Reactionary Nationalists, Fascists and Dictatorships in the Twentieth Century. Against Democracy (original) (raw)
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Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), 1-38.
Fascist movements and regimes have usually been conceived as and presented themselves as national political forces. In fact, contemporaries as well as scholars have highlighted hyper-nationalism as one of the most important features of fascism which separated fascist movements and regimes from each other. Not accidentally, all attempts to forge a “Fascist International” foundered between the two world wars. Many historians have therefore dismissed or failed to recognize crossborder cooperations between fascists. In fact, the hyper-nationalism of fascist movements and their social Darwinist doctrines, as well as the expansionist and racist policies of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, have led most experts to argue that fascist internationalism or international fascism was merely a camouflage and a sham. The interpretation that “international fascism is unthinkable, a contradiction in terms” has received broad support from most historians. As a corollary, fascism has largely been investigated in the framework of national history. Beyond volumes that have collected national case studies, few systematic comparative studies have been published. In particular, cross-border interactions between fascist movements and regimes have largely been dismissed in historical scholarship.
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.
Rethinking fascism and dictatorship in Europe
2014
With this volume we wish to move the debate on inter-war fascism from its ideological nature to its political dynamics; from classification according to criteria derived from conceptual ‘ideal types’ to a ‘relational perspective’ that scrutinizes the complex contemporary contexts and processes of ideological, political and institutional hybridization over the time and space of inter-war Europe.
Anti-Fascism as a Transnational Phenomenon: New Perspectives of Research
1969
JENS SPÄTH (Saarbrücken) surveyed the difficulties of defining the term anti-fascism in his introductory remarks: be it as a political countermovement to Italian fascism or set as a broader term along the lines of a movement against dictatorship. These issues of terminology formed a central point during each debate. Common ground could be found in the fact that anti-fascism, just like fascism, always changes in the course of history. Thus, the conference sought to discuss these different forms of anti-fascism and to historicize them. All participants agreed on the benefits of focusing on transnational entanglements and processes of reception and appropriation in a multinational context when discussing anti-fascism.
European Fascism: The Unfinished Handbook
2012
Fascism continues to fascinate scholars within the social sciences, perhaps as much as communism, that other great non-democratic '-ism' of the twentieth century. The topic also seems to be of continuing interest to the student and commercial book markets. In some cases bland repetition is the norm, but the pressure from commercial publishers often results in some excellent syntheses, even if based on secondary material, and that is not to mention the biography genre, which is always attentive to charismatic leaders and dictators — the more cruel the better. Moreover, the already voluminous academic literature on contemporary dictatorships often returns to the fascist and dictatorial regimes of the inter-war period.
Decentering Comparative Fascist Studies
Fascism, 2015
This article challenges a tendency that grew up in fascist studies in the 1930s to treat Fascism and Nazism as the only authentic expressions of fascism, and to evaluate and understand all other manifestations of the generic force as more or less derivative of them and hence of secondary importance when understanding ‘the nature of fascism’ as an ideology. This has created an artificial location of each fascism as being either at the core or periphery of the phenomenon, and has reinforced a Eurocentrism that leads to parallel movements in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa to be neglected. It calls for wider acceptance of the realization that researching movements that did not seize autonomous power, such as the Croatian Ustasha, the Romanian Iron Guard, or the Transylvanian Saxons, can enrich understanding of aspects of Fascism and Nazism, such as the role of racism, eugenics, anti-Semitism and organized Christianity in determining the ideological contents ad fate of a part...
2022
This book takes up the stimuli of new international historiography, albeit focusing mainly on the two regimes that undoubtedly provided the model for Fascist movements in Europe, namely the Italian and the German. Starting with a historiographical assessment of the international situation, vis-à-vis studies on Fascism and National Socialism, and then concentrate on certain aspects that are essential to any study of the two dictatorships, namely the complex relationships with their respective societies, the figures of the two dictators and the role of violence. This volume reaches beyond the time-frame encompassing Fascism and National Socialism experiences, directing the attention also toward the period subsequent to their demise. This is done in two ways. On the one hand, examining the uncomfortable architectural legacy left by dictatorships to the democratic societies that came after the war. On the other hand, the book addresses an issue that is very much alive both in the strictly historiographical and political science debate, that is to say, to what extent can the label of Fascism be used to identify political phenomena of these current times, such as movements and parties of the so-called populist and souverainist right.