Considering a number of recent works on the ideology and culture of Fascism, the article explores how the concept of utopia, as formulated by different thinkers, can prove useful in attempting to unlock some of the mechanisms through which Fascism sought to manipulate the imagination and the aspirations of Italians. It focuses on the written accounts of writers and journalists who reported on the supposed achievements of the regime both in Italy and in the newly established colonies. (...) It examines the cult of Rome, which was increasingly to become the symbolic language of Fascism, and explores how, in the writings of one journalist after another, the regime was represented as having recovered the powerful utopia of the ancient past. The article then looks at the kind of rhetoric that surrounded some of the most important building projects that took place in Italy in the 1930s. It suggests that the creation of a blueprint for an ideal society was central to this rhetoric and that the notion of the arrival in an earthly paradise was to form the master narrative for most representations of Mussolini's newly acquired African territories. The article then looks at some of the competing versions of utopia that were presented, albeit subliminally, in the official media of the time. It examines some of the dystopian images of the United States that were manufactured on the eve of the Second World War. It concludes by pointing to the violence and intolerance imbedded within the utopian project of Italian Fascism. (shrink)

Fascism, modernism and modernity -- The Jew as anti-artist : Georges Sorel and the aesthetics of the anti- Enlightenment -- La Cité française : Georges Valois, Le Corbusier and fascist theories of urbanism -- Machine primitives : Philippe Lamour and the fascist cult of youth -- Classical violence : Thierry Maulnier and the legacy of the Cercle Proudhon.

The idea of a Europe of its peoples, or a post-nation-state ‘regionalist Europe’, is largely applauded by radical democratic and post-colonial theorists who considered this development an antidote to nationalism. What is hardly heeded by liberal as well as left-wing intellectuals, however, is that several fascist and neo-fascist intellectuals during the inter-war and the post-war eras have also been attracted by the idea of a post-nation-state, ‘Europe des peoples’. By analyzing the complementary ideologies of two French intellectuals associated with (...) class='Hi'>fascism and post-war neo-fascism – Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Alain de Benoist – this article traces the attempts to shed new light onto some of the shortcomings embedded in the concept of the ‘Europe des peoples’. Building upon Drieu and de Benoist’s ideas on the future of Europe as a post-national exclusionist ‘Europe of the peoples’, this article sets an alert that a new type of ethnic exclusionism may be strengthened precisely with the end of old states nationalism. (shrink)

This book covers the fascist period in Italy and Giovanni Gentile as a man and his works.

Investigates the intent, method and structural unity of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles. The author of this study argues that the intended audience is Christian and that the subject is Christian wisdom.

In order to discuss the notion of presence, I explore Fascist Italy as an example of a presence-based culture. In the first part of this paper, I focus on the doctrines of "the philosopher of fascism," Giovanni Gentile , in order to show that his programme of cultural awakening revolves around the notion of the "presentification of the past." This notion formed the basis of Gentile's dialectic of the act of thought, which is the kernel of his actual (...) idealism, or actualism. I argue that actualism should primarily be interpreted as an ontology of a historical reality; it expresses the view that reality is history. In his 1914 inaugural "L'esperienza pura e la realtà storica" , Gentile drew this view to its ultimate consequence by developing a view of experience that has some striking parallels with the contemporary views of presence as expounded by Gumbrecht, Runia, and Ankermit. In the second part of my paper, I discuss how Gentile and his collaborators put presence into practice in school reforms, the Enciclopedia Italiana, and in hundreds of monuments, memorials, and exhibitions. Finally, I discuss the 1932 Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, which was not only the apex of Fascist culture politics, but also of the practice of presence. In this context, I argue that this practice should not be seen as a politics of historical interpretation, as Hayden White once held, but as a politics of sublime historical experience, or presence. The presence of presence in Fascist political culture raises some difficult questions for all who embrace the new paradigm, questions that can only be answered if the notion of presence is somehow balanced by the critical historical method, which is the basis for a true dialogue with the past. (shrink)

In a period in Italy in which the fascist “Ethical State” gave way to a lesser god, the ethical party, culture was transformed into a sort of political pedagogy. Bobbio insisted on the fact that the “first task of intellectuals ought to be to prevent the monopoly of force from becoming the monopoly of truth.” Today the ethical parties have disappeared, along with political pedagogy. Bobbio was aware of the reasons that make participatory democracy difficult: In complex societies citizens (...) are poorly informed judges regarding their own interests; hidden powers condition the visible choices; pluralism borders on corporatism and even on a modern version of feudalism; and, lastly, where mass individualism prevails, perception of the general interest appears increasingly distant and difficult. Consequently, we need a different relationship between culture and politics. (shrink)

This article deploys Spinoza’s ethic of joy alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s exposition of micropolitics to expose how fascist desires and affects bloom and circulate through digital communications ecosystems that generally promote a diffusion or decentralisation of power. Beyond the steady barrage of alt-right content conscientiously documented by liberal journalists and progressive watchdogs, a more persistent and widespread fascist impulse permeates the very forms of some of our most banal digitally mediated acts and encounters. Rather than a sole looming authoritarian figurehead, (...) the network itself – particularly with the new image paradigms propelled by apps such as Instagram and TikTok – has become the rallying point for the circulation of fascistic affects, burnished through the art and ethos of following: of rules, routines, protocols, accounts. I contend that a joyful passion accompanies much of this everyday experience of keeping up with one’s feeds, engaging the platforms, participating in the spectacles. This is what Sontag, interrogating the appeal of the Third Reich, calls the ‘joy of followers’, a joy in fascist belonging, which is to suggest that fascist movements thrive not only on the circulation of negative affects like hatred and fear, but also on the profusion of pleasure and affiliation. Deleuze’s Spinoza, resolutely anti-fascist, helps us parse this situation as it plays out in the social media sphere. Spinoza offers a bipartite conceptualisation of joy that allows us to diagnose the pleasures particular to fascist belonging and network belonging alike as passive, partial and indirect. Ultimately, what we today share with historical fascisms is a ubiquitous aesthetic that merges art with life and bodies with information, and a corresponding ethos that cultivates conformism, barbarises critical thought and redirects joyful impulses into reactionary social forms. As fascistic power relations spread anew through digital cultures’ newly evolving modes of visuality, hapticity, vibration and expression, one can observe something of what Deleuze calls ‘sad joy’, a sort of joy rooted in conquest and domination. The aim of this article is to root out such sad joys, to appreciate their appeal, and ultimately to reject them in all their various forms. (shrink)

This article, taking a social semiotic approach, analyses two pieces of music written, shared and exalted by two pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British Union of Fascists. These movements, both political and cultural, employed mythologies of unity, common identity and purpose in order to elide the realities of social distinction and political–economic inequalities between bourgeois and proletarian groups in capitalist societies. Visually and inter-personally, the fascist cultural project communicated a machine-like certainty about a vision for (...) a new society based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation. In this article, we are interested in the ways that these very same discourses are also communicated through sound and music in two songs: The Horst Wessel Lied and the BUF marching song, two songs that used the same melody. We analyse the discourses communicated by the semiotic choices made in melody, arrangements, sound qualities, rhythms as well as in lyrics. The article first identifies some of the underlying semiotic resources for meaning making in sound and then shows how these are used in order to communicate specific ideas, values and attitudes. (shrink)

In this work David Durst explores the development of modernism in the philosophy, politics, and culture of the first German Republic between 1918 and 1933. Through a reasoned critique of various Weimar intellectual figures such as Ernst Bloch, Martin Heidegger, and Theodor Adorno, Durst offers clarity and insight into the various aesthetic postures of the interwar period. From the cultural vibrancy of the early Weimar period to the eventual decay towards fascism and Nazi rule,Weimar Modernism provides a new (...) and coherent way to examine this important era, which has often been presented in a fragmented manner. (shrink)

The plot of the first three seasons of the Amazon Prime series The Boys, adapted from the graphic novel by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, makes direct comparisons between its superpowered protagonists, the Nazis, and the modern MAGA movement. As such, the series seems to be an argument from analogy that the modern MAGA movement is fascist. It is the goal of this chapter to examine that argument and evaluate its conclusion. In the end, we will see that the analogy (...) is strong, and that the modern MAGA movement is not even just “fascist adjacent.” Although the historical circumstances are different, the modern MAGA movement belongs to the family of fascist political ideologies, just as much as 1930s German Nazism. (shrink)

ExcerptIn 1929, at the height of the conciliation process between the Italian State and the Catholic Church, sealed by the Lateran Treaty, Pope Pius XI referred to Mussolini as the man “sent by providence.”1 Conversely, in 1938, right in the middle of the clash between the Holy See and the Fascist government over the racial problem, Pius XI would say: “Today there is a mutual declaration of war between the Prime Minister and us. Mussolini might even win on some battlefields, (...) but one day he will be considered just like those peoples who won a battle but lost the war.”2. (shrink)

The papers in this volume of Ernst Cassirer’s unpublished works give insight into the major issues that engaged Cassirer’s interest between 1935 and 1945. The book begins with his inaugural address at the University of Göteborg, Sweden, in the first years of his exile from Hitler’s Germany, and ends with a talk to the Columbia Philosophy Club. The note that introduces this piece was written on the day of his death. In his long and productive career, Ernst Cassirer always tried (...) to integrate his works of original philosophy and studies in intellectual history into a general understanding of the nature of myth, culture, and symbol. These essays show that his interest persisted to the end. His piece on Judaism and political myths is perhaps the most dramatic in this collection, as it blends philosophical coolness with his deeply felt outrage at fascism. Best known in this country for _The Myth of the State_, _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms_, and _An Essay on Man_, Ernst Cassirer has been read and studied by generations of students. In this book they will find illuminations, in a more informal voice, of the major themes in Cassirer’s work. New readers will be introduced to the great issues that occupied the interest of one of the twentieth century’s most widely read philosophers. “A genuine contribution to the history of modern philosophy – and of special value to the informed general reader, since it includes a number of valid attempts by Cassirer to translate his radical, sometimes difficult, concepts of culture into non-technical terms.” -- _The Booklist_. (shrink)

Marxist theory has always maintained that a strict continuity exists between liberalism and fascism, and has even proclaimed that there is a causal connection between the two. Therefore fascism comes to be portrayed as the ‘armed wing’ of the bourgeoisie. The Marxist thesis is weak for two reasons: first, because the connection between liberalism and fascism, though it doubtless exists, is considerably more complex, mediated and contradictory than it suggests; and second, because it axiomatically denies the revolutionary (...) nature of fascism, which despite what Marxists claim, represents a rupture with the liberal tradition and demonstrates a relative autonomy from it. In the case of Italy, this autonomy arises from the fact that Fascism was born from the turmoil surrounding the genesis, the course and the outcome of the Great War, and was fed by fragments of philosophies and political theories radically opposed to liberalism, democracy and Marxism (though not to socialism) which arose in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. A birth in such a turbulent cultural and political climate could not give rise to an internally consistent and coherent ideology. The theoretical works of philosophers such as Giovanni Gentile encouraged liberalism to fool itself into seeing in fascism an unruly brother who could be put to good use by opposing socialism. This delusion enabled the rise to power of Mussolini. The revolutionary side to Fascism could draw on Italian populism’s latent revolutionary tradition which developed in the 50 years following unification as a transfiguration of ideological currents which contributed to the Risorgimento but which had been defeated by Cavourian liberalism. These included Mazzinianism and a particular type of radical anti-monarchism. (shrink)

Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, and the (...) arts. (shrink)

In this new installation of his work, William E. Connolly examines entanglements between volatile earth processes and emerging cultural practices. He highlights relays between extractive capitalism, self-amplifying climate processes, migrations, democratic aspirations, and fascist dangers. In three interwoven essays, Connolly takes up thinkers in the "minor tradition" of European thought who, unlike Cartesians and Kantians, cross divisions between nature and culture. He first offers readings of Sophocles and Mary Shelley, asking whether close attention to the Anthropocene could perhaps have (...) arrived earlier had later humanists absorbed their lessons. He then joins Deleuze and Guattari's notion of an abstract machine with contemporary earth sciences, doing so to compare the Antique Little Ice Age in late Rome to relays today between extractive capitalism and accelerating climate processes. The final essay stages a dialogue between Alfred North Whitehead and Michel Foucault about the pursuit of truth during a time of planetary turbulence. With _Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth_, Connolly forges incisive interventions into key issues of our time. (shrink)

In 1924 the Fascist University was founded in Bologna. This essay reconstructs the foundation of this study centre, its cultural purposes and contacts with the academic world Giovanni Gentile had frequent relations with this cultural centre. On March 9th, 1930 he participated in a crowded lecture making a speech that was to remain unknown. It is published here and analyzed in relation to his complete works and the reactions aroused in Bologna and in the national cultural environments. The essay ends (...) with the circumstances that led to the closing of the Fascist University in 1933 and the consequences they caused. (shrink)

Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His penetrating critiques of the ways modern technology produces forms of society and culture with oppressive modes of social control indicate his enduring significance in the contemporary moment. This collection of unpublished or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts, and correspondence between 1942 and 1951, provides Marcuse's exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, and develops ideas that (...) can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. These papers vividly chronicle Marcuse's increasing, yet reluctant estrangement from Max Horkeimer, director of the Institute for Social Research and his years as an analyst with various U.S. government agencies. Marcuse's later attempts to link theory and practice in the 1960s and 1970s in regard to the New Left, National Liberation Movements and other new social movements were grounded in his work from the 1940s. As the 1940s witnessed the rise to global prominence of German fascism and its defeat in World War Two, and the emergence of the Cold War, Marcuse strived to preserve the radical vision of his youth during a difficult historical period while many turned toward more conservative positions. Precisely the sort of broad theoretical and political theorizing that Marcuse undertook througout his life is needed today to analyze the momentous changes that we are currently undergoing. Excerpt: Personal history is interwoven with intellectual and political events in these papers. We debated whether letters belonged here: whether some should be published at all. My father had a deep sense of personal privacy, both as a character trait and as a political expression of resistance to the commodification of the private. Yet the letters contain substantive discussions also. We could have edited out, expurgated some of the material. While not publishing every letter my father wrote, our selection was based on interest, and every letter that is included is included in full. That decision was in part painful for me personally. The juxtaposition of the letters to Horkeimer and the exchange with Heidegger highlights the point. --from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Nietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism? What can Nietzsche have in common with this murderous ideology? Frequently described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit, Nietzsche abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate an Übermensch endowed with exceptional mental qualities. What can such a thinker have in common with the fascistic manipulation of the masses for chauvinistic goals that crushed the autonomy of the individual? The question that lies at the heart of this collection is how Nietzsche came to (...) acquire the deadly "honor" of being considered the philosopher of the Third Reich and whether such claims had any justification. Does it make any sense to hold him in some way responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz? The editors present a range of views that attempt to do justice to the ambiguity and richness of Nietzsche's thought. First-rate contributions by a variety of distinguished philosophers and historians explore in depth Nietzsche's attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, Christianity, anti-Semitism, and National Socialism. They interrogate Nietzsche's writings for fascist and anti-Semitic proclivities and consider how they were read by fascists who claimed Nietzsche as their intellectual godfather. There is much that is disturbingly antiegalitarian and antidemocratic in Nietzsche, and his writings on Jews are open to differing interpretations. Yet his emphasis on individualism and contempt for German nationalism and anti-Semitism put him at stark odds with Nazi ideology. The Nietzsche that emerges here is a tragic prophet of the spiritual vacuum that produced the twentieth century's totalitarian movements, the thinker who best diagnosed the pathologies of fin-de-siècle European culture. Nietzsche dared to look into the abyss of modern nihilism. This book tells us what he found. The contributors are Menahem Brinker, Daniel W. Conway, Stanley Corngold, Kurt Rudolf Fischer, Jacob Golomb, Robert C. Holub, Berel Lang, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Alexander Nehamas, David Ohana, Roderick Stackelberg, Mario Sznajder, Geoffrey Waite, Robert S. Wistrich, and Yirmiyahu Yovel. (shrink)

In _Archaism and Actuality_ eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation of capitalism and fascism in Japan as a prime example of the uneven development of capitalism. He applies his theorization of subsumption to examine how capitalism integrates and redirects preexisting social, cultural, and economic practices to guide the present. This subsumption leads to a global condition in which states and societies all exist within different stages and manifestations of capitalism. Drawing on Japanese philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka (...) Jun, Marxist theory, and Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution, Harootunian shows how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and its program dedicated to transforming the country into a modern society exemplified a unique path to capitalism. Japan’s capitalist expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rise as an imperial power, and subsequent transition to fascism signal a wholly distinct trajectory into modernity that forecloses any notion of a pure or universal development of capitalism. With _Archaism and Actuality_, Harootunian offers both a retheorization of capitalist development and a reinterpretation of epochal moments in modern Japanese history. (shrink)

Some fashionable leftist movements and populist intellectuals habitually blame the sources of information for public ignorance about the miserable state of the world. It could be argued, however, that the masses are ignorant because they prefer ignorance. A mass individual is politically apathetic and intellectually lazy. As a result, even when huge amounts of information are available, which is the case in this epoch, the masses insist on choosing ignorance. It is true that there is not enough information about what (...) has happened in a place such as Darfur, but the masses choose not to access even the amount of information that is available. The great majority of people in China, Iran, and America, despite the fact that they have varying amounts of access to various types of “knowledge,” still tend to be misinformed. It seems that a mass individual is curious only about what directly affects his/her own personal life. I will explore the connection between mass mentality and the culture industry in order to capture the essential role of the former in the latter. I will also argue that a mass individual is the source of fascism although fascism as a phenomenon needs a mass culture in which to flourish. (shrink)

There is an affinity between the politics that might be derived from Nietzsche's philosophy and the politics of fascism. Nietzsche favours elitism, he is not wholly averse to the use of cruelty as a means of achieving political ends, he is prepared to break decisively with the past and recommends an anti-Christian ethos. Those things in Nietzsche's philosophy which appear to denote the arbitrariness of civilisation might be picked on by a person of a fascist disposition. What they arguably (...) would not pick on is Nietzsche's dislike of nationalism, his scepticism about the state, and his pan-Europeanism. Also they might not find too congenial his interest in culture, his apparent love of scholarship and his plea for the uniqueness of the individual. (shrink)

This essay argues that, just like liberalism and communism, fascist ideology was based on a specific philosophy of history articulated by Giovanni Gentile in the aftermath of World War I. Gentile’s actualist notion that history “belongs to the present” articulated an immanent vision of the relationship between historical agency, representation, and consciousness against all transcendental conceptions of history. I define this vision as historic because it translated the popular notion of historic eventfulness into the idea of the reciprocal immanence of (...) the historical and the historiographical act. I further show that the actualist philosophy of history was historically resonant with the Italian experience of the Great War and was culturally modernist. I insist, however, that the actualist catastrophe of the historical act was also genealogically connected to the Latin-Catholic rhetorical signification of “presence” that had sustained the development of Italian visual culture for centuries. Accordingly, I argue that the fascist translation of actualism into a historic imaginary was at the root of Italian fascism’s appeal to both masses and intellectuals. Fascism presented itself as a historic agent that not only “made history,” but also made it present to mass consciousness. In fact, I conclude by suggesting that the fascist success in institutionalizing a proper mode of historic representation in the 1920s, and a full-blown historic culture in the 1930s, may have also constituted a fundamental laboratory for the formation of posthistoric imaginaries. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse's critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of (...) Marcuse's thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in _Technology, War and Facism_ provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. _Technology, War and Fascism_ is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

In this article, Brzozowski’s much discussed connections with fascism are reconsidered in the context of interpretations of fascism by Sternhell and Gentile. At the end of his life, Brzozowski tried to reconcile socialism and nationalism. He criticized orthodox Marxism and liberal democracy, underlined the political and cultural importance of the nation, praised irrationalism, strength, imperialism, heroism, asceticism, the labourer and the soldier as ideal attitudes with regard to the world. He wanted to turn Poland into a modern nation, (...) but feared some consequences of modernity. Brzozowski’s ambivalent attitude towards modernity precludes finding an adequate description for them, in particular in the Polish and Central European context, although his concepts were similar to those of some of his contemporaries from France or Italy, such as Georges Sorel or the “La Voce” group, as well as “antimoderns” as described by Antoine Compagnon. At present labels such as “fascism” or even “proto-fascism” seem to be too ambiguous to grasp the originality of Brzozowski’s thinking. The Polish thinker’s case suggests a reconsideration of Sternhell’s thesis that Eastern-European Marxism remained loyal to the Heglian, rationalist, and materialist essence of Marxism. (shrink)

My contribution to this series of articles in Telos is not that of an historian or a social theorist, and it does not deal with totalitarianism in anything other than a rather spectral sense. To this extent, it might seem a little out of place. This essay concerns itself not with the analysis of a specific historical society that might (or might not) be characterized as totalitarian, but with the way in which a certain sense of the totalitarian has shaped (...) the self-understanding of liberal Western popular culture. It starts from two very different points. At the level of theory,…. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse's critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of (...) Marcuse's thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in _Technology, War and Facism_ provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. _Technology, War and Fascism_ is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

They envisioned a brave new world, and what they got was fascism. As vibrant as its counterparts in Paris, Munich, and Milan, the avant-garde of Florence rose on a wave of artistic, political, and social idealism that swept the world with the arrival of the twentieth century. How the movement flourished in its first heady years, only to flounder in the bloody wake of World War I, is a fascinating story, told here for the first time. It is the (...) history of a whole generation's extraordinary promise--and equally extraordinary failure. The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical ideals of Croce and Gentile, the politics of Italian socialism: all these strains flowed together to buoy the emerging avant-garde in Florence. Walter Adamson shows us the young artists and writers caught up in the intellectual ferment of their time, among them the poet Giovanni Papini, the painter Ardengo Soffici, and the cultural critic Giuseppe Prezzolini. He depicts a generation rejecting provincialism, seeking spiritual freedom in Paris, and ultimately blending the modernist style found there with their own sense of toscanità or "being Tuscan." In their journals--Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and l'Italia futurista--and in their cafe life at the Giubbe Rosse, we see the avant-garde of Florence as citizens of an intellectual world peopled by the likes of Picasso, Bergson, Sorel, Unamuno, Pareto, Weininger, and William James. We witness their mounting commitment to the ideals of regenerative violence and watch their existence become increasingly frenzied as war approaches. Finally, Adamson shows us the ultimate betrayal of the movement's aspirations as its cultural politics help catapult Italy into war and prepare the way for Mussolini's rise to power. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse's critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of (...) Marcuse's thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in Technology, War and Facism provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. Technology, War and Fascism is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

This article deals with the role of the political print media popular with communists in Mexico when anti-fascism became the code for the behaviour of democratic forces in the face of the provocation of Hitler’s fascism. Under the facade of anti-fascist unity, the German-speaking communist exiles established a publishing culture, from which Hannes Meyer and Lena Meyer-Bergner, who had come to Mexico from Soviet exile and who committed themselves to proletarian internationalism, soon separated or were excluded. Independent (...) of the group, they developed strategies in accord ance with their anti-imperialist mission, from propaganda media for the Soviet state to the implementation of a sign language that would enable communication across borders: the International System of Typographic Picture Education (Isotype). The goal of my analysis is to provide a starting point for classifying Meyer and Meyer-Bergner’s work in print media, beyond the extensively researched Taller de Gráfica Popular context, but within the polarization of international opposition to fascism and totalitarian regimes during the Second World War. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Dark Arts of Politics:Aesthetics and Engineering in Nazism and FascismJonathan AllenThe Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, by Eric Michaud, translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 271 pp.Building Fascism, Communism, and Liberal Democracy: Gaetano Ciocca—Architect, Inventor, Farmer, Writer, Engineer, by Jeffrey T. Schnapp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 291 pp.Despite their obvious centrality to the history of the twentieth century, sixty years after the (...) defeat of the Axis powers fascism and Nazism remain elusive phenomena, hard to define with any real clarity. Scholars wrangle not only over the identification of their central characteristics but also over whether the similarities between fascism and Nazism are close enough to justify considering them as parts of a single category. A growing number of studies, however, ranging from general histories such as Norman Davies's Europe: A History and Mark Mazower's Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, to more specialized works such as Zeev Sternhell's Neither Left Nor Right and Robert Paxton's fine The Anatomy of Fascism, argue the case for treating fascism and Nazism together.1 A mark of all of these books is their willingness to give serious attention to fascist ideologies and to the interactions between these ideologies and fascist practice and culture. This interest, in turn, makes it necessary to examine anew broader questions about the relations between fascism and the circumstances and attitudes of modern life.The two works under consideration here—The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, by Eric Michaud, and Building Fascism, Communism, and Liberal Democracy, by Jeffrey T. Schnapp—share the growing concern to take seriously fascist ideology and culture as essential to an understanding of the movement. Michaud sets out to present an analysis of Nazi myth, which he argues was constructed with reference to two models: art and Christianity (xii). His immensely erudite study relates Nazi conceptions of the leader to Romantic views of genius and Christian doctrines concerning the role of the Savior. This allows him to present a distinctive view of Nazi ideology, one that relates it to themes and debates that have figured prominently in the history of European culture and belief. [End Page 113]Schnapp, on the other hand, focuses on the career of a single man—Gaetano Ciocca. Though Ciocca is now an obscure figure, unlikely to be familiar even to most students of fascism, Schnapp argues that his career deserves attention for several reasons. In the first place, he "strove to translate a fascist politics into the language of modern technics in the domains of architecture, urbanism, theater design, animal husbandry, drainage and transportation systems" (7). What is more, Ciocca was no power-hungry opportunist but rather a committed and reflective intellectual, who spent much of his time writing books and articles aimed at explaining and justifying his various projects to a general audience. Last but not least, though Ciocca's passionate commitment to fascism cooled as World War II wore on, this had no visible effect on his engineering projects. In the aftermath of the war, Ciocca presented himself as a nonpolitical "rebuilder" concerned to provide for popular need. In this guise, he served Italy's postwar liberal democracy as enthusiastically as he had previously devoted his projects to the cause of fascism. Ciocca thus presents us with an intriguing puzzle: a committed and reflective fascist intellectual—no Eichmann, Schnapp insists—who was nevertheless able to function equally effectively after the demise of the fascist regime. Schnapp argues that Ciocca's career forces us to examine with care the complex relations between technologies and political ideologies. In fact, I think it compels us to consider more general questions about the extent to which Ciocca's conception of himself as a modernizing technocrat could be equally at home in the political contexts of fascism and a certain kind of elite-centered liberal democracy. Schnapp hints at this issue at several moments but does not address it in a sustained way.Though there have been some notable exceptions, most studies of Nazism in particular have tended to gravitate toward one of two explanatory options. The first, more common in philosophical circles, has been to view... (shrink)