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With a second Trump presidency potentially looming over our shoulders dependent on the fate of this 2024 election, I thought it would be important to review some quotes about Fascism from one of my favorite political books. While the title Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright really states its intention of warning the reader, goodness did I feel warned and seem some eerie parallels to our current society, especially after our democracy just barely surviving the first Trump presidency and the January 6th insurrection. In this post I have highlighted some quotes that really stuck out to me personally in this book. But first, I have included a description on Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright below:
#1 New York Times Bestseller
” A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of the most admired public servants in American history, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state
A Fascist, observed Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. Fascism: A Warning is drawn from Madeleine Albright’s experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.
Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II. The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which historically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions. In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left. Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.
Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times. Written by someone who not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past. “
Who is Madeleine Albright?
Her academic background in political science and international affairs provided her with the knowledge necessary for her subsequent career in diplomacy and foreign policy. She was one of the United States’ most prominent diplomats and the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.
Some quotes in her book that serve as important warnings…:
“Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries. The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion, and cowardice. And losing has a price.”
This was how twentieth-century Fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.
“Falsehood flies,” observed Jonathan Swift, “and the truth comes limping after it.”
When we awaken each morning, we see around the globe what appear to be Fascism’s early stirrings: the discrediting of mainstream politicians, the emergence of leaders who seek to divide rather than to unite, the pursuit of political victory at all costs, and the invocation of national greatness by people who seem to possess only a warped concept of what greatness means. Most often, the signposts that should alert us are disguised: the altered constitution that passes for reform, the attacks on free press justified by security, the dehumanization of others masked as a defense of virtue, or the hollowing out of a democratic system so that all is erased but the label.
The temptation is powerful to close our eyes and wait for the worst to pass, but history tells us that for freedom to survive, it must be defended and that if lies are to stop, they must be exposed.
A Fascist, however, expects the crowd to have his back. Where kings try to settle people down, Fascists stir them up so that when the fighting begins, their foot soldiers have the will and the firepower to strike first.
There are two kinds of Fascists: those who give orders and those who take them. A popular base gives Fascism the legs it needs to march, the lungs it uses to proclaim, and the muscle it relies on to menace–but that’s Fascism from the neck down. To create tyranny out of the fears and hopes of average people, money is required, and so, too, ambition, and twisted ideas.
Democracy is not only a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity… I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth.
Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.
If these quotes resonated with you, or you want to learn more interesting history about Fascism, the book might be right up your alley. You can purchase Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright here.
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