From Fascism to Populism in History

Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City. He is the author of several books, including Transatlantic Fascism and The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War. He contributes to major American, European, and Latin American media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Mediapart, Politico, Clarin, Nexos, and Folha de S.Paulo.

• Preface to the Paperback EditionPrologueIntroduction: Thinking through Fascism andPopulism in Terms of the Past1. What Is Fascism in History?2. What Is Populism in History?3. Populism between Democracyand DictatorshipEpilogue: Populism RechargedAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“The historiography rests on three basic assumptions, all of which are usefully questioned in Federico Finchelstein’s From Fascism to Populism in History. One is that fascism not only originated in Europe but was primarily a European phenomenon. Another is that it was historically specific to those interwar years. The third: that fascism involved a repudiation of democracy, a kind of pathology of political development. . . . An expert on the modern history of Argentina, Finchelstein reminds us that the second world war marked a turning point. Before it, fascists were filled with confidence: they wrote off democracy as an outmoded relic of the 19th century, and claimed fascism as the future. . . . ”