Arab Fascism – Arabs and Fascism : Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

In this paper, I present preliminary results of an inquiry about the presence or absence of fascism in the Arab Middle East. My approach combines an inventory of the state of empirical research about pro-fascist trends in the region, primarily until 1945, with an attempt to locate fascism in the Arab world in a broader context of fascism as a phenomenon of non-European societies. This latter part of the paper is comparative and theory-driven.