Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion

The atrocities committed against untold millions of human beings by the Axis Powers in the Second World War, and the oceanic human suffering inflicted by the Soviet state on the Russian people, not only scarred the consciousness of the generations who lived through the period 1930-50, it also branded the terms 'fascism' and 'totalitarianism' with connotations of nihilism and moral evil that created a psychological barrier to academics attempting to understand the complex historical and social processes involved in the events covered by these words. However, a number of exciting developments in the social sciences over the last decade for the first time make it possible to conceive both fascism and totalitarianism as different aspects of the 'political religion' that comes into being when fanatics obsessed with overcoming decadence pursue the utopia of a regenerated national community. In this volume a number of international experts on individual variants of fascism explore the link between aparticular totalitarian movement or regime and the concrete historical phenomena it produced in the light of the theories of fascism, totalitarianism and political religion that are now gaining increasing currency. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions.