Departments

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fascism

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    4/25/2021

    Stop Pretending Italian Fascists Were Innocent Victims

    The growing far right has sought to draw a moral equivalency between Italian Fascists and the leftist partisans, including Communists, who fought to expel fascist forces from occupied Yugoslavia at the end of World War II. Historian Eric Gobetti says that victims of reprisals were targeted for fascist allegiance, not Italian ethnicity.

  • SOURCE: Public Seminar
    4/8/2021

    Why Weimar is an Imperfect Mirror

    by Helmut Smith

    Peter Gay's "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider" became a key text for understanding the Weimar era as an allegory for understanding political conflict when it was published in 1968. But his psychoanalytical approach can be an impediment to understanding the historical specificity of the era. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    4/6/2021

    Methods of Power: How do Authoritarians Rule? (Review)

    by David A. Bell

    Is Trumpism a fascist movement or a response to a power vacuum created by decades of neoliberal policies? Historian David A. Bell reviews Ruth Ben-Ghiat's "Strongmen" and argues that the book misses the specific context of Trumpism by making him an archetype of the authoritarian ruler. 

  • 3/21/2021

    Rally 'Round the Rune: Fascist Echoes of the CPAC Stage

    by Mark Auslander and Jay Ball

    The incorporation of a Norse rune associated with the SS into the stage of the recent CPAC conference probably isn't an accident; the choice reflects the cultural cachet of Norse myth on the far right, the conservative movement's desire to maintain deniability about its ties to the far right, and the recognition that the design would be crystal clear to viewers of internet memes. 

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
    3/16/2021

    Fascism and Analogies — British and American, Past and Present

    by Priya Satia

    "Historical and local specificities mean all analogies are ultimately inaccurate in ways that historians must always make clear. The point of such comparisons, however, is to uncover darker historical truths obscured by prevailing, more flattering comparisons."

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    2/17/2021

    The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

    Katy Hull's book looks to four American fascist sympathizers to conclude that the appeal of fascism reflected anxieties about how the United States could function as a world power and connect communitarian values with national progress. 

  • SOURCE: Just Security
    2/4/2021

    Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda

    by Jason Stanley

    Not enough attention has been paid to the video shown to spectators at Donald Trump's January 6th "Save America" rally. A close look shows it to be a work of propaganda firmly in the tradition of fascism. 

  • 1/24/2021

    Cheese to Chalk: Can Democracies be Compared to Dictatorships?

    by Leonid Luks

    A German historian argues that American scholars and commentators have for years been too quick to equate antidemocratic measures taken by Republicans with Hitler's seizure of dictatorial power, dismissing ample research on the nature of totalitarian regimes. The last three months have shown that America's core institutions are not weak enough to be crushed. 

  • 1/14/2021

    Donald Trump’s Situational Fascism

    by Gavriel Rosenfeld

    Rather than engage in an unproductive debate about whether Donald Trump is or is not a bona fide fascist, scholars should consider the events of January 6 (and Trump's role in inciting them) as emergent, contingent results of the interplay of factors latent in American liberal democracy.

  • SOURCE: New Statesman
    1/13/2021

    Why Trump Isn't a Fascist

    by Richard J. Evans

    Richard J. Evans argues that "fascism" arose in the specific context of states defeated in World War I and thus embraced military expansionism and a concurrent militarization of domestic life in addition to racial domination. While Trump is dangerous, labeling him a fascist doesn't explain his political movement. 

  • 1/10/2020

    Will the Republicans Take the Fascist Option?

    by Kevin Matthews

    Before this past week, too many in the GOP seemed too willing to choose the fascist option.  Now they have seen what it looks like and where it leads.  The question Republicans must answer is simple: Will they choose fascism anyway? 

  • SOURCE: Daily Beast
    1/6/2021

    Trump’s Neo-Fascism Takes America’s Racism to the Next Level

    by Jason Stanley

    The Republican Party has long embraced herrenvolk democracy, where participation is limited (as much as possible) to favored ethnic groups. But Trumpism is harnessing this system of racial rule to an authoritarian cult of personality.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    12/14/2020

    Just How Dangerous Was Donald Trump?

    Times columnist Michelle Goldberg checks on competing evaluations from scholars including Corey Robin, Roger Griffin and Robert O. Paxton – did Trump's lack of command of the machinery of government make him a play-acting authoritarian, or was his rhetoric of national regeneration through his personal leadership exemplary of fascist movements? 

  • SOURCE: Associated Press
    11/30/2020

    US Embassy in Hungary slams article likening Soros to Hitler

    A Hungarian culture minister suggested that the Hungarian-American Jewish financier's advocacy of stronger democratic standards in the EU--which reflect criticism of right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary--are similar to the crimes committed against the two nations by Nazi Germany, among other attacks.