Abstract
British Fascism aims to contextualise contemporary British fascist movements and discourses by tracing their historical roots. Richardson is explicitly critical of the synchronic approaches favoured by political scientists, who have ‘treated [fascism] as an ideology and movement of the past’ (p. 21) while neglecting how its ideologies and movements have transitioned into the present. For Richardson, the duplicitous and contradictory nature of fascism helps mask the motives and intentions of contemporary fascist groups. To highlight historical continuities, he employs diachronic analyses that examine how fascism adapts to changing conditions and circumstances.
The book comprises six cohesively and logically organised chapters supplemented by a preface and a conclusion. The first three establish the premise, methodological approach and historical context of the study. Chapter 1 builds upon Billig’s account of fascism as an often contradictory constellation of modes of political expression and ‘inegalitarian political action’ (p. 56), to define it as a nationalist political movement advocating a capitalist political economy and explicitly rejecting Marxist or socialist approaches to governance (p. 58). For Richardson, fascism’s ideological commitments are in opposition to democracy and individual liberty. Left unexplored at this stage, however, is what distinguishes fascism from far-right movements and ideologies in general; only in later chapters do the specifics of fascist ideology – such as attitudes towards racial identity and the role of the nation state – begin to emerge. A discussion of the fuzzy boundaries between fascist movements, nationalist movements and forms of conservatism could have made the chapter stronger.
Chapter 2 outlines the discourse-historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis, focused on locating ‘discursive practices, strategies and texts in specific socio-political contexts’ (p. 62) to systematically address the relationship between text and context, language and use, and discourse and practice in particular historical continuities. Although constrained by its specific focus on fascist song lyrics, Richardson’s exploration of DHA is both extensive and more detailed than the analyses presented in the remainder of the book. The historical development of British fascism – from early movements such as the Imperial Fascist League and Mosley’s British Union of Fascists to the English Defence League and Britain First – is discussed in chapter 3, focused on the ‘basic continuous ideological thread’ (p. 97) of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. But while a great deal of attention is paid to 20th-century groups, their 21st-century counterparts are less extensively treated, weakening the sense of historical continuity. Cases such as the UK Independence Party and the resurgence of right-wing populism in the United Kingdom, or the fact that aspects of the British National Party’s policy framework in 2009 have been operationalised by the Conservative government, would have strengthened Richardson’s ambition to account for contemporary social and political change.
Chapters 4–6 investigate the different aspects of fascist movements in Britain. Chapter 4 addresses the relationship between nation state and racial identity in fascist discourse, which Richardson argues is naturalised using ‘biological metaphors’ (p. 172) for the unity between race and land. This assumes ‘an ethnic definition of the nation’ (p. 189) which carries notions of racial purity, eugenics and sexual discrimination. Preservation, then, or an extreme form of conservatism is emblematic of British fascist groups, practices and discourses. While Richardson supports these claims with a range of primary sources, the analytic detail apparent in chapter 2 is sometimes absent, and the composition and mapping of these biological metaphors is not always thoroughly explored.
Chapter 5 considers fascist accounts of political economy, which embrace a form of nation state capitalism as a ‘third way’ between free-market liberalism and socialist economics. Fascist discourses proffer highly regulated, mixed-economic models as attractive alternatives to the status quo: while always anti-communist, fascism unanimously perceives international finance and the free movement of labour as a threat to society. The cohesive link is the connection between the ethnic definition of the nation state and the threat posed by globalised market economies to the state’s assumed sovereignty and identity. Richardson traces the logic of this argument to the same anti-Semitic conspiracy theory documented in chapter 3: the fascist alternative is a salve to the allegedly Jewish origins of both liberalism and socialism.
More indirect threats to democracy – including racism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism and misogyny – are addressed in chapter 6, which argues that British fascists are committed to an ‘exclusionary vision of British society’ (p. 274). Post-war fascist discourse mystifies the dangerous implications of a programme where the material functions of the state would be turned over to incarceration, subjugation, division and persecution. Here Richardson’s analyses are most effective because we encounter the duplicitous and adaptive nature of fascist discourses, an ability that enables their continuity: British fascism distances itself from its historical correlates by embracing the perceived spirit of British patriotism, a spirit defined in opposition to fascist regimes, while embracing the same programme that led to their atrocities.
The conclusion draws together these strands, offering recommendations to aid further analyses of fascist discourses. Richardson argues that our ability to understand and to challenge fascism is crucial to critical practice and to our ability to preserve emancipatory political modes. Pogroms, concentration camps and genocides may return if we lose sight of the duplicitous and divisive nature of fascist discourses and the horrifying realities of fascist practices. From this perspective, this book represents a stark warning and a call to arms to all who favour progressive, egalitarian forms of social organisation, including discourse analysts who see their work as having emancipatory potential.
Criticism has largely been related to the scope and ambition of this book, but it is also the scope and ambition of the book which ought to be commended. This is an internal contradiction which comes to define this contribution to the field: the breadth of textual sampling restricts the capacity for analytical depth. In spite of this, this is an important book that can be recommended without hesitation to critical discourse analysts and political discourse analysts. It stands, too, as a starting point for researchers who wish to pursue the less well-defined aspects of this account – and the primary reference list, composed mainly of archival materials, is a fertile source for such approaches. There is much more to be said about the relationship between 20th-century fascist movements and discourses and 21st-century populist movements, much as there is about the role of technology in reconfiguring the ideologies of the past for a new generation.