Abstract

“If something begins when it acquires a name, we can date the beginnings of fascism precisely,” states the author of The Anatomy of Fascism, the Columbia University historian Robert Paxton, at the start of what is bound to be a controversial book (p. 24). Contradicting Zev Sternhell, the author of major books on fascism who has repeatedly named France as the intellectual cradle of fascism, Paxton asserts that Italy is where fascism started. The date was March 23, 1919, when Mussolini and some one hundred of his cronies, the fasci italiani di combattimento, held a meeting in a room of…