The Mobilizing Passions of Fascism: From 2005 to 2025
Insights from re-reading Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism
Twenty years ago when I was researching my book Call to Liberty, I sought to understand the dynamics of fascism and how it contrasted to what we were experiencing at the time. George W. Bush was in power and it was a few years after the 9/11 attacks. The Patriot Act had been passed and Bush was taking unto himself extraordinary powers as President—powers that looked to me to be anti-democratic and unconstitutional. My questions was: Is this pushing us toward a future of fascism?
Three books were decisive in my assessment—The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, and The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. At the time I used Hayek’s book to help broadcast my warning because it was a favorite treatise of libertarians and the far right. (Recently, I updated that warning here.) What we could see at the time through that lens was that the powers Bush was claiming for the executive branch of government were both extraordinary and counter to the Rule of Law. We could also see that placing those powers in the hands of a man less benevolent than Bush could be catastrophic for democracy.
Since Trump was elected, those powers have been executed exactly as I had feared they would be. But a big question has continued to hold sway in my mind: Are we closer to fascism or not? To get a sense of it, I returned to my reading of The Anatomy of Fascism. Here’s what I learned in that re-reading.