The Civic foundations of fascism in Europe : Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945

I was looking forward to reading this though I had a strong suspicion I would be frustrated by it. the lengthy introduction riffing with polsci concepts, axe-grinding state-formation models developed by people I'd never heard of and an overall emphasis on method let me know that I would be in fact be v frustrated by it.

Riley's argument is directed against a cohort of political scientists who propagate a 'Tocquevillian' analysis of the state and society; the notion that the growth of voluntary associations in modernity open up to democratic outcomes. Riley argues that such developments can as easily inculcate the social forces that lead to fascism and where fascism did develop hegemony that might have sustained the rule of a particular class or coalition of classes were lacking. After the theoretical stall is set out there are three case studies, each of which, Riley argues, are distinct; statist fascism in Romania, traditionalist fascism in Spain and party fascism in Italy. I would recommend anyone approaching this book looking for histories of these moments in broad outline to just read these three chapters and skip a paragraph when they see the phrase 'intra-group hegemony'.

In his eagerness to de-mystify liberal pieties Riley argues fascism is democratic, that fascist parties and organisations represented means of upholding and enforcing the popular will. Therefore one of the reasons Trump isn't a fascist (left / liberal apocalypticism on his entering office provided an opportunity to re-launch the book) is because civil society in the United States is characterised by an absence of democracy rather than a surfeit. This is fine but also really stupid in a way that only very well-read people with tenure can be. I'll leave aside the quite correct point that I think Gabriel Winant made that the police are the Friekorps that Riley can't see here because I do think understanding Trump as an emblem of the Reality Collapse Event is important, but I see no reason why we can't and shouldn't square what we see in fascism's 'classical' epoch with developments since. The political and social objectives of fascism; the beheading of communism, militarisation, racialised mass-killings have all been realised in the United States and I don't think Riley needs to come up with a new theory in order for us to have pre-existing social formations that it might remind us of.

I think the book suffers in direct proportion to how hard its working to pursue its hypothesis and reduces the quite good historical stuff to quibbling over taxonomy, eschewing what I think the strength of Marxist analysis is in the first place, i.e. understanding these things in their historical context. As polsci works dealing with the fascistic nature of liberalism I find Losurdo much better. He keeps it looser and lays a lot more emphasis on imperial atrocities, which I think is where the real evidence on this stuff is found. Riley's re-issued preface apologises for the lack of space given to imperialism, but doesn't seem to have revised the book as a consequence, which isn't good enough.