Honestly contradictory: a latin-american perspective on fascism

Abstract

As Origens do fascismo, a collection of short articles by José Carlos Mariátegui, edited and translated into Portuguese by Luiz Bernardo Pericás, is a series of intellectual portraits of Italian political leaders in the 1920s. During his two year stay in Italy Mariátegui witnessed key events that led to the rise of fascism, a movement at once aimed at co-opting ranks from socialist workers’ movements and combating the lib-eral-democratic order. In this article I highlight his idiosyncratic sympathy for both socialist reformism and the friend-versus-foe view politics that was gaining ground at the time.