Federico Finchelstein is professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. His books include A Brief History of Fascist Lies (2020), From Fascism to Populism in History (2017), The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina (2014), and Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (2010).

Scratching the skin of second nature we find the basic animal instinct that seals the unity of the horde—this is the primordial face of fascism. In this timely and needed book, Federico Finchelstein brings to surface through a compelling study of myth in politics the psycho-aesthetical forging of the ideology of fascism, something we believed buried forever under the butchery of extermination camps and politics as celebration of violence.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Freud, Fascism, and the Return of the Myth2. Borges and Fascism as Mythology3. Borges and the Persistence of Myth4. A Fascist History: Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of MythConclusionAcknowledgementsNotesIndex

Federico Finchelstein is professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. His books include A Brief History of Fascist Lies (2020), From Fascism to Populism in History (2017), The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina (2014), and Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (2010).

Scratching the skin of second nature we find the basic animal instinct that seals the unity of the horde—this is the primordial face of fascism. In this timely and needed book, Federico Finchelstein brings to surface through a compelling study of myth in politics the psycho-aesthetical forging of the ideology of fascism, something we believed buried forever under the butchery of extermination camps and politics as celebration of violence.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Freud, Fascism, and the Return of the Myth2. Borges and Fascism as Mythology3. Borges and the Persistence of Myth4. A Fascist History: Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of MythConclusionAcknowledgementsNotesIndex

Federico Finchelstein is professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. His books include A Brief History of Fascist Lies (2020), From Fascism to Populism in History (2017), The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina (2014), and Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (2010).

Scratching the skin of second nature we find the basic animal instinct that seals the unity of the horde—this is the primordial face of fascism. In this timely and needed book, Federico Finchelstein brings to surface through a compelling study of myth in politics the psycho-aesthetical forging of the ideology of fascism, something we believed buried forever under the butchery of extermination camps and politics as celebration of violence.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Freud, Fascism, and the Return of the Myth2. Borges and Fascism as Mythology3. Borges and the Persistence of Myth4. A Fascist History: Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of MythConclusionAcknowledgementsNotesIndex