Are there vestiges of fascism left today, like there are vestiges of communism?
I think vestiges is a good word. They’re like vestigial parts of the body that no longer have much use. Fascism had deep cultural roots in science, the Romantic movement, in literature, and in philosophy. Those things, of course, persist, but as a political movement, a movement that could take over a great power the way it took over Italy, Spain, Germany — it contended in France — I think it’s gone. How is what you described as a fascist state different from Saddam’s Iraq? That’s quite an interesting question, because much of the rhetoric of the Baathist philosophy was quite fascist in nature. The word baath means resurrection, and it calls on many of the same emotions that Hitler and Mussolini did, about a rebirth of national goals. And the ethnic group for the Baath Party were Arabs. It was a pan-Arab movement. You had some of the same attitudes about law, the spontaneity, the use of terror, the hatred of other ethnic groups, Jews in particular but also Kurds and others. I think ther
