iberoamericana 6, no. 24 (2006): 39.

8. On fascism and history, see Claudio Fogu, The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003); Fernando Esposito and Sven Reichardt, “Revolution and Eternity: Introductory Remarks on Fascist Temporalities,” Journal of Modern European History 13 (2015): 24–43.

9. Volt, “Antistoria,” Critica Fascista, January 15, 1927, 9–10.

10. The fascist intellectual Ardengo Soffici presented the fascist absolute as opposed to the theory of relativity proposed by a group of “German Jews whose capo is Einstein.” See Ardengo Soffici, “Relativismo e politica,” Gerarchia (January 1922): 34–35. See also a similar opposition by Mussolini in Sandra Linguerri and Raffaella Simili, eds., Einstein parla italiano: Itinerari e polemiche (Bologna: Pendragon, 2008), 31.

11. See Tirso Molinari Morales, El fascismo en el Perú (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 186.

12. See the insightful analysis of Markus Daechsel, “Scientism and Its Discontents: The Indo-Muslim ‘Fascism’ of Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi,” Modern Intellectual History 3, no. 3 (2006): 462, 463.

13. See James P. Jankowski, “The Egyptian Blue Shirts and the Egyptian Wafd, 1935–1938,” Middle Eastern Studies 6, no. 1 (January 1970): 87; Reto Hofmann, The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 81–83.

14. See Hofmann, The Fascist Effect, 86; see also Harry Harootunian’s review of the book Hirohito Redux—Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix in Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 609–36. I would like to thank Reto Hofmann for his comments regarding these dimensions of Japanese fascism.

15. See Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 236.

4. Enemies of the Truth?

1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Mariner, 1999), 65; original emphasis.

2. José Vasconcelos, “Contra los planes ocultos, la luz de la verdad,” Timón, no. 13 (1940). Reprinted in Itzhak M. Bar-Lewaw, ed., La Revista “Timón” y José Vasconcelos (Mexico City: Edimex, 1971), 143–44.

3. Pablo Yankelevich, “El exilio argentino de José Vasconcelos,” Revista Iberoamericana 6, no. 24 (2006): 37. On Vasconcelos, see also Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila (1920–1925) (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989). On Mexican fascism, see also Jean Meyer, El sinarquismo: ¿Un fascismo mexicano? 1937–1947 (Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 1979).

4. See Fernando de Euzcadi, “Judaismo vs. Catolicismo,” Timón, no. 12 (1940). Reprinted in Bar-Lewaw, La Revista “Timón” y José Vasconcelos, 222–25.

5. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 318; see also 324.

6. On Argentine clerico-fascism, see Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

7. Julio Meinvielle, El judío (Buenos Aires: Antídoto, 1936), 11; Virgilio Filippo, Los judíos: Juicio histórico científico que el autor no pudo transmitir por L. R. S Radio París (Buenos Aires: Tor, 1939), 111.

8. Virgilio Filippo, Conferencias radiotelefónicas (Buenos Aires: Tor, 1936), 215. These European stereotypes have been analyzed by such authors as George L. Mosse and Sander Gilman. See George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985); George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).

9. See Simon Levis Sullam, L’archivio antiebraico: Il linguaggio dell’ antisemitismo moderno (Rome: Laterza, 2008). On anti-Semitism as a cultural code, see Shulamit Volkov, “Anti-Semitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany,” Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 23 (1978): 25–46. On anti-Semitism, see also Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). On anti-Judaism, see David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013).

10. See “Los judíos en la República Argentina: Breve reseña de las sucesivas invasiones,” Acción Antijudía Argentina 13 (1939): 1; Virgilio Filippo, ¿Quiénes tienen las manos limpias? Estudios sociológicos (Buenos Aires: Tor, 1939), 127.

11. Filippo, Los judíos, 44, 45, 49.

12. As the historian of anti-Semitism Michele Battini explains, “Anti-Semitic propaganda states a fact that never happened and falsifies the evidence that would demolish it, yet it tells the truth about its own persecutory intentions because its authors were certain that they were able to deceive public opinion and even those who did not believe it.” The power to distinguish between true and false was reserved for those who could lie in plain sight but also explicitly reveal their destructive intentions. Michele Battini, Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 9.

13. See Valeria Galimi, Sotto gli occhi di tutti: La società italiana e le persecuzioni contro gli ebrei (Florence: Le Monnier, 2018).

14. See Bruno Jacovella, “El judío es el enemigo del pueblo cristiano,” Crisol, October 13, 1936; Clarinada (June 1942): 31.

15. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia (New York: Verso, 2005), 108.

16. Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence (New York: New Press, 2003), xx.

17. See all these references in Federico Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 73–81.

18. Jorge González von Marées, El mal de Chile (sus causas y sus remedios) (Santiago: Talleres gráficos “Portales,” 1940), 53.

19. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Manual del jefe (Munich: Europa, 2004), 130–31.

5. Truth and Power

1. “Il nostro orgoglio e la nostra sicurezza di grande Nazione. Tra le incertezze di altri Popoli noi abbiamo: un regime saldo. . . . La parola precisa e decisa del Duce, il quale vede, prevede e provvede, ed ha sempre ragione.” Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, Argentina, División Política, Caja 2386, Italia, Exp. 1, Año 1933, n. 39, R.E. 1/33, Giornale d’Italia, March 11, 1933; “Mussolini ha sempre ragione,” Universalità Fascista (July–August 1939): 423; “Mussolini dittatore del partito,” Critica Fascista, September 15, 1926, 344.

2. “Nuestras lecturas,” El Fascio (Madrid), March 16, 1933, 13.

3. See Federico Finchelstein, El mito del fascismo: De Freud a Borges (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2015).

4. See Theodor W. Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” (1951), in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), vol. 8, 408–33; Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (London: Hogarth Press, 1940), 115.

5. Finchelstein, El mito del fascismo, 43–77.

6. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian, 1959), 349.

7. See Alfredo Rocco, “Per la cooperazione intellettuale dei popoli,” Critica Fascista, March 1, 1926, 52. See also Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, MRF B 58 F 129 “CANZONI FASCISTE,” Cart. 1, “Per te, o Mussolini!”; Cart. 3, “Saluto al Duce”; and in the same archival folder but not included in the cartelle, “Inno al fondatore dell’ impero”; Arturo Foà, “Fascismo e classicismo,” Il Popolo d’Italia, May 18, 1928; Giuseppe Bottai, “Ritratto di Demostene,” Critica Fascista, March 1, 1926, 53. For this notion of heroism and truth in Argentine fascism, see Federico Ibarguren, Rosas y la tradición hispanoamericana (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1942), 4. For Hitler, see, e.g., the symptomatic considerations of the Argentine fascist Julio Irazusta, “La personalidad de Hitler,” Nuevo Orden, May 14, 1941; of the Spanish fascist Ramón Serrano Suñer, in Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, Argentina, División Política, mueble 7, casilla 22, Guerra Europea, exp. 258, año 1940; and Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, Argentina, Caja 14, España, exp. 1, 1945.

8. Adolf Hitler, Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus (London: Tauris, 1990), vol. 1, 420.

9. Ernesto Giménez Caballero, La nueva catolicidad: Teoría general sobre el fascismo en Europa (Madrid: La Gazeta Literaria, 1933), 128–29, 131–32.

10. See Leopoldo Lugones, “El único candidato,” in Escritos políticos, ed. María Pía López and Guillermo Korn (Buenos Aires: Losada, 2011), 320. On the fascist notion of liberalism as presenting half-truths or even lies, see José María Pemán, “Perfiles de la nueva barbarie,” Acción Española, January 1, 1932, 131–41.

11. José Millán Astray, Franco el caudillo (Salamanca: M. Quero y Simón Editor, 1939), cited in Antonio Cazorla, Franco, biografía del mito (Madrid: Alianza, 2015), 105. On other Spanish fascist myths of the leader, see Joan Maria Thomàs, José Antonio Primo de Rivera: The Reality and Myth of a Spanish Fascist Leader (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019).

12. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Manual del jefe (Munich: Europa, 2004), 182.

13. Jacques Derrida, Historia de la mentira: Prolegómenos (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Press, 1995), 36, 38, 43.

14. Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 49, 50.

15. See Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); Derrida, Historia de la mentira, 25.

16. On Nazi redemptive anti-Semitism, see Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Tears of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997); Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence (New York: New Press, 2003). On fascism and political religion, see Emilio Gentile, Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e totalitarismi (Rome: Laterza, 2001). On Heiddeger, Nazism, and anti-Semitism, see Donatella Di Cesare, Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks (Cambridge: Polity, 2018).

17. Ramiro de Maeztu, “¿No hay hombres?,” A B C, March 26, 1936.

18. They claimed that de Maeztu had given “his life for the Truth.” See “Vox clamantis in deserto,” Acción Española (March 1937): 6–7. See also “Tre Gennaio,” Augustea (1943): 35.

19. See Lloyd E. Eastman, “Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts,” China Quarterly, no. 49 (January–March 1972): 9. On fascism in China, see also Maggie Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture, 1925–1937 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Brian Tsui, China’s Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

20. Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, CA: Noontide Press, 1982), 61–62.

21. Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2014), 86. On Romanian fascism, see Constantin Iordachi, “God’s Chosen Warriors: Romantic Palingenesis, Militarism and Fascism in Modern Romania,” in Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives, ed. Constantin Iordachi (London: Routledge, 2009), 316–57.

22. Julius Evola, Il mito del sangue (Milan: Hoepli, 1937). On Italian anti-Semitism, see Simon Levis Sullam, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); Valeria Galimi, Sotto gli occhi di tutti (Florence: Le Monnier, 2018); Marie Anne Matard-Bonucci, L’Italia fascista e lapersecuzione degli ebrei (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008).

23. See Carl Schmitt, “El fuhrer defiende el derecho” (1934), in Carl Schmitt, teólogo de la política, ed. Héctor Orestes Aguilar (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001), 114–18.

24. Ibid.; see also Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 70–79. On Schmitt’s receptivity to fascism, see the compelling argument in Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 240. On the contemporary need to study Schmitt, see Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 80–67. Nadia Urbinati has cogently noted Schmitt’s participation in a long antidemocratic tradition that perceives democracy as the manipulation of truth. See Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 88.

25. Antonio Gramsci, Gli intellettuali (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979), 93.

26. Hans Frank, cited in Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 136. On Arendt’s interpretation of this imperative in Eichmann, see 137, 148, 149.

27. Gustavo Barroso, Reflexões de um bode (Rio de Janeiro: Gráf. Educadora Limitada, 1937), 169, 177, 178.

28. Plínio Salgado, Palavra nova dos tempos novos (Rio de Janeiro: Olympio, 1936), 114–15. On Salgado and Brazilian fascism, see Leandro Pereira Gonçalves, Plínio Salgado: Um Católico integralista entre Portugal e o Brasil (1895–1975) (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2018).

29. Silvio Villegas, No hay enemigos a la derecha (Manizales: Arturo Zapata, 1937), 43, 46, 50, 57, 78. See also Leopoldo Lugones, “Una página de estética,” Repertorio Americano, October 27, 1924, 113–15.

30. Salgado, Palavra nova dos tempos novos, 114–15. See also Plínio Salgado, O doutrina do sigma (Rio de Janeiro: Schmidt, 1937), 168.

6. Revelations

1. “Il convegno di mistica fascista,” Il Legionario, March 1, 1940, 4, 5.

2. Ivan, “Tra i libri,” Gerarchia (August 1939). See also Titta Madia, “ ‘Duce’ Biografia della parola,” Gerarchia (1937): 382. As the fascist Telesio Interlandi told Mussolini in a private letter, the Duce’s words could not be truly understood by reading them for they transcended their explicit meaning. See Letter to Mussolini from Telesio Interlandi, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, D. G. Serv. Propaganda, Gabinetto B. 43 260.2 (1941).

3. Curzio Malaparte, “Botta e risposta,” Critica Fascista, November 15, 1926, 419–20.

4. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, MRF B 58 F 129 “CANZONI FASCISTE,” Cart. 1, “Dux” and “L’Aquila legionaria.”

5. Federico Forni, “Appunti sulla dottrina,” Gerarchia (1939): 459–60. On this, see also by the Spanish fascist Víctor Pradera, “Los falsos dogmas,” Acción Española (1932): 113–22.

6. Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, CA: Noontide Press, 1982), 432.

7. Plínio Salgado, Palavra nova dos tempos novos (Rio de Janeiro: Olympio, 1936), 115. See also Plínio Salgado, O doutrina do sigma (Rio de Janeiro: Schmidt, 1937), 168.

8. See Partito Nazionale Fascista, Foglio d’Ordini, no. 147, November 18, 1935, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, Archivi Fascisti, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Cart. riservato, B 31 F Gran Consiglio SF 13 1935. On justice and fighting, see also Angelo Tarchi, “Perché combattiamo,” Repubblica Sociale (1945): 4, 11; and La Verità (Venice: Erre, 1944), 19, 25.

9. Alexandre Koyré, “The Political Function of the Modern Lie,” Contemporary Jewish Record 8 (1945): 290–300. See also Jacques Derrida, Historia de la mentira: Prolegómenos (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Press, 1995), 43, 47–48; and Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker, February 25, 1967.

10. Leopoldo Lugones, “Rehallazgo del país,” La Nación, November 8, 1936.

11. See Ramiro de Maeztu, “El valor de la Hispanidad,” Acción Española (1932): 561–71; and “El valor de la Hispanidad II,” Acción Española (1932): 1–11.

12. Gustavo Barroso, O integralismo e o mundo (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1936), 16, 17.

13. Ibid., 145.

14. Salgado, Palavra nova dos tempos novos, 116–17.

15. Ibid.

16. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Manual del jefe (Munich: Europa, 2004), 151–52.

17. Sir Oswald Mosley, 10 Points of Fascism (London: B.U.F., 1933), 2–3.

18. Derrida cogently criticizes this idea that truth can be owned in politics, but both Arendt and Koyré seem to insist on the nonpolitical nature of their insights. For a converging criticism of Arendt, see Ágnes Heller, Solo se sono libera (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2014), 16.

19. See Jorge Luis Borges, “De la dirección de Proa,” in Jorge Luis Borges, Textos recobrados (1931–1955) (Barcelona: Emecé, 1997), vol. 1, 207–8; Federico Finchelstein, El mito del fascismo: De Freud a Borges (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2015).

20. See Jorge Luis Borges, “El propósito de Zarathustra,” in Borges, Textos recobrados, vol. 2, 211–18; The Diary of Sigmund Freud, 1929–1939, ed. Michael Molnar (New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1992), 149.

21. See Omero Valle, “Dell’ intelligenza fascista,” Gerarchia (1939): 703.

22. See Italo Calvino, “Il Duce’s Portraits,” New Yorker, January 6, 2003.

23. José Carlos Mariátegui, Obra política (Mexico City: Era, 1979), 122, 124, 137.

24. Theodor W. Adorno, “Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda” (1946), in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), vol. 8, 398, 403.

25. See Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, Archivi Fascisti, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, B1 F 2 SF 9 GENTILE GIOVANNI; Giovanni Gentile, “La legge del gran consiglio,” Educazione Fascista (September 1928). See also Luigi Chiarini, “Coscienza imperiale,” Critica Fascista, June 15, 1928, 235; Enzo Capaldo, “Attualità della vigilia nella formazione della coscienza fascista,” Critica Fascista, January 1, 1934, 20.

7. The Fascist Unconscious

1. A. M., “I segni del tempo,” Il Popolo d’Italia, January 1, 1928. See also “Senso dell’ eterno in Mussolini,” La Repubblica Fascista, December 22, 1944, 1.

2. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Mariner, 2001), 510.

3. Ibid., 509–12.

4. Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 318, 329, 328.

5. Michele Bianchi, “Il concetto di rappresentanza nello Stato fascista,” Il Giornale d’Italia, November 27, 1929, 1.

6. Edgardo Sulis, ed., Mussolini contro il mito di demos (Milan: Hoepli, 1942) 71, 72. See also Gustavo Barroso, “Procurador dos descaminhos,” A Offensiva, April 13, 1935; and the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered (London: B.U.F., 1936), 15. On the history of the concept of sovereignty, see Dieter Grimm, Sovereignty: The Origins and Future of a Political and Legal Concept (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

7. See Benito Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini (Milan: Hoepli, 1934), vol. 3, 108; Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 258.

8. Plínio Salgado, A doutrina do sigma (Rio de Janeiro: Schmidt, 1937), 21; Alfonso de Laferrere, Literatura y política (Buenos Aires: Manuel Gleizer, 1928), 128; Silvio Villegas, No hay enemigos a la derecha (Manizales: Arturo Zapata, 1937), 224. On Mussolini and Sorel, see Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 213; Emil Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini (Milan: Mondadori, 1932), 124; Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 20, 123. On Nazism and moral rebirth, see Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambride, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 31 and 33, 75.

9. See Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 5, 322.

10. Roberto Pavese, “Filosofia e religione nel momento presente,” Gerarchia (November (1936): 761. See also Cesare Colliva, “Impero fascista,” Meridiani (March–April 1936).

11. See Camillo Pellizzi, “Pensiero fascista,” Il Popolo d’Italia, April 5, 1925. See also Alessandro Pavolini, “La funzione del partito,” Critica Fascista, July 1, 1926, 171.

12. See “Il messaggio del Duce,” Il Giornale d’Italia, October 27, 1935; Mussolini, Opera omnia, vol. 32, 105; Sulis, Mussolini contro il mito di demos, 49. See also Francesco Maria Barracu, La voce della patria (Venice: Erre, 1944), 15, 18. For the songs “Inno a Mussolini” and “Inno dedicato agli Eroi della Rivoluzione Fascista,” see Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, MRF B 58 F 129 “CANZONI FASCISTE,” Cart. 1 and Cart. 3.

13. Camillo Pellizzi, “Educazione fascista,” Il Popolo d’Italia, February 10, 1928.

14. Volt, “L’imperialismo economico,” Il Popolo d’Italia, 1923. See also Nardo Naldoni, “La guerra,” Meridiani (June 1936): 2.3.

15. See Federico Finchelstein, “On Fascist Ideology,” Constellations 15 (2008): 320–31. On fascism, see also the following important works: Zeev Sternhell, Ni droite ni gauche: L’idéologie fasciste en France (Paris: Gallimard, 2012); Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Geoff Eley, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology and the Ground of Consent in Germany (London: Routledge, 2013); António Costa Pinto, The Nature of Fascism Revisited (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2012); Angelo Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria: Guerra, modernità, violenza politica: 1914–1918 (Rome: Donzelli, 2003); Emilio Gentile, Fascismo: Storia e interpretazione (Rome: Laterza, 2002); Giulia Albanese, “Brutalizzazione e violenza alle origini del fascismo,” Studi Storici 1 (2014): 3–14; Sandra Deutsch, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile 1890–1939 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Joan Maria Thomàs, Los fascismos españoles (Barcelona: Ariel, 2019).

16. See Benito Mussolini, “Vivere pericolosamente” (1924), in Mussolini, Opera omnia, vol. 21, 40, 41. See also by Ernesto Giménez Caballero, “Tre fasi del generale Franco,” Gerarchia (1937): 153; and Genio de España (Madrid: La Gaceta Literaria, 1932), 134, 318.

17. Romans 3:4; 1 John 2:22; John 8:43–45 (NRSV).

18. Leonardo Castellani, Las canciones de Militis: Seis ensayos y tres cartas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dictio, 1973), 61.

19. See Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Genio de España: Exaltaciones a una resurrección nacional y del mundo (Zaragoza: Ediciones Jerarquía, 1938), 211; and his Casticismo, nacionalismo y vanguardia: Antología, 1927–1935 (Madrid: Fundación Santander Central Hispano, 2005), 73, 105, 172.

20. See Giménez Caballero, Casticismo, nacionalismo y vanguardia, 73, 102, 103, 129, 160, 183, 241–42.

8. Fascism against Psychoanalysis

1. Carlos Meneses, Cartas de juventud de J. L. Borges (1921–1922) (Madrid: Orígenes, 1987), 15.

2. See Leopoldo Lugones, “La formación del ciudadano,” La Nación, February 13, 1938.

3. Albérico S. Lagomarsino, La cuestión judía: Su estudio analítico y crítico (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1936), 84–87.

4. Virgilio Filippo, Los judíos: Juicio histórico científico que el autor no pudo transmitir por L. R. S. Radio Paris (Buenos Aires: Tor, 1939), 217.

5. Freud actually had cancer of the jaw, not the tongue. See Leonardo Castellani, Freud en cifra (Buenos Aires: Cruz y Fierro, 1966), 11. Many fascists, including Castellani, compared Vienna to Buenos Aires and claimed that both cities were “monstrously” overwhelmed by the Jews. See Degreff, Esperanza de Israel (Buenos Aires: F. A. Colombo, 1938), 51. For them, both cities faced a pollutant from a lower world that was a combination of both modern and ancient threats to Christianity and its foremost creation, “the white race.” See Vezzetti’s suggestive analysis of Castellani in his introduction to Hugo Vezzetti, ed., Freud en Buenos Aires, 1910–1939 (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1989), 71–72; Leonardo Castellani, “Sigmund Freud (1856–1939),” La Nación, October 8, 1939, sec. 2, 1–2.

6. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Mariner, 1999), 325.

7. Gustavo Franceschi, “Como se prepara una revolución,” Criterio, September 14, 1933, 30; “Una Europa sin judíos,” Bandera Argentina, February 1, 1941, 1.

8. Julio Meinvielle, “Catolicismo y nacionalismo,” El Pueblo, October 18, 1936, 3.

9. Julio Meinvielle, Entre la Iglesia y el Reich (Buenos Aires: Adsum, 1937), 68.

10. Fernando de Euzcadi, “Judaismo vs. Catolicismo,” Timón, no. 12 (1940). Reprinted in Itzhak M. Bar-Lewaw, ed., La Revista “Timón” y José Vasconcelos (Mexico City: Edimex, 1971), 225.

11. Ibid., 222–25.

12. Filippo, Los judíos, 197.

13. Virgilio Filippo, El reinado de Satanás: Conferencias irradiadas dominicalmente a las 13 horas desde L. R. 8, Radio París de Bs. As. (Buenos Aires: Tor, 1937), vol. 2, 109.

14. On fascism and psychoanalysis in Italy, see Piero Meldini, Mussolini contro Freud: La psicoanalisi nella pubblicistica fascista (Florence: Guaraldi, 1976); Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1966); Mauro Pasqualini, “Origin, Rise, and Destruction of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Fascist Italy, 1922–1938,” in Psychoanalysis and Politics, ed. Joy Damousi and Mariano Plotkin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Roberto Zapperi, Freud e Mussolini: La psicoanalisi in Italia durante il regime fascista (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2013); Maddalena Carli, “Saluti da Vienna, o duce,” Il Manifesto, September 25, 2014. For psychoanalysis and antifascism, see Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis (New York: Knopf, 2004), 244–45.

15. See Fermi, “Psicanalisi e psicosintesi,” Gerarchia (1935): 817; Roberto Suster, “Elementi di psicologia germanica,” Critica Fascista, February 1934, 55; “Psicoanalisi e castità,” La Difesa della Razza, November 20, 1941, 31.

16. Benito Mussolini, “Labirinto comunista,” in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 26, 11–12.

17. Castellani argued that “it is known that a true Freudian will not denounce it; Freudianism is a kind of religion”; Juan Palmetta, “Fe de erratas: Freud. I. La Vida: Freudiana del niño,” Criterio, October 5, 1939, 107.

18. Plínio Salgado, O doutrina do sigma (Rio de Janeiro: Schmidt, 1937), 157, 158.

19. See Ellevi, “Tra i libri,” Gerarchia (1941): 57. See also Lidio Cipriani, “Quale la vera responsabile: Albione o Israele?,” Gerarchia (1940): 519; Ellevi, “La democracia, secolo d’oro dell’ebraismo,” Gerarchia (1938): 806; Julius Evola, Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza (Milan: Hoepli, 1941), 148–49; Ernesto Pesci, Lotta e destino di razza (Alterocca: Terni, 1939).

20. Was this dimension exclusive to fascists? As Adorno explained this situation in 1944, nobody or nothing (not even Freudian theory and certainly not capitalist society) was exempted from this pattern in which the subject becomes “untruth.” To be sure, Adorno noted, in Freud’s thinking, a tension existed between the emancipation and the normalization of the subject in the bourgeois world. But, notably, Adorno warned that psychoanalysis also ran the risk of becoming a “follow my leader behavior” that was connected to a situation in which “truth is abandoned to relativity and people to power.” If the “terror against the abyss of the self” was fully normalized and the self was annulled by means of formulas, psychoanalysis also risked becoming a normalizing response to the total alienation of bourgeois society. See Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia (New York: Verso, 2005), 60–66.

21. See Giuseppe Maggiore, “Logica e moralità del razzismo,” La Difesa della Razza, September 5, 1938, 32; Alfonso Petrucci, “Morte dell’ultimo illusionista,” La Difesa della Razza, November 20, 1941, 27, 28, 31.

22. Domenico Rende, “Il pansessualismo di Freud,” La Difesa della Razza, October 5, 1938, 43, 45.

23. See Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Tears of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 172. See also Sander Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 31.

24. On this theme, see especially the pioneering work of Meldini, Mussolini contro Freud. On Italian “volontarismo,” see, e.g., the symptomatic article by Antonio Monti, “Contributo ad una sintesi storica del volontarismo,” Gerarchia (1936): 389–92. See also Umberto Mascia, “Il volontarismo italiano da Roma al fascismo,” Gerarchia (1930): 1030–34.

25. See Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 191; see also Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence (New York: New Press, 2003), 95.

26. See Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), 137, 167.

9. Democracy and Dictatorship

1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Mariner, 1999), 316, 325–27.

2. Ugo D’Andrea, “Teoria e pratica della reazione política,” Critica Fascista, February 1, 1925, 41.

3. See Joseph Fronczak, “The Fascist Game: Transnational Political Transmission and the Genesis of the U.S. Modern Right,” Journal of American History 105, no. 3 (December 2018): 586; Benjamin Zachariah, “A Voluntary Gleichschaltung? Indian Perspectives Towards a Non-Eurocentric Understanding of Fascism,” Transcultural Studies 2 (2014): 82.

4. Maria Hsia Chang, The Chinese Blue Shirts Society (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985), 27, 19–20.

5. “El fascismo y la democracia,” El Fascio (Madrid), March 16, 1933, 5.

6. See José Vasconcelos, “Otro fantasma: El nazismo en la América española,” Timón, no. 11 (1940); and Editorial, Timón, no. 15 (1940). Both articles are reprinted in Itzhak M. Bar-Lewaw, ed., La Revista “Timón” y José Vasconcelos (Mexico City: Edimex, 1971), 138–39 and 102, respectively.

7. See Raul Ferrero, Marxismo y nacionalismo: Estado nacional corporativo (Lima: Editorial Lumen, 1937), 125, 187; R. Havard de la Montagne, “Démocratie politique et démocratie sociale,” Action française, May 14, 1941, 1.

8. Leopoldo Lugones, El estado equitativo (Ensayo sobre la realidad Argentina) (Buenos Aires: La Editora Argentina, 1932), 11.

9. Leopoldo Lugones, Política revolucionaria (Buenos Aires: Anaconda, 1931), 52, 53, 65–66; Lugones, El estado equitativo, 9, 11.

10. Leopoldo Lugones, “Un voto en blanco,” La Nación, December 3, 1922. See also Leopoldo Lugones, Escritos políticos (Buenos Aires: Losada, 2009), 191.

11. Leopoldo Lugones, “Ante una nueva perspectiva del gobierno del mundo,” La Fronda, January 16, 1933, 7.

12. For some interesting Argentine examples, see Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter AGN], Archivo Agustín P. Justo, Caja 36, doc. 277, Reacción 1 quincena junio 1935, no. 1, “La Legión cívica argentina”; Guido Glave, Economía dirigida de la democracia corporativa argentina (Buenos Aires: Imprenta L. L. Gotelli, 1936), 7, 25, 30, 135–36; AGN, Archivo Agustín P. Justo, Caja 104, doc. 151, February 28, 1942.

13. AGN, Archivo Agustín P. Justo, Caja 49, doc. 29, Nueva Idea año 1, no. 1, 19 enero 1935; Héctor Bernardo, El régimen corporativo y el mundo actual (Buenos Aires: Adsum, 1943), 52–54.

14. Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

15. As the historian António Costa Pinto observes, “Powerful processes of institutional transfers were a hallmark of interwar dictatorships. . . . Corporatism was at the forefront of this process, both as a new form of organized interest representation and as an authoritarian alternative to parliamentary democracy. The diffusion of political and social corporatism, which with the single party are hallmarks of the institutional transfers among European dictatorships, challenges some rigid dichotomous interpretations of interwar fascism.” António Costa Pinto, The Nature of Fascism Revisited (New York: SSM—Columbia University Press, 2012), xix. See also his Latin American Dictatorships in the Era of Fascism (London: Routledge, 2020).

16. See Antonio Costa Pinto and Federico Finchelstein, ed., Authoritarian Intellectuals and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America (London: Routledge, 2019). See also António Costa Pinto, “Fascism, Corporatism and the Crafting of Authoritarian Institutions in Interwar European Dictatorships,” in Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe, ed. António Costa Pinto and Aristotle A Kallis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 87; Matteo Passetti, “Neither Bluff nor Revolution: The Corporations and the Consolidation of the Fascist Regime (1925–1926),” in In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy, ed. Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Alessio Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista (Rome: Laterza, 2010); Philip Morgan, “Corporatism and the Economic Order,” in The Oxford Handbook of Fascism, ed. R. J. B. Bosworth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 150–65; Fabio Gentile, “O estado corporativo fascista e sua apropriação na era Vargas,” in Ditaduras—a desmesura do poder, ed. Nildo Avelino, Ana Montoia, and Telma Dias Fernandes (São Paulo: Intermeios, 2015), 171–95.

17. “Il corporativismo è l’economia disciplinata, e quindi anche controllata, perché non si può pensare a una disciplina che non abbia un controllo. Il corporativismo supera il socialismo e supera il liberalismo, crea una nuova sintesi.” See Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 26, 95.

18. See Hanks Kelsen, The Essence and Value of Democracy, ed. Nadia Urbinati and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 63–66. This book was originally published in 1920 and then updated in 1929.

19. Francisco Franco, Franco ha dicho (Madrid: Ediciones Voz, 1949), 43.

20. Francisco Franco, Palabras del caudillo: 19 abril 1937–31 de diciembre 1938 (Barcelona: Ediciones Fe, 1939), 176.

21. Francisco Franco, Discursos y mensajes del jefe del estado (Madrid: Dirección General de Cultura Popular y Espectáculos, 1971), 75.

22. Jorge Gonzalez von Marées, El mal de Chile (sus causas y sus remedios) (Santiago: Talleres gráficos “Portales,” 1940), 121–22.

23. A. F., “La démocratie et le mensonge,” Action française, October 2, 1938.

24. Jean-Renaud, “Chambre d’ Incapables, de nuls, ou de pourris,” La Solidarité nationale: Seul organe officiel du Parti du faisceau français, July 15, 1937.

25. AGN, Archivo Uriburu, Legajo 20, Sala VII 2596, Carpeta recortes s/n.

26. For Uriburu, fascism had modernized corporatism. He opposed both Jews and the French Revolution: “The Argentine revolutionaries of 1930 cannot take seriously the accusation that we are reactionaries. [It is an accusation made] with the language and ideas of the French revolution. . . . We cannot take seriously that a few naturalized citizens that have lived the anguish of far-off oppressions scandalize themselves over the supposed purpose they maliciously attribute to us of wanting to import foreign electoral systems.” AGN, Archivo Uriburu, Legajo 20, Sala VII 2596, Carpeta recortes s/n.

27. Franco, Franco ha dicho, 237, 242.

28. Franco, Palabras del caudillo, 149, 161, 276, 278.

10. The Forces of Destruction

1. Georges Valois, La Révolution nationale (Paris: Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1926), 81. On the distinction between logical and eternal truth, see Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 15; Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker, February 25, 1967.

2. See Massimo Scaligero (Antonio Massimo Sgabelloni), “Principi di etica fascista,” Meridian (January 1936): 9–10. As the Dutch fascist De Vries De Heekelingen put it, “Fascism does not annul the individual but it subordinates the individual.” H. De Vries De Heekelingen, “Bismark e Mussolini,” Critica Fascista, September 1, 1926, 322. For the Bottai letter, see Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy, Archivi Fascisti, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, B4 F BOTTAI GIUSEPPE SF 2.

3. Leopoldo Lugones, “Elogio de Maquiavelo,” Repertorio Americano, November 19, 1927, 298.

4. See Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 1962), 8, 9, 92.

5. See Sigmund Freud, The Letters of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernst L. Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1960), 283.

6. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage, 1939), 67; Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1957), vol. 3, 183–84.

7. On Freud and fascism, see Federico Finchelstein, El mito del fascismo: De Freud a Borges (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2015), 43–77.

8. Antonio Gramsci, Passato e presente (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979), 284.

9. Theodor Adorno, “Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda” (1946), in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), vol. 8, 406, 407.

10. José Carlos Mariátegui, Obra política (Mexico City: Era, 1979), 121–22.

11. See Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 7, 98.

12. Mariátegui, Obra política, 121–22.

13. Adorno, “Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda,” 401, 402, 407.

14. Hannah Arendt, “Approaches to the German Problem,” in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 111–12.

15. Jorge Luis Borges, “Letras alemanas: Una exposición afligente,” Sur 8, no. 49 (1938): 67; Jorge Luis Borges, Obras completas IV (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996), 378, 442.

16. Borges, Obras completas IV, 427, 442–44.

17. See Benito Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini (Milan: Hoepli, 1934), vol. 5, 190.

Epilogue

1. See “Welcome to Dystopia—George Orwell Experts on Donald Trump,” The Guardian, January 25, 2017; Henry Giroux, “ ‘Shithole countries’: Trump Uses the Rhetoric of Dictators,” Conversation, January 10, 2018; Adam Gopnik, “Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Trump’s America,” New Yorker, January 27, 2017.

2. See Paul Farhi, “Lies? The News Media Is Starting to Describe Trump’s ‘Falsehoods’ That Way,” Washington Post, June 5, 2019; Katie Rogers, “An Orwellian Tale? Trump Denies, Then Confirms, ‘Nasty’ Comments about Meghan Markle,” New York Times, June 5, 2019; “In 828 Days, President Trump Has Made 10,111 False or Misleading Claims,” Washington Post, April 27, 2019; Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made 13,435 False or Misleading Claims over 993 Days,” Washington Post, October 14, 2019. For other examples, see Susan B. Glasser, “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose,” New Yorker, August 3, 2008; Stephen Walt, “Does It Matter That Trump Is a Liar?,” Foreign Policy, September 17, 2018.

3. Michelle Boorstein, “Sarah Sanders Tells Christian Broadcasting Network: God Wanted Trump to Be President,” Washington Post, January 30, 2019; Andrew Restuccia, “The Sanctification of Donald Trump,” Politico, April 30, 2019; “Trump to the National Prayer Breakfast: ‘I will never let you down. I can say that. Never,’ ” Washington Post, February 7, 2019; “Trump Says He’s ‘So Great Looking and Smart, a True Stable Genius,’ in Tweet Bashing 2020 Dems,” USA Today, July 11, 2019; John Wagner, “Trump Quotes Conspiracy Theorist Claiming Israelis ‘Love Him Like He Is the Second Coming of God,’ ” Washington Post, August 21, 2019; Chris Moody, “Donald Trump: ‘God is the ultimate,’ ” CNN, September 23, 2015.

4. See Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 268.

5. Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2015), 696.

6. Amy Sullivan, “Millions of Americans Believe God Made Trump President,” Politico, January 27, 2018.

7. Nick Givas, “Trump Tells Reporters He’s ‘Always Right’ during Oval Office Press Conference with Polish President,” Fox News, June 12, 2019, www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-tells-media-always-right-cnn. See also Ittai Orr, “Why His Fans Think Trump Has ‘Great and Unmatched Wisdom,’ ” Washington Post, October 8, 2019.

8. Bob Bauer, “Trump’s Voter-Fraud Lies Are a Betrayal of His Oath,” Atlantic, November 19, 2018.

9. Arnie Seipel, “Fact Check: Trump Falsely Claims a ‘Massive Landslide Victory,’ ” NPR, December 11, 2016, www.npr.org/2016/12/11/505182622/fact-check-trump-claims-a-massive-landslide-victory-but-history-differs.

10. See Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 153. See also Nadia Urbinati, Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). On populism, see also Carlos de la Torre, ed., Routledge Handbook on Global Populism (London: Routledge, 2018); Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

11. See Federico Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History, 252–53.

12. Ibid., 199.

13. Ibid., 207–8. On fascism and populism, see also Mabel Berezin, “Fascism and Populism: Are They Useful Categories for Comparative Sociological Analysis?,” Annual Review of Sociology 45 (2019): 345–61.

14. www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-how-netanyahu-became-a-holocaust-revisionist-1.6744462; www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-absolves-hitler-of-guilt-1.5411578.

15. On this topic, see my preface to the paperback edition of From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), xviii.

16. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 2016), 228.

17. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “How to Push Back against Trump’s Propaganda Machine,” Washington Post, September 20, 2018. See also Patrick Iber, “History in an Age of Fake News,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 3, 2018.

18. Juan Domingo Perón, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Docencia, 1998), vol. 24, 468.

19. Trump said regarding Mussolini’s statement, “It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote, and I know it. . . . I know who said it. But what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else? It’s certainly a very interesting quote.” See Jenna Johnson, “Trump on Retweeting Questionable Quote: ‘What difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini,’ ” Washington Post, February 28, 2016; Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2015), 71; Katie Shepherd, “ ‘Beyond repugnant’: GOP Congressman Slams Trump for Warning of ‘Civil War’ over Impeachment,” Washington Post, September 30, 2019. On Nazism and its use of Christian symbols and language, see Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: lmage and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

20. Bolsonaro had stated in 1999, “Through voting you will not change anything in this country, nothing, absolutely nothing! Things will only change, unfortunately, the day you set off for a civil war, and doing the work the military regime didn’t do. Killing about 30,000, starting with FHC [Brazilian former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso], not letting him out, killing! If some innocents are going to die, it is all right. In war innocent people die.” Kiko Nogueira, “Sou a favor da tortura. Através do voto, você não muda nada no país. Tem que matar 30 mil,” Diário do Centro do Mundo, October 4, 2017.

21. See Bruno Biancini, ed., Dizionario mussoliniano: Mille affermazioni e definizioni del Duce (Milan: Hoepli, 1939), 58; Javier Lafuente, “Bolsonaro: ‘Esta misión de Dios no se escoge, se cumple,’ ” El País, October 29, 2018.

22. As the historian Mark Mazower explained, “We have tended to pathologise fascism and that makes its rise harder to understand.” See Mark Mazower, “Ideas That Fed the Beast of Fascism Flourish Today,” Financial Times, November 6, 2016.

23. As the historian Sophia Rosenfeld put it about the American president’s closed world, “In trumpland, truth becomes falsehood, and falsehood masquerades as truth.” See Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 7.

24. Josh Dawsey, “Trump Derides Protections for Immigrants from ‘Shithole’ Countries,” Washington Post, January 12, 2018.