"Fascism" is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political
discourse, but few know about its roots in the ancient past or its
long, strange evolution to the present. In ancient Rome, the fasces
were a bundle of wooden rods bound with a leather cord, in which an
axe was placed-in essence, a mobile kit for corporal or capital
punishment. Attendants typically carried fasces before Rome's
higher officials, to induce feelings of respect and fear for the
relevant authority. This highly performative Roman institution had
a lifespan of almost two millennia, and made a deep impression on
subsequent eras, from the Byzantine period to the present. Starting
in the Renaissance, we find revivals and reinterpretations of the
ancient fasces, accelerating especially after 1789, the first year
of the United States' Constitution and the opening volley of the
French Revolution. But it was Benito Mussolini, who, beginning in
1919, propagated the fasces on an unprecedented scale. Oddly, today
the emblem has grown largely unfamiliar, which in turn has offered
an opening to contemporary extremist groups. In The Fasces, T.
Corey Brennan offers the first global history of the nature,
development, and competing meanings of this stark symbol, from
antiquity to the twenty-first century. The word "fascism" has
universal awareness in contemporary political discourse, which thus
makes this, the first book to trace the full arc of the fasces'
almost 3,000-year history, essential reading for all who wish to
understand how the past informs the present.
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