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Résumé
Résumé
#1 New York Times Bestseller
Best Books of 2018 --The Economist
A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today's world, written by one of America's most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state
A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, "is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have."
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.
Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II. The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which historically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions. In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left. Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.
Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times. Written by someone who has not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past.
Critiques (3)
Critique du Guardian
Madeleine Albright and Timothy Snyder have each written a book about the current threat to democracy, but do they have their history wrong? Democracy is under threat in its historic heartlands, Europe and the US. Right-wing strongmen such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland are curtailing civil liberties, removing the independence of the judiciary and muzzling the press. In other countries, antidemocratic parties are riding high on a wave of public hostility to immigrants. And then there is Donald Trump, who, as we have seen during his recent European tour, is potentially a far more disruptive and dangerous figure than any of these, because as US president he wields an influence that is global in scale. There can be little doubt about Trumps hostility to democratic institutions or his contempt for democratic standards of public discourse. He defames his critics as liars, calls for the suppression of newspapers that expose his falsehoods, attacks judges who rule against him, urges the wider use of firearms in society, expresses sympathy for white supremacist demonstrators, withdraws demonstratively from international alliances and organisations, and suggests that becoming president for life might not be a bad idea. For some concerned observers, its all too reminiscent of the 1930s, when democracies were destroyed all over Europe and dictators plunged the world into the bloodiest war in history. But are we really witnessing the revival of fascism? Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state under Bill Clinton, certainly thinks so. Economic and social crisis, weak democratic parties and compliant conservatives all helped bring fascism to power then, and look very much as if they are doing so again today. 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, she writes. Trump is one of a kind with such tinpot dictators as Maduro, Erdogan, Putin, Orbán and Kim Jong-un Madeleine Albright Trump is the first antidemocratic president in US history. He flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself. He is one of a kind with such tinpot dictators as Maduro, Erdogan, Putin, Orbán, Duterte and the sole example among them of a true fascist Kim Jong-un. At this point, if it hasnt been clear earlier in the book, it becomes apparent that Albright doesnt really know what fascism is. Lumping together post-Stalinist dictators such as Kim Jong-un and Nicolás Maduro with rightwing nationalists such as Orbán and Vladimir Putin is not much help in understanding either the forces that brought them to power or the policies they are implementing. Albright seems to identify fascism simply with a hostility to democracy and a propensity to lie. Theres a vast literature on its history and politics, but this might as well not exist as far as she is concerned. For the Nazis, for example, she relies mainly on Alan Bullocks biography of Hitler, published in 1952. Her account of fascisms history is shot through with errors, great and small. The German inflation of 1923 did not destroy the middle classes. German surplus capital did not all go to pay reparations, which in any case were suspended well before the Nazis came to power. The Nazi flag was designed in the colours not of the German republic but of the German empire. Oswald Mosley did not have a toothbrush moustache. And so on. Why does any of this matter? If we fail to identify how the threat to democracy operates or why it succeeds in some places and not in others, we wont be able to offer any effective opposition to it. Fascism, as Albright correctly notes, used mass violence against its opponents to bludgeon them into submission as a means of overcoming them. Todays threat to democracy, surely, is more insidious, involving, as a start, a populist appeal to voters that produces the kind of overwhelming electoral dominance that Hitler, who never secured more than 37.4% of the vote in a free national election, failed to achieve. That is why he deployed hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers, following the example of Mussolinis squadristi, to turn democratic success into dictatorial power. For todays enemies of democracy, it is the coercive institutions of the state that play the key role, not private armies of thugs. True, racism was at the heart of German nazism and, though in a different way, Italian fascism, but its not the core ideology of late-communist regimes such as those in North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela. In Europe and the US at the moment, to paraphrase the famous declaration of a democratic politician in the Weimar republic, the enemy stands on the right, not on the left. In The Road to Unfreedom, the historian Timothy Snyder also sees Trump as engaged in a turn away from democracy and the rule of law. Trump said he would reject the presidential election as rigged if he did not win, hinted that Hillary Clinton might suffer violence if she pushed for stricter gun controls, and spread internet memes from fascists. He is not a populist but a sadopopulist, winning support from deprived masses only to implement policies, notably in healthcare and tax reform, that were designed to hurt them. Of course, the hallmark of populists is that their rabble-rousing rhetoric does not really hold out the promise of improving opportunities for the masses, as Snyder supposes: its promises, such as halting immigration, or reviving obsolete industries, are all snake-oil medicines. Snyder, too, seems to equate hostility to democracy with fascism. He is as vague and confused about its history as Albright is. But where the former secretary of state provides an oversimple analysis of the travails of democracy, the Yale professor offers an overacademic one, calling as witnesses a procession of obscure Russian thinkers, above all Ivan Ilyin, whom he regards as fascist. But many of these were not really fascist at all by any commonly accepted definition: Ilyin, for example, was conservative, religious and monarchist in his views, while fascism was radical and revolutionary, anti-religious and highly critical of the traditional institution of monarchy. Ilyin, moreover, was strongly opposed to German nazism. What united all these thinkers was their ultra-nationalism, which is why they are being taken up by Putin; but ultra-nationalism is not the same as fascism, for all the things they have in common. Britain and France had no modern history as nation-states. The European powers had never been nation-states Timothy Snyder The effectiveness of Snyders thoughts on the road to unfreedom isnt helped by the strangely declamatory, often obscure style in which they are expressed. One dubious generalisation follows another, as the author never troubles to support any of them with serious evidence. For instance: Britain and France had no modern history as nation-states. The European powers had never been nation-states. Does Snyder really think that the possession of an overseas empire negated the claim of the imperial power to be a nation-state? Or: The meaning of each election is the promise of the next one. Most people think the meaning of an election is defined by the policies of the parties that contest it. And so on. Obsessed with the theory of Russian manipulation behind all the political surprises of recent history, from the Brexit vote to the election of Trump, he has little to say about the driving forces behind them, forces that are vital to understand if democracy is to be saved. And by packaging all of this in the endlessly repeated concepts of the politics of eternity and the politics of inevitability, he virtually guarantees that he will lose the attention of his readers. The current threats to democracy cry out for reasoned and powerfully expressed analysis, but regrettably, neither of these books comes anywhere near to offering it. - Richard J Evans.
Critique du New York Review of Books
LAST STORIES, by William Trevor. (Viking, $26.) The great Irish writer, who died in 2016 at the age of 88, captured turning points in individual lives with powerful slyness. This seemingly quiet but ultimately volcanic collection is his final gift to us, and it is filled with plots sprung from human feeling. FASCISM: A Warning, by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Albright draws on her long experience in government service and as an educator to warn about a new rise of fascism around the world. She is hopeful that this threat can be overcome, but only, she says, if we recognize history's lessons and never take democracy for granted. MOTHERHOOD, by Sheila Heti. (Holt, $27.) The narrator of Heti's provocative new novel, a childless writer in her late 30s - like Heti herself - is preoccupied with a single question: whether to have a child. Her dilemma prompts her to consult friends, psychics, her conscience and a version of the I Ching. INTO THE RAGING SEA: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of the El Faro, by Rachel Slade. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Pieced together from texts, emails and black box recordings, this is a tense, moment-by-moment account of the 2015 sinking of the cargo ship El Faro during Hurricane Joaquin. SEE WHAT CAN BE DONE: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary, by Lorrie Moore. (Knopf, $29.95.) The first essay collection by this gifted fiction writer features incisive pieces about topics like Alice Munro, John Cheever, "The Wire," Dawn Powell and Don DeLillo, all of it subject to Moore's usual loving attention and quirky perspective. CAN DEMOCRACY SURVIVE GLOBAL CAPITALISM? by Robert Kuttner. (Norton, $27.95.) Kuttner returns to the argument he's been making with increasing alarm for the past three decades: Countries need to have autonomy to control their economies, otherwise they'll be crushed by the whims of the free market. THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS: A Story Of War and What Comes After, by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil. (Crown, $26.) As a 6-year-old refugee of the Rwandan genocide, Wamariya crisscrossed Africa with her sister, enduring poverty and violence. She recounts her path to America lyrically and analytically. AND NOW WE HAVE EVERYTHING: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready, by Meaghan O'Connell. (Little, Brown, $26.) This honest, neurotic, searingly funny memoir of pregnancy and childbirth is a welcome antidote in the panicked-expectant-mothers canon - though its gripping narrative will appeal to nonparents, too. WHITE HOUSES, by Amy Bloom. (Random House, $27.) A psychologically astute novel that celebrates the intimate relationship of Eleanor Roosevelt and the A.P. reporter Lorena Hickok. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Critique du Library Journal
Former U.S. secretary of state Albright began work on this book before the 2016 election as a response to assaults on democratic values in other countries but asserts its relevance only increased during and since the election. In discussions during Albright's classes at Georgetown University, she and her students concluded that fascism should be viewed more as a means of seizing and holding power than as a political ideology. They defined it as an extreme form of authoritarian rule linked to a doctrine of rabid nationalism. Through her perspective as a victim of Hitler's takeover of her native Czechoslovakia in 1938, Albright summarizes the history of fascism from its origins in Italy during the 1920s and rise in Germany in the 1930s. The author further documents modern experiences in countries such as Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary that have replaced democratic systems with more authoritarian governments and relates meeting former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, explaining why government may best represent fascism today. Albright hopes that citizens are aware of the challenges to democratic values; for freedom to survive, she believes, it must be defended. Verdict Readers interested in political systems and international relations will appreciate Albright's outlook. [See Prepub Alert, 10/9/17.]-Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
