The recent political developments in the Philippines require a reevaluation of the nature of the State under the Rodrigo Duterte regime. Just years ago, scholars illustrated the regime of Duterte to be a populist, illiberal, or authoritarian one. But since then, and especially during the pandemic, a lot of things have changed. In this paper, I will argue that Duterte’s regime is a fascist one. Unlike how Walden Bello characterized Duterte as a fascist original, a characterization laden with theoretical inconsistencies (...) and practical difficulties, I will develop a concept of fascism proper to the neoliberal and semi-colonial conditions of the Philippines. I will likewise trace the rise, development, and stabilization of the regime’s fascism. The discussion will be supported and illuminated by some illustrative examples taken from the experience of the mass movement in Cebu. (shrink)

Despite the recent rise in studies that approach fascism as a transnational phenomenon, the links between fascism and internationalist intellectual currents have only received scant attention. This book explores the political thought of Bertrand de Jouvenel and Alfred Fabre-Luce, two French intellectuals, journalists and political writers who, from 1930 to the mid-1950s, moved between liberalism, fascism and Europeanism. Daniel Knegt argues that their longing for a united Europe was the driving force behind this ideological transformation-and that we (...) can see in their thought the earliest stages of what would become neoliberalism. (shrink)

While the mainstreaming of the far right is attracting growing scholarly interest based on its contemporary relevance, the role that far-right self-representation strategies play in this process has seen limited engagement. In this article, we argue that far-right actors employ a post-fascist logic to bring their ideas closer to the mainstream. This logic rests on a dual message, whereby they attempt to outwardly distance themselves from fascism while at the same time recontextualising fascist ideas. To explore these dynamics, we (...) use a mixed-methods approach to discourse analysis to examine far-right social media posts during the 2022 Italian general election. Taking all Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts during the official campaigning period from the party and leader accounts of Lega per Salvini Premier and Fratelli d’Italia, we explored articulations of the post-fascist dyad within this context. Our findings underscore how both far-right parties ridiculed accusations of fascism and depicted themselves as ‘centre-right’, yet they commonly used fascist dog-whistles and violent anti-immigration discourse to construct a broader conspiracy narrative and portray themselves as Italy's saviour. While Italy proves a paradigmatic case, this research has wider implications for the need to explore the relationship between self-representation and mainstreaming. (shrink)

The article offers an overview and a critical assessment of the work of Zeev Sternhell, focussing on the questions of fascism and of the anti-Enlightenment tradition. It claims that the career of the Israeli historian revolves around the intuition of a history of European modernity marked by a central opposition: that between the Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment. I show how the idea is already present in his initial works, and argue that it produces a specific kind of intellectual history, (...) concerned with the unity of traditions over large temporal horizons. I claim that it has the advantage of offering an historically grounded reading of fascism which nonetheless is capable to account for its emergence in apparently very dissimilar contexts. After having examined some of the shortcomings of this approach, I offer an historical explanation for the type of intellectual history practiced by Sternhell, arguing that it must be tied to his political activism in Israel. (shrink)

This chapter relates post-1918 Italy to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the ascent of the successor states, and analyses, from the Trieste’s vantage point, fascist projects, practices and networks of ‘empire’ in the Adriatic Sea, in Mitteleuropa and in the Balkans between 1918 and 1938. It focuses on three connected aspects. Firstly, the northern Adriatic was the first setting of the ascent of squadrismo, a model of violent action against ‘enemies within’ then replicated elsewhere. Secondly, Italian nationalism and (...) imperialism aimed to reconfigure the post-Habsburg economic space and to reconnect the Adriatic with Central and Balkan Europe. Thirdly, Italian nationalist (then Fascist) élites from Trieste played a critical role, by boosting processes of empire-building and defending Austria vis-à-vis the prospects of Anschluss. In sum, the Habsburg legacies kept on shaping the dynamics of Italianization and fascistization in northern Adriatic and on feeding the search for Italy’s informal empire in Central and Southeastern Europe. (shrink)

"As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don't have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism's roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on (...) the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics--the language and beliefs that separate people into an 'us' and a 'them.' He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation's past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics--charged by rhetoric and myth--can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."--Jacket. (shrink)

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)

Most theorisations of fascism, Marxist and otherwise, have taken for granted its idolatry of the state and phobia of freedom. This analytical common sense has also inhibited the identification of continuities with contemporary movements of the far Right, with their libertarian and anti-statist affectations, not to mention their embeddedness in neoliberal policies and subjectivities. Drawing on a range of diverse sources – from Johann Chapoutot’s histories of Nazi intellectuals to Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s theorisation of the anti-state state, and from (...) Marcuse’s explorations of fascist competitive individualism to debates on neoliberal authoritarianism – this essay sketches the counter-intuitive but disturbingly timely image of a fascism enamoured of freedom and at odds with the state. (shrink)

This article theorises the contemporary convergence of neoliberal and fascist principles by examining the thought of political actors in the 1930s and 1940s who were active in both neoliberal and fascist organisations. I suggest that a sympathy for fascism formed a minor but significant strand of early neoliberal thought, and that unpacking the logics that led particular thinkers and political actors to believe that fascism was compatible with neoliberalism can shed light on the contemporary political moment. Based on (...) my reading of early ‘neoliberal fascists’, I theorise three points of convergence. The first was a belief that socialism had to be opposed by all possible means, including violence and the repression of popular democracy. The second was a racialized understanding of the underpinnings of the market economy, leading to an acceptance of the necessity of racial exclusion. Thirdly, both fascist and neoliberal thinkers believed that patriarchy was a necessary feature for the reproduction of capitalism, and hence that traditional gender roles had to be preserved against pressures for social change. In theorising this convergence, I also gesture to how the overlap of neoliberalism and fascism can be witnessed in the contemporary milieu, with a focus on the libertarian Mises Institute. (shrink)

This paper will investigate the intersection between fascism and social media communication. Drawing from Christian Fuchs’s notion of digital fascism and placing it in dialogue with other Marxist literature, the paper will argue that the state retains a centering role in the organization of fascism as against the post-organizational position which highlights its ambivalent, fluid, and decentered character. The paper will further argue that the propagandistic character of fascism requires it to instrumentalize technical specifications of communications (...) technologies. What (digital) fascism instrumentalizes today is what will be developed as the omnipresence of communication, primarily supported by the complexities of today’s internet powered social media. The paper will examine fascism as it has taken place in the Duterte-Marcos Jr. fascist continuity in the Philippines. The paper will conclude by proposing a kind of anti- fascism that goes beyond the ecosystems of the social media, reiterating both technical as well as socio-political transformations required to overcome fascism. (shrink)

Arthur Rosenberg’s remarkable essay, first published in 1934, was probably the most incisive historical analysis of the origins of fascism to emerge from the revolutionary Left in the interwar years. In contrast to the official Comintern line that fascism embodied the power of finance-capital, Rosenberg saw fascism as a descendant of the reactionary mass-movements of the late-nineteenth century. Those movements encompassed a new breed of nationalism that was ultra-patriotic, racist and violently opposed to the Left, and prefigured (...) fascism in all these ways. What was distinctive about the fascists in Italy and Germany was not so much their ideology as the use of stormtroopers to wage the struggle against democracy in more decisive and lethal ways. After the broad historical sweep of its first part, the essay looks at the factors that were peculiar to the Italian and German situations respectively, highlighting both the rôle of the existing authorities in encouraging the fascists and the wider class-appeal of the fascist parties themselves, beyond any supposed restriction to the middle-class or ‘petty bourgeoisie’. (shrink)

Security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting exclusionary practices, and exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. This article explores the political dangers that lie in this connection, dangers which open the door to a fascist mobilization in the name of security. To do so the article first asks: what happens to our understanding of fascism if we view it through the lens of security? But then a far more interesting question emerges: what happens to our understanding of (...) security if we view it through the lens of fascism? Out of these questions it is suggested that the central issue might be less a question of "security and exclusion" and much more a question of "security and extermination.". (shrink)

Controversy has long surrounded the complex relationship between King Victor Emmanuel III and the dictator Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy. It is clear that the king played decisive roles in bringing Mussolini to power in 1922 and in removing him in 1943. In between, the two coexisted as Italy became a ‘dyarchy’, with two foci of power. The presence of the monarchy at once checked Fascist radicalism and persuaded many conservatives to adhere to the regime. Thanks especially to the monarchy, (...) the innovative thrust of Fascism was channelled in certain delimited directions, toward a statist economy, for example. Still, the relationship between the crown and Mussolini was often rocky, though the king’s reluctance did not prevent alliance with Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism, and war. Tensions were largely papered over by rhetoric and myth-making, as if the elements of Fascism fit together neatly. Despite his opposition to certain particulars, Victor Emmanuel identified with the overall Fascist project to some extent, and he worried that outright opposition to the regime would jeopardize the monarchy. But as the Second World War went badly for Italy, the king finally deposed Mussolini. Nevertheless, Italy soon voted to eliminate the monarchy, discredited by its association with fascism. (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)

Makes a case for the power of music and sound in the face of fascistic forces, from modernism to the present.

This essay describes some of the literary, psychological, and historical causes of Russia’s war in Ukraine (2022) based on observations of the national character found in the fiction of Aleksandr Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky and in philosophical and psychological essays of Petr Chaadaev, Sergei Askol’dov, and Sigmund Freud. The political ideology that stands behind the war can be characterized as schizofascism, or schizophrenic fascism that embraces the contradiction between archaic myths, chauvinism, and xenophobia, on the one hand, and corruption (...) and cynicism, on the other. Citing the controversial results of sociological polls indicating both Russians’ aspiration for friendship with Ukraine and their support for the aggressive war, the author explores the deep ambivalence inherent in the psychology of Russians as historical successors of the Golden Horde and the Moscovite State, incorporating the legacy of nomadism, militarism, messianism, and autarky. (shrink)

In the current political landscape fascism is on the rise and the threat to democracy is imperiled both as an ideal and promise (DiMaggio, 2022; Hedges, 2022b; Street, 2022). A number of Republican...

This essay introduces Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism to illuminate how history teachers may invoke a critique of the past and present through democratizing the production of knowledge in the classroom. Historical materialism gives students access to the means of knowledge production and entrusts them with the task of generating a critique of politics though encounters with historical objects. The rise of the alt-right, alternative facts, and fake news sites necessitates social studies methods that intervene into the fascist seductions of narrative (...) in history. A Benjaminian pedagogy emphasizes reading practices that acknowledge the political layers of history inscribed within the objects. This generates space for forms of pessimism and dialectic critiques of barbarism that students may experience with history beyond the teacher’s capacity for understanding. In the name of democracy over fascism, the article adds a political critique to students’ historical and critical thinking skills. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper seeks an integral part of the two concepts of the political theorist William E. Connolly's ‘aspirational fascism’ and the intellectual historian Enzo Traverso's ‘postfascism’, thereby revealing the conceptual relevance of each concept. Its primary purpose is to give details of why movements as depicted by these concepts should be categorised as postfascism, rather than as aspirational fascism, and thereby to unravel these movements that have prospered in advanced countries under liberal democracy. Since fascism emerged (...) in the first half of the twentieth century, many prominent scholars, including the two aforementioned theorists, have been engaged in its discourse. In the light of a comparative analysis, I argue that although Connolly's aspirational fascism works by deciphering certain far-right movements, it has severe conceptual difficulties. Finally, I conclude that theorists should prefer to use Traverso's postfascism in that it captures the essence of broader far-right and authoritarian political movements in the West and is more convincing due to its accurate understanding of the key elements of those movements in liberal democracies in terms of involuntary and unconscious practice, rather than in strategical terms. (shrink)

In the first volume to place Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy in the context of contemporary fascism, international contributors uncover and reflect upon the anti- and non-fascist ethics situated in their 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 (21st 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. (shrink)

This Introduction to Rosenberg’s essay starts with a brief synopsis of his life, then summarises the key arguments of the essay itself before looking briefly at the twin issues of the social base of the fascist parties and the passive complicity/compliance of ‘ordinary Germans’, as the literature now terms whole sectors of the civilian population that were defined by their apathy or moral indifference to the horrors of the Nazi state.

This is an attempt to clarify the nature of extreme, or complete, “wokeness” in its modern sense. The central thesis is that it is an inverted form of fascism, and thereby even worse than some of its critics assume. In fact, it is far worse than ordinary fascism whether or not it is correct to see it as an inverted form. As this is a thesis, it is not a definition. Therefore, this thesis could certainly be mistaken. But (...) if it is, then sound criticisms of the explanation would be needed to refute it. (shrink)

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts, Edited by R. Bessel, (Cambridge University Press, 1996) 242 pp. £35 cloth, £12.95 paper. The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy. By E. Gentile (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996). 208 pp. $49.95 cloth.

Using the literary work of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Italian Futurist movement and an early associate of Mussolini, the author explores the point of contact between a "progressive" aesthetic practice and a "reactionary" political ideology.

The recent increased prominence of far-right movements and nationalism has led to a renewed focus on the political thought of the early twentieth century. This era is defined by large strands of anti-liberalism, fascism, communism, and other political inclinations and practices that have largely fallen out of favour. Nevertheless, there are a multitude of thinkers that occupy unique niches that avoid these classifications but are associated with these movements to categorise and minimise their heterogeneous thoughts. This paper counters arguments (...) that claim that Georges Bataille is a fascist or left-fascist thinker. Specifically, these arguments claim that his “anarchism” is founded on a valorisation of violence and reckless usage of social effectivities. However, these arguments often misinterpret his writings or force his thought into easily understandable categories in which it does not fit. (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)

The general question underlying this article is whether it is possible to turn a paradox into a productive principle. The article approaches this question through Adorno’s and Dainotto’s analyses of the jazz movement in fascist Italy. Jazz was marked by a specific paradox: on the one hand, it was banned due to its African American roots, and as such did not adhere to or glorify the Italian tradition; on the other hand, jazz served very well to protect the nationalist interests (...) in the light of the nascent mass movements. Against the backdrop of these analyses, the article proposes two distinct paradigms of exception: the logic of count till all and the logic of count till none. (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)

ExcerptThe debate about persecutory Fascist legislation, in its anti-Jewish and racial-colonial1 articulation, has represented one of the most innovative branches of historical research in Italy in the last twenty years.2 In 1988, the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of anti-Jewish legislation marked the symbolic beginning of fruitful studies on the racial character of Fascism. It allowed the integration, development, and refinement of the research carried out for a long time only by Renzo De Felice and Meir (...) Michaelis.3The actual enforcement of persecutory legislation, especially against the Italian Jewish minority, has been an object of detailed study…. (shrink)

In the interwar years the Gran Paradiso ibex population followed two subsequent, contrasting trends: a steady rise once the national park was established in 1922, followed by a precipitous fall after the Fascist regime took direct control of conservation in 1934, which almost led to the colony’s extinction. This paper addresses the issue of how models taken from population ecology may inform historical narratives. The data for the interwar years were analyzed using a statistical model based on climate and population (...) density, which has proved reliable for most of the post-World War II period. The article highlights the pivotal role of anthropic variables in determining the inter-war trends and how these are best analyzed using historical scholarship. (shrink)

An investigative reporter documents the destructive impact of the environmental movement in North America and beyond. When journalist Elizabeth Nickson sought to subdivide her twenty-eight acres on Salt Spring Island in the Pacific Northwest, she was confronted by the full force and power of the radical conservationists who had taken over the local zoning council. She soon discovered that she was not free to do what she wanted with her land, and that in the view of these arrogant stewards it (...) wasn’t really hers at all. Nickson’s long, frustrating, and eyeopening encounter with these zealots started her on a journey to investigate and expose the hugely destructive impact of the environmental movement on ordinary people and communities across North America—and the world. What she discovered is shocking. Forty million Americans have been driven from their land, and rural culture is being systematically crushed, even as wildlife, forests, and rangelands are dying. In Eco-Fascists, Nickson explores how environmental radicals have taken over government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. The result? A wholesale sequestration of forest, range, and water—more than 40 percent of North America—impoverishing us all, especially the most vulnerable. This confiscation of America’s natural heritage is a major factor contributing to our current economic decline; until it is acknowledged and addressed, our economy will not recover. Nickson traces the tens of billions of dollars environmental nonprofits marshal every year to promote the notion that our essential natural systems are collapsing, and finds, in a brutal example of self-fulfilling prophesy, that their corrupted science is desertifying the heartland. She visits once-thriving communities that are turning to ghost towns because environmental legislation has forced mines, ranches, and mills to close and has forbidden critical forest, range, park, and wilderness maintenance. Eco-Fascists exposes the major fallacies of the environmental movement—from wildlife protection to zoning to forest-fire management—and introduces us to the individuals who are fighting back. Fast-paced, highly accessible, and sure to be controversial, this is a work that will change the national conversation about environmental protection and its impact. (shrink)

ArgumentMy contribution focuses on two aspects strictly related each other. On one hand, the progressive marginalization of Volterra from Italian scientific and political life after the rise of Fascism – because of his public anti-Fascist stance, both as a senator and as a professor – until his definitive exclusion on racial grounds in 1938. On the other hand, the reactions of his French colleagues and friends to this ostracism, and the support he received from them. As it emerges from (...) several sources (Volterra's correspondence, institutional documentation, conference proceedings, etc.), it was mainly thanks to their support that he was able to escape the complete isolation and the “civil death” to which the regime condemned many of its adversaries. (shrink)

This article draws from the reading protocols developed by José Esteban Muñoz to advance a political reading of Georges Bataille. It argues for a consistent and coherent anti-fascism across Bataille’s work, from the early “political” writings to the mature turn toward mysticism. Focusing in particular on his writings from the 1930s, this article clarifies some of the key concepts in Bataille’s critical theory of fascism: expenditure, heterology, base materialism, and democratic anguish.

Bitterly anti-Marxist though it was, fascism now appears to have been in some sense revolutionary in its own right, but this raises new questions about the meaning of modern revolution. In a recent essay Roger Griffin, a major authority on fascism, challenges Marxists and non-Marxists to engage in a dialogue that would deepen our understanding of the relationship between the Marxist-communist and fascist revolutionary directions. Although he finds openings within the Marxist tradition, Griffin insists that, if such dialogue (...) is to be possible, the Marxists must give up any a priori claim to the unique validity of the Marxist revolutionary project. However, Griffin’s way of framing the issues proves too limited, first because his understanding fascism as revolutionary is not rich enough, but also because he too often forces his argument to make the fascist revolution seem the archetypal 20th-century revolution. The alternative starts with a deeper understanding of the basis of the fascist claim to be spearheading, as Marxism could not, a revolutionary departure appropriate to contemporary challenges and possibilities. In asking about the commonality of the fascist and Marxist revolutions, Griffin convincingly accents a certain mode of historical consciousness that seemed to warrant a totalitarian direction. But the historical sense he draws from Walter Benjamin, and then attributes to Marxism and Leninism, misconstrues the area of commonality. Through a different way of conceiving fascism as revolutionary, and of understanding fascist-communist convergence, we can challenge the Marxists more deeply — but also suggest the basis for a more fruitful mode of dialogue around fascism, Marxism and modern revolution. (shrink)

If one looks at the controversial premises of analytical approaches to fascism according to Roger Griffin, it is not surprising that a yawning distance has opened up between Marxist and non-Marxist schools of interpretation. In this situation whereby two camps are mutually ignorant of one another, it is certainly suggestive that the liberal British theoretician of fascism should put himself forward to play the role of a ‘mediator’, even if he faces the danger of significant criticism from both (...) schools of interpretation. But Griffin’s attempt takes place on a predominantly theoretical level. The author of this essay instead places the notion of revolution in historical-empirical perspective, in order to distinguish it from the account associated with (liberal) representatives of the ‘new consensus’. He then examines, in particular, whether National Socialism represented a utopia which satisfied revolutionary aspirations. The author further asks whether fascism could separate itself from its (early) conservative support to an extent that would permit commentators to meaningfully identify a revolutionary breakthrough. And finally he clarifies what the modernizing achievements of fascism during its time in power actually were. Against this background, there does seem at least the possibility of a dialogue between the two approaches that would advance each of them. (shrink)

“If something begins when it acquires a name, we can date the beginnings of fascism precisely,” states the author of The Anatomy of Fascism, the Columbia University historian Robert Paxton, at the start of what is bound to be a controversial book (p. 24). Contradicting Zev Sternhell, the author of major books on fascism who has repeatedly named France as the intellectual cradle of fascism, Paxton asserts that Italy is where fascism started. The date was (...) March 23, 1919, when Mussolini and some one hundred of his cronies, the fasci italiani di combattimento, held a meeting in a room of…. (shrink)

Andreu Nin defines fascism and analyses its class nature, challenging the notion that fascism’s aims match its rhetoric. While recruiting from among Italy’s middle classes, the petite bourgeoisie, it ultimately serves the big bourgeoisie objectively.

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)

The present article is an attempt at a closer reading of Ivan Ilyin’s relationship to fascism. This is explored primarily through a selection of articles in which Ilyin wrote in positive terms of Italian fascism, and in one case also of German National Socialism. The author of this article first presents a summary of relevant historical and biographical information, revealing that although Ilyin praised fascism in his articles, his personal experience of German Nazism was negative. This is (...) followed by an examination of Ilyin’s own concept of fascism, concluding that it in fact derived from his understanding of the Russian White Movement. The examination focuses on three selected aspects, key notions for both fascism and Ilyin’s philosophy: the principle of the leader, the idea of the elite and the notion of chivalry, and nationalism and anti-Semitism. This analysis demonstrates that Ilyin drew upon idealized versions of these concepts, as integral parts of his projected utopian vision of a future Russia. (shrink)

A companion piece to Federico Finchelstein’s From Fascism to Populism in History, this generally well-written but otherwise problematic work, presents a conceptual history of “lying” with fa...

We know a lot about the sociology of fascism, but how have sociologists responded to fascism when confronted with it in their own lives? How courageous or compromising have they been? And why has this history been shrouded in silence for so long? In this major work of historical scholarship sociologists from around the world describe and evaluate the reactions of sociologists to the rise and practice of fascism.

Purpose: Radical constructivism holds that experiential reality is created by each individual. As a way of thinking, it unquestionably belongs to the theories of knowledge that are called “subjectivist” and “relativist”. This paper deals with the Italian philosopher Adriano Tilgher’s analysis of the relation between relativism and fascism and examines the possible impact of this connection on constructivism and its view of ethics. Approach: Conceptual analysis and the demonstration of a contradiction in Tilgher’s argumentation. Findings: A review of the (...) ethics inherent in Kant’s categorical imperative shows a tendency towards a subjectivism that may hint at anarchism but in no way implies fascism. Implications: This investigation should make it more difficult for critics of constructivism to relate it to fascism. (shrink)

Fascism is a virulent historical social pathology that presents itself as a political ideology or a component of general ideology. It is historical in a double sense. It is actualized at specific times and places. It is also, a recurring feature of history itself. Crypto-fascism is the manipulation of the ambiguity of language for the purpose of fascistic actualization. Crypto-fascism is often an early “tell” or warning of the presence of more widespread fascism. There have been (...) several powerful and deep studies of fascism and its co-optation of the ambiguity of language. Two of these approaches are of particular importance. In both instances fascism is addressed as a potentiality or susceptibility tied to the human condition per se. The first is Freudian and the second is existential. These approaches both meet the historical criteria noted above. In this essay I follow the work of Erich Fromm and Jean-Paul Sartre to understand the ground of fascism and its crypto variant. Camouflage is the hallmark of crypto-fascism, and it is exactly this that Fromm’s analysis and that of Sartre discloses. (shrink)