This book takes apart Nazi Germany theology in a more bitable sense. Like it really gets into the Nazi mind. It does share comparisons to today’s rise in fascism ideology, though its main focus is on Germany and its surrounding countries. 
This helped get the statistics across. Specifically the us versus them now feels more understandable of how something as (dumb) as that sounds worked for Hitler.  I learned more about how that worked. The same with how gender independence was seen as an attack on Aryan purity. Blows my mind how this happened then, though I now feel more knowledgeable on the how it got there. 

To start, I think this book does a really good job outlining the main principles of fascism and citing with historical examples. I feel like it started off strong and gradually fell off (but it's entirely possible and very likely that I was getting fed up with it and getting more critical as the book progressed).

What I think it lacks is a fuller grounding in history. He seem to be constantly skirting around some inevitable conclusions; for example, for nearly all of the historical examples of fascist movements that he gives, he also points out how they were heavily inspired by American examples.  It's hard not to feel like the USA is some sort of wellspring of fascist ideologies that then get exported to the rest of the world. He tries to make some distinction of "stark" economic inequality as fertile soil for fascism, while allowing that some amount of economic inequality is necessary for our current economic system - but where is the line, and what is the mechanism to prevent more mild economic inequality from slipping into stark economic inequality? As he phrases it, "Liberal equality is, by definition, meant to be compatible with economic inequality." He allows that our current economic system is "nondemocratic" and that that creates a friction with our democratic system, but no further conclusion. He allows that trade unions are an essential stopgap against fascism, and that fascists then routinely attack trade unions in order to destroy that class solidarity that can overcome the religious/ethnic in-out group dynamics of fascism, and that liberal democracy would fail without those progressive programs. He provides numerous examples of liberal democracies falling towards fascism, but only ever concludes that we must liberal democracy harder. He explicitly advocates for class solidarity, but I guess only in a libdem way. He mentions that fascists also consistently create a bogeyman out of Marxism, but he is so deeply wedded to liberalism that he cannot deeply examine why that might be. Basically, he keeps running head first into the conclusion that communism is the best antidote to fascism, but he can't say that because of how successfully Americans have made communism into a bogeyman... almost like...

I know he addressed my critiques in the text: "Leftist critiques of liberalism point out its supposed failure to account for structural, historical inequalities, in that the practice of liberalism does not typically include remedies for past injustice. Leftist critics of liberalism also argue that the liberal ideals of equality and freedom can be used to entrench the power of dominant groups." And yes, these are my critiques. He nailed them, 10/10, and failed to disprove them in any way. 

I did enjoy his attempt to explain how libertarianism isn't actually as similar to fascism as it might look on the surface. I don't think he at all succeeded, but his attempts were entertaining, a real use of the English language.

Once I realized I could speed up the audiobook I listened a lot faster! A good intro to the topic, not hard to follow and examples in modern day as well as history. 

The Goodreads comments that basically say "This book is so biased, it only shows right wing political examples" are so 🤏 close to getting the point. To spell it out, right now there is a massive shift in fascist thinking in conservative parties around the world but especially in the USA under Trump. 

His policies are literal textbook examples of fascism and people don't see it because of the normalization of fascist principles over time + the way that fascism likes to uphold the status quo (cis white patriarchy etc) makes it easier to just blame others than to see things for what they are. I thought this book spelled everything out very clearly

Actually rattled by how increasingly and alarmingly relevant this book got