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Fascism denied the very nature of democracy, the legitimacy of democratic procedures and their electoral outcomes. Its proponents claimed that votes were only legitimate when they confirmed by referendum the autocratic will of their leader.
Populists, in contrast, have used elections to stress their own democratic nature even when they advanced other authoritarian trends. These differences matter today as wannabe fascist populist like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and others, deny the electoral legitimacy of their opponents.

The more we know about the past fascist attempts to deny the workings of democracy, the more worried we should be about present post-fascist and populist forms.

Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research at the Eugene Lang College in New York City. He is the author of several books, including Fascist Mythologies, A Brief History of Fascist Lies, From Fascism to Populism in History, Transatlantic Fascism, and The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War. He contributes to major American, European, and Latin American media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CNN, Foreign Policy, Clarín, Corriere della Sera, Nexos, and Folha de S.Paulo.

After his undergraduate education at the University of Buenos Aires, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He has previously taught at Brown University.