The optimal conditions for the triumph of the crazy ultra-Right were an old state and its ruling mechanisms which could no longer function; a mass of disenchanted, disoriented and discontented citizens who no longer knew where their loyalties lay; strong socialist movements threatening or appearing to threaten social revolution, but not actually in a position to achieve it; and a move [sic - mood?] of nationalist resentment.... These were the conditions in which helpless old ruling elites were tempted to have recourse to the ultra-radicals... [t]hese were the conditions that turned movements of the radical Right into powerful organized and sometimes uniformed and paramilitary forces (squadristi, storm-troopers) or, as in Germany during the Great [Economic] Slump, into massive electoral armies.... [F]ascism came to power by the connivance of, indeed (as in Italy) on the initiative of, the old regime, that is to say in a 'constitutional' fashion.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991
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