The Neofascist Network and Madrid, 1945–1953: From City of Refuge to Transnational Hub and Centre of Operations (original) (raw)
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In: "Anti-Fascism in a Global Perspective: Transnational Networks, Exile Communities and Radical Internationalism", edited by David Featherstone, Nigel Copsey and Kasper Braskén, Routledge, 2020
As the source of one of the broadest movements of solidarity in history, the Spanish Civil War represents an ideal laboratory for the culture-oriented and increasingly transnational historiography that has developed since the turn of the century. This chapter examines the discourse and actions of the activists who supported –or refused to support– the Spanish Republic as combatants, relief workers or intellectuals, focusing on their conceptions of antifascism. Thus, it tries to move beyond existing international histories of the war to gauge the extent to which a transnational imagined community built on this notion operated throughout this period, its relations to parallel movements in various regions and its changing contours. While the often invoked Anti-fascist International never achieved actual unity or a truly global reach, it served as an effective bond between disparate actors and projects and had a considerable performative force in sustaining Republican resistance throughout the conflict.
Transnational Anti-Fascism: Agents, Networks, Circulations (2016)
Anti-fascism – a hallmark of the left since the 1930s, and a vague term for active opposition to Italian fascism, German Nazism and similar movements in the interwar period – used to be studied as a brief episode in the history of European nation states. The available syntheses read like collections of national studies with a clear European or Western focus. However, methodological nationalism may soon become a thing of the past – the last few years have brought a transnational turn in anti-fascist studies, which this special issue tries both to illustrate and to discuss.
Journal of Contemporary History, 2019
Spanish fascist women played a very active role in the Falange’s cross-border relations with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. From the very beginning, fascist women took a preeminent place in these contacts and exchanges in order to see with their own eyes how both fascist models were at a practical level. These relationships between fascist women’s organizations were born out of deep ideological affinity and were especially fluid, firstly on a bilateral level and after 1940 on the ‘New Order’ Europe-wide multilateral, transnational collaboration. However, they lacked neither of political calculation nor could abstract from the wider frame of international politics in such an eminently war period. As this article will show, Falangist women used these fluid but less studied relationships to consolidate their own political position at home and explore other ways of political participation in a Nazi-Fascist New Europe, while at the same time trying to secure there a pre-eminent place for non-belligerent Spain. In the end, concerns about the own survival of the Franco dictatorship as the fate of war clearly changed in 1943, let ideological affinity succumb to the diplomatic conveniences they had once meant to overcome.
GUERRILLEROS AND NEIGHBOURS IN ARMS: Identities and Cultures of Anti-fascist Resistance in Spain
2016
The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939, was the first battle against fascism in Europe. Five months after the victory of dictator Francisco Franco in Spain the conflict moved to Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War. Fascism and anti-fascism again faced each other on the battlefield. Amid the heat of the Nazi invasions in Europe, anti-fascist resistance groups formed by ordinary citizens emerged in virtually all European countries. Although the Franco dictatorship was not directly involved in the Second World War, in Spain an anti-Franco resistance movement was organised in 1939 and lasted until 1952. Although the Spanish resistance constituted the first and last antifascist resistance movement in Europe, the Spanish case has been consistently overlooked by international studies. This book inserts the Spanish anti-Franco resistance into the European context, proposing a new narrative of anti-fascist resistances (plural and in lower case) in Europe. At the same time, the book offers a new interpretation of guerrilla phenomena with a strongly peasant character, as was the case of the resistance in Spain. The author underlines the Importance of primary groups (kinship, neighbourhood, friendship) and secondary groups (camaraderie and political loyalties) in the mobilization and organization of armed groups. For this study, the author established twelve variables that permitted him to distinguish between ‘neighbours in arms’ and ‘modern guerrilla’. Using all of these elements, the author shows the plurality of the identities and cultures of the antifascist resistance in Spain.
Fasicm, 2021
Scholars have recently begun advocating for the application of social movement theory in the analysis of the rise and development of fascist political entities. While representing a welcome effort to increase the theoretical depth in the analysis of fascism, the approach remains hampered by conceptual deficiencies. The author addresses some of these by the help of a critical discussion that problematises the often incoherent ways in which the concept of 'movement' is used when describing fascist political activity both within and across national borders. The analysis then turns to the application of social movement theory to the historical example of the Ustašas. While recent research on social movements has begun to explore the role and character of transnationalism, this case study analysis suggests that the lack of supra-national organisations during the period of 'classic' fascism prevented the emergence of a 'transnational public space' where fascist movements could have participated. The conclusion is that rather than acting and organising on a 'transnational' level, fascist entities appear to have limited themselves to state-based international 'knowledge-transfer' of a traditional type.
Transatlantic Routes and Encounters. European Anti-Fascists in Mexico, 1939-1945
Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 2020
Once the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, thousands of anti-fascist exiles began to move to Latin American; Mexico, in particular, welcomed several thousand Europeans. We will follow the trajectories of some anti-fascists who had participated in the conflict, and who later decided to cross the ocean and settle in Mexico. While the existence of intra-European anti-fascist exiles is well known (e.g., Italian anti-fascists who exiled to France between the 1920s and 1930), those of transatlantic origins are much less apparent in history, with the remarkable exception of the Spanish fleeing Francoism after 1939. Since history’s recent ‘global turn’, the concept of ‘networks’ has been particularly adept at enabling historians to see the reciprocal connections between local, regional and global actors and to bridge the increasingly artificial divide among national and international spaces. The case we will discuss in this article represents a paradigmatic example of the utility of this approach. Studying anti-fascist exiles and their networks after 1939 on a global scale will allow us to see the flows of people and ideas between Europe and the American continent