Gatekeepers of Fascism

How Liberals Enabled Authoritarian Regimes

De: Henry Bugalho

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Why did liberals support fascists?
The answer may change how you understand the history of fascism—and why it keeps returning.

This book is not another generic fascism book or a simplified warning about authoritarianism. It is a rigorous political essay on how fascism works, and why, again and again, liberal institutions and elites have failed to stop it.

We hear it often, especially in left-wing debates: that liberalism is the antechamber of fascism. A provocation, certainly—but is it historically true? By examining the history of fascism across the twentieth century and into the present, this book argues that under specific conditions, liberalism does not resist fascism. It enables it.

From Mussolini to Hitler, from Pinochet to Bolsonaro, this essay traces a recurring pattern: when faced with a democratic left and an authoritarian right, segments of liberalism repeatedly chose authoritarianism—out of fear, ideological blindness, or strategic calculation.

This is a book about fascism, but also about liberal fascism, American fascism, and the uncomfortable continuity between past and present.

What you will find in this book

• Ludwig von Mises’s explicit defense of fascism in 1927
• How Italian liberals handed power to Mussolini
• How German liberals voted for the Enabling Act that granted Hitler dictatorial powers
• Hayek and Milton Friedman’s legitimization of Pinochet’s dictatorship
• The Spanish “pact of forgetting” during the democratic transition
• The same pattern repeating today: Trump fascism, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Milei

The central thesis

This book does not argue that liberalism inevitably leads to fascism. That would be historical determinism at its worst.

Instead, it demonstrates that under certain historical and political conditions, a specific liberal tradition tends to open the door to authoritarian movements. When forced to choose between a left-wing democracy and a right-wing dictatorship, these liberals chose dictatorship with alarming frequency.

Understanding this pattern is essential if we want to understand fascism this time—not as a historical anomaly, but as a political mechanism that adapts, mutates, and survives.

Why this book matters now

The same dynamics are visible today:

• Economic elites supporting authoritarian populists
• The illusion that extremists can be “tamed”
• Anti-communism—now repackaged as anti-wokism—outweighing the defense of democracy
• The normalization of American fascism within liberal institutions

This book provides the conceptual tools to recognize these patterns early—and to think seriously about how to stop fascism, before it consolidates power.

Based on primary sources and rigorous academic research, this is both a historical analysis and a political warning. If you are looking for a serious alternative to books like Fascism: A Warning or How Fascism Works, this essay offers a deeper, more unsettling diagnosis.

(Yes, even readers searching for facism will find what they are actually looking for here.)

About the Author

Henry Bugalho is a Brazilian philosopher, writer, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He holds a Master’s degree in Rhetoric and Oratory, with a thesis on dehumanization strategies in Nazi propaganda. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Manufacturing an Enemy and Killing Is My Expertise.

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