For all of its real murderousness, there is something about fascist strutting that inclines healthy people to laugh, rather than admire or cower. Fascism, on some level, is just an ultimately buffoonish insistence to be taken very seriously or else, so one must reserve one’s right to mockery. […]
In the final analysis, the provocation is a successful one because it freezes us and leaves us with no good response: It’s an expression of defiant power. We seem to laugh or ignore it at our peril, but also to express outrage to no avail. This is the whole point. As Sartre said of the anti-semite reveling in his bad faith, he seeks above all else, “to intimidate and disconcert.” … But a new collectivity is also thereby born, as in a Church. When the fascist squads in Italy went out on their punitive expeditions with their clubs and castor oil, they sang songs together.