Fascism - A Warning, by Madeleine Albright (reviewed by Richard Thomas)

 

Madeleine Albright was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State (the first woman to serve in that position), and before that she was the US Ambassador at the UN.  She was born into a Czech secular Jewish family and, as a child, had twice to flee from her homeland – first, to the UK from the Nazis, and then to the USA from the Communists.  Many of her relations perished in the Holocaust.  She is thus well suited to write about political extremism, especially fascism.

 She takes us through the history of fascism, from its “invention” by Mussolini and replication and development by Hitler, through to the present day, where she considers and compares political developments in countries headed by the likes of Orban (Hungary) and Erdogan (Turkey), whom she categorises as semi-fascists, and clarifies and lays bare the growth of far right organisations and parties in a number of European countries, including especially Russia, as well as Poland, France, Italy and Spain.  She discusses how the resurgence of populist politics has been eased by the attenuation of living memory of its consequences, with xenophobia boosted by the migration crisis, and resentment, particularly in the UK and the US, fed by ever widening divergences in wealth and opportunity.  She is appalled, but unsurprised, by Trump.

 The rub lies in the subtitle.  Ms Albright warns us that decent, middle-of-the-road societies and politicians may be sleep-walking into a repeat of the 1930s.  I recommend this book.  It is timely and admirably clear.

RT