Fascism and the masses: the revolt against the last humans, 1848-1945

Highlighting the 'mass' nature of interwar European fascism has long become commonplace.

Throughout the years, numerous critics have construed fascism as a phenomenon of mass society, perhaps the ultimate expression of mass politics.

This study deconstructs this long-standing perception.

It argues that the entwining of fascism with the masses is a remarkable transubstantiation of a movement which understood and presented itself as a militant rejection of the ideal of mass politics, and indeed of mass society and mass culture more broadly conceived.

Thus, rather than 'massifying' society, fascism was the culmination of a long effort on the part of the elites and the middle-classes to de-massify it.