Modernism and Fascism

The book Modernism and Fascism is the culmination of many years of research by the renowned British historian Roger Griffin, who seeks to trace and prove the essence of generic fascism while at the same time locating it within the context of the many movements of modernism. In the first part of this boldly interdisciplinary work, which interweaves the history of fascism, the history and theory of literature and culture with philosophy and social anthropology, Griffin builds a groundbreaking, broad definition of modernism as a socio-cultural movement addressing the crisis of modernity in innumerable forms. A solution is sought in a new beginning of temporal history or in a man-made future course of events as a way out of decline. In the second part of the book, this concept allows Griffin to gradually prove the reality of “fascist modernism” – thus promoting a view that has been mostly rejected until now. He focuses primarily on two historical forms of generic fascism: the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. He traces them from their ideological genesis through the phase of a political movement gaining social support, right up to their form as a modernist state, collapsing in a project of destructive and self-destructive global expansion.