Fascism: A Warning Audio CD – Unabridged, April 10, 2018

This is a timely book by a brilliant person who had a front row seat to the tragedy that was Europe in the Mid-20th Century. There is little doubt that the world is starting to look fearfully like it did at the beginning of those dark hours, starting with the tyranny of Hitler and Mussolini and culminating in the Cold War and the gulags of the Soviet Union.Figuratively speaking, this is really three books. The first will be the most divisive and may, in fact, quite unfortunately, relegate the book to practical irrelevance. The second book is extremely insightful and informative. And the third book, honestly, is pure gold and vintage Madeline Albright.The first book begins with a contradiction. Albright openly acknowledges that Fascism has become a meaningless epithet, hurled, as it is, by opposing politicians of every stripe and at parents merely attempting to limit the cell phone usage of their children. She goes on to defend the titular use of the term, however, by clarifying her use of the term: “To my mind, a Fascist is someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary—including violence—to achieve his or her goals.”At that point, however, she hasn’t really narrowed the list of politicians who qualify for the pejorative label at all. Every reader will conclude that his or her political enemies fit the bill. She seals the fate of this portion of the book, however, when she asks, on page 4 of the book, “…why, this far into the twenty-first century, are we once again talking about Fascism?” And answers, “One reason, frankly, is Donald Trump. If we think of Fascism as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab.” And she goes on to make thinly veiled comparisons between Trump, Mussolini, and Joseph McCarthy.And, unfortunately, I fear, she, in one fell swoop of prose, both fuels the fires of division while exiling the book to practical irrelevance. In the end, she will likely only energize both political extremes, and, I suspect, the reader ratings of this book will ultimately reflect that.That is most unfortunate because without those opening pages this would be a truly terrific book. It chronicles both relevant history and the recent past to a degree that few other people on the planet could.The second part of the book is devoted to an analysis of recent political events in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, the Philippines, Russia, North Korea, and, of course, the United States. All, to varying degrees, she maintains, are showing signs of a slide toward Fascism and the decline of post-war liberal democracy. It is an informative analysis and unless you are a political junkie, you will learn a lot.In the third part of the book she truly hits her stride. She notes, for starters, that the Fascist epithet may be appropriate for the US today for reasons having more to do with economics than populism. The Fascist Party of Italy, which gave rise to general use of the term, was the ultimate merger of the corporate and political states. And that is, in fact, what has happened here in the US.The incorporation of America has been going on since the conservative movement of the 1980s, however, and while Trump is carrying the corporate water at the moment, he can hardly be blamed for allowing Wall Street and Silicon Valley to take control of Washington.The incorporation accelerated greatly during the dot-com 90s when young entrepreneurs were preaching disruption and libertarianism. It is ironic, indeed, that tech’s “democratic” perspective has now produced among the biggest and most powerful corporations the world has ever known. And they pulled it off, actually, while the anti-trust regulators in both Republican and Democratic administrations stood by and watched.To me what we have today is not so much analogous to the Fascist or Nazi parties of the mid-20th Century as it is the power of the church in Medieval Europe. The kings and queens of Washington may wear the crowns, but it is the corporate “popes” of Wall Street and Silicon Valley that are really calling the shots.Which is why both parties, I think, should be fearful of whatever happens in the mid-term elections. Be careful what you wish for. Neither party has defined an agenda that addresses the issues that originally brought Trump to power. And until that happens I believe Albright’s Fascist warning will remain valid.In the final chapters of the book Albright notes that putting American interests first invites Russia, China, and others to do the same. And it is here that she lowers her partisan guard (we all have one) and calls for unity through the recognition of our common humanity and the rejection of extremism that favors one group over another.It is here that she also seems to soften her position on ideals of post-war democratic liberalism and focuses more on compassion, integrity, and fairness. I think of it as defining a new standard of shared obligation and responsibility that includes those countries and those people that aren’t rushing to implement an Electoral College and to copy our form of bare-knuckle individualism, but those are my words, not hers.In the end she notes that spend her time on issues like: “…purging excess money from politics, improving civic education, defending journalistic independence, adjusting to the changing nature of the workplace, enhancing inter-religious dialogue, and putting a saddle on the bucking bronco we call the Internet.” It’s a perfect ending to what is a very good book by an inspiring individual.I do recommend reading it.

Madeleine Albright was the secretary of state in Bill Clinton's second administration and a majorarchitect of his approach to globalization. I remember her for being very hawkish toward SlobodanMilosevic, and she's remembered for her view of America as the "indispensable nation". She haswritten several books, and here again provides some biography of growing up under the Nazisand Communists in Czechoslovakia.She notes at the beginning that the term "Fascism" is directed to whatever people don't like. PaulGottfried notes that there is no such thing as "generic fascism" because the Italian and Germanvariants were so different from each other, despite their common cause and alliance. Often peoplecall you a "Fascist" when it would be going too far to say "Nazi", but because Mussolini is associatedwith Hitler, the namecalling is done anyway and you are linked to both Mussolini and Hitler. Gottfriedshows how the name is often directed toward bourgeois traditionalists and the values of what R.R.Reno has recently called the strong gods. But as Albright shows, there were important differencesbetween the personality cult of Il Duce and the actions taken by Der Fuhrer. General Franco is alsosometimes lumped in, but the Spanish Civil War was a complexity that involved Catholicism, asWarren Carroll has documented.Albright provides a definition that has something to do with the individual speaking for the nation.But what I found interesting is how she then applies the definition. There's a discusssion of JoeMcCarthy, of course. If there's anything that kids are taught, it's that Joe McCarthy was a bad guy.Whether Communism is taught adequately is another question. But Sam Francis has shown thatwhen McCarthy talked about the influence of Communism, what it really applied to was themanagerial elite and their contempt for ordinary American people, and the people knew thatit was true. There's the story of the Perons in Argentina, who had their own unique approachto populism, going back and forth between the different factions.Albright then discusses the "Kims" of North Korea-Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il and Kim Jon Un, theonly family dynasty that has come out of totalitarianism. Then there is the story of Hugo Chavez,who was a very charismatic orator, followed by Maduro, who has Chavez' bad points without thegood ones. As Jonah Goldberg has argued, fascism can be on the left. Then there's Erdogan inthe formerly secular state of Turkey, Orban in Hungary, Putin in Russia, and Duterte in thePhilippines. What most of these have in common is the personality cult of a "dear leader". Thereis certainly no consistent ideology among all these instantiations. Albright says that only NorthKorea is actually fascist, while the others have disturbing tendencies in that direction. Putin, forexample, was with the KGB and laments the decline of the 90s. But this is not because of a specificcommunist ideology, but his devotion to the Russian state, as Fiona Hill has shown. Putin isn't asmuch of an orator as most of these, but he shows it by riding horses and stuff.You can see where she's going with this. Albright doesn't care for Trump. He recently got KaitlynCollins and Paula from CBS going with the thing about "total authority" or whatever he said. I hopethey discover states' rights and advocate for them consistently. Albright adds that populism isn'tbad, it's a corrective to elitism, and the lower middle class isn't always to blame as many academicelites believe. And yet, she's definitely a globalist, whether of the moderate Clinton or the moreliberal Obama variety. In criticizing Trump she also had good things to say about Reagan andthe Bushes. But this bipartisanship is generally not directed toward whatever Republican iscurrent.Obama was popular in his last year, and yet the election went to "American carnage". Here hercolleague Bob Reich may be helpful. Reich may be one who can make the bridge between theClinton-Biden wing and the Sanders-Warren-Wellstone faction. Also Michael Lind.What about Xi Jinping? He is subtler than Putin. His strategies don't always work, but he continuesto rework the 100 year plan and seems to be underestimated by many. I thought he was the biggestthing since Chairman Mao, but Albright goes back even a couple of centuries before that. Seems likea big deal. Quite some time ago when China reformed economically but not politically, I found thatto be interesting with regard to the notion of fascism.

2019. 320 pages. History. New York Times best seller. Madeleine Albright, a former US Secretary of State, gives us an in-depth look at Fascism, starting with the tricky definition, and proceeding with the history of Fascism. She defined fascism as a government where the leader speaks for everyone, but does not care about the rights of anyone and is consumed with his own goals or agenda. One of the most startling revelations was that fascism does not occur overnight, but that it begins slowly and methodically eroding the rights of others (usually a specific group-as the Jewish population during Hitler’s rise to power). Albright highlights the fascist governments of Hitler and Mussolini, but also includes other such as, Erdogan in Turkey, or Orban in Hungary, Kim Jong, Un in Korea, and of course, Putin in Russia. She also highlights how the 45th President of the United States possessed many of the characteristics of some of these very leaders, and how he often praised very authoritarian regimes, but belittled democratic governments. Albright warns that Americans need to hear the alarm bells that are ringing loudly of fascism such as: A. those who denigrate our justice system, B. Those who lack tolerance for the rights of others, C. Those who attacked the Free Press, and D. Those who attack democracy. Lest we find ourselves without the rights we have always assumed would be there.

Na era do populismo, é importante distinguir os diferentes regimes autocratas que têm surgido no mundo. Nenhum deles -- com exceção da Coreia do Norte, segundo a autora -- se encaixa na prateleira do fascismo. Albright, cuja família fugiu da ocupação nazista e, depois, stanlinista de sua Tchecoslováquia natal, dá um aula sobre a ascensão de Mussolini e Hitler, e os compara os líderes populistas de hoje (incluindo Donald Trump).

冷戦や第二次世界大戦の頃から国際政治にキャリアを賭けた人々に共通する、世界観の復習として非常に興味深かったです。御年八十ということで、現代の価値観、特に非民主的、人種差別的、反現実的な行動と、過去の世界の理想の矛盾を非難する態度にも納得がいくと思います。

I expected a pretty dry recitation of nefarious deeds by malevolent psychopaths; I got the latter but the telling was more conversational than I expected. Consequently it was entertaining but still depressing. The point is made that the progress of fascism is facilitated by economic and social discord. Since the inevitable result of global warming is to provide both in abundance we can be confident that the future is bleak at best cataclysmic at worst.

Não me atentei que o livro era em inglês. Pode trocar pela edição em Português?

Outstanding and insightful reading, totally recommended