Anyone who enjoyed Michael Ledeen’s NRO article on Friday on <a

href=”http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200310170840.asp”>Fasci

sm is Back-Big Time, should really enjoy this fascinating article on

The Mystery of Fascism by David Ramsay Steele. Steele writes with nuance about the

largely forgotten story of how socialist militants became ardent

fascists and how closely related the two violently rival ideologies

remained. As he puts it at the end of his introduction:

Given what most people today think they know about Fascism,
this bare recital of facts is a mystery story. How can a movement which
epitomizes the extreme right be so strongly rooted in the extreme left?
What was going on in the minds of dedicated socialist militants to turn
them into equally dedicated Fascist militants?