Sources

The scholars

The people whose frameworks and findings this site runs on, with their works in the bibliography below. Where a scholar's public position on a live question has moved, the site's pages state the position as of their last-verified date rather than assuming it.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat History and Italian studies, New York University

Historian of Italian fascism and of authoritarian leaders. Analyzes the contemporary United States within her strongman framework, documenting what she calls authoritarian innovations, with autocracy rather than fascism as her operative category, a precision this site preserves against looser summaries of her position. [1]

Umberto Eco (1932 to 2016) Semiotics and philosophy, University of Bologna

Novelist and semiotician who grew up under Italian fascism. His fourteen features of Ur-Fascism form the most popular framework in circulation, and the loosest, a caveat he stated himself. [1]

Richard J. Evans (born 1947) History, University of Cambridge (emeritus)

The leading English-language historian of the Third Reich. Rejects the fascism label for the contemporary United States on the ground that historical fascism was organized around war and empire, and documents that Griffin, Payne, and Feldman concur. [1] [2]

Emilio Gentile (born 1946) History, Sapienza University of Rome (emeritus)

The leading historian of Italian fascism as political religion, documenting the sacralization of politics, the cult, the rites, and the martyrs, that distinguishes fascist rule from mere dictatorship. [1]

Roger Griffin (born 1948) History of ideas, Oxford Brookes University (emeritus)

Author of the most widely adopted fascist minimum, palingenetic ultranationalism, and of the para-fascism category. Applies his own test restrictively, rejecting the label for Putin's Russia and the contemporary United States alike. [1] [2]

Steven Levitsky (born 1968) Government, Harvard University

Comparativist of democratic erosion, co-author of the competitive authoritarianism framework and of the December 2025 assessment placing the United States in that category, alongside the insistence that the trajectory is reversible. [1] [2]

Juan J. Linz (1926 to 2013) Political science, Yale University

Author of the standard typology separating authoritarian from totalitarian rule, built on the Spanish case. His categories do more work than any others in this site's regime catalog. [1]

Michael Mann (born 1942) Sociology, UCLA (emeritus)

Historical sociologist whose definition of fascism puts paramilitary violence at the center, and whose study of who actually joined the interwar movements grounds the sociology used on this site's movements pages. [1]

Samuel Moyn Law and history, Yale University

Historian of ideas who argues the fascism comparison abnormalizes what is quintessentially American, obscuring the domestic lineage documented on this site's US history pages and sparing the harder analysis of what is new. [1]

Cas Mudde (born 1967) Political science, University of Georgia

The leading scholar of the populist radical right, whose definition of the party family, nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, marks tier 1 of this site's gradient and guards the line between that family and fascism. [1]

Robert O. Paxton (born 1932) History, Columbia University (emeritus)

The most cited living authority on comparative fascism. Author of the behavioral definition and the five-stage process model this site uses throughout, and of the foundational study of Vichy France. Publicly reversed his rejection of the fascism label for the American case after January 6, 2021, while holding that the term now generates more heat than light. [1] [2] [3]

Stanley G. Payne (born 1934) History, University of Wisconsin-Madison (emeritus)

Author of the standard typological description of fascism and of the field's standard one-volume history. The leading specialist on the Spanish case, whose classification of Franco's regime as authoritarian rather than fascist anchors that debate. [1] [2]

Timothy Snyder (born 1969) History, Yale University and University of Toronto

Historian of Central and Eastern Europe who applies the fascism label directly to Putin's Russia and to the contemporary United States, and who as of 2026 analyzes the American project as fascist in character and failing on its own terms. [1] [2]

Jason Stanley Philosophy, University of Toronto, previously Yale

Philosopher of language whose ten pillars describe fascist politics as a set of tactics that can operate inside a non-fascist state. Applies the framework directly to the contemporary United States; insists it classifies politics, not regimes. [1]

Lucan A. Way Political science, University of Toronto

Co-author of the competitive authoritarianism framework and of the 2025 Foreign Affairs assessment of the United States, with a career built on the post-Soviet hybrid regimes the framework was made for. [1] [2]

Books and scholarship

• António Costa Pinto. Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism. East European Monographs, 1996. ISBN 978-0-88033-968-1.
• Bradley W. Hart. Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States. St. Martin's Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-250-14896-4.
• Cas Mudde. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-85081-0.
• Emilio Gentile. The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy. Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-674-78475-8.
• Ernst Nolte. Three Faces of Fascism. Penguin (Mentor reprint; first English edition 1965), 1969. ISBN 978-0-451-60919-9.
• Jason Stanley. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. ISBN 978-0-525-51183-0.
• Jonah Goldberg. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Doubleday, 2008. ISBN 978-0-385-51184-1.
• Juan J. Linz. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000. ISBN 978-1-55587-866-5.
• Kathleen Belew. Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Harvard University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-674-23769-8.
• Leandro Pereira Gonçalves and Odilon Caldeira Neto. Fascism in Brazil: From Integralism to Bolsonarism. Routledge, 2022. ISBN 978-1-032-12334-9.
• Linda Gordon. The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition. Liveright, 2017. ISBN 978-1-63149-492-5.
• Matthew Dallek. Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. Basic Books, 2023. ISBN 978-1-5416-7356-4.
• Michael Mann. Fascists. Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-511-21651-0.
• Richard J. Evans. The Coming of the Third Reich. The Penguin Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-59420-004-5.
• Robert O. Paxton. The Anatomy of Fascism. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ISBN 978-1-4000-4094-0.
• Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. Columbia University Press (reprint; first edition Knopf, 1972), 1982. ISBN 978-0-231-05427-0.
• Roger Griffin. The Nature of Fascism. St. Martin's Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-312-07132-5.
• Rory Yeomans. Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8229-7793-3.
• Stanley G. Payne. Fascism: Comparison and Definition. University of Wisconsin Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0-299-08060-0.
• Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-299-14870-6.
• Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-88252-1.

Journal and periodical articles

• Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz. Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set. Perspectives on Politics, 2014. Link (accessed August 2, 2026).
• Elisabeth Zerofsky. Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind. The New York Times Magazine, 2024. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Eurozine. The mainstreaming of the European far right. Eurozine, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Marina Nord, Fabio Angiolillo, Martin Lundstedt, Felix Wiebrecht, and Staffan I. Lindberg. When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900. Democratization, 2025. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Marzia Casolari. Hindutva's Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence. Economic and Political Weekly, 2000. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Nitasha Kaul and Barry Buzan. Trump's new America and the question of fascism. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Richard J. Evans. Why Trump isn't a fascist. New Statesman, 2021. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Roger Griffin. Putin's Fascist Russia? Roger Griffin's Comments on the Concept. The Interpreter, 2014. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Trump's Authoritarian Innovations. Project Syndicate, 2025. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Samuel Moyn. The Trouble with Comparisons. The New York Review of Books, 2020. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt. The Price of American Authoritarianism. Foreign Affairs, 2025. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Timothy Snyder. The State of Trump. Project Syndicate, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Timothy Snyder. 9 Theses on Putin's Fascism for 9 May. Thinking About (Substack), 2022. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Umberto Eco. Ur-Fascism. The New York Review of Books, 1995. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).

Primary sources

• Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile. The Doctrine of Fascism. Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University, 1932. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Federal Republic of Germany. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 22. Federal Ministry of Justice, English translation, 1949. Link (accessed August 2, 2026).
• George Orwell. Politics and the English Language. The Orwell Foundation, 1946. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Georgi Dimitrov. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International (report to the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International). Marxists Internet Archive, 1935. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).

Indices and monitoring reports

• Bright Line Watch. The Persistence of Diminished Democracy in a Second Trump Presidency. Bright Line Watch, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2026: United States Country Report. Freedom House, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Marina Nord, David Altman, Tiago Fernandes, Ana Good God, and Staffan I. Lindberg. Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling The Democratic Era?. V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. History of the Swastika. Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2025. Link (accessed August 2, 2026).

News and documentation

• Balkan Insight. Romania's Government Ousted by Parliamentary No-Confidence Vote. Balkan Insight, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Euronews. New Dutch minority government sworn in under the nation's youngest prime minister Rob Jetten. Euronews, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Freedom House. After the Election: Revitalizing Hungarian Democracy, and Lessons from the Opposition Victory. Freedom House, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Human Rights Watch. Dying in Detention: Rising Deaths in an Expanding US Immigration Detention System. Human Rights Watch, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Human Rights Watch. Justice Delivered in Greece. Human Rights Watch, 2020. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• RFE/RL. Nasty, Repressive, Aggressive -- Yes. But Is Russia Fascist? Experts Say 'No.'. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2022. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).
• Robert O. Paxton. I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now. Newsweek, 2021. Link (accessed August 11, 2026).
• Simone Rafael. Far-Right Symbols: The Reich Flag. Belltower.News, Amadeu Antonio Foundation, 2020. Link (accessed August 2, 2026).

Court and legal records

• Congressional Research Service. Congressional Redistricting: High Court Narrows Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais. Library of Congress, 2026. Link (accessed July 31, 2026).