Robert O. Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism provides historians of political and intellectual history with an important argument about the role of ideas in political movements. While not denying how the ideas behind fascism tell us much about its origins and early stages, Paxton convincingly argues that what fascists did once installed in positions of power is at least as, and probably more, crucial to the quest to diagnose and understand fascism as a political movement with extraordinary consequences.Being receptive to this argument requires historians of ideas to perhaps tune down some of their key proclivities. After all, the power of Read more