Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed decisively on the world stage. Having banished ...fascism in World War II, liberalism had now buried communism, and the result would be an end of major ideological conflicts, as liberal norms and institutions spread to every corner of the globe. With the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the resurgence of right-wing populist parties across the European continent, and the surprising ascent of Donald Trump to the American presidency, such hopes have begun to seem hopelessly naïve. The far right is back, and serious rethinking is in order.In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life. Beiner contends that Nietzsche's hatred and critique of bourgeois, egalitarian societies has engendered new disciples on the populist right who threaten to overturn the modern liberal consensus. Heidegger, no less than Nietzsche, thoroughly rejected the moral and political values that arose during the Enlightenment and came to power in the wake of the French Revolution. Understanding Heideggerian dissatisfaction with modernity, and how it functions as a philosophical magnet for those most profoundly alienated from the reigning liberal-democratic order, Beiner argues, will give us insight into the recent and unexpected return of the far right.Beiner does not deny that Nietzsche and Heidegger are important thinkers; nor does he seek to expel them from the history of philosophy. But he does advocate that we rigorously engage with their influential thought in light of current events—and he suggests that we place their severe critique of modern liberal ideals at the center of this engagement.
The legal scholarship of the National Socialist and Fascist period of the 20th century and its subsequent reverberation throughout European law and legal tradition has recently become the focus of ...intense scholarly discussion. This volume presents theoretical,historical and legal inquiries into the legacy of National Socialism and Fascism written by a group of the leading scholars in this field. Their essays are wide-ranging, covering the reception of National Socialist and Fascist ideologies into legal scholarship; contemporary perceptions of Nazi Law in the Anglo-American world; parallels and differences among authoritarian regimes in the Third Reich, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Vichy-France; how formerly authoritarian countries have dealt with their legal antecedents; continuities and discontinuities in legal thought in private law, public law, labour law, international and European law; and the legal profession’s endogenous obedience and the pains of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The majority of the contributions were first presented at a conference at the EUI in the autumn of 2000, the others in subsequent series of seminars.
The paper aims to reflect on the differentiated, polysemic and multidimensional character of the Fascist State, starting from the examination of some of the categories used by the legal science of ...the period to define it. The analysis concerns in particular the terms totalitarian state, strong state, ethical state, corporative state, nation-state, people-state, party-state. Following the theoretical debate that grew up around the different attributions of the state, the often fragmented and conceptually indefinite contours of Fascist state doctrine are traced. Each conceptual cluster considered describes an aspect of the tumultuous historical-political experience of Fascism and suggests thinking of Mussolini's State as a constellation of themes, ideas and discourses around which the regime developed its own self-definition. Il contributo si propone di riflettere sul carattere variegato, polisemico e multidimensionale dello Stato fascista, a partire dall'esame di alcune delle categorie utilizzate dalla scienza giuridica del tempo per definirlo. L'analisi riguarda in particolare i lemmi Stato totalitario, Stato forte, Stato etico, Stato corporativo, Stato-nazione, Stato-popolo, Stato partito. Seguendo il dibattito dottrinale cresciuto intorno alle diverse attribuzioni dello Stato, si ripercorrono i contorni spesso sfrangiati e concettualmente indefiniti della dottrina dello Stato fascista. Ogni nucleo concettuale considerato descrive un aspetto della tumultuosa esperienza storico-politica del fascismo e suggerisce di pensare lo Stato mussoliniano come una costellazione di temi, idee e discorsi intorno a cui il regime ha sviluppato la propria autonarrazione. Parole chiave / Keywords: Stato, Nazione, Popolo, Partito, Corporativismo / State, Nation, People, Party, Corporatism.
Over the past 15 years, the project of advanced European integration has followed a complex secular and cosmopolitan agenda. As that agenda has evolved, however, so have various hard-line populist ...movements with goals diametrically opposed to the ideals of a harmonious European Union. Spearheaded by figures such as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the controversial leader of France's National Front party, these radical movements have become increasingly influential and, because of their philosophical affinities with fascism and national socialism--politically worrisome.
InIntegral Europe,anthropologist Douglas Holmes posits that such movements are philosophically rooted in integralism, a sensibility that, in its most benign form, enables people to maintain their ethnic identity and solidarity within the context of an increasingly pluralistic society. Taken to irrational extremes by people like Le Pen, integralism is being used to inflame people's feelings of alienation and powerlessness, the by-products of impersonal, transnational "fast-capitalism." The consequences are an invidious politics of exclusion that spawns cultural nationalism, racism, and social disorder.
The analysis moves from northern Italy to Strasbourg and Brussels, the two venues of the European Parliament, and finally to the East End of London. This multi-sited ethnography provides critical perspective on integralism as a form of intimate cultural practice and a violent idiom of estrangement. It combines a wide-ranging review of modern and historical scholarship with two years of field research that included personal interviews with right-wing activists, among them Le Pen and neo-Nazis in inner London. Fascinating, provocative, and sobering,Integral Europeoffers a rare inside look at one of modern Europe's most unsettling political trends.
The first book to present an analysis of Arab response to fascism and Nazism from the perspectives of both individual countries and the Arab world at large, this collection problematizes and ...ultimately deconstructs the established narratives that assume most Arabs supported fascism and Nazism leading up to and during World War II. Using new source materials taken largely from Arab memoirs, archives, and print media, the articles reexamine Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi responses in the 1930s and throughout the war.While acknowledging the individuals, forces, and organizations that did support and collaborate with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism focuses on the many other Arab voices that identified with Britain and France and with the Allied cause during the war. The authors argue that many groups within Arab societies—elites and non-elites, governing forces, and civilians—rejected Nazism and fascism as totalitarian, racist, and, most important, as new, more oppressive forms of European imperialism. The essays in this volume argue that, in contrast to prevailing beliefs that Arabs were de facto supporters of Italy and Germany—since "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"—mainstream Arab forces and currents opposed the Axis powers and supported the Allies during the war. They played a significant role in the battles for control over the Middle East.
Review of: The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, Giles Tremlett (2020)London: Bloomsbury, 720 pp.,ISBN 978-1-40885-398-6, h/bk, £30.00ISBN 978-1-52664-454-1, e-book, ...£11.99
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A range of international contributors uncover and reflect upon the anti- and non-fascist ethics situated in Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical framework and that of the scholarship that followed ...after. The 'new philosophy' that Deleuze and Guattari propose to us is engaged and situated and it asks us to map urgent issues, not by opposing ourselves to it, but by mapping how it is part of the everyday, and of ourselves. The global rise of fascism today demands a rigid and careful analysis. The concepts and themes that Deleuze (and Guattari) handed to us in their extensive oeuvre can be of immense help in capturing its micropolitics and macropolitics.
All of the contributions in this volume have a keen eye on the practices of fascism today, meaning that they all show us, very much in line with Deleuze's thinking, how fascism works. The book is organized in three parts. The first part (twenty-first century fascisms) focuses on the global threats technologies and algorithmic realities; the second part (situated fascisms) holds analyses of fascisms at work in different parts of the contemporary world; the third part deals with patriarchal fascism and offers concrete case-studies of sexualized and genderized modes of oppression.
The Oxford Handbook of Fascism explores the way in which fascism is understood by contemporary scholarship, as well as pointing to areas of continuing dispute and discussion. From a focus on Italy ...as, chronologically at least, the ‘first Fascist nation’, the contributors cover a wide range of countries, from Nazi Germany and the comparison with Soviet Communism to fascism in Yugoslavia and its successor states. The book also examines the roots of fascism before 1914 and its survival, whether in practice or in memory, after 1945. The analysis looks at both fascist ideas and practice, and at the often uneasy relationship between the two. The book is not designed to provide any final answers to the fascist problem and no quick definition emerges from its pages. Readers, instead, will find historical debate. On appropriate occasions, the authors disagree with each other and have not been forced into any artificial ‘consensus’, offering readers the chance to engage with the debates over a phenomenon that, more than any other single factor, led humankind into the catastrophe of the Second World War.
This seminal book challenges the common assumption that fascism is a misogynist movement which has tended to exclude women. Using examples from Germany, Italy and France, Durham analyses the rise of ...women in fascist organizations across Europe from the early twenties to the present. Unusually, however, the author focuses on British fascism and in doing so he offers valuable new perspectives on fascist attitudes to women. Offering interesting examples of women training in armed combat, and more generally as voters and members of fascist organizations, he highlights women's relationship to fascist policies on birth rate, abortion and eugenics.
This thesis examines the image of Great Britain in Fascist Italy. It traces the roots of Fascist Anglophobia in the Great War and in the peace treaties, where Britain was seen by many Italians as a ...'false friend' who was also the main obstacle between Italy and its foreign policy aspirations. The Fascist movement and Mussolini embraced such views. While at times dormant, the Anglophobic sentiment did not disappear in the years that followed, and was later rekindled during the Ethiopian War. This thesis demonstrates that the peculiarly Fascist contribution to the assessment of Britain was ideological. Since the mid-1920s, the regime's intellectuals saw Fascism as the answer to a crisis in the Western world and as irredeemably opposed to Western civilization of the sort exemplified by Britain. Britain was described as having failed the 'problem of labour', framing Fascism as a salvation ideology, which nations would either embrace or face decay. The Great Depression strengthened such a mind-set and, although by the mid-1930s it was clear that it would not turn into a Fascist country, the perception of Britain as a decaying and feeble nation increased. The consequence was a consistent underrating of British power and resolve to resist Italian ambitions. This tendency was so pervasive among the Fascist elite that anti-British views shaped the reports of military attaches in the late 1930s while others sought ways to explain Britain's decline in racial terms. Furthermore, the analysis of the popular reception of the Fascist discourse shows that the tendency to underrate Britain had permeated large sectors of the Italian people, and that public opinion was more hostile to Britain than previously thought. Indeed, in some quarters hatred towards the British lasted until the end of the Second World War.
