Francois Furet quotes

The fact that Communism and Fascism assigned contradictory roles to history and reason-the emancipation of the proletariat versus the domination of the Aryan race-mattered little. (Francois Furet)
In Fascism, as in Communism, the idea of the future was based on a critique of bourgeois modernity... It rose from a variety of currents and from authors of very different origins, all of whom demonized the bourgeoisie. The doctrine was cast as post-Marxist, not as pre-liberal. View quote
Francois Furet
For the same reason that the Ancien Regime is thought to have an end but no beginning, the Revolution has a birth but no end. View quote
Francois Furet
The American people were possessed by the capitalist spirit without ever having had a bourgeoisie; French political society, in contrast, created a bourgeoisie devoid of the capitalist spirit. View quote
Francois Furet
Nazism was a form of Bolshevism turned against its initial form. View quote
Francois Furet
The bourgeoisie is a synonym for modern society. The word designates the class that gradually destroyed, by its free activity, the old aristocratic society founded on a hierarchy of birth. View quote
Francois Furet
Nazism was a German form of Bolshevism. View quote
Francois Furet
To understand this relationship we may start with what has become an accepted observation: Stalinized Bolshevism and National Socialism constitute the two examples of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Not only were they comparable, but they form a political category of their own, which has become established since Hannah Arendt. View quote
Francois Furet
What was new about Hitler and Stalin was what Friedrich Meinecke, in an attempt shortly after World War II to express his horror at Hitler's moral nihilism, called a ‘Machiavellianism of the masses. View quote
Francois Furet
Hitler did a better job than Stalin of accomplishing Lenin's totalitarian promises-better, too, than Mussolini,... View quote
Francois Furet
Born of war, both Bolshevism and Fascism drew their basic education from war. They transferred to politics the lessons of the trenches: familiarity with violence, the simplicity of extreme passions, the submission of the individual to the collectivity, and finally the bitterness of futile or betrayed sacrifices. (Francois Furet)
It was in Nazi Germany that Bolshevism was perfected; there, political power truly absorbed all spheres of existence, from the economy to religion, from technology to the soul. The irony, the tragedy, of history was that both totalitarian regimes, identical in their aim for absolute power over dehumanized beings, presented themselves as protection from the danger presented by the other. View quote
Francois Furet
In many thundering discourses, Hitler expressed his respect, if not admiration for Stalinist Communism and its leader. View quote
Francois Furet