Part I. Success: Italy, 1910-1939 -- At the roots of fascism's ideological fluidity: the Italian Nationalist Association and the National Syndicalist Movement -- Totalitarian inclusiveness: Italian fascism from marginality to mass movement, 1919-1922 -- The labourious search for a balance: Italian fascism as a regime, 1923-1939 -- Part II. Failure: Britain and Norway, 1923-1939 -- Into the arms of fascism: left, right and new combinations of political concepts in Britain and Norway, 1923-1933 -- Building an inclusive political platform: the British Union of Fascists and the Nasjonal Samling, 1932-1934 -- Between authoritarianism and totalitarianism: from expansion to implosion, 1934-1939
Summary
This book develops a number of new conceptual tools to tackle some of the most hotly debated issues concerning the nature of fascism, using three profoundly different national contexts in the inter-war years as case studies: Italy, Britain and Norway. It explores how fascist ideology was the result of a sustained struggle between competing internal factions, which created a precarious, but also highly dynamic, balance between revolutionary/totalitarian and conservative/authoritarian tendencies. Such a balance meant that these movements were hybrids with a surprising degree of internal diversit
