The Apprentice’s Sorcerer

Book excerpt: 20th-century European Fascism is conventionally described by both historians and political scientists as a fierce assault on liberal politics, culture and economics. Departing from such typical analysis, this book highlights the long overlooked critical affinities between liberal tradition and fascism. Far from being the antithesis of liberalism, fascism, both in its ideology and its practice, was substantially, if dialectically, indebted to liberalism, particularly to its economic variant. Fascism ought to be seen centrally as an effort to unknot the longue durée tangle of the liberal order, as it finally collided, head on, with mass democracy. This brilliantly provocative thesis is sustained through innovative and incisive readings of seminal political thinkers, from Locke and Burke, to Proudhon, Bagehot, Sorel and Schmitt.