The First Fascist

A beguiling portrait of Morès, balancing his fascinating exploits with an acute awareness of his danger. Luzzatto reminds us that, ideologically and culturally, Morès anticipates the tragedies of the 20th century, and also those of today * The Times *Part adventurer, part entrepreneur, part ideologue, the Marquis de Morès is one of the nineteenth century’s most intriguing figures, with exploits that span four continents. And above all, as Sergio Luzzatto demonstrates in this superb biography, he is the forefather of extreme-right nationalist and antisemitic movements that remain all too familiar to this day. The First Fascist offers an indispensable, urgently relevant look at a toxic past that is also, alas, a tragic prologue – Caroline Weber, author of Proust’s DuchessThis deeply researched and thoroughly engrossing biography shows how the Marquis de Morès, one of the most colorful figures of the nineteenth century, helped invent the fascist style of politics. From the American plains to the Parisian streets, the rabble-rousing aristocrat was one of the first to see the potential of antisemitism to galvanize populist resentment against capitalist elites, and Sergio Luzzatto reconstitutes his fascinating life with exceptional acuity. This is an important book for understanding not just fin-de-siècle France but our own political moment as well – Maurice Samuels, author of Alfred DreyfusIn this darkly scintillating biography, Sergio Luzzatto engagingly charts the dangerous life of the Marquis de Morès: aristocrat, adventurer, gunslinging rancher in the Dakota Territory, railway enthusiast in southeast Asia, freebooting expeditionary in the Sahara?and a founding father of fascism. The First Fascist adds another fascinating and disturbing layer to our understanding of how the ideology, culture, charismatic leadership, and violence associated with the fascist movements of the twentieth century had some of their roots in the fraught atmosphere of the fin-de-siècle – Mike Rapport, author of 1848

Sergio Luzzatto is Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut. A winner of the Cundill History Prize, he is the author of The Body of Il Duce and Primo Levi’s Resistance, among other books.