Iconic Fascism: The Excess of Destruction and Creation in Interwar Radical Right-Wing Politics

Aristotle Kallis uses comparative analysis in Fascism and Iconoclasm to demonstrate that fascists were supreme icon-lovers even as they were consummate icon-breakers. Kallis shows that Iconoclasm – the wilful destruction of icons – was a core feature of fascist violence, from its early movement days through to the consolidation of political power and until the very end of the fascist epoch. The book looks at how fascist iconoclasm changed significantly over this period and differed in its targets and rituals from case to case, whilst remaining central to the fascist dynamics of rupture and rebirth. It examines several case studies, with a focus on Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany, and underlines how much fascists appreciated and instrumentalized icons and symbols in the pursuit of their revolutionary political project in the process.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Fascism, Destructive Creation, Violence 2. The Construction of the False Gods 3. The Production of the Icon 4. Fascist Violence between Performance and Efficiency 5. Iconoclasm from below and from above 6. From Icon-Destruction to Icon-Production Conclusions Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Aristotle Kallis is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Keele University, UK. He is the author of Genocide and Fascism (2009), The Third Rome (2014), and Nazi Propaganda in the Second World War (2005), as well as articles and chapters on aspects of fascist violence and cultural production.

Review :
This book makes a very positive contribution to the literature on fascism and tackles this much-written about topic from a fresh and interesting angle. Cogent and convincing in its argument, original in its interpretations, and carefully crafted and sophisticated in its style, Aristotle Kallis has produced an excellent monograph. In a world where “fascism” is constantly trivialized by application to any form of unpalatable form of authoritarianism, reading Iconic Fascism is a salutary and sobering experience. This scholarly but highly accessible book confronts the human catastrophes unleashed two generations ago by an ideology that makes the systematic destruction of demonized human lives and their habitats the precondition for making a nation “great again”. In doing so it should help dispel the widespread tendency to confuse even radical right-wing populism's more appalling perversions of democracy with the “real thing”.