Definitions of Fascism - Robert Paxton

Robert Paxton

Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defines fascism in his book The Anatomy of Fascism as:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Read more about this topic:  Definitions Of Fascism

Famous quotes containing the words robert and/or paxton:

    Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both, as a measure of their creation, have always had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos.... This cannot be an easy life.
    —J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)

    Mr. Marriott: I’m afraid I don’t like your manner.
    Philip Marlowe: Yeah, I’ve had complaints about it but it keeps getting worse.
    —John Paxton (1911–1985)