Discredited Fascism: the New Guard after 1932*

In large part Australian interwar fascism has been studied in isolation. The present article compares and contrasts the New Guard with kindred movements in Europe during the 1930s. Using the conceptual model of “generic fascism” developed by Roger Griffin, its principal concern is to explain why, in the “era of fascism”, with many factors encouraging the growth of authoritarian movements to replace parliamentary democracy, the New Guard proved to be so manifestly unsuccessful.