The question of whether there was a “causal nexus” between Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and National Socialism in Germany is far older than the Historikerstreit. Ernst Nolte's controversial thesis implied that the formation of the Nazis as a party (NSDAP) and a movement, and their subsequent rise to power were hardly conceivable without the German bourgeoisie's basic fear of Bolshevism; the Nazis' exterminatory anti-Semitism was only a sort of response to, and the interpretive reversal of, the looming expectation (...) of a Sovietized Germany. Thus, Bolshevik “class genocide” provided the historical model for Nazi “race genocide,” the annihilation of…. (shrink)

This article examines the anti-fascist rhetoric of the self-proclaimed `revolutionary liberal', Piero Gobetti, in Italy in the early 1920s. Gobetti is interesting from a rhetorical perspective for two reasons: first, for his efforts to redefine liberalism as an emancipatory ethic of struggle that extended to the revolutionary worker's movement; and second, for his rejection of fascism as essentially continuous with the anti-conflictual tendencies of the liberal parliamentary regime. An exemplary `ideological innovator', Gobetti's `paradiastolic' redescription of liberalism and (...) his metaphorical reading of fascism underscored a commitment to the value of rhetorical disputation over the meaning and form of liberty. This contrasts with contemporary approaches to fascism — and purportedly similar ideologies — which demonize or objectify in a way that forestalls such a debate. Yet, paradoxically, the cost of Gobetti's innovations was an inability to secure what Perelman calls the `universal audience', a task that preoccupied Gobetti's Marxist friend, Gramsci. (shrink)

The article discusses this intricate issue of women’s anti-Fascist/communist activism during World War II in Romania. I am particularly interested in the relationship that developed between the Romanian Communist Party and the women who joined the movement in the complicated context of World War II. The article is attempting to assess whether women’s increased involvement in the communist organization was due to the previous and continuous politics of the RCP, or it was a mere consequence of unprecedented circumstances. (...) The article also addresses issues related to the legacy of the anti-Fascist/communist women’s struggle during World War II, in their attempt to establish postwar public careers, but also the manner in which their efforts and activisms were recognized and/or recompensed after the war. (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)

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)

Drawing upon the concepts of civic epistemologies and sociotechnical imaginaries, this article delves into the history of nuclear energy in Portugal, analyzing the ways in which the nuclear endeavor was differently enacted by various sociopolitical collectives – the Fascist State, post-revolutionary governments and the public. Following the 1974 revolution - known as the Carnation Revolution - this paper analyzes how the nuclear project was fiercely contested by a vibrant anti-nuclear movement assembled against the construction of the Ferrel (...) Nuclear Plant, the first sociotechnical controversy in Portugal, paving the way for the emergence of a combative civic epistemology. Supported by semi-structured interviews with scientists, activists and local residents of Ferrel and the analysis of historical material, this article presents the failed Portuguese nuclear endeavor as an emblematic case study to explore the co-production of science and society, in particular the role of revolutionary processes in the unfolding of sociotechnical controversies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Drieu, Céline: French Fascism, Scapegoating, and the Price of Revelation Richard J. Golsan Texas A &M University Although the Girardian concept of the scapegoat and its attendant phenomena have a number of obvious implications for the study of fascism, to date the connection has been addressed only in broadly theoretical terms. In Des Choses cachées and in subsequent works, René Girard has alluded to modern political scapegoating such as (...) the Nazi persecution of the Jews as examples of mass victimizations where the enormous number of victims represents an effort to compensate for the failure of the scapegoating process itself in the wake of Christian revelation.1 While the victims are initially vilified, they are not sacralized after their sacrifice, and order is maintained only so long as a steady stream of victims is forthcoming. As Andrew McKenna explains in Violence and Difference, "with the passing of the sacred order, of the sacred tout court, sacrifice becomes less and less capable of uniting the community and therefore demands more and more victims... the decline of symbolic violence brings an increase of real victims; their quantity mounts in inverse proportion to the ritual efficacy of sacrifice, and victimage appears more and more gratuitous" (159-60). Moreover, McKenna continues, victimage of this sort becomes increasingly untraceable, rootless, and it is this aspect of official Nazi anti-Semitism, for example, which allowed many Nazis in their postwar trials to proclaim their innocence for their roles in the Final Solution by insisting that they were "only following orders" (162-3). 1 See Things Hidden 128-9. For a more general discussion of the persecution of ethnic minorities as a source of social cohesiveness, see the essays "Violence and Representation" and "Generative Scapegoating." Drieu, Céline: French Fascism173 These observations certainly help to illuminate the role of scapegoating in Nazi racial politics and in the Holocaust in particular. They are less helpful, however, in understanding other paradigms of fascism in which antiSemitism did not play as central a role or in cases in which fascist ideology was not synonymous with government policy or political hegemony. The role of scapegoating in Italian Fascism, for example, is more difficult to ascertain than it is in Nazism because anti-Semitism was less crucial as a means of establishing social cohesiveness, at least until Nazi influence became predominant during World War II (Soucy xviii). In France, the presence of a number of fascist movements from the twenties through the end of the Occupation, and the absence of an autonomous fascist state during the same period, make the task of assessing the role of scapegoating even more difficult. This is especially true in light of the fact that a number of French fascist movements were not anti-Semitic, at least until it became expedient to be so to curry favor with the Nazis. In French Fascism: The First Wave, Robert Soucy notes that during the interwar years, fascist groups including "the Jeunesse Patriotes, the Croix de Feu and the Faisceau... welcomed Jews into their ranks" (xviii). The lack of a consistent attitude towards the Jews is, in fact, just one of several points of divergence among French fascists and fascist groups prior to World War Two. As a result, historians and political theorists who have studied French fascism have strongly disagreed as to its origins as well as its basic ideology. In Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, Zeev Sternhell argues that "the history of fascism can be described as a continuous attempt to revise marxism and create a national form of socialism" (20). Soucy, on the other hand, insists that on many of the most important social and political issues, including "taxation, government spending, nationalization, property rights, class conflict, religion, education, and foreign policy, French Fascism was overwhelmingly conservative" (xi). Other historians, especially among the French themselves, have gone so far as to insist that there is no such thing as French fascism, that such a creature, if it existed at all, was merely an import, a watered-down version of Nazism or Italian Fascism.2 If no consensus as to the nature or even the existence of French fascism can be reached by analyzing the programs... (shrink)

Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct (...) the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (shrink)

Chris Ealham's book reveals a fascinating dialogue between a prominent individual figure (José Peirats, 1908–1989) and the anonymous masses in the history of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, and vice versa. Peirats would hardly be known without Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, while Spanish anarcho-syndicalism would have been less relevant if José Peirats had not been included in its ranks. -/- What is remarkable is that, despite Ealham's honest confession of his sympathy for some of the working-class movements in general and for anarcho-syndicalism in (...) particular (3), his research is highly critical of both anarcho-syndicalism and Peirats's numerous personal and ideological errors and contradictions. We need not go far to find examples: in his book, Ealham makes no effort to conceal that Peirats can be described at times using adjectives such as homophobic, sexist (or rather, antifeminist), anti-intellectual, antinationalist, and anticommunist (226). Nevertheless, his negative elements paled in comparison with his achievements. -/- Peirats was born in La Vall d'Uixó (Castellón); he was a brick-maker, anarchist militant, and later a noted writer and historian. The moral influence [End Page 188] coming from his mother and maternal uncles was decisive in the young Peirats's character and training. His informal education, together with his move to Barcelona, awakened his early militancy. In spite of having to work very hard from a young age, he was lucky enough to be educated later at the Ateneo Obrero Racionalista in Sants (a neighborhood in the southern part of Barcelona). There, he started having contact with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), joining the union when he was just fourteen years old. During Primo de Rivera's dictatorship (1927–1930) Peirats was devoted to avoiding—sometimes fighting back against—State repression of syndicalists. He also continued doing manual work while cultivating his intellectual training and techniques as a working-class writer. -/- With the coming of the Second Republic (1931), the general attitude within the CNT was that nothing revolutionary would be achieved by collaborating with professional or parliamentary politics: "radicals like Peirats gave no quarter to the new regime. After the enforced interregnum of the dictatorship, they were primed and ready for direct action" (47). Nonetheless, the CNT was not united on this issue and the disputes over ideological tactics came swiftly. At this point, Ealham pinpoints a three-fold division within the CNT: one revolutionary, one syndicalist, and another anarcho-syndicalist (55–56). The divisions and differences would become even more marked when the CNT took part in the Frente Popular with four anarchist ministers (Federica Montseny, Joan Peiró, Juan García Oliver, and Juan López Sánchez): "the anarchist leaders opted simply to ignore what remained of the old state and accept a policy of 'democratic collaboration' with the other anti-fascist forces on behalf of unity in the fight against authoritarianism" (90). Peirats vehemently opposed this strategy that placed the CNT inside a republican state, and from this time on, including during the Spanish Civil War "conferences, meetings, and plenums were organized like witch-hunts" (104). -/- After Franco's triumph, Peirats did not follow in Montseny's or Germinal Esgleas's footsteps—that is, he opted against a diplomatic passport or any special safe conduct, but joined the multitudes of Republican soldiers and civilians who escaped in their retirada (retreat) towards France (119). In fact, after going through a French internment camp, he asked himself whether the best option was to return to Franco's Spain or try his luck abroad. Without any hint of cowardice, he knew that in Spain he could only expect his death... (shrink)

Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth (...) century. Gregor makes this case by presenting for the first time a chronological account of the major intellectual figures of Italian Fascism, tracing how the movement's ideas evolved in response to social and political developments inside and outside of Italy.Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco, and Julius Evola, a bizarre and sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism."Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots. (shrink)

In line with a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ discourse within conservative Russian politics, Aleksandr Dugin has increasingly critiqued “postmodern” theories that allegedly underpin social diversity (sexual, gender, racial, etc.) within the West: queer theory, post-structuralism, and other theoretical accounts of identity and alterity. In Dugin’s argument for a political philosophy of Eurasianism, the Western endorsement of multiculturalism and pluralism is indicative of individualism and “Atlanticist” liberalism, therefore at odds with the traditional, nationalist collectivism of Eurasia. In this light, queer (...) theory is a Western imposition whose philosophical premises directly contradict native, Russian traditions. Dugin’s attack on queer theory, however, mark a departure from the philosopher’s earlier career within the National Bolshevik movement. Throughout the nineties, Dugin was relatively sympathetic with the nascent LGBT movement in Russia: specifically within the political and philosophical circles of National Bolshevism, in which such figures as Eduard Limonov and Slava Mogutin coalesced with fascists and communists around a broad critique of Western capitalism and openly embraced homoeroticism and countercultural, queer dissidence. Dugin’s links to the LGBT movement are even relatively mainstream: his first wife, Evgeniia Debrianskaia, was a prominent gay activist, and both Debrianskaia and Dugin for a time viewed the Eurasianism’s goals as aligned with that of LGBT activism in Russia. This article examines the development of Dugin’s political philosophy in the context of his reading of queer theory. It first discusses the link in historical terms, in the connections between Dugin’s early post-Soviet career and post-Soviet Russian gay activism. The article then focuses on Dugin’s philosophy of “multipolarity,” as a form of resistance to universalist, American hegemony, in order to illustrate how Dugin’s Eurasianist account of political “anti-normativity” both aligns and contradicts with his reading of queer theory. The article concludes with comments on the globalization of queer theory, cultural imperialism, and its relationship to Dugin’s geopolitics. (shrink)

This article discusses some current research claims on gender and state socialism in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989. It raises questions about claims by Revisionist Feminist Scholars that official state socialist women’s organizations were ‘agents’ on behalf of women, or women’s movements, perhaps feminist, and not ‘transmission belts’ of communist parties. State socialist policies are described as ‘friendly towards women’ and ‘pro-women’. In contrast, the author claims that these organizations both were and were not agents on behalf of (...) women, and also prevented women’s agency. Meaningful women’s agency is not actually shown to occur intermittently throughout their history, but in two contexts – before 1955 or in moments of political rupture. Scholars do not distinguish the who, when, and what – Who could be agents? When could they be agents? And what kind of agents could they be? State policies, the author claims, were also at one and the same time ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ towards women, sometimes harming women. The author explores why this research is happening now, discussing research on Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Democratic Women’s Organization of Germany, the Democratic Association of Hungarian Women, later renamed MNOT, the Romanian National Council of Women and the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s Organization. (shrink)

The war against Iraq unleashed in March 2003 spawned an attempt to silence the protest movement by accusing it of anti‐Americanism. This essay argues that the theory according to which right‐wing anti‐Americanism and left‐wing anti‐Americanism coincide is a myth. A new issue appears now, a paradox that characterizes the United States, where democracy developed within the white community concomitantly with the enslavement of blacks and the deportation of American Indians. In the American “Herrenvolk democracy,” a line of (...) demarcation between whites and people of color fosters the development of relations based on equality within the white community. Furthermore, U.S. history is marked by the fundamentalist tendency to transform the Judeo‐Christian tradition into a sort of national religion that consecrates the exceptionalism of the American people and the sacred mission with which they are entrusted (“Manifest Destiny”). Europe is unable thoroughly to comprehend the American mixture of religious and moral fervor, on the one hand, and overt pursuit of political, economic, and military world domination, on the other. But it is this mixture, or rather this explosive combination, this peculiar fundamentalism, that constitutes the greatest threat to world peace today. (shrink)

During India’s Emergency, anti-state poetry of a decidedly amateurish quality proliferated. Anti-Emergency poetry did little to bring about the restoration of democracy, nor could it have reasonably been mistaken for great art. So what was the purpose of writing resistance poetry if it was not meant to directly influence politics nor to be great art? Poetry as politics has a long history in the Islamicate world, dating back to the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. While until the 19th century (...) Islamicate poetry was tied to the Caliphates who employed poets to extol the virtues of the ruling classes, after the so-called ‘Rise of the West’ Islamicate poetry became associated instead with anti-colonial and anti-state movements across the Islamicate world from Morocco to Indonesia and from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. In this essay, I argue that the utility of resistance poetry in anti-state movements in South Asia has been to build solidarity among social movement participants. The sociology of social movements has long placed emphasis on the role of affective bonds and solidarity building for predicting social movement success, and poetry, in the Islamicate context especially, I argue, does exactly that. By circulating poems, social movement participants inform the reader that resistance and opposition exist, they inspire participants and would-be participants and calm fears that participants might have, especially in moments of political repression. These poems generate emotional and cultural bonds among social movement participants by linking anti-state movements to the centuries-old tradition of Islamicate poetry, thereby fostering solidarity and providing a firm basis for collective action. (shrink)

Originating from the teachings of Confucius, Confucianism became the mainstream of Chinese culture and had enormous effects on all aspects of Chinese society. Confucianism has gone through three major changes in Chinese history: the first occurred during the Han period, the second during the Song period, and the third during the Qing period, after the first Opium War. In the late Qing period, China experienced a rapid decline due to the invasion of Western forces. Progressive intellectuals attributed this to (...) the conservative nature of Confucianism at that time. Their Anti-Confucianism Movement grew especially active during the May Fourth Movement in the early twentieth century. Two prominent figures in this movement were Chen Duxiu, from the political field, and Lu Xun, from the literary field. Chen Duxiu, who was a thinker and politician, and Lu Xun, who was a thinker and novelist, were both strongly critical of the problematic social habits connected to conservative Confucian ideologies, such as humaneness, courtesy, filial piety, and so on. However, there were also important differences between these two figures: while Chen Duxiu criticized the bad habits of Confucianism across various fields of society at a rather abstract political angle through his articles, Lu Xun more specifically criticized the bad habits of Confucianism in daily life from a literary perspective through his novels. These differences derived from their respective vocations. Consequently, while Chen Duxiu’s Anti-Confucianism Movement had a huge impact on intellectuals, Lu Xun’s Anti-Confucianism Movement had a huge impact on the general public. While the former led the Anti-Confucianism Movement, the latter popularized it. The third major change in Confucianism is still ongoing. It seems likely that the Anti-Confucianism Movement of Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun will help us to anticipate what kind of changes in Confucianism may go through in future. (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 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)

Robert Holub’s book, Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism, fundamentally concerns two topics: Was Nietzsche the man anti-Jewish? Was he somehow responsible for inspiring anti-Semites and particularly fascists and Nazis? These are different issues—one of biography, the other of reception—and Holub would have been advised not to link them in a single volume. Nonetheless, one reason for the connection is immediately evident. Holub distinguishes between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, separating them before discussing their interplay. (...) He conceives the first as a nationalist political movement opposed to Jews, and the second as prejudices against Jews at a personal level.... (shrink)

The role of professional revolutionaries is usually reserved for men. One exception is Teresa Noce, a prominent Italian Communist leader in the (residual) quota reserved for women, who was the wife of Luigi Longo, but with an independence that made her existence an original example of militancy and activism. Both underground and within republican Italy, Noce never adapted to what already existed, but fought to subvert the order, especially in the face of exploitation and discrimination. A member of the ICP, (...) Noce fought against fascism, transporting clandestine material, writing articles for anti-fascist papers, promoting strikes by rice weeders and labourers. In France, she directed partisan movements and, in Spain, she was a militant in voluntary groups against Francisco Franco. After the war, she was elected to the Parliament as a “Constituent Mother”. She also revolutionised the world of labour as the first female Secretary General of the textile trade union. (shrink)

Jesudason and Weitz's article examines two public policy debates in California, where both sides of the debate used similar language that had the potential to be detrimental to women. Specifically, they show how anti-abortion crusaders in California used similar language to describe why women's rights should be curtailed as pro-choice advocates use when fighting for more choice and privacy for women's reproductive decisions. This commentary builds upon their article by demonstrating the harm that such co-opting causes to women's rights (...) using the example of sex selective abortion. By examining the legislative history of state and national bills to ban sex-selective abortion, this commentary demonstrates how the anti-abortion lobby has adopted the language of pro-choice advocates quite effectively. Although the framing of this issue as being “woman-protective” is strategic and insincere, such political framing is powerful, as Jesudason and Weitz have noted. Anti-abortion activists have convinced lawmakers in many states that sex-selective abortion is a dire issue in their state and that they must restrict it in order to protect women. In fact, there is no evidence that sex selective abortion is a problem in the United States, yet these frames have been very effective in weakening women's privacy rights. Whenever woman-protective framings are invoked for self-serving purposes, women's rights advocates must work hard to uncover the truth behind these discourses to prevent successful legislative efforts that curtail women's reproductive freedom. (shrink)

SummaryThis article examines the role played by conceptions of friendship in the francophone Catholic world during the early-to-mid twentieth century, focusing particularly on the review La Relève, a significant French Canadian publication of the 1930s and 1940s. For many francophone Catholic intellectuals during this period, friendship signalled a shared commitment to common religious, social and political goals. These notions of community and friendship were especially central to Catholic thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, who participated in the personalist (...) movement, an influential current of philosophy in mid-twentieth-century France. While the young writers at La Relève were initially a small and cliquish group of old schoolmates, their growing interest in personalism led them to conceive of their group in more inclusive and communitarian terms. Their personal ties to Maritain also allowed them to cultivate links with a broader, international network of francophone Catholic authors. These relationships would come to fruition during the Second World War, when the Relève group would act as publishers for many European anti-fascist intellectuals living in North American exile. The example of La Relève thus allows us to see how friendship served as both an idealised form of social relationship and a means for building up a larger community of like-minded Catholic intellectuals and social activists. (shrink)

A.E. Taylor's 1938 essay, ‘The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes’, was widely and for a long time thought to provide the basis of a deontological interpretation of Hobbes that was so distinctive and compelling that it came to constitute the basis of a ‘Taylor thesis’, an analytical construct long prominent in Hobbes Studies. But, the ‘Taylor thesis’ was a myth. First, Taylor's essay of 1938 were, in reality thin, and not well-argued; neither did they stimulate any contemporary response at all from (...) Hobbes scholars, even though they criticized the whole of Hobbes interpretation. Second, it seeming unlikely that so ineffectual a critique could have come from serious scholarly motives, an interesting way of accounting for Taylor's attempt to paint Hobbes morally is to locate that effort in the context of a general reaction against world Facism and against attempts to link Hobbes with totalitarian ideologies. Third, in the final analysis, however, Taylor's essay of 1938 was of such doubtful quality that it is difficult to think that it was ever seriously meant to be taken as scholarly research. Close analysis reveals weaknesses, lapses, and an arbitrariness which cast further doubt on the uncritically received opinion of a ‘Taylor thesis’. (shrink)

From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime (...) teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe. (shrink)

Anti-caste movements in India have a long history. Cultural heritage became and remains a site of political contestation by excluded communities searching for identity and equality, and gender remains at the core of their engagements. The meanings underlying the more homogenous term of ‘Dalit’ used today are part of a historical process of self-definition. Moreover, diverse Dalit countercultures suggest varied social domains in which Dalit communities are located. South Asian historiographies have been critiqued as denying histories and (...) historical agency to Dalits. Yet Dalit studies have developed epistemologies, bringing articulations and ideas from the margins to the centre of writings on history, leading to debates around caste that have transformed notions of politics. This paper draws from one such trajectory through a nonlinear narrative, juxtaposing the intergenerational contexts of engagements: my mother Dakshayani's political and life experiences, as narrated in her autobiography (1912–1978), and my own experience in the Dalit women's and other movements in the 1980s and 1990s. While my experience saw the onset of liberalisation and the emergence and growth of ‘new social movements’, the context of Dakshayani's narrations is the Pulaya (agrestic slave caste) community in the early 1900s in Cochin, a community in the process of transforming itself. Both narratives highlight how radical traditions within the Dalit women's movement over time have consciously and critically addressed anti-caste movements, social reform, the state, peoples’ movements and the nation within a conceptual framework of equality, liberty and non-discrimination. (shrink)

This article explores how Britain’s Black Power movement challenged the political outlook of the anti-fascist left in the 1960s–70s. While the established left interpreted the National Front (NF) as an aberrant threat to Britain’s social democracy, Black political groups foregrounded the systemic racial violence of the British state. By addressing intensifying racial oppression during a critical early phase in the transition to neoliberalism, they prefigured Stuart Hall’s analysis of ‘authoritarian populism’. The British Black Power movement especially criticised the (...) high-profile Anti-Nazi League (ANL) for its singular focus on the NF, which was framed as a revived Hitlerite peril. For British Black radicals, the larger strategic problem was the populist racism, inflected by imperial nostalgia, which propelled Thatcher’s New Right to power. Instead of narrow Nazi analogies, they related the re-emergence of white nationalism to British social democracy’s racist treatment of Black immigrants, as well as its neocolonial role abroad. (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)

_Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism_ provides rich new insights into the history of political thought and clinical knowledge. In these chapters, internationally renowned historians and cultural theorists discuss landmark debates about the uses and abuses of ‘the talking cure’ and map the diverse psychologies and therapeutic practices that have featured in and against tyrannical, modern regimes. These essays show both how the Freudian movement responded to and was transformed by the rise of fascism and communism, the Second World (...) War, and the Cold War, and how powerful new ideas about aggression, destructiveness, control, obedience and psychological freedom were taken up in the investigation of politics. They identify important intersections between clinical debate, political analysis, and theories of minds and groups, and trace influential ideas about totalitarianism that took root in modern culture after 1918, and still resonate in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they suggest how the emergent discourses of ‘totalitarian’ society were permeated by visions of the unconscious. Topics include: the psychoanalytic theorizations of anti-Semitism; the psychological origins and impact of Nazism; the post-war struggle to rebuild liberal democracy; state-funded experiments in mind control in Cold War America; coercive ‘re-education’ programmes in Eastern Europe, and the role of psychoanalysis in the politics of decolonization. A concluding trio of chapters argues, in various ways, for the continuing relevance of psychoanalysis, and of these mid-century debates over the psychology of power, submission and freedom in modern mass society. Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism will prove compelling for both specialists and readers with a general interest in modern psychology, politics, culture and society, and in psychoanalysis. The material is relevant for academics and post-graduate students in the human, social and political sciences, the clinical professions, the historical profession and the humanities more widely. (shrink)

Despite recent strides in the direction of achieving a more equitable and genuine place for Indigenous voices in the conservation conversation, the conservation movement must more deliberately and thoroughly grapple with the legacy of its deeply settler colonial history if it is to, in actuality and not merely in rhetoric, achieve the aim of being more equitable. In this article, we show how the conservation movement, historically and still largely today, traffics in certain ethical and political values that are, (...) in principle or in effect, anti-Indigenous. Through this examination, we hope to reveal how present-day conservation efforts, even if ‘well-meaning’ or nominally deferential regarding Indigenous peoples and perspectives, in fact reinforce settler colonial structures. In particular, we critique the notion of the uninhabited wilderness as a conservation ideal and the disavowal of originary violence (along with a parallel positing of settler nativism) in the articulation of conservation historicity and the founding of conservation movements. We conclude by offering some steps conservationists can take to alter their practices, methods, and values in ways that recognize, respect, and reciprocate with Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers a new reading of Carl Schmitt and his Nazi engagement by chronologically examining the changing uses of Roman law in his Weimar and Nazi thought. I argue that Schmitt’s different ways of narrating the modern reception of Roman law disclose, first, the Nazification of his thought in the spring of 1933, and second, the partial and apologetic de-Nazification of his thinking in the 1940s. While Schmitt’s Weimar-era works are defined by a positive use of Roman imagery, (...) ranging from Schmitt’s support to the Catholic Church to his endorsement of Benito Mussolini’s ‘total state’ in Italy, Schmitt’s Nazi writings from 1933 to 1936 describe the reception of Roman law as an anti-German virus that must be overcome by the Nazi movement. This shift mirrors Schmitt’s transformation from an authoritarian thinker sympathetic to Italian Fascism into a devoted Nazi. However, once Schmitt begins to see that Germany will lose World War II, he recalibrates his position. While Schmitt’s earlier Nazi writings offered a negative estimation of the historical school of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, in his 1943/44 book on European legal science, Schmitt portrays Savigny as the paradigmatic European, whose work opens the path for a renewed legal science. (shrink)

Attempting to trace the intellectual history of any political movement is, at best,problematic. Humans construct political movements and the intellectual, philosophical underpinnings of those movements, and, in general, it is not one person who is doing the creating, but rather a multitude of people are involved; the circumstance of how politics is created is a web, which makes it difficult for researchers to trace the historical roots of movements. Nazi Germany has been the focus of numerous (...) research projects to understand the intellectual roots of Nazism and the how and why they were successful in gaining and consolidating power. In line with popular theories in Sociology and History, earlier researchers have traced the intellectual roots of the Nazis in order to situate Nazi Germany as anti-modern, which by extension would situate their crimes against humanityand fascism in the same camp. In particular, Romanticism has been the movement that some historians have cited as a possible root for Nazism. The primary goal of this paper will be to disrupt the historical continuation argument, deconstruct the main parts of each of the camps, and provide support for the appropriation argument. This goal is designed to connect to the much larger debate of the state of anti-modern/modern of Nazism, and aid in showing Nazism as a modern movement. It is through researching and analyzingthe how and why the Nazis appropriated Romanticism that allows academics to study the influences from the past in the development of National Socialism, while accounting for the frame that the Nazis used to read the Romantics and the purpose for the way that Romantic literature was framed within Nazi-Germany. (shrink)

This book shows how, during the 20th century, evils such as totalitarianism, tyranny, war, and genocide became indelibly linked to the fascist cause, and examines the enduring and popular appeal of an ideology that has counted princes, poets, and war heroes among its most fervent adherents. From the followers of Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Arab leader who met with Adolf Hitler in November 1942 to the murderous death squads of the Croatian Ustasha to certain members of the British Establishment, (...) fascism's heady brew of extreme nationalism and revolutionary violence has attracted followers from across all religions, races, and classes. Now widely reviled, fascism became an immensely powerful political force in Western Europe throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. How did civilized nations like Italy, Germany, Austria, and others succumb to an ideology now regarded by the political mainstream as barbarous and beyond the pale? World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia covers all the key personalities and movements throughout the history of fascism and brings to light some of the ideology's lesser-known aspects, from Hindu extremists in India to the influential role of certain women in fascist movements. How did an ideology which was openly boastful of its belief in violence come to seduce the elites of some of the most civilized nations on earth? What can explain fascism's enduring appeal? (shrink)

This paper discusses the work of Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991), a controversial writer whose long literary career extending over four decades roughly corresponds to the formative stages of the Indian women's movement. It interprets Chughtai's novella The Heart Breaks Free (1966) to forward an anti-teleological enquiry of the women's movement in India. This progressive teleology often suggested by a discussion of the ‘waves’, ‘stages’ or ‘phases’ of the Euro-American women's movement and adopted to postcolonial women's movements, such as those (...) in India, Jamaica and South Africa, is belied by the piecemeal legislative gains won by activist efforts. Some of the questions governing my enquiry are: What lessons can a questioning of teleology teach us about the gains and losses of postcolonial women's movements? If the alternative to teleology is, as I suggest, a genealogy, then what constitutes a genealogical enquiry into the women's movement in India? In face of apparent and self-acknowledged losses and ineffectiveness in recent times, would the movement's apparent unity across religious differences be a way of initiating such an inquiry or is another mode of analysis required? The paper directs attention to the Indian women's movement's attempts at bringing together women of different religious persuasions, legislative, and religious edicts related to Muslim women's right to co-habitation and divorce, and ‘cases’ that serve as testing points of the movement's struggle against religious and state authority. It also points to the neglected factor of economic security for women as a way in which a genealogical inquiry can proceed so as to strengthen the legislation and the movement itself. (shrink)

One of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. There is always something schizophrenic about logic in Deleuze, which represents another distinctive characteristic: a deep perversion of the very heart of philosophy. Thus, a preliminary definition of Deleuze's philosophy emerges: an irrational logic of aberrant movements. —from Aberrant Movements In Aberrant Movements, David Lapoujade offers one of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. Drawing on the entirety of Deleuze's work as well as his collaborations with Félix (...) Guattari, from the “transcendental empiricism” of Difference and Repetition to the schizoanalysis and geophilosophy of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Lapoujade explores the central problem underlying the delirious coherence of Deleuze's philosophy: aberrant movements. These are the movements that Deleuze wrests from Kantian idealism, Nietzsche's eternal return, and the nonsense of Lewis Carroll; they are the schizophrenic processes of the unconscious and the nomadic line of flight traversing history—in short, the forces that permeate life and thought. Tracing and classifying their “irrational logics” represent the quintessential tasks of Deleuzian philosophy. Rather than abstract notions, though, these logics constitute various modes of populating the earth—involving the human as much as the animal, physical, and chemical—and the affective, mental, and political populations that populate human thought. Lapoujade argues that aberrant movements become the figures in a combat against the forms of political, social, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific organization that attempt to deny, counter, or crush their existence. In this study of a thinker whose insights, theoretical confrontations, and perverse critiques have profoundly influenced philosophy, literature, film, and art over the last fifty years, Lapoujade invites us to join in the discordant harmonies of Deleuze's work—and in the battle that constitutes the thought of philosophy, politics, and life. (shrink)

Jama’at-i-Islami is one of the most prominent religious parties of Pakistan that also take active part in the politics of the country. The party is credited with the introduction of Islamic element in the political and constitutional set up of Pakistan. This paper highlights the efforts of the party for the enforcement of Islamic Constitution soon after the creation of Pakistan up to the enforcement of the Constitution of 1956. The style, ideas and politics of the party regarding the Islamic (...) Constitution in Pakistan from 1947 to 1956 are the main focus of the discussion. The second part of the paper deals with the contribution of the Jama’at in the Ahmadiyah issue. How reluctantly the party was involved in the issue and in what way could it win the sympathy of the people as a main leading force of the campaign against Ahmadiya influence in 1953 have been examined in the course of the discussion. (shrink)

The volume is a collection of papers on certain aspects of Indian history, historiography and culture. The papers are fundamental, insightful and path-breaking to some extent. Combining literary, archaeological, scientific and other perspectives, they cover a range of subjects stretching from ancient to modern India. The volume deals with the Greek historians, the Indian epic and Puranic tradition of historiography, colonial and cultural expansion of the Aryans, the early history of north-west India, society, trade and commerce in ancient (...) India, economic, political and cultural contacts of India with other parts of Asia in ancient and medieval periods, and the 1857 War of Independence in India. It takes up some very interesting and new subjects like role of Brahmanas in the anti-Alexander movement in north-west India and the concept of national integration in ancient India. It explores the sources of history of Uttar Pradesh and the antiquity of Ayodhya and historicity of Rama in an interesting study. The volume will be of immense use to historians and scholars of philosophy. (shrink)

Decolonization of the European empires in the twentieth century was spurred by the colonized based on two purposes: the desire for independence, and the desire to build a sovereign political identity. The most obvious feature of the first intention was the formation of anti-imperialist movements, organised under the banner ‘they must leave’. The latter was characterized by the establishment of constitutional government, which highlighted the identity of a novice country in a political and unified form and which featured (...) a central source of power. These two purposes share a complex relationship. For power to be sovereign, independence must be gained first. Power cannot be obligated to the wishes of another power or constrained by the laws of another regime. The struggle for independence of European empires did not readily create the conditions for the exercise of a sovereign power. It was elusive at the moment of independence. This chapter discusses some of the implications of these two purposes, with emphasis on the second purpose and the Indian experience. It addresses questions such as: what is the meaning of collective identity to those newly independent countries in the context of politics; what were the pressures on the claims to political identity and unity; how did these pressures encourage a revolutionary mindset in the conceptualization of constitutional provisions and political power; and how does the struggle for political identity relate to the history of nation and its struggle for independence? (shrink)

The History of Indian Philosophy is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Indian philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide fifty-eight accessible chapters, organis[=z]ed into three clear parts: knowledge, context, concepts philosophical traditions engaging and encounters: modern and postmodern. This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Indian philosophy. It will also be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance of (...) this rich and complex philosophical tradition, and to philosophers who wish to learn about Indian philosophy through western philosophical and contemporary comparative lens. For complete Contents and authors' abstracts per chapters go to title of the book under Routledge Taylor & Francis ; it is a usual http link not allowed to enter here.> Click on the External Links below . (shrink)

This is a comprehensive introduction to the history of Western Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to Twentieth Century thought. In addition to all the key figures, the book covers figures whose contributions have so far been overlooked, such as Vico, Montesquieu, Durkheim and Weber. Along with in-depth discussion of the philosophical movements, Skirbekk and Gilje also discuss the natural sciences, the establishment of the Humanities, Socialism and Fascism, Psychoanalysis, and the rise of the social sciences. _History of Western Thought_ (...) is an ideal introduction to philosophy and the sociological and scientific structures that have shaped modern day philosophy. (shrink)

Modern conservatism was born in the crisis of the French Revolution that sought to overturn Christianity, monarchy, tradition, and a trust in experience rather than reason. In the name of reason and progress, the French Revolution led to the guillotine, the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a decade of continental war. Today Western Civilization is again in crisis, with an ever-widening progressive campaign against religion, tradition, and ordered liberty; Francesco Giubilei's cogent reassessment of some of conservatism's greatest thinkers could not (...) be timelier. Within these pages, English-speaking readers will come across some familiar names: Burke, Disraeli, Chesterton, and Scruton. Americans get their own chapter too, including penetrating examinations of John Adams, Richard Weaver, Henry Regnery, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Barry Goldwater. But perhaps most interesting is Giubilei's coverage of the continental European tradition–largely Catholic, monarchical, traditionalist, and anti-Jacobin, anti-Communist, and anti-Fascist. Giubilei offers insightful intellectual portraits of statesmen and philosophers like Count Klemens von Metternich, the man who restored Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; Eric Voegelin, the German political philosopher who made his career in America and traced recurrent strains of leftism to an early Christian heresy; Joseph de Maistre, the leading French counterrevolutionary philosopher; George Santayana, a Spaniard who became an American philosopher and conservative pragmatist; Jose Ortega y Gasset, who warned of the "revolt of the masses"; and a wide variety of Italian thinkers whose conservatism was forged against a Fascist ideology that presented itself as a force for stability and respect for the past, but that was fundamentally modernist and opposed to conservatism. Unique and written by one of Italy's youngest and brightest conservative thinkers, Francesco Giubilei's History of European Conservative Thought is sure to enlighten and inform. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe author traces the impact of Abramowski's ideas on the recent history of Poland. His concepts were not only popular in the Polish Socialist Party and the syndicalist movement in the interwar period, but they also exerted a profound influence on the cooperative movement and democratic left-wing opposition in the 1970s and 1980s. The leaders of the Workers’ Defence Committee were much influenced by Abramowski's ideas and, according to some researchers, the Solidarity movement from 1980 to 1981 in Poland (...) was the culmination of his concepts. Today's anti-systemic movements in Poland are also inspired by Abramowski. The author also draws attention to certain similarities between Abramowski's ideas, Kropotkin's idea, Gramsci's concept of civil society and the thought of the young Marx. The author also outlines Abramowski's social ideas in the context of ideas promoted by the main theoreticians of the Polish left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (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)