Gino Germani was an Italian-born Argentine sociologist who in 1956 offered the first interpretation of peronism based upon current social science categories. Popular interpretations of peronism considered it a local version of fascism. Germani specified the differences between these two political phenomena, but still considered the first as a special case of the second. This paper studies Germani’s first interpretation of peronism and fascism in order to single out the criteria allowing him to include both regimes within a single category.