Okay, since pretty much all of the academics are too afraid of the JSTOR cops to give me access to their accounts, I’ll just throw this bleg out there. One of the many things about the history of fascism I am investigating is the evolution of fascism as not only a synonym with “conservatism” (which is nonsense) but it’s segue into a psychological state. In other words capital F Fascism was once an ideology but in the 1950s it became lower-case f fascism and came to describe personality types who were invariably “right wing.” Bullies, police, prudes, et al all became “fascists” psychologically. Adorno’s “The Authoritarian Personality” was obviously a major source of this cultural trend. Hebert McClosky’s 1958 paper, “Conservatism and Personality” in the American Political Science Review was also seminal (though I haven’t read it yet, hint hint). The most recent example of this was that idiotic Berkeley study which claimed to have identified the conservative psychosis common to Reagan, Hitler etc.
Anyway, if any researchers, academics or layman run across anything they think would be particularly useful to this story, I would love to see it. I’m interested in the academic stuff as well as instances in the popular press and popular culture where the word “fascist” was cavalierly hurled at Republicans, conservatives, the police etc. Please send suggestions, examples, articles, leads etc to JonahResearch@aol.com. In fact, feel free to send anything you think might be of interest to me in regard to my book to that address.