2007 08 04 book reviews

This section includes book notes of 150-300 words as well as some book reviews of 600-900 words on books of particular interest to the members of our group. If you have either suggestions for books you would like to review or see reviewed (including recent books of your own), please contact our new book reviews editors, Andreas Umland or Matthew J. Goodwin

The below section includes brief notes of less than 500 words as well as longer reviews of more than 600 words on books of particular interest to the members of our group. The following volumes are currently on storage for review in eExtreme: Africa and the War on Terrorism. Ed. by John Davis, 2007.

Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. By Jason Brownlee, 2007.

Women, Ethnicity and Nationalisms in Latin America. Ed. by Natividad Gutiérrez Chong, 2007.

Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism: New Directions in Cross-Cultural and Post-Communist Studies. ByTaras Kuzio, 2007.

Die Rußländische Föderation und die russischsprachige Minderheit Lettlands: Eine Fallstudie zur Anwaltspolitik Moskaus gegenüber den russophonen Diasporas im „Nahen Ausland“ von 1991 bis 2002. By David Rupp, 2007.

Autoritarismus statt Selbstverwaltung: Die Transformation der kommunalen Politik in der Stadt Kaliningrad 1990-2005. By Tim Bohse, 2007.

Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution. By Ivan Maistrenko, 2007 (2nd edn).

Das sakrale eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin: Eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen russischen Rechtsextremismus. By Alexander Höllwerth, 2007.

‘Rossiia-Matushka’: Natsionalizm, gender i voina v Rossii XX veka. By Oleg Riabov, 2007.

Alexander Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke: Fakten und Hypothesen zu den internationalen Verflechtungen der russischen Neuen Rechten. By Vladimir Ivanov, 2007.

The Impact of the European Convention on Human Rights on Russian Law: Legislation and Application in 1996-2006. By Anton Burkov, 2007. Современные интерпретации русского национализма. Под ред. Марлен Ларюэль, 2007. Радикальный национализм в России и противодействие ему: Сборник докладов Центра «Сова» за 2004-2007 гг. Галина Кожевникова, 2007.

Aspects of the Orange Revolution I-VI (6 vols.). Collective of editors, 2007.

If you are interested to review one or more of them or to propose further books for review (including your own), please, email simultaneously: Matthew J. Goodwin matthewjamesgoodwin@yahoo.com, and Andreas Umland andreumland@yahoo.com.

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Book Notes

Jonathan Frankel (ed), Dark Times, Dire Decisions: Jews and Communism (Studies in Contemporary Jewry 20). Jerusalem/Oxford: The Hebrew University/Oxford University Press, 2004. 393 pp. ISBN 13-978-0-19518224-8 (hb). £35.99.

Reviewed by David Renton (University of Hertfordshire)

Among the Jewish Communists of the twentieth century can be counted some of the great idealists of the twentieth century, as well as some of the century’s most terrible victims. The volume’s introduction sketches the history of the subject –

much of it well-known – in Poland, Russia, America, Palestine and elsewhere.

But the actual contents of this publication fall somewhat short of being even a survey. Figures of global significance, such as Luxemburg, Chagall or Trotsky, raise barely a mention. Just two of the chapters, comprising a total of less than 50 pages of a 400-page book, have anything to say of the relationship between Jews, Communism and anything else. One, a country study of Jews and Communism in Poland is an intelligent, if brief, essay. The other, a study of the same phenomena in Hungary, is less persuasive for its eclecticism of analysis and haziness of detail. The largest part of this publication is given over to something more modest: studies of local activists who happened to be both Jews and Communists, without any serious attempt to analyse their significance to the wider societies in which they lived. At this point, the quality of the writing does improve: Jason Hepple’s chapter on Jews and Communism in Britain and Alan Wald’s contribution on America Communist as “cultural workers” are of interest, as both their work always is. However, the writing remains uneven, and a nadir is reached with a chapter by Walter Laqueur, which is in part a biography of the Egyptian activist Henri Curiel. In his endnotes, Laqueur admits that he has not read two of the three published biographies of Curiel. The third he claims to have read, but it appears from the notes that he has not managed even that, citing only an internet version of extracts published in a newspaper.

Aleksandr Verkhovskii (ed), Russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia i nastroenie [Russian Nationalism: An Ideology and Mood]. Moscow: Information-Analytical Center “SOVA,” 2006. 301 pp. ISBN 5-98418-007-3 (hb).

Reviewed by Stephen D. Shenfield (Independent Analyst, Providence, RI, USA).

The contents of this volume are rich but heterogeneous: there does not seem to be any overriding theme. Galina Kozhevnikova surveys nationalist activity in 2005 and the first half of 2006. Aleksei Kozlov discusses ultra-right tendencies among football fans, while Mikhail Sokolov traces the ideological evolution of the National Bolshevik Party. Marlène Laruelle examines the “civilization-based nationalism” of the Eurasianist theorist Aleksandr Panarin; the “clash of civilizations” in Russian discourse is also the topic of Viktor Shnirelman’s article.

Vladimir Pribylovskii comments on the performance of nationalist candidates in regional elections over the period 2000-2006. Dmitrii Dubrovskii returns to the fraught legal issue of “expert evaluation.” There are two concluding pieces of very broad scope. Andreas Umland substantiates his classification of post-Soviet fascism into three varieties, with special reference to the ideologies of Aleksandr Barkashov, Vladimir Zhirinovskii, and Aleksandr Dugin. Finally, the prospects of Russian nationalism are weighed up in an interview conducted by Verkhovskii with Lev Gudkov and Boris Dubin, public opinion analysts from Iurii Levada’s Analytical Center.

Aleksandr Verkhovskii (ed), Demokratiia vertikali [Vertical Democracy]. Moscow: Information-Analytical Center “SOVA” and Information-Research Center “Demos,” 2006. 374 pp. ISBN 5-98418-006-5 (hb).

Reviewed by Stephen D. Shenfield (Independent Analyst, Providence, RI, USA).

This collected volume is devoted to problems of democracy in Putin’s Russia, and a joint publication of “SOVA” and the “Demos” center. It paints a gloomy picture of the deterioration of democratic norms and institutions under the Putin regime. Key articles discuss changes to the electoral system (Lev Levinson, “We Have No Choice”), the prevention and suppression of popular protest (Svetlana Kovaleva, “The Authorities Versus the Street”), state control of the mass media (Vladimir Pribylovskii), and the political situation in Chechnya (Tatiana Lokshina).

Another article by Lokshina analyzes the interaction between Russia and European institutions on questions of democracy and human rights. And two other articles by the same author bear eloquent titles that speak for themselves: “Return to the Day Before Yesterday” and “With Wide-Closed Eyes.” A large section of the book is also devoted to transcripts of a seminar on “prospects for a democratic transition.” Two of the articles in the book deal with questions of Russian nationalism and ethnic identity: the use of religion in constructing a “national idea” for Russia in the twenty-first century (Verkhovskii) and competing conceptualizations of the position of ethnic Russian minorities outside Russia (Marlène Laruelle).

Joseph H. Campos, II, The State and Terrorism: National security and the Mobilization of Power (Homeland Security Series). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 178 pp. ISBN 978-0754671923 (hb). €69.99.

Reviewed by Frank J. Faulkner (University of Derby).

This book, part of an ongoing academic treatment of the seismic events of 9/11 and the Western (especially US) response to these acts, seeks to examine these reactions from the perspective of the State as principal actor in the international arena. It does so by taking a pragmatic view that the acknowledged global preeminent legal authority reserves the right to act in a manner commensurate with the power resources at its disposal, at least partly in recognition of the threat that ‘Terrorism’ poses both within the sovereign political entity and externally in terms of allies and the state’s ‘outside interests’. What the author has to contemplate, one notes, is the sheer output of work in this area in the last half-dozen or so years; it is no exaggeration to remind the reader that new articles, books and reviews are just about a weekly (or even more frequent) event, and that the volume of scholarly work is mind-boggling in its quantitative element, and complexity. However, and with the above in mind, the author has quite wisely elected to limit the scope of his output within a not unreasonably narrow vista, and that in so doing he has been able to strengthen the veracity and impact of his research. From an introductory angle, this text opens up the subject with lucid discussions of the state, the use of language as a form of terror-based ‘demonology’ juxtaposed against the righteous wrath and legal standing of the nation-state. The ostensible objective of this approach (as typified by Bush’s speech of 20 September 2001) is to instil in the minds of the people that terrorism is an ‘evil’ that threatens ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, and that harnessing the considerable strengths that America possesses is both ‘noble’ and ‘right.’ Indeed, Campos correctly identifies the notion of terrorism as an often external, sub-state manifestation of ‘intolerance, envy and hatred’ as Bush often invokes, yet acknowledges the existence of ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ without detaining the reader with pointless analysis of what is in any case purely peripheral matter, certainly for the aims of this book. It is not, patently, about proselytising. What the book does, however, and quite effectively, is mobilize the rhetoric of national indignation to the point that terrorism appears to represent the

nadir of human political expression – the ‘bête noire’ of all that is civilized, humane, decent, and compassionate, and that it is anathema to the notion of hermetic ‘national security’ discourses. Woven with the thread of linguistic dexterity throughout, the text is ample testimony to the methodologies and intellectual instruments by which the state secures its security vis-à-vis the challenges posed from within and without. From this standpoint alone, Campos achieves an effective and compelling argument for the legitimacy of the state-asactor, and the manner in which that political unit continues to preserve its unique and historical status in an ever-globalizing and troubled world.

Book Reviews

Wojciech Sadurski (ed), Political Rights under Stress in 21st Century Europe (Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 304 pp. ISBN 978-0199296033 (pb). €36.99.

Reviewed by John Schwarzmantel (University of Leeds).

This book consists of a number of chapters written by academic lawyers dealing with the problems of political rights and the difficulties of securing them under conditions of stress. The protection of political rights is particularly problematic in the face of the challenge of political terrorism, and in the context of a transition to democracy, however uncertain, in post-Communist countries.

There are three unifying themes which run through the essays. The first is the question of the nature of rights, and the specific nature of political rights, which are defined in the introductory chapter as ‘the rights that are instrumental, and perhaps indispensable, to the participation of citizens in the exercise of political power in their society’ (p. 1). Such rights are obviously fundamental to the working of a democratic system, yet they raise particular problems when they are under ‘stress’. This second concept, basic to the book, is defined as a situation distinct from both normal politics and from a crisis situation. In normal conditions, ‘the common self that binds all citizens to the unity of the polity

remains glued together and shows no signs of unravelling’ (p. 26), whereas in a condition of crisis such a common identity is in imminent danger of disintegrating.

A situation of stress is less extreme than such a crisis situation. It is one in which the unity of the polity is put under pressure, when it becomes more difficult to achieve the integration or reconciliation of different conceptions of the good, and of groups and parties that articulate them. Can political rights survive such ‘stressful’ conditions? This is one of the questions which the contributors to this volume seek to answer. The third theme which runs through the essays is one which is alluded to, rather given the fuller exposition which it needs. This is the theme of ‘militant democracy’: should a democratic society in ‘militant’ mode deny political rights to those parties and groups that pursue anti-democratic ends, even if they use democratic means, perhaps veiling their ultimate ends to escape sanctions? The essays invite reflection on whether ‘militant democracy’ is the appropriate defence for political rights in a democracy in times of ‘stress’, or whether such a policy undermines democracy by confining political rights to a restricted circle of those parties deemed to be ‘safe’ for democracy.

The chapter by Eva Brems discusses at length the issue of freedom of association and ‘party closure’, the latter term referring to ‘the prohibition or forced dissolution of a political party by a government authority’ (p. 120). Clearly, to order the dissolution of a political party is a serious restriction on the freedom of political association, a political right fundamental to a pluralistic liberaldemocratic order. Yet if a political party in its programme threatens human rights, or promotes and incites racial discrimination, is it not permissible or even mandatory to prohibit the activity of such a party? Brems’ chapter cites the case of the Welfare Party (Refah) in Turkey, whose dissolution was supported by the European Court of Human Rights in February 2003. The ECHR judged the measure of party closure legitimate for a party advocating ‘a policy which fails to respect democracy or which is aimed at the destruction of democracy ’ (p. 160).

This raises, as Brems notes, the ‘democratic dilemma’ of whether ‘fundamental rights will be restricted for the purpose of protecting fundamental rights’ (p. 160).

Her chapter uses the case law of the ECHR and other sources to show the varying criteria that have been developed to argue for, and against, the decision whether to ban a political party.

The problem of political rights in times of stress is also posed acutely in confronting the question of ‘difference’, whether that takes the form of ethnic or national difference, or more generally the conflict between varying conceptions of ‘the good’ or of the ideal society. The chapter by Gwendolyn Sasse discusses the political rights of national minorities in the context of post-Communist Eastern and Central Europe. Her chapter follows a more general one by Jiri Priban and Wojciech Sadurski on the role of political rights in post-Communist democratisation. Both chapters are excellent in showing the problems of securing

political rights in the post-Communist context. Priban and Sadurski discuss, among other issues, the topic of ‘lustration’ and its implications for the equality of political rights. Sasse reviews the varying experiences of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe with respect to minority rights, and assesses the contribution of the European Union and its agenda of ‘conditionality’ to securing such rights. A broader and more philosophical approach to the problem of difference is taken by Michel Rosenfeld, who seeks to defend a concept of ‘comprehensive pluralism’.

He sees this as both encompassing and yet superseding ideas of liberalism, republicanism and communitarianism. A challenging chapter by Damian Chalmers argues that what he calls a ‘new form of political reason’ (p. 73) has become dominant in the European Union. This new form of political reason is in part a response to the challenge of terrorism, and has as its priority, he argues, the protection of the EU market society. It can lead to the denial of humanity to those minorities (irregular migrants, asylum seekers) who are seen as threatening this market society. A chapter by Victor Ferreres Comella probes the case law of the ECHR and focuses on some hard cases to review issues of freedom of speech. Should the speech of parliamentarians be protected outside parliament as well as within it? What principles might be used to remove Holocaust denial from the category of ‘protected speech’? What standards of diligence are required from journalists and from politicians in order to secure them from penalties for their reports or statements?

The essays are all searching and informative. Their thorough use of legal sources does not always make for easy reading, and political scientists and political theorists might regret the absence of more direct and fuller analysis of the concepts of ‘stress’ and of ‘militant democracy’, and might wish for more references to the broader philosophical and political theory literature on rights in general. Yet the volume is invaluable as a source book on the problems of implementing political rights not just under conditions of transition to democracy, but more generally in the ‘stressful’ conditions of pluralist societies divided, sometimes bitterly, by cultural, political and philosophical differences.

Jens R. Hentschke (ed), Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives (Studies of the Americas). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 306 pp. ISBN 1-40397391-1 (hb). $74.95.

Reviewed by Paul Timmermans (University of Denver).

What was Getúlio Vargas thinking? Many historians will remember him as Brazil’s most impassive realist. Or as the dictator who managed to appear both as the father of the poor and a mother to the rich. He is also imagined as a ‘shrewd pragmatist unencumbered by any creed of his own’, as Joan L. Bak mentions in her attack on this very image (Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1983). But what is so intriguing about his dictatorship is that it was ultimately responsible for initiating Brazil into the club of unified, urbanized, and industrialized states. If Vargas’s aims had been geared towards naked power, then how to make sense of the social justice programs that his populist governments advocated? This work, edited by Jens Hentschke, is weak on answers as to what the man’s morals and beliefs were. But it proves to be very strong on social analysis and is a meticulously prepared vintage with offerings for all students of Latin American politics.

Vargas becomes governor of Rio Grande do Sul in 1928. He models this state after Mussolini’s corporativism. But by creating food processor cartels and agricultural cooperatives he also realizes that trade conflicts have a negative impact on prices and on political stability. Brazil would have to centralize in order to become more protectionist. During the revolutionary events of 1930 the military then comes to favor a Vargas who presents himself as “merely a transitory expression of the collective will.” With the additional support of younger officers (tenentes), Vargas subsequently assumes a non-party, and presumably also non-ideological, dictatorship. Bak’s thesis is that as head of the provisional government Vargas was uniquely positioned to institute his own corporativist ideals through the 1934 constitution. However, whether or not this was still a further step towards fascism or that it remained in following with that mystical notion of “the collective will”, rather than perhaps a leap towards import substitution alone, is a question that has insufficiently been answered in this bundle. Maybe the right answer was trumped by the ambiguous intentions of the Estado Novogovernment, ultimately siding with the United States. And yet, this government felt that only the state was to affect the Brazilian people as a whole, that illiterates should not vote, and that unions and strikers were public enemies. The moral consequences of this constitution are never too obvious.

Regardless, with the exception of Oliver Dinius’ chapter on the preemptive policing of steel labor organizers and John Crocitti’s research notes on poverty and the system’s wanton ignorance of malnutrition, none of the contributionstries to answer whether Vargas controlled an extremist, fascist, and immoral state.

The book consists of nine contributions and an introduction by its editor.

The chapters by Gunter Axt, James Woodard, and Frank McCann are all

variations on the thesis that Vargas’ thought can best be known through the social and economic sources of his power. Axt complements Bak’s aforementioned article but is refreshingly more informative about the pre-1930 style of corporativism. In fact, he is likely to have delivered a deep and lasting impression of this program as ‘a means to overcome division’ among social groups rather than as to have aimed at ‘an authoritarian model’ (p. 57). Such a conclusion could point to Vargas as a realist pragmatist. It would also help explain how he much later came to deserve the respect of those ‘ordinary folks’ that far more resented the chauvinist classes than the central government (Woodard, p. 97). Woodard and McCann rework their theses on respectively the depth of Vargas’ concern with the coffee-based class of nouveaux riches in São Paulo and on his alliances with the always politically active army leaders. This shows that Vargas lived in more fear of a counter-state oligarchy than of the multitude. Especially intra-military relationships, as McCann observes them between generals Dutra and de Góes Monteiro, are important because they called for the 1937 constitutional dictatorship, also assumed by Vargas. In brief, Brazilian political history is ideologically complex. But how were the people themselves affected by all this Bonapartism from above? And how are we to conceptualize the moral differences between a Roosevelt on the one hand and Mussolini or Franco on the other? It would certainly have been interesting if at this point a comparison could have been made to Italian anti-fascists that also favored American-style industrialization.

A few years after his abdication in the 1945 “scramble for power” by a bunch of democratic parties, Vargas stages a comeback. It makes that an era will be named after him. Contributions by Thomas D. Rogers, Jerry Dávila, and Daryle Williams are all fantastically insightful as to how “the Vargas era” offers a study in nationalism and collective memorializing. Rogers begins this study by dissecting the suicide letter that Vargas left behind in the wee hours of August 24, 1954. Vargas’s last words, “I choose this means to be with you always”, are used as chapter-title. The letter envisioned that “each drop of my blood” shall come to “uphold the sacred will to resist” unspecified “forces and interests” that, it reads, conspire against the humble, the hungry, and the humiliated. Its dramatic references to Christ had an instantaneous force and led to popular marches that, at least symbolically, almost castrated any eventual successors.

Dávila’s chapter branches off from two visits to Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of the Republic. The stigmata and the death-mask on display here make the dictator seem to come to life. This mystical realism creates ‘a kind of symbolic center of the Brazilian national experience’ (p. 260). Williams’ chapter recollects how the civic calendar was being celebrated, especially in Rio de Janeiro.

Whereas the 1930-1934 government recognized a mere six holidays, such as those for the Universal Fraternity of Working Classes and the Spiritual Unity of

Christian Peoples (Christmas), the more fascist 1937-1945 Estado Novo came to designate some thirteen national holidays. Williams clarifies how the Minister of Education, Capanema, helped execute this increase. His vision brought together tremendous forces in the form of public works, city architecture, and youth marches. Vargas himself also stood at the center of a ritual; burning the old state flags. At this juncture the study becomes stronger on comprehensiveness than on analysis. Where it could have been written for those visitors of Rio de Janeiro who have not yet appreciated the regime’s “civic-scape” and all the ironies of its monumental legacy, several details may only resonate with cariocas on their walks away from the beaches.

The popularity of the dictatorship must in large part have been supported by the civic faith of the urban working class. Despite the fact that not one contribution describes how the state co-opts the Catholic Church, Lisa Shaw must be commended for her viewing of the official newsreels of “the Vargas era.”

She finds that they were usually followed by longer films of ‘the irreverent, carnivalesquechanchada genre’ (p. 207). These films must indeed have made the era’s civic and nationalistic atmosphere, simultaneously pursued by the government’s newsreel-makers, look like a pompous and chaotic charade. Shaw gets a bit caught up in this irony as she argues that for the duration of each shown chanchada, all the “unwritten rules about race, class, and gender” had to have been suspended. We will probably never learn whether the people resisted state policies because of what made them laugh. But what must have made them cry is what Dinius describes as the ‘logic of political policing’ (p. 173). It led to intensely repressive actions against labor organizers, especially just prior to Vargas’ 1951 return to government. Secret police files gathered during “the Vargas era” also aided ‘purges and tribunals after the 1964 military coup’ (p.

176).

Each of the ten scholars’ individual research efforts will be hard to replicate.

Fresh efforts such as those by Dinius and Axt increase this bundle’s shelf-life remarkably. This multi-faceted, detailed, and deeply pragmatic work allows us to imagine that Vargas thought he was creating his own era.

A. James Gregor, The Search for Neofascism The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 318 pp. ISBN 9780521676397. $23.99

Reviewed by Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes University).

There is a fundamental irony running through the weft and warp of this book. It purports to be a warning about the abuse of social science in the investigation of neofascism, and comes with the highest endorsements from respectable scholars for its scholarly precision and analytical clarity. It displays in an articulate academic register a range of emotions from dismay and impatience to barely concealed contempt and anger at the fact that ‘so many academics have spent so much time in the search for neofascism’ (256). Yet the only academic to my knowledge who has devoted considerable time to reflecting on the nature of neo-fascism, or rather to exposing the scandalously inadequate way the topic has allegedly been treated by other academics, is A. J. Gregor himself. Since publishing his revised edition of Interpretations of Fascism (1997) when he started lashing out at interpretations of fascism that diverged from his own (partly on the basis of his adamant conviction that Nazism cannot be regarded as fascist since it was not nationalistic but racist!), he has sounded forth on the topic of neofascism in Phoenix: Fascism in our Time (1999), The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in Our Time (1999), and Metascience and Politics: A Brief Inquiry into the Conceptual Language of Political Science (2002). (1995).

The fact is that, contrary to what Gregor implies, very few books, chapters, or articles have appeared attempting to define neofascism or provide its catalogue raisonné. Instead, as is only right, there have been numerous works of various degrees of scholarship and methodological sophistication considering specific post-war political phenomena widely associated with neofascism, such as international neo-Nazism, pagan and Christian racism in the US and elsewhere, the activities of the extreme right’s ‘leaderless resistance’ to the hegemony of liberal capitalism, post-war right-wing extremism in France or Germany, Third Positionism, the Movimento Sociale Italiano in Italy, racist rock music, neo-populism, or the European New Right. Most of these publications, whatever quibbles one could have with their definitions or classifications, are indepth studies of particular manifestations of the far right (we will leave aside another of Gregor’s idée fixes, that fascism is also a phenomenon of the extreme left).

His mission to define neofascism through a technique of via negativa leads him to forced readings of what others have actually written. The tone is set within the very first pages where he perversely misrepresents a sustained analysis of the first party programme of the Alleanza Nazionale (AN), the Tesi di Fiuggi, which showed it to be a hybrid of fascist and centre-right ideological components (which it demonstrably was in 1995). He implies instead that the thrust of the

article is an irresponsible calumny against the AN that went on to form a vital part of the Berlusconi coalition and which ‘has been an important ally of the United States’ (pp. 1-2). This ignores the fact that the article he indicts was published in 1996, several years before Berlusconi adopted his sycophantic relationship with George W. Bush and Fini extensively defascistized the party.

A far more serious symptom either of shoddy scholarship or a disingenuousness bordering on revisionism is his account of Julius Evola. It is intent on exculpating the author of The Synthesis of Racial Doctrine (which Mussolini called ‘the book we needed’) of any direct association with fascism — partly by resorting to the sophistry of stressing the distance the Baron undoubtedly maintained from Fascism, a somewhat different issue. As a result Gregor omits the awkward fact that Evola himself claims in his intellectual autobiography The Cinabar Path (p. 100) that by the mid-1930s he was working for the realization of ‘a more radical Fascism, more fearless, a really absolute fascism, made of pure force, impervious to any compromise’. He also neglects to alert the reader to genuinely scholarly works by the likes of Gianfranco Ferraresi, Marco Revelli, and Richard Drake, all of whom document the considerable impact Evola’s theories of the state of Europe after the war had both on neofascist intellectuals and ‘black’ terrorists. After all, if Evola was so un-fascist, why did Giorgio Almirante, Minister of Propaganda under the Salò Republic and leader of the (hardly un-fascist) Movimento Sociale Italiano, call him ‘our Marcuse, only better’? Why does Alexander Dugin, the leader of the Russian New Right who has openly declared that he is working for a fascist future, continue to celebrate Evola’s crucial importance to the Eurasianist vision of cultural rebirth?

As for analytical clarity, the book makes no attempt to follow through the documentable strands of continuity that link interwar fascism or groups sympathetic to it with the various forms of anti-liberal and anti-communist politics alluded to earlier. There is no mention of Third Positionism, or Italy’s ‘Strategy of Tension’, and the European New Right is given a short shrift (pp. 72-4) that obscures its origins — exposed in detail by Pierre-André Taguieff — in the decision by some leading French neofascist theorists in the 1960s to change ‘discourse’ from biological racism to cultural identity and difference. Though Gregor cites Maurice Bardèche (there is a graveaccent), he does not cite this significant passage from his Qu’est-ce que le fascism? of 1961 (pp. 175-6).

The single party, the secret police, the public displays of Caesarism, even the presence of a Führer are not necessarily attributes of fascism. [ ] The famous fascist methods are constantly revised and will continue to be revised. More important than the mechanism is the idea which fascism has created for itself of man

and freedom. [ ] With another name, another face, and with nothing which betrays the projection from the past, with the form of a child we do not recognize and the head of a young Medusa, the Order of Sparta will be reborn: and paradoxically it will, without doubt, be the last bastion of Freedom and the sweetness of living.

Nor does he cite another important testimony to attempts by sophisticated fascists to steer their cause away from the discredited forms it adopted in the inter-war period, Giorgio Locchi’s L’Essenza del fascismo (1980) to the realm of pan-European metapolitics.

Instead Gregor chooses to devote the bulk of his energy to chapters on black nationalism, the Nation of Islam, Islamofascism, Hindutva, and post-Maoist China. These are perhaps the most valuable sections of the book, since in their idiosyncratic way they shore up the broad consensus that already exists among serious political scientists that the application of the term fascist to these areas is illegitimate. However, even this sustained section of the book would have been more impressive had he not written as a lonely seer surrounded by fools. As he says himself in the concluding sentence, ‘The academic study of what is an important topic deserves better’ (279). I only hope that there is a serious scholar waiting in the wings who will one day rise to the challenge of showing us all how it should be done with genuine precision and clarity, and hopefully less prone to abuse his academic colleagues and hence social science itself and to confuse analysis with rant.