Fascization of Russia: defining the problem

The evolution of the Russian socio-political system in the direction of its fascism is analyzed. Russia has gone through the main stages of the formation of fascist corporatism: oligarchic, bureaucratic and authoritarian. As a result, the ideology and practice of «racism» – a Russian variety of Nazism disguised as anti-fascism – was formed. The practice of racism is war and mass repressions against Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. In the European tradition, four types of responsibility for the deed are established: criminal, political, moral and metaphysical. Accusations of the collective guilt of an entire nation are not allowed. However, according to Karl Jaspers, «only violence» is used for criminal crimes against humanity, because these people «live only by violence».


Radical Nationalist and Philo-Fascist Movements in Argentina in the 1930s

Nationalism
Political science
Law
Politics


Dutch fascism was marked by an international outlook and character from the outset in the 1920s. Rather than a purely Netherlands affair, it had proponents in multiple countries, particularly Belgium and the East Indies (Indonesia). For many of these, the idea of a Great Netherlands territory uniting all Dutch-speaking nations – Dietsland – was central to their international vision. There were a number of Dutch fascist parties and other organisations spread across the globe which experienced limited success throughout the 1920s, notably Flemish fascists in Belgium, and the reactionary Fatherland Club in the Dutch Indies. The latter was the most important, successfully mobilising the white settler population against perceived weakness in the face of Indonesian nationalism and communism. In the early 1930s they became influenced by fascism. The dominant fascist force of the 1930s however was Anton Mussert’s National Socialist Movement, which became a considerable force in the Netherlands, but proportionally even greater in the East Indies. Permitting mixed-race members in the party, it established integrated branches in the colonies where it became the largest political party. An inclusive culturalist notion of Dietsland was central to the party’s international vision and plans for a future fascist Imperium. It took a broadly positive stance towards the colonial administration, pointing to it as a model of fascist rule. This international Dutch fascism was underpinned by a transnational network of members and colonial administrators and army veterans which moved around the Dutch empire. This had a real impact on the development of party ideology, as leaders had to reckon with the influence of the transnational fascist network. However, ultimately metropolitan chauvinism and white supremacism determined the ultimate failure of Dutch fascism in the Indies and the hollowness of the Dietsland myth.

Empire
Reactionary
Colonialism
Communism
Political science
Nationalism
Politics
Economic history
Population
Ideology
Political economy
Law
Sociology
History


Formada em Pedagogia,possuo algumas especializações na área da educação como Psicopedagogia Clínica e Neuropsicopedagogia ,atualmente estou cursando mestrado em História pela UEG-Morrinhos

This research aims to explore three fundamental works that address interconnected aspects of political, philosophical and social thought. “Fascism”, by Evguiéni B. Pashukanis, released in 2020, offers a critical analysis of the ideological roots and social implications of fascism. Then, “Philosophy, Ideology and Social Science - Essays on Denial and Affirmation”, by István Mészáros, published in 1993, highlights the contradictions of the capitalist system and potential social transformations. Finally, “The German Ideology”, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, written in the 19th century, provides a theoretical basis for understanding historical materialism and criticizing the dominant ideology. The research seeks to draw connections between these works to enrich the understanding of contemporary social and political dynamics.

Hegemony
Ideology
Power (physics)
Political science
Economic system
Sociology
Economics
Politics
Law
Physics


Reclaiming Gramsci's “historicity”: A critical analysis of the British appropriation in light of the “crisis of democracy”

School of Politics and International Relations Queen Mary University of London  United Kingdom

School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom

Any approach to the legacy of Antonio Gramsci represents a substantial challenge. Today, the thinking of this Italian intellectual is not only acknowledged as one of the most significant contributions to 20th century social theory, but has also been one of the most frequently employed frameworks for different disciplines and approaches. His categories, and especially his further development of the concept of hegemony, have provided the basis for new approaches in fields that include international relations, political theory, critical geography, literary criticism, media studies, and feminism, and for entirely new fields such as cultural and postcolonial studies.1 The international success of Gramsci's work, now considered essential reading in political theory, derived from the political and cultural atmosphere of Cold War Europe as well as from its very favorable reception within the emancipation movements in the United States. While this first phase of the international spread of Gramsci's thinking was characterized by the explicitly political use of his writing within the context of Marxist internationalism (Liguori, 2012), a second phase, coinciding with the new century and reaching almost all corners of the globe, has been characterized by a shift in the application of Gramscian theoretical instruments which has sometimes resulted in the detachment, often unintentional, of his concepts from the Marxist spheres in which they were forged (Filippini, 2017; Frosini, 2008). The “globalization” of Gramsci, or, to paraphrase Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), the provincialization of Gramsci (meaning the fragmentation and weakening of Gramsci's concepts as a way of giving them new life in different contexts; see also Harootunian, 2020) is not incompatible with a philological reading of his work, as Joseph Buttigieg (1990) and Italian scholarship have abundantly demonstrated (Baratta, 2000; Cospito, 2016; Di Meo, 2020; Frosini & Liguori, 2004; Francioni & Giasi, 2020). However, the propensity to distance the central and most prolifically applied concept, “hegemony,” from the “rhythm of his thought” (Cospito, 2016) has clearly been fraught with potential danger (Baker, 2016). The wide dissemination and application of Gramscian concepts and thinking has also been given impetus by the recent “global rise of populism,” seen as further confirmation of Gramsci's theoretical modernity (Mouffe, 2018). While these developments have emphasized the emancipatory and critical spirit of Gramsci's reflections, they have also given rise to new interpretations in varying contexts, and have prevented a full appreciation and further operationalization of Gramsci's theoretical apparatus in fields such as historiography and intellectual history (Denning, 2020; Harker, 2021; Lacy, 2014; Kaye, 1992). In this article, I tease out the different aspects of the appropriation of Gramsci's thinking by Anglo-Marxism, from the 1960s onward, in the context of the British debate, in the field of political theory, regarding the “crisis of democracy.” Building on a methodological platform located at the intersection of transnational intellectual history and hegemony theory, I offer a more theoretically nuanced articulation of “Gramscianism,” restoring the importance that Gramsci gave to a historical perspective, by critically evaluating three of the British appropriations: the application by Perry Anderson, the uses made by Stuart Hall, and the displacement into the area of populism by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Although overlooked more recently in favor of other frameworks of investigation (Pensky, 2019), research into the Anglo-Marxist school of thought, and especially into the “New Left,” was a discrete area of interest in the 1990s (see Dworkin, 1997; Roberts, 1997); nevertheless, the isolation of a distinct “British case” might appear to be an artificial heuristic operation in light of the porous borders of the well-documented international reception of Gramsci's thought (see Boothman et al., 2015; Descendre et al., 2020; Manduchi et al., 2017; Schirru, 2009). However, the first publication outside Italy of any of Gramsci's writing was the English translation of some shorter extracts, in, 1957, followed in, 1971 by Selections From the Prison Notebooks (hereafter SPN) (Gramsci, 1971), which triggered the emergence of Gramsci as a global phenomenon.2 The history of his reception, application, adaptation, and further circulation in the English-speaking context was therefore of central importance (Buttigieg, 2018). While most scholarship on Gramsci does accept his historical approach as central (especially Burgio, 2014), this article's critical investigation into the appropriation and transmutation of Gramsci's concept of hegemony in the anglophone context reveals that Gramsci's “historicity”—the historical perspective and awareness that was an inherent element of his thinking—has been increasingly set aside, and in consequence the theoretical novelty of his reflections has not been fully captured. Gramsci's interest in the “production of the past within the present” (Q 10 II § 41: 1310; Q 11 § 12: 1376, SPN: 323) provides him with a basis for developing the theoretical matrix of “conceptions of the world” (Q 4 § 1: 419; Q 101 § 5: 1217; Q 1.1 § 10: 1231) as a particular understanding of politics as temporal “displacements,” and as a “reconfiguration” of different layers of history (Q 11 § 12: 1375−79, SPN: 323−325; Q 13 § 17: 1585, SPN: 182).3 Drawing on recent trends in the studies into Gramsci's plural temporalities (Morfino, 2020; Thomas, 2017), my argument is based on the idea that Gramsci's thought is constantly situated: always driven by the necessity “of seeing things historically” (Q 10 II § 28: 1266, SPN: 369) and motivated by thinking in historical and contextual, but never absolute, terms. Gramsci's reflections on politics as a plurality of temporalities informs most of his themes, including the formation of the modern state and the role of intellectuals (Q 7 § 16: 865−867, SPN: 236−238; Q 12 § 1: 1513−1540, SPN: 5−14), the hierarchy between philosophy and ideology (Q 7 § 35: 883−886, SPN: 351−357; Q 11 § 12: 1379, SPN: 325; Q 11 § 62; 1487, SPN: 404), and in particular his innovative reflections on language and dialects (see Ives, 2004). Moreover, Gramsci's consideration of the “Southern Question” (see Urbinati, 1998) and, in particular, his engagement with Bukharin's teleological conception of linear historical time (Q 11 § 26: 1431−1434; extract in SPN: 425−427; see Frosini, 2003) are intrinsically connected to his conception of the coexistence of multiple temporalities. The history of the alleged “abuse and misuses” of Gramsci's thinking is as long as the history of his reception, and has unfolded in step with Gramsci's continuing success (see Davidson, 2008; Diggins, 1988). To avoid the exaggerations that either limit its application to his specific historical time or, in diametrical opposition, generate new formulations that risk breaking the connection between events and their historical context, which for Gramsci was an essential relationship, I approach ideas, and the texts and intellectual networks that are their channels, as mobile by nature (Baring, 2016). Framing my argument in such a way assumes a methodological approach to the connection between theory and history that remains better captured by the term “praxis” and by what Gramsci understood as the relationship between ideology and philosophy: an integral and nonreductive conception of the world (Cospito, 2019; Thomas, 2009). My intention here is not to establish a full set of new norms for the interpretation of Gramsci, but, more in keeping with the stage of my research, to emphasize the importance of understanding the concept of hegemony as both a political practice and at the same time a historical process: to use Gramscian terms, a dynamic relationship between different layers of “displaced pasts” that have been “reconfiguring” in the ongoing process of “translating” history and theory (see Boothman, 2008; Thomas, 2019). This approach has implications for further research, which I will introduce in the final section. I propose that the issue of hegemony should be seen as a complex intertwining of temporalities that cuts across individuals, social groups, and institutions, and is—according to Gramsci—multiple, stratified, and also affected by spatiality. This plural temporality is a process in which the ongoing results are not by accumulation but, on the contrary, by cross-negotiation with hegemonic apparatuses and intellectuals playing a pivotal role, and in which a “situated praxis” (Tosel, 2016) displays the dialectical drive toward “unity of the society,” a critical and practical human activity (described by Gramsci as “the historical bloc”; see Sotiris, 2018). According to Anne Showstack Sassoon (2000), one of Gramsci's major contributions is the recognition of the importance of historical reflection as a precondition for expanding democracy and as the foundation for construction of a theoretical and political agenda, rather than using history merely to denounce the past. While acknowledging the weight of history, Gramsci derived “a theoretical and political agenda from the problems and possibilities of the present and future rather than from a programme of the past” (p. 4). Within this conceptual boundary, hegemony can therefore be regarded as a form of articulation and intertwining of different times and temporal experiences simultaneously present at a particular historical conjuncture, which provides the basis for progressive and transformative political action. In line with Gramsci's innovative notion of “translatability”—close to the concept of “transposability,” which involves finding matches or differences between “idioms”—I would suggest that the history-theory nexus can be understood as the ability to transpose—finding correspondences or differentiations—between temporally and spatially different political and cultural ways of thinking and acting in a country at a given moment.4 From this angle, Gramsci's historicity resumes its crucial importance as the method for reformulating Marxism as a “philosophy of praxis” and “living philology” (Thomas, 2020). It is evident that the temporal dimension of hegemony, although generally marginalized by the authors examined in this article, is conceptually related to Gramsci's theory of subalternity (see Chakrabarty, 1998; Ekers et al., 2012; Spivak, 2007). In this regard, Gramsci's changing paradigm of inquiry, from focusing on strategies of inclusion to questioning the social and cultural conditions of subordination and exclusion, represents a crucial shift not only for political theory but also for historical analysis. The outbreak of “history from below” in the 1960s and the distinctive British Marxist historiography, for which the study of class formation was linked with the cycles of hegemony, can be parallel to the process investigated in this article. The British Marxist understanding of historical development led to the establishment of a distinctive approach to democratic and socialist strategies in which the recovery of the past was also a project that would assist a theoretical and political understanding of the present (see Kaye, 1992). My account of Gramsci's undertaking remains epistemologically limited to a historical reconstruction of British Marxist political and intellectual discourse. Reclaiming Gramsci's historicity and “his” hegemony as historical categories proves valuable for my approach to a transnational discourse that was reconsidering the dyad of materialism and democracy, and had been welcoming the “linguistic turn.” In this regard, exploring the sphere of the main Anglophone appropriations of Gramsci's thinking may offer us an interdisciplinary resource that can help us to understand the current crisis of democracy and give us the opportunity for political action and renewal. Gramsci's thinking arrived in Britain across a broad spatial, historical, and cultural gap. The Notebooks had for a long time been principally an Italian concern, closely connected to the history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the way in which its post-WWII leader Palmiro Togliatti had tried to foster a link between Marxism and the national intellectual tradition. The first printing (Gramsci, 1948–1951), edited by Togliatti himself in collaboration with Felice Platone, created a sort of double register for the study of Gramsci in which historical reconstruction and critical evaluation ran in parallel with applications of his thought to contemporary politics. This is the background for the particular impact of the Italian thinker in Britain. It is generally thought that his ideas contributed to freeing British Marxism from “economism” and helped the Left to interpret Thatcherism and the process of globalization. This translation into the British context involved the overdevelopment of one aspect of Gramsci's work at the expense of others; the explanation for this imbalance lies in the political needs that his texts have served to fulfil (Forgacs, 2002; see also Eley, 1984; Williams, 1960, in which the author keeps “egemonia” in Italian; Williams, 1975). The turning point in British awareness of Gramsci came in 1971, with publication of the first extensive selection of his writings in English. Although SPN reflected the Italian version, edited by Platone and Togliatti and published by Einaudi (Gramsci, 1948–1951), the two translators Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith had access to Gramsci's original manuscripts and the first draft of Valentino Gerratana's critical Italian edition, which was to be published in 1975. The “Introduction,” largely written by Hoare, presented a strong “leftist” Gramsci, in harmony with the radical interpretation favored by the British readership and in explicit opposition to the “inter-class” version endorsed by the PCI. In order to provide a better translation of Gramsci's language, Hoare and Nowell Smith adopted neologisms and created a completely new English vocabulary; this both refreshed British political discourse and influenced the global reception and reworking of Gramsci's thinking (Boothman, 2013; Boothman et al., 2015). The earlier arrival in the Anglophone world of translations of some of Gramsci's (1957a, 1957b) writing had exerted some influence, especially in relation to the formation of the British Marxist school of historiography. Eric Hobsbawm's (1959) book on archaic forms of social movement in Italy and Spain, for example, used Gramsci's conceptualization of the “Southern Question” and an embryonic formulation of hegemony. However, Perry Anderson's engagement in the pages of the New Left Review with Gramsci's concepts, especially that of “hegemony,” opened the way for their wider exposure in British intellectual circles. Before he published “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” (1976a)—an essay that is still much quoted in the Anglo-American theoretical debate notwithstanding its inconsistencies and distortions have been abundantly demonstrated (Buttigieg, 1994; Dal Maso, 2021; Francioni, 1984; Thomas, 2009)—Anderson employed Gramsci's theoretical framework in his article “Origins of the present crisis” (Anderson, 1964), in which he offered a structural analysis of British historical development through the prism of Gramsci's “passive revolution.” Much influenced by Tom Nairn (1964a, 1964b, 1964c, 1964d), who had come into contact with Gramsci's oeuvre during his time in Italy at Pisa's Scuola Normale Superiore, Anderson was particularly inspired by Gramsci's endeavor to view Italian history as diverging from what had been seen as the normal pattern of bourgeois historical development. Anderson argued that the particular character of England's modern history was as exceptional as Italy's failed national and bourgeois revolutions (examples of what Anderson called “historical pathology”). In the Italian case, the Risorgimento, understood as a failed revolution, had relegated the progress of Italian society to a premodern stage; in the English case, by contrast, construction of a “historical bloc” from the landowning class, representing aristocratic capitalism, and a “supine bourgeoisie,” the social class of mercantile capitalism, created a traditional hegemonic culture and ultimately prevented the formation of a radical proletariat. “Passive revolution,” like other terms used by Gramsci, has different meanings in the Notebooks and underwent a process of transformation from a concept developed to indicate the absence of revolutionary politics—the Jacobin moment—in the process of nation-building in Italy, to, in the third and final phase of Gramsci's reflections, a theoretical and historical term emphasizing the logic of the process of modernization and the social displacement of capitalism (see Thomas, 2015; Voza, 2004). Explicitly drawing on Gramsci's analysis of Italian history, and also inspired by his observations on the French, German, and British bourgeois revolutions (Q 1, § 41: 53; SPN: 77), Anderson's application of this thinking failed to understand that the main purpose of Gramsci's historical reflections had been to explain the rise of Italian Fascism in the context of the inherent and insuperable tension between democracy and the state.5 The development of the Gramscian Nairn–Anderson thesis might be better understood in the light of its first appearance, in the Italian journal Il Contemporaneo (Nairn, 1963), and when placed in the context of the debate within Italian Marxism, which from the 1960s onward expressed increasing hostility toward the approved version of Italian Gramscianism (Liguori, 2012). However, Gramsci's thinking, filtered by the lens of Nairn and Anderson, won over a new British audience: portraying a highbrow Gramscianism, which became very popular in academic circles, their thesis represented a powerful alternative to the cultural Marxism of E. P. Thompson, Raphael Samuel, and Stuart Hall (Davis, 2006, as a political Anderson's Gramscianism provided an first theoretical at a of and the of the British Party in the 1960s and (see 2021; It is therefore that this particular of Gramsci's ideas extensive and to interest and especially within discourse (see the of essay of in 2019). Anderson's particular perspective articulation in his essay “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” and book on Marxism both texts had a major on almost who with Gramsci's The purpose of Anderson's analysis was to on “the forms and of Gramsci's concept of hegemony in his Prison and to their as a to their as an account of the of class in the bourgeois of the and to their for the of the class to emancipation and Anderson his on Gramsci's theory regarding the different political of the and and the different revolutionary strategies to which the of the of for the case, and the of for the His main theoretical to emphasize the idea that Gramsci's concept of hegemony both had with and was a of and, to that Gramsci had the theory of hegemony from its original basis in class and, by the importance he to the dimension of Anderson argued that can be from his work that from revolutionary (p. Drawing on extensive has presented a very of the theoretical and philological of Anderson's conceptual in to Gramsci's thinking hegemony was to his of to the of in the that had been by Buttigieg and by Dal Anderson has recently presented a more nuanced version of his It is that his interpretation keeps in the British cultural Marxist debate, to Anderson's ability to offer a of Gramsci's political thought, and his regarding this represented a impetus for all Anglophone (Pensky, 2019; see also 2004). The of Anderson's analysis of Gramsci's concept of hegemony was by its with the by in et al., both approaches on the to the revolutionary nature of Gramsci's political thought had reading Gramsci in the in the Italian and to the circulation in of a of and made some in his article et In the to he developed an increasingly of Gramsci his of While very but translation of the Notebooks in, a version was not published the and Although was critical of Gramsci's he was in also the for the arrival of Gramsci's thinking in theoretical debate this followed a that ran parallel to Gramsci's theoretical in the Anglophone parallel have provided the background for all further developments in British Gramscianism and Gramscian studies most the Gramsci” offered by political theory (Thomas, 2019). made its into the British the concept of hegemony to in the as an explanation for the way that popular and ideas social at a particular political Gramsci's theory of hegemony be as a to the notion of of the idea of of and between a complex of different and However, the danger of an of this understanding is that Gramsci's hegemony will principally be seen as a of social in a given social formation from historical From this perspective, hegemonic politics the process of the of a political in opposition to an and hegemony as a process of linear temporalities which in a (see Thomas, 2020). the at Perry Anderson, is that he argued that Stuart application of Gramsci's thinking was for further of the concept of hegemony. his and particular understanding of Gramsci, he that in the of Thatcherism “the on at the expense of and but with to from any social as they in any political Hall and would never have this the was for (Anderson, Hall Gramsci in when he the cultural who with a of the Italian of Gramsci's when first at the for in his activity and a distinct field of British cultural studies & Hall made use of the concept of hegemony in his analysis of of cultural such as and for the of my he was at the same time the concept to the by he argued that success resulted from the establishment of a new “historical had been the to the apparatus of popular culture and, in the of the this development as a new British form of what Gramsci had called “the of some in an formation and their and appropriation into a new political Gramsci had his particular version of in his of the of Italy's (Q 1, § in Q § extract in SPN: While Hall used concepts from Gramsci's to political revolution, including crisis” and the main theoretical for his analysis of Thatcherism 2020). Hall had the concept in an article in the Marxism some the in the British and developed his formulation in he as a political was a cultural In such as “the that they in and understand the of the of the social to new and the to have a use was made of Gramsci's and conceptual the new of British politics was as a distinctive and hegemonic political nature be understood by the perspective of cultural analysis. Hall, a Gramscian approach was crucial not only he any idea of a which the of culture and ideas from the of but, he a central importance to “the of or of which the of thought and ideas is Hall never out a developed theory his adopted concept of “hegemony,” but its gave the an In a further he linked to his use of the concept of Building on notion of which to the of a shift from a political culture of and toward a based on explicit Hall as a better of the hegemonic project of Thatcherism by developing Gramsci's conception of hegemony to by in the context of the crisis of the social democratic While of as a to the crisis of capitalism was influenced by the of the of the Hall the more nuanced concept of to the of to understand the in British society of both the process of traditional political and the of national the by a premodern for and the over which he as the main of The of this hegemonic project was the engagement of the over the by Hall in his article “The the notion of some of the crucial of the between the and the that Gramsci had by developing his concept of hegemony. Although Gramsci's conception is to be understood as an of social in which is but between political and aspects of hegemony, drawing from Gramsci's Hall a between Thatcherism as a as “a and to which the had been in some aspect of argument this emphasizing the that has most not of the in also the application of a as a theory of the in an to the new as an of and the Hall argued that

Marxist philosophy
Sociology
Politics
Hegemony
Social science
Critical theory
Democracy
Appropriation
Epistemology
Law
Political science
Philosophy


(Hi)story‐Telling: An Introduction to Italian Alternate and Counterfactual History

University of Salerno  Salerno Italy
Email: [email protected]
University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy

The dilemma of the history of the defeated is certainly not a novel topic for political and historical enquiry. The experience of the unspeakable forced the Auschwitz generation to question the meaning of historical memory. Walter Benjamin posed this question very early on, when he wrote in 1940 that ‘The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious’.1 The nagging for the memory of the unspeakable obviously ran through the writings of Primo Levi, who immediately recognised the fallacy and falsifiability of memory, both personal and historical. ‘The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features.’2 Years before the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt also put the question of memory and its manipulability. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), she reflects on the relationship between narrative and politics in these terms: ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule – she argues – is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction […] and the distinction between true and false […] no longer exist’.3 Collective memory is hence a recurring question in the aftermath of the Second World War and in particular after the unaccountable experience of the concentration camp. The memory of the drowned is never safe, firstly because the real witnesses of Auschwitz are the ones who did not survive it, and secondly because the memory of the past is always exposed to its posthumous falsification.4 It is sometimes said that the aim of the historian is to explain the past by “finding,” “identifying”, or “uncovering” the “stories” that lie buried in chronicles; and that the difference between “history” and “fiction” resides in the fact that the historian “finds” his stories, whereas the fiction writer “invents” his. This conception of the historian's task, however, obscures the extent to which “invention” also plays a part in the historian's operations.5 When Metahistory was published in 1973, the European historiographical debate had already been profoundly influenced by post-structuralism. As a matter of fact, in the preceding years, books such as Michel Foucault's Le mots et les choses (1966), Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie (1967), or Gilles Deleuze's Différence et répétition (1968) had powerfully occupied the public discussion in France and Europe. In those same years, Roland Barthes had published Le discours de l'histoire (1967) and L'effet du réel (1968), two essays destined to have a great echo in the reflection on historiographical methodology. It is perhaps superfluous to recall how the debate on the writing of history continued in the years following Metahistory. Nonetheless, it seems important to point out that works such as Lynn Hunt's The New Cultural History (1989) and Linda Hutcheon's The Politics of Postmodernism (1989) show that the discussion on the writing of history has gone far beyond the seventies. The interplay hypothesised by White between history and fiction, between historiography and literature, has in some ways forced the historiography of the second half of the twentieth century into a process of self-reflection, starting with the recognition of the problematic connection between reality and language, truth, and storytelling.6 Another relevant aspect of intellectual discussions over collective historical memory after the Second World War was denialism. The publication of Arthur Butz's Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry (1976), David Irving's Hitler's War (1977), and Robert Faurisson's Le problème des chambres à gaz (1978) constituted an authentic cultural trauma for the generation of scholars formed after the Second World War. The very fact that the extermination of the Jews, the concentration camps, and the gas chambers could be questioned as real events – as historical facts – made Benjamin's admonition dramatically relevant: auch die Toten werden vor dem Feind, wenn er siegt, nicht sicher sein. The enemy, in fact, became threatening again, taking on the guise of the historian. If the condemnation of denialism has occurred first and foremost in politics and public opinion, it is the reaction of European and American intellectuals that is of particular interest to us. As a matter of fact, in the intellectual debate, the condemnation of denialism has often been accompanied by an equally severe condemnation of post-structuralism and post-modernism.7 The reasons are rather easy to understand. The idea that the writing of history is equated with any other process of narrative invention, that rhetoric is in the background of both reconstructions of the past and works of fiction, is considered the conceptual matrix that allowed denialism to arise. For denialists, if nothing escapes the domain of appearance, if everything is an effect of reality, then even the Shoah can possibly be considered fiction. In the same years in which the negationist scandal broke out, Jean-François Lyotard published his groundbreaking work: La condition postmoderne (1979). As Nancy Partner has convincingly pointed out in a recent essay, the reaction to postmodernism in the historical debate was quite disproportionate. As a matter of fact, Lyotard, in his rapport sur le savoir, did not examine history as a possible example of the crisis of metanarratives, nor was history central to the reflections of Fredric Jameson or Linda Hutcheon. ‘Postmodernism's founding definers and observers – Partner has then concluded, not concludes – seemed indifferent to academic history, yet professional historians eventually recognised in postmodernism a critical force of unprecedented threat’.8 Lyotard's book impacted on the pre-existing debate on the writing of history which had its origins in narrativism.9 From the 1950s onwards, Arthur Danto had insisted on the relationship between history and storytelling, showing in particular the mechanisms by which retrodiction works in the writing of history. According to Danto, the historian composes their narrative through a ‘retroactive re-alignment of the Past’.10 In other words, from the narrativist's standpoint, the historian is inevitably posthumous, and the historical (re)construction of the past is a retrospective story. Similarly, in the 1960s and 1970s, Louis Mink had presented historical knowledge as an imaginative construction, outlining the inescapable and structural link between history and fiction: ‘We could learn to tell stories of our lives – he says in 1970 – from nursery rhymes, or from culture-myths if we had any, but it is from history and fiction that we learn how to tell and understand complex stories, and how it is that stories answer questions’.11 It is in this context of historical-philosophical discussion that reactions to Lyotard's arguments and to postmodernism took place. The liaison between epistemological reflection and historiographical debate is, of course, represented by White. ‘The events are made into a story – he wrote in 1978 – by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and the highlighting of others, by […] all of the techniques that we would normally expect to find in the emplotment of a novel or a play’.12 In short, by the time the English translation of La condition postmoderne was published in 1984, the discussion on the writing of history had already taken on rather broad dimensions. As Partner rightly points out, from 1989 onwards it has been the journal History and Theory, in particular, that has hosted the debate on history writing. Frank Ankersmit and Perez Zagorin in particular are the ones leading the dance.13 It is impossible, nor perhaps useful, to go back to the discussion between the two historians. Here, in fact, it seems more important to recall some positions taken by Ankersmit in Narrative Logic, which will later be reiterated in History and Tropology. In the first place, he advocates for the total autonomy of narratio: ‘There are no translation-rules – he wrote in 1983 – enabling us to “project” the past onto the narrative level of its historiographical representation’.14 This is what Ankersmit calls ‘narrative idealism’. Another of his fundamental theses is that postmodernism is to some extent a radicalisation of historism. As a matter of fact, according to Ankersmit, they share the idea of a ‘fragmentation of the historical world’, although the historical object of postmodern narrativism ‘it is not part of a reified past but situated in the distance or difference between past and present’.15 Finally, in a similar direction seems to go Keith Jenkins, who in Why History? takes both White and Ankersmit to the extreme. In a perspective of radical narrativist presentism, Jenkins claims the superfluity of history tout court. That is, starting from the assumption that history is and has always been mythologised and ideologised, rhetorically represented, and emplotted, Jenkins concludes that we should all realise that we live in a post-historical world and take on its emancipatory aspects: ‘If Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty, Ermarth et al. can do without a historical consciousness and especially a modernist upper or lower case one, then we all can’.16 In my view, the most balanced reaction on this issue is that of Carlo Ginzburg, who polemicised against the spread of a postmodernist fashion and, on the other hand, reconstructed some crucial steps in the history of writing history. In doing so, Ginzburg managed to show how historiography used ab origine the weapons of rhetoric to make the truths in its discourse effective. In this regard, Ginzburg spoke of an effect of truth – explicitly polemicising against Barthes’ effet du réel – meaning that truth in general, and historical truth in particular, has to do not only with reality, but also with its transposition into a persuasive narrative.17 On these premises, it is not surprising that alongside the historiographical debate, the so-called alternate history proliferated during the second half of the twentieth century. Although it has to be considered literature in the strict sense, alternate history closely investigates the very conception of historical time, trying to question its deterministic linearity.18 The problem alternate history deals with may be posed in a rather simple way: could history have gone differently? Karen Hellekson has defined this literary subgenre as follows: ‘The alternate history (also known as alternative history, alternate universe, allohistory, uchronia, and parahistory) is that branch of nonrealistic literature that concerns itself with history turning out differently than we know to be the case.’19 In brief, the narrative peculiarity of alternate history is to identify a specific point on the past timeline – indifferently referred to as nexus point, nexus event, Jonbar hinge, or Jonbar point – from which a different development of the (hi)story is hypothesised.20 The point of divergence from the acknowledged historical timeline is located in a moment considered particularly significant for the future development of events: Hitler's rise to power, the Allies’ victory in the Second World War, Kennedy's assassination, and so forth. From this standpoint, one may say that the main aim of alternate history is to show the precariousness of historical time as such: it really could have happened that the Axis Powers won the war, just as it could have happened, on the contrary, that the Nazis did not rise to power at all, that Hitler was not born or that JFK was not assassinated. On the other hand, though, narrating an alternative history induces a critical reflection on the present. In this sense, we may agree with Charles Renouvier when he defined uchrony as a ‘utopie dans l'histoire’, imagining a more auspicious progress of Western civilisation with its non-Christianisation.21 But we may also define it as a dystopia in history when the alternative course of history presented to the reader has, in reverse, frightening traits. The link between cause and effect is always an interpretation made by the person looking. In history, the effect will be the event expressed through the trace – the battle, the treaty, the marriage, all recorded by contemporaries. The historian will construct a reason for the effect, one grounded in letters, tax rolls, legal decisions, and other traces. This reason will be her argument, the thesis of her work. But in history, the leap between cause and effect will always be an interpretation. In fiction (and of course in the alternate history), the connection between cause and effect is not an interpretation but an invention.22 While historiography therefore uses logical arguments and documentary evidence, alternate history fiction, starting from real historical events, invents a deviation, sometimes even minimal – a bullet that misses its target (in the case of Kennedy) or, on the contrary, that hits it (in the case of Roosevelt) – to imagine a different historical reality and induce a critical reflection on the present. Although it is often associated with it, the so-called counterfactual history does not actually have much to do with alternate history. In his extensive introduction to Virtual History, Niall Ferguson starts from some epistemological assumptions – mainly related to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Lorenz's butterfly effect – to promote the use of simulation in historical research. Assuming the aleatory nature of historical phenomena, which are subject more to the laws of probability than to those of causality, Ferguson proposes the use of counterfactual conjecture in historiographical reconstruction as a virtual stress-strain analysis of a research hypothesis. In epistemological terms, this means to adopt what in criminal law is called the but-for test, which is the hypothetical exclusion of certain causes that are supposed to have provoked a certain event in order to determine its actual causation.23 Would this specific event have happened if there had not been that specific cause? As a matter of fact, all the essays collected in Virtual History aim to verify specific what-ifs of history: What if there had been no American War of Independence?24 What if England had remained neutral during the First World War?25 What if the Wehrmacht had defeated the Red Army?26 What if Kennedy had not been assassinated in Dallas?27 Here too, as in alternate history, the reader is placed before certain nexus points, from which the author of the article hypothesises an alternative development of events. The methodological difference is however very clear and is established in the introduction by Ferguson himself: ‘We should consider as plausible or probable – he argues – only those alternatives which we can show on the basis of contemporary evidence that contemporaries actually considered.’28 For the virtual historian, it is therefore a matter of standing somewhere in between the pure literary invention of fictional narrative and historicistic determinism. In other words, according to Ferguson, it is a question of assuming the aleatoric nature of history, of showing its possible alternatives, in order to emphasise how a given event could easily have had opposite outcomes – for example, Britain could have stayed neutral in 1914; Operation Barbarossa could have succeeded. But, as we have outlined, the counterfactual hypothesis first and foremost aims to show the main determining causes of a given event – for example, the hung Parliament resulting from UK general election in January 1910; Hitler disastrous interference with his High Command's strategies in USSR in December 1941. Although the book edited by Ferguson was met with a rather tepid academic reception, it can certainly be said that Virtual history represents an important moment in the historiographical debate at the turn of the century.29 A few other historians have since tried to systematically adopt the approach proposed by Ferguson. An example is the book edited by Robert Cowley – What If? – where in their respective essays Cowley himself and John Keegan show how the First World War could have been avoided and how the Second World War could have been won by Germany.30 Nonetheless, it cannot be argued that virtual history fully succeeded in establishing itself as a historiographical research method. The reasons for this are most likely to be found in the understandable suspicion, following the spread of anti-Semitic denialism, of any approach that claimed the use of imagination, or fiction, as a tool for historiographical investigation. Denying the existence of the Shoah and verifying the causes of the Nazi defeat by hypothesising their victory were seen as two dangerously similar approaches. It is probably for these same reasons that alternate history and counterfactual history have not had much editorial or academic success in the Italian scene. Apart from Se Garibaldi avesse perso31 and La storia con i se,32 there is not much other Italian research in this field. This silence has been recently broken by a special issue of Rivista di Politica.33 The essays written by Federico Trocini34 and Emiliano Marra,35 in particular, analyse the parable of the so-called fantafascismo. Their detailed reconstruction of a part of Italian uchronic literature, however, indirectly shows the main reason for its poor fortune: the ideological compromise of some Italian allohistory writers with fascism and neo-fascism. Starting from these general coordinates, it is possible to show the main research aims of the special section of the present issue of History. The three articles that follow are the result of a lengthy discussion between the authors. Our aim is to show how a tradition of alternate and counterfactual history exists in Italy as well, although it is not easy to detect. This difficulty in tracing alternate and counterfactual Italian writings, in our opinion, is due to the non-explicit adoption of the rules and methods of these genres of (hi)storytelling. As a matter of fact, writers such as Camillo Pellizzi, Delio Cantimori, Corrado Alvaro, Guido Morselli, Luigi Malerba, Wu Ming, and Antonio Scurati preferred to apparently assume the canon of historiography, future narrative, or historical novel in order to produce a hidden or implicit counterfactual effect. From this standpoint, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte's opening article analyses some examples of narratives that present some of the typical features of counterfactual history. Her article analyses the ante litteram emergence of the counterfactual in historiographical discourse and in particular in the literature on the so-called ‘missed revolutions’ during Italian fascism. In this way, Chiantera-Stutte investigates the origins and common motives of the political revolt of the young generation who lived during Mussolini's regime. More specifically, her essay considers the interpretations of the ‘unfinished revolution’ given by Pellizzi and Cantimori. She considers the topic of the ‘missed revolution’ as a cluster of questions that the generation born at the turn of the twentieth century had to face. The main aim of her reconstruction is to observe the mutual connection of antifascist and fascist perspectives and, at the same time, to understand the different attitudes towards politics and political ideals, illustrating the different ways of being fascists during the Ventennio. The reconstruction of the ‘missed revolution’ debate, occurring as it did in a period of crisis, shows to what extent history became a terrain of appropriation in the political and intellectual discussion. It reveals not only the uses of history by political adversaries, but also the interplay between history and politics in that specific genre of historical writing which was on the borderline between historical reconstruction and hypothetical narrative. From this perspective, Chiantera-Stutte aims to show that the literature concerning ‘missed revolution’ is a true historical genre, in which the personality, and the political and social values of the writers eventually come into the light more clearly than in other historical works. Angelo Arciero's article analyses the various uchronic reverberations of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in the Italian literary context, trying to show their political implications. The author shows that Alvaro's novels L'uomo è forte and Belmoro, Morselli's uchronies and and story are – in different ways – onto the reflections and literary by The between and is and in On the one hand, L'uomo è forte represents a totalitarian dystopia by of years the conceptual of Nineteen On the other hand, – after a hypothetical World War – is placed on a historical similar to Orwell's in a the concerning the relationship between and then how the conceptual with that can be in go by with to the author of Nineteen In both he allohistory and future narrative aim to in a critical the that took in the Italian from the to the The and essay the course of the European and Italian historical novel between the and the The central hypothesis is that the historical from its has In the specific case of the canon of the historical novel its and to be taken on as an of of Italian The same it had in where the genre never to a of historical reconstruction and social But it is at the turn of the twentieth and the that the historical novel has an unprecedented From the publication of to di the Italian historical novel at the turn of the century has as a of historical on the from the First to the Second Finally, it is with Antonio three novels – L'uomo and – that the a tool for a critical analysis of collective memory, in particular of the historical memory of fascism. If in this – this is the hypothesis – it is because he uses an of counterfactual the implicit

Narrative
Politics
Collective memory
The Holocaust
Jewish question
History
Politics of memory
Dilemma
Ideal (ethics)
Meaning (existential)
Subject (documents)
Literature
Aesthetics
Philosophy
Law
Epistemology
Art
Political science


Fascist Italy as the Heir of the Imperium Romanum Celebration of Romanism as an ideological instrument of legitimation

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

On May 9, 1936, at 9:45 p.m., on the balcony of Palazzo Venezia, Benito Mussolini proclaimed: “Italy, at last, has an empire of its own“ For Mussolini, revealing Italy as an “empire” was not just the simple use of a term. Still, it was to be the cornerstone of the large-scale adaptation of the Imperium Romanum that Fascism had made its primary goal. With this proclamation, a new era dawned for Italy, which is why the year in question was also meaningfully touted by Mussolini at the time as “anno zero”. However, Italy's basic idea of using the Roman Empire as a political model existed before the Fascist era. Even during Italy's nation-building in 1861, ancient Rome was considered an important role model. This can be seen, among other things, in a statement by Camillo Cavour, which read: “Just as ancient Rome was once the capital of the world, so the new Rome should once again occupy this place”. The protagonists of the Kingdom of Italy, however, in the sense of a historical-political euphoria, were almost exclusively content with the idea of the ancient Mediterranean. When fascism entered the Kingdom of Italy in 1922, Benito Mussolini declared Rome as the starting point, final goal, and myth of fascism, seeing a lack of integration ideology. Fascist Italy, under this slogan, committed itself subsequently to acting as the historical heir of ancient Rome, establishing the restoration of the Imperium Romanum as the affirmative goal of fascism. The claim was made not only to use ancient Rome for political purposes in the form of a historical projection but also to elevate it to the spirit of the entire current and the Italian nation. The first elements of a turn to Roman antiquity can already be seen in the initial phase of the fascist rise to power. This was the case, for example, with the formation of the “Camicia Nera” based on elite Roman troops. While Fascism succeeded in consolidating its position of power in Italy, under Mussolini, Romanism was staged in numerous areas, which convinced the Italian people to approve of an imperial expansionist policy. Italy's entry into the Second World War will be the temporal endpoint of our investigation. The present work focuses on the central question of the means used to legitimize Fascist Italy as the rightful heir to the Imperium Romanum. As an introduction to this topic, we first illuminate the extent to which ancient Rome already served as a model at the time of the Risorgimento. Then we will look at the tense situation after the end of the First World War, which the angry population generally called “Vittoria mutilate”. Then we will talk about the causes of the emergence of an increasing imperialist urge, which paved the way for the ambitions of fascism in Italy. In the following, the identification with the symbol of the fasces is considered, which was consistently used under the influence of Benito Mussolini, both in party names and as a recurring emblem on flags. In particular, it examines how it was possible to give the Roman lictor bundle a genuine emblem character. Subsequently, by looking at three areas in which a deliberate orchestration of fascist Romanism took place, the so-called “romanità fascista” We will begin with the military organization of the March on Rome, with which fascism succeeded in gaining political domination in Italy. Mussolini's self-portrayal follows this in his heyday as the second Augustus and the representative large-scale building project of fascism, the Via dell Impero, in the heart of Rome. In conclusion, a summary will be drawn about how the idea of a reconstruction of the Imperium Romanus could ideologically manifest itself in fascist Italy and in which period it was significant for the national mentality. The conclusion critically examines Italy's claim to embody an empire and Mussolini's self-image as the second August. Benito Mussolini: Scritti E Discorsi dell'Impero. (Novembre 1935-XIV – 4 Novembre 1936-XV E.F.), Milano 1939, S. 115-120. Vgl. Camillo Benso conte di Cavour: Opera parlamentaria del conte di Cavour, o.O 1862., S. 361-362 Vgl. Richard Faber: Das ewige Rom, oder, Die Stadt und der Erdkreis. Zur Archäologie "abendländischer" Globalisierung, Würzburg 2000, S. 173. Martinelli, Salvatore. "Diagrammatische Potenz in neuer Perspektive mit Linie und Punkt." (2020): 277-280.

Legitimation
Ideology
Philosophy
Political science
History
Law
Politics


Politics and perversion (Pier Paolo Pasolini’s de Sade today)

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade

The article attempts to examine Pier Paolo Pasolini?s film Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom, not only as an adaptation of Marquis de Sade?s work, but as a possible response to the problems of modern society, which reanimates fascism, no longer as political ideology, but as a ?natural? form of contemporary human sensibility. Relying on his original ?semiology of reality,? the expression of which is cinema, Pasolini?s film embodies the non-political logic of fascism as the logic of perversion, hidden behind the facade of political ideology. The article shows that Salo consistently contradicts the key principles of cinematic expressiveness of Pasolini?s theory itself, which focuses on moments in which ?reality? reveals itself (acting as life itself). As a result, the film connects the unconnected - the shock of scenes of torture and sexual violence with a cultural allegory that anesthetizes effect of visual violence. For Pasolini, both violence and culture are mechanisms for analyzing the ephemeral substance of power, which inevitably generates some form of fascism and perversion, while de Sade is the discoverer of the basic sensual (plastic) syntagmas of power, embodied in the figure of the libertine. The sadistic libertinage, which combines the idea of freedom and the practice of torture, finds itself at the very heart of contemporary politics, its operative unconscious.

Perversion
Torture
Ideology
Politics
Allegory
Aesthetics
Movie theater
Power (physics)
Sociology
Foregrounding
Sensibility
Philosophy
Psychoanalysis
Literature
Art
Law
Human rights
Gender studies
Political science


The reasons for the demise of Liberty Europe

Journal of Education Humanities and Social Sciences

The article explores the reasons behind the collapse of liberal Europe in the 20th century, arguing that it was a necessary consequence of the core conflict between imperialism and social democracy. Imperialism undermined the foundations of social democracy by prioritizing expansion and war, leading to economic competition and irreconcilable conflicts among European nations. This competition eroded social democratic institutions, intensified the conflict between socialism and capitalism, and ultimately led to the demise of European democracy. The rise of fascism became an inevitable outcome as it offered a third option in the conflict between imperialism and socialism, appealing to those disillusioned with democracy and freedom. The article concludes that the demise of liberal Europe was due to the conflict between imperialism and socialism, which shattered the traditional democratic framework and led to the rise of fascism.


On May 9, 1936, at 9:45 p.m., on the balcony of Palazzo Venezia, Benito Mussolini proclaimed: “Italy, at last, has an empire of its own“ For Mussolini, revealing Italy as an “empire” was not just the simple use of a term. Still, it was to be the cornerstone of the large-scale adaptation of the Imperium Romanum that Fascism had made its primary goal. With this proclamation, a new era dawned for Italy, which is why the year in question was also meaningfully touted by Mussolini at the time as “anno zero”. However, Italy's basic idea of using the Roman Empire as a political model existed before the Fascist era. Even during Italy's nation-building in 1861, ancient Rome was considered an important role model. This can be seen, among other things, in a statement by Camillo Cavour, which read: “Just as ancient Rome was once the capital of the world, so the new Rome should once again occupy this place”. The protagonists of the Kingdom of Italy, however, in the sense of a historical-political euphoria, were almost exclusively content with the idea of the ancient Mediterranean. When fascism entered the Kingdom of Italy in 1922, Benito Mussolini declared Rome as the starting point, final goal, and myth of fascism, seeing a lack of integration ideology. Fascist Italy, under this slogan, committed itself subsequently to acting as the historical heir of ancient Rome, establishing the restoration of the Imperium Romanum as the affirmative goal of fascism. The claim was made not only to use ancient Rome for political purposes in the form of a historical projection but also to elevate it to the spirit of the entire current and the Italian nation. The first elements of a turn to Roman antiquity can already be seen in the initial phase of the fascist rise to power. This was the case, for example, with the formation of the “Camicia Nera” based on elite Roman troops. While Fascism succeeded in consolidating its position of power in Italy, under Mussolini, Romanism was staged in numerous areas, which convinced the Italian people to approve of an imperial expansionist policy. Italy's entry into the Second World War will be the temporal endpoint of our investigation. The present work focuses on the central question of the means used to legitimize Fascist Italy as the rightful heir to the Imperium Romanum. As an introduction to this topic, we first illuminate the extent to which ancient Rome already served as a model at the time of the Risorgimento. Then we will look at the tense situation after the end of the First World War, which the angry population generally called “Vittoria mutilate”. Then we will talk about the causes of the emergence of an increasing imperialist urge, which paved the way for the ambitions of fascism in Italy. In the following, the identification with the symbol of the fasces is considered, which was consistently used under the influence of Benito Mussolini, both in party names and as a recurring emblem on flags. In particular, it examines how it was possible to give the Roman lictor bundle a genuine emblem character. Subsequently, by looking at three areas in which a deliberate orchestration of fascist Romanism took place, the so-called “romanità fascista” We will begin with the military organization of the March on Rome, with which fascism succeeded in gaining political domination in Italy. Mussolini's self-portrayal follows this in his heyday as the second Augustus and the representative large-scale building project of fascism, the Via dell Impero, in the heart of Rome. In conclusion, a summary will be drawn about how the idea of a reconstruction of the Imperium Romanus could ideologically manifest itself in fascist Italy and in which period it was significant for the national mentality. The conclusion critically examines Italy's claim to embody an empire and Mussolini's self-image as the second August. Benito Mussolini: Scritti E Discorsi dell'Impero. (Novembre 1935-XIV – 4 Novembre 1936-XV E.F.), Milano 1939, S. 115-120. Vgl. Camillo Benso conte di Cavour: Opera parlamentaria del conte di Cavour, o.O 1862., S. 361-362 Vgl. Richard Faber: Das ewige Rom, oder, Die Stadt und der Erdkreis. Zur Archäologie "abendländischer" Globalisierung, Würzburg 2000, S. 173.

Legitimation
Ideology
Political science
Philosophy
Law
History
Politics


The war of a defeated Italy. The Second World War in Candido and Il Borghese

Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy

Universita degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy

World War II
Art
Spanish Civil War
History
Humanities
Archaeology


Postwar denazification of Ukraine: tasks, principles, criteria for highlighting groups of special attention

Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan

National Security and Strategic Planning

The article proposes a view of the structure and methodology of the postwar denazification of Ukraine. The conceptual apparatus associated with the subject of denazification is being revised and the author's definition of fascism and criteria for distinguishing Nazism are proposed. The generally accepted scheme for the manifestation of fascism at the state (political regime) and organizational (military / paramilitary parties and movements) levels is supplemented by the sphere of public consciousness and everyday communication practices. An analysis of the concept of “Ukrainianism” is made and its interpretation as a variety of Nazism is substantiated. The specificity of Ukrainian Nazism, its own "intellectual" tradition, which developed independently of the ideologies of the Third Reich, is noted. Comprehensive tasks and principles of combating the institutional and social structures struck by Nazism are formulated. The concept of groups of special attention is introduced and the criteria for their discharge at all levels of society are proposed.

Nazism
Ukrainian
Ideology
Politics
Variety (cybernetics)
Subject (documents)
Consciousness
State (computer science)
Interpretation (philosophy)
Sociology
Epistemology
Political science
Psychology
Social psychology
Law
Philosophy
Computer science
Linguistics
Artificial intelligence


I.A. Ilyin’s Views in the Context of the Ideological Discourse of the Second Quarter of the 20th Century: Myths of Political Labeling

Mythology
Quarter (Canadian coin)
Ideology
Politics
Context (archaeology)
Literature
Sociology
Political science
History
Art
Law
Archaeology


Dollies for the <i>Duce</i>: the politics of playtime in Fascist Italy

Dictatorship
Politics
Narrative
Legislation
Corporate governance
Sociology
Gender studies
Political science
History
Law
Art
Literature
Management
Democracy


<i>Beyond the Things Themselves: Economic Aspects of the Italian Race Laws (1938–2018)</i> Ilaria Pavan

Punitive damages
Opposition (politics)
Nazism
Narrative
Political science
Law
History
Guard (computer science)
Nazi Germany
Constructive
Sociology
Criminology
Art
Politics
Literature


Il rifiuto di Vito Volterra: matematica e politica. Dalla 'damnatio memoriae' alla memoria ritrovata - Mathematics and Politics: Vito Volterra’s refusal of the fascist oath. From ‘damnatio memoriae’ to memory rediscovered

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)

The author frames Vito Volterra’s refusal of the oath of allegiance to fascism in the general context of his anti-fascist political position. Such position became public as early as 1923, with his opposition to the educational reform promoted by Giovanni Gentile, and later on as opposition to the Mussolini government in parliamentary activity and as a signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto in 1925. Fascism reacted by ousting Volterra from its positions in the world of culture (presidency of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and presidency of the National Research Council) and by making him invisible to public opinion. In a few years, Volterra was obscured outside the scientific community, and even within it the very important role he had played as a science stateman was forgotten. Only after decades has the historical significance of his personality been fully rediscovered.

Humanities Oath Mathematics Theology Philosophy


Global populism and Italy. An interview with Federico Finchelstein

School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

Populism
Politics
Latin Americans
Mythology
Classics
Humanities
Sociology
History
Economic history
Art history
Political science
Media studies
Law
Art


Nazism
Ukrainian
Ideology
Politics
Variety (cybernetics)
Subject (documents)
Consciousness
State (computer science)
Interpretation (philosophy)
Sociology
Epistemology
Political science
Law
Psychology
Social psychology
Social science
Philosophy
Computer science
Linguistics
Artificial intelligence


Extremismos e intolerância: Uma lição não aprendida

Centro de Estudos Globais da Universidade Aberta

e-Letras com Vida Revista de Estudos Globais — Humanidades Ciências e Artes

With the concern that totalitarian phenomena, such as fascism and Stalinism, should not be treated as dead movements or as historical events confined to the past, it can be observed that they resurface as a possibility within the modern mass society, as a reaction model to the current global political and social context.What is intended to be highlighted is the appeal of these extremist ideas led by a leader and a charismatic discourse, their ability to offer security and refuge, proposing a virtuous future, overcoming alienation and the discomfort of the ordinary man facing a society that condemns individuals to either success or failure — and the reasons why the masses become politically fascinated and receptive to numbing ideologies. From this perspective, the present study attempts to analyze the conditions found in 20th-century civilization that enabled these movements, as a defense mechanism against crisis and discomfort, and the possibility of their resurgence through neo-fascism, Islamic fundamentalism, and current racist and anti-immigrant sentiments.


LA NON VIOLENZA DI CAMILLO PRAMPOLINI NELLE PAGINE DE “LA GIUSTIZIA”

After an introductory overview of “La Giustizia”, the article analyses Camillo Prampolini’s non-violent thought through the pieces that appeared in the socialist periodical and related to the First World War, fascism and anarchist, maximalist and communist insurrectionism.


Portuguese History Literature Classics Linguistics Art Philosophy


trad. Jacques Parsons, Paris, Opta, 1970,

Università di Trieste, Istituto Comprensivo Pordenone Torre

Mussolini dans les uchronies italiennes », Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts [en

De façon générale, cf. Pierre Milza, L'Europe en chemise noire. Les extrêmes droites européennes de 1945 à aujourd'hui, Paris, Fayard, 2002

nouvelle trad. Michelle Charrier, Paris, J'ai lu, 2012

Traduit de l'italien par Éric Vial (Cergy-Paris Université, UMR Héritages). Sur ce sujet, Emiliano Marra est sur le point de publier un article plus ample, en langue italienne, dans

The Man in the High Castle, New York, Putnam's, 1962 ; Le Maître du haut-château,

numéro monographique de la Rivista di Politica

Fatherland, Londres, Hutchinson, 1992 ; Fatherland, trad. Hubert Galle, Paris, Julliard, 1992

From the Second World War to the present day, a flourishing crop of uchronias allowed Italian authors to grapple with the country’s Fascist past. Marra frames these works within their political and historical context, firmly linking those published in the immediate aftermath of the war to far-right activism, while later works, in reaction to the first, were more critical of Fascism, and later still, adopted a more playful angle (thus Massimo Mongai recasts “Benny” Mussolini as a placid Italian-American author of science-fiction and uchronia). Political activism has not disappeared for all that, as the far-right CasaPound movement recently demonstrated by sponsoring Mussolini-centred uchronias. Marra concludes that such partisan works are narratively flawed, for in order to vindicate Mussolini and Fascism, they are forced to distort History in a more artificial way than other, more distanced uchronias.

Flourishing
Politics
Context (archaeology)
World War II
Order (exchange)
History
Art history
Political science
Economic history
Sociology
Law
Archaeology
Psychology


Soldier-Spy: The National Security State and the 1960s World War II Spy Film

Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Espionage
Movie theater
Nazism
World War II
Rhetoric
Adversary
Law
Political science
Ideology
National security
Media studies
History
Sociology
Art history
Politics
Computer security
Philosophy


The Catholic Church and Anti-Fascist Resistance in Istria and the Kvarner Littoral During the Second World War

The paper presents the role of local Catholic priests from Istria and the Kvarner Littoral in the fight against fascism and Nazism. The research is based on pertinent literature, archival sources and periodicals, offering a novel perspective on the origins of the anti-fascist spirit in the mentioned regions.

Resistance (ecology)
Littoral zone
World War II
Ancient history
First world war
Religious studies
Political science
History
Philosophy
Law
Geology
Oceanography
Biology
Ecology


Italian Fascists and the Rewriting of American History

HERO
History
Politics
Treasure
Classics
Fell
Newspaper
Mistake
Law
Ancient history
Literature
Art
Cartography
Political science
Geography


Remo Bianco, plastic and the trauma of the post-war Italian artist


‘Vetrine della Moda’: Forms and models of femininity on the pages of fascist movie magazines

ISNI: 0000000101203326 University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro’

ISNI: 0000000101203326 University of Bari 'Aldo Moro'

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies


Public space at stake: competing forms of territorialisation and the construction of a democratic public space in the first years of the Italian Republic

Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires en Histoire University of Limoges

Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires en Histoire, Histoire de l'Art et Musicologie (CRIHAM UR 15507), University of Limoges, Limoges, France

Abstract The end of the civil war, the fall of the Italian Social Republic, the allied occupation and the gradual transition to the new Italian Republic not only set Italy on the path to democracy, but also gradually gave Italians access to a new public space. This article proposes to revisit the classic question of the legacy of Fascism by looking at the question of space and the difficult construction of a genuine democratic space. During the ventennio , opponents were largely denied access to common spaces, both symbolically and physically. The article raises the question of violence and the exclusive appropriation of space, showing that the representations and practices inherited from Fascism did not disappear overnight. But these practices of space were not always violent: by looking at aspects that are often neglected (graffiti, manifestos, noises and singing), the aim is to show that the transition took time and was sometimes complicated, despite the political leaders of the Italian Republic claiming to have opened up a completely new era.

Democracy
Space (punctuation)
Public space
Public administration
Political science
Law
Politics
Computer science
Architectural engineering
Engineering


"Non giurate affatto". Il rifiuto di Ernesto Buonaiuti nel 1931, tra politica e religione - «Swear not at all». Ernesto Buonaiuti's Refusal in 1931, between Politics and Religion

Ernesto Buonaiuti chose not to obey to the order to pledge allegiance to fascism, in 1931, for religious reasons. He was born in 1881 and ordained as a catholic priest in 1903. In 1915, he became professor of History of Christianity at University of Rome and in 1924 he was excommunicated by the Holy Office because he used the historical critical method to study Ancient and Medieval Christianity. During the negotiations for the concordat of 1929, the Italian government imposed him to conduct only research and not to teach students, to satisfy Vatican desires/claims. In 1931, Buonaiuti explicitly recalled the words of the Gospel – «swear not at all» – because he believed that politics was not an absolute fact to which needed to subordinate individuals and society. After the fall of fascism, he asked insistently to return to his teaching post: he was reinstated to duty in the University of Rome, in May of 1945, but democratic governments did not allow him to teach students, to prevent disagreements with Vatican. He died in 1946.

Politics
Philosophy
Sociology
Political science
Law


Populism
Latin Americans
Politics
Conservatism
Political economy
Political science
Key (lock)
History
Economic history
Sociology
Law


Povratak duha evropskog humanizma / The Return of the Spirit of European Humanism

University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Law / Univerzitet u Sarajevu, Pravni fakultet

Pregled časopis za društvena pitanja / Periodical for social issues

This text is a review of a book by Rob Riemen: The Eternal Return of Fascism, published by Dereta, Belgrade, 2019, (with original title „DE EEUWIGE TERUGKEER VAN HET FASCISME DE TERUGKEER VAN EUROPA: HAAR TRANEN; DADEN EN DROMEN, Nederlands letterenfonds – Dutch Foundation for Literature, 2017).

Humanism
Foundation (evidence)
Philosophy
Classics
Art history
Theology
Art
History
Archaeology


Fascist Regionalism: Nordic Cooperation among Scandinavian Fascist Parties in the 1930s

Refubium (Universitätsbibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin)

The article examines the genesis and evolution of cross-border connections and cooperation among three fascist parties in Scandinavia in the 1930s, the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Denmark (Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Arbejderparti), the Norwegian National Unity (Nasjonal Samling) and the Swedish National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet). Their cooperation is discussed as an example of fascist regionalism, building on and contributing to recent research on regionalism in transnational history, fascist internationalism and the historiography of Nordic fascism. The article examines factors that thwarted cooperation between fascist parties in Scandinavia, namely the fragmented fascist scene, domestic rivalries, historical-imperialist revisionism and divergent ideas about the Northern region. It presents the exclusion of the National League of Sweden (Sveriges Nationella Förbund) from the Nordic fascist front as an example of the intricate relationship between fascism and conservatism. Despite these challenges, the article demonstrates an intensification of Scandinavian fascist regionalism over the course of the 1930s. This cooperation was based on ideas of Nordic racial unity and common enemies, namely labour parties, communism, liberal democracy and ‘international Jewry’.

Internationalism (politics)
Regionalism (politics)
Norwegian
Historiography
National Question
League


Prolegomena to a “Counter-Ideology” Reflections on the Book: A. V. Shchipkov. Unfinished Nazism. Genesis, Transformations and Related Phenomena

National Research University Higher School of Economic

This article offers reflections on A.V. Shchipkov’s book Unfinished Nazism: Genesis, Transformations, and Related Phenomena . In it, the author proposes a quite paradoxical thesis, identifying liberalism as the ideological “root” of contemporary Nazism. Previously, drawing connections between liberalism and fascism was an intellectual move typically confined to leftist academic circles. However, the author emphasizes that this particular interpretation of the connection between fascism and liberalism is both original and independent in its own right. As a necessary condition for the discussion, he emphasizes the need to recognize liberalism as an external ideological “protective belt” that shields and legitimizes Nazi doctrines. A serious conceptual framework for understanding modern Nazism, therefore, must be immune to the liberal–neo-Nazi perspective and must exclude any liberal constructs at its very foundation. This methodological distancing enables the author to challenge the most widespread clichés about Nazism. For instance, that it emerged in Europe unpredictably and by accident, as an anomalous exception within Western civilization. In his book, Shchipkov argues instead that Nazism did not arise as a historical reaction to Marxism or communism, but much earlier, as a racist, political-ideological form inherent in the colonial model of capitalism. According to this view, Nazism is not a historical aberration or a systemic failure of society, but a natural product of Western modernity. The imperial and expansionist pathos of fascism, in this light, can be traced back to Europe’s colonial conquests that began in the late 15th century, culminating in the famous notion of the “white man’s burden”. Thus, racism, Nazism, and liberalism share a common value system, one based on the division of the world and the hierarchical classification of “human material”. One of the key points in the book is that the historical kinship between fascism and liberalism — i.e., the European complex of civilizational superiority — ultimately has religious roots, which lie in Protestantism and the Reformation. (This, however, does not imply that individuals with Protestant beliefs and (or) worldviews are inherently inclined toward Nazism or racism). Shchipkov’s attempt to “theoretically complete” the concept of Nazism comes at a time when this sinister phenomenon is not only re-emerging before our eyes but is also receiving comprehensive support from the liberal West. The “battleground” today includes the mental and ideological sphere, where a struggle is underway for the minds and souls of our people. For this reason, Shchipkov’s book also serves an applied purpose: it contributes to the development of a counter-ideology.


La forza del passato: Pier Paolo Pasolini, il "fascismo degli antifascisti" e il potere dinamico della nostalgia

My attempt here is to draw a picture of Pasolini’s thought in terms of Bateson’s analogic communication. In this way, Pasolini’s though that antifascism might become a hidden form of fascism can be analysed by means of Bateson’s theory of double bind. In Pasolini’s intellectual personality the contradictions of his position are dealt with by means of the epistemology analogic thought.


‘We are not the Last of Yesterday but the First of Tomorrow’: Futural Nostalgia and the Emotionology of Postwar British Fascists

Drawing on both the history of emotions and study of radicalised temporalities in fascist cultures, this article defines and explores variants of 'futural nostalgia' in British fascist discourses from the 1940s to the present day. It defines 'futural nostalgia' as a specific type of nostalgia that is both backward looking and forward focused: it looks to the past to evoke a sense of rooted identity, community and ontological security that underpins myriad critiques of the present day as in crisis; it looks forwards in time to provide a vision of an alternate future based on its idealizations of the past. After conceptualizing this term, it explores forms of postwar British fascism that evoke this trope. Starting with Oswald Mosley and the Union Movement, the article examines variants of futural nostalgia in the emotionology of postwar British fascism, including in the National Front, Blood & Honour, the British Movement, the British National Party and National Action. It concludes by suggesting futural nostalgia is an extreme variant of far-right nostalgia, and further exploration of the phenomenon could help establish family relationships between the fascist and populist far right.

Yesterday
History
Political science
Economic history


University of Oslo https://dx.doi.org/6305 Oslo Norway

University of Groningen https://dx.doi.org/3647 Groningen The Netherlands

Abstract This article explores the role of the Latin language in the context of political performance and spectacle under Italian Fascism. We investigate the different ways in which Latin words, phrases, and texts are used as visual and symbolic elements of Fascist performances and how they are staged in contemporary media coverage. Specifically, this article focuses on three case studies: first, human mosaics of the word DVX ; second, the use of a tapestry bearing a Latin motto in the context the fourteenth anniversary of Fascism; and finally, the role of a Latin foundation deposit in an inauguration ceremony for building works at the Esposizione Universale di Roma . Two main arguments connect the three case studies. First, we argue that the Latin language does not simply gesture towards Roman antiquity, but that it is used to evoke several different pasts at the same time. Second, we show that the Latin language has a range of affordances for diverse audiences, which are tied closely to the visuality, materiality, and symbolism of Latin during the ventennio fascista .

Latin Americans
Materiality (auditing)
Affordance
Ceremony
Gesture
Context (archaeology)
Art
Contemporary Latin
Spectacle
Politics
History
Linguistics
Visual arts
Aesthetics
Philosophy
Computer science
Political science
Archaeology
Law


Pius XI in the Discourse of Contemporary Spanish Fascist Non+Conventional Political Actors

The geopolitical context in which the fi rst encyclical of this pope was written is elaborated to understand the interests of the Catholic Church in the interwar period and its attitude towards fascist regimes. The novelty of these results is that the perception of modern European fascists of an ideological war waged by the globalist left similar to what Pius XI called a “holy battle” to defend Catholicism from secularism is supported by the studied document. Though any positive perception of fascism by Pius XI is not clearly demonstrated in the encyclical there are evident accusations against socialism and the Italian government of the time. This position can be used by modern European far-right ideologues to present the Church in a manipulated and equivocal rigid dichotomy between rejecting socialism and approving fascism. As exposed by this work, Pius XI tried to position the Church as a political institution capable of providing the conditions for a durable peace in Europe and as a third political way that rejected socialism, but also nationalism. The signifi cance of these results can serve to clarify how European far-right extremists use historical religious texts taken out of context to justify and promote their political ideology


A sessant’anni da La marcia su Roma di Dino Risi

tragico nasce infatti da una espulsione, dalla frattura tra

Istituto per la storia della Resistenza e dell'età contemporanea di Forlì-Cesena

E-Review Rivista degli Istituti Storici dell Emilia-Romagna in Rete

The sixty years since the release of Dino Risi’s film offer us the opportunity to rethink the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome, avoiding, however, the risks of a commemorative excess. Furthermore, thanks to the antirhetorical character of the Italian comedy, the film allows to retrace the takeover of fascism with communication methods more suitable for a wide and non-specialistic audience, including students.

Character (mathematics)
Comedy
Computer science
Humanities
Sociology
Art
Media studies
Mathematics
Literature


A materialistic Hegel for the times of the WethOthers

Ricardo Espinoza Lolas
Fabiana Pellegrini
Nicolás Rojas Cortés

Universidad Complutense de Madrid,  Espanha

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso,  Chile

Abstract This paper seeks, on the one hand, to clarify the relationship between Hegel and Machiavelli as materialist thinkers who, on the other hand, allow us to understand the fascism that plagues us in contemporary political forms. We will use arguments from Marx, Gramsci and Cassirer to show that in Hegel-Machiavelli's thought are the principles for a Political Revolution, namely, the WethOthers.

Materialism Hegelianism Philosophy Epistemology


LA STORIOGRAFIA SULLE ORIGINI DEL FASCISMO A BOLOGNA. UNA BREVE SINTESI

This short paper is focused on the analysis of the studies on the origins of fascism in Bologna since the early 1920s. With this paper, an attempt will thus be made to bring order within a massive body of studies on one of the most important Italian case studies. We will therefore focus on studies that have specifically analyzed the Bologna area and the pivotal characters of the economic, political and social life of the city.


Appropriating Orthodoxy: Rhetorical Ambiguity and Religious Martyrdom for the Fascist Masses in Interwar Romania (1920–37)

Gheorghe Șincai Institute of History, Romanian Academy

Orthodoxy
Ambiguity
Rhetorical question
Literature
Rhetoric
Art
History
Philosophy
Theology
Linguistics
Archaeology


Building an Anti-Semitic Network in Europe

This study analyses Tibor Eckhardt’s presidency of the Association of Awakening Hungarians (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete, ÉME) between 1923 and 1927, showing how he intended to position the movement between the far right of the Horthy era and pro-consolidation conservatives dominating the government. The ÉME quickly transformed from a base for white terror into a nationwide mass organisation and a hub for a transnational network. Involving Italian Fascism, the German Völkisch movement, as well as Romanian, Austrian and Russian partners, Eckhardt’s efforts were aimed at the transnational expansion of Hungarian racialist thinking. The process culminated in the 1925 anti-Semitic congress held in Budapest, while it also showed the movement’s limitations. Internal contradictions within the organisation, conflicts of its transnational allies, political isolation, and pressure from the consolidated authoritarian system ultimately led to the decline of the ÉME. The study points out that the ÉME was not only an important part of Hungarian history, but was also significant in the intertwined histories of the far right in (Central) Europe. Thus it serves as an example of the networked, permeable nature of early Fascism. Through the figure of Eckhardt, it also highlights the key role of political entrepreneurs in the institutionalisation of the far right.

Presidency
German
Institutionalisation
Politics
Authoritarianism
Position (finance)


Parallels
Communism
Context (archaeology)
Politics
Art
Art history
Literature
Visual arts
History
Political science
Law


Keele University School of Humanities UK Keele

Abstract There are few more challenging tests of fascist core-periphery topographies than the case of interwar Greece. Greece can claim no significant fascist movement in the interwar years; no significant fascist political party; and no dictatorial regime inspired by a genuinely revolutionary ultranationalist vision. In the last category, the only possible candidate, the 4th of August dictatorial regime headed by the retired general Ioannis Metaxas, was established late (1936) and lasted only for a few short years until the death of the dictator (January 1941). The contributions to this special issue on interwar Greece feature not only diverse aspects of the Metaxas regime but also offer broader perspectives on the ideological and political dynamics of fascism across the 1920s and 1930s. This special issue intends to build bridges between historical and sociological approaches; between the study of ideas and the analysis of policies; between contextual specificities and international trends; and, in the end, between recent historiographies of generic fascism and of modern Greek history. Collectively, the contributions also evince a plea to take the fascist experience and the potential for radical ruptures in interwar Greece more seriously.

Dictator
Interwar period
Plea
Ideology
Politics
Political science
World War II
Law


Administration of the State Railways During the Fascist Regime: The Creation of the Ministry of Communications

University of Naples 'Federico II' , Italy ;

University of Naples 'Federico II', Italy;

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), College of Communication and Public Relations, Bucha

The political and social climate in Italy at the end of the First World War was fertile ground for the establishment of the Fascist Regime. During Fascism, even the transport sector, already strained by the war effort, was subject to organisational changes aimed at establishing greater political control. A well-defined pattern was imposed on the organisation of the State Railway Administration, as a state rail transport body, accompanied by a strict military order. During the fascist period, two distinct phases of change in the internal organisation of the State Railways Administration can essentially be identified. The first was marked, in 1922, by the appointment of the Extraordinary Commissioner for the State Railways, while the second, which determined the real beginning of the Fascist administration for the State Railways, was characterised by the establishment of the Ministry of Communications, which took place with Royal Legislative Decree RDL. No. 596 of 30 April 1924. The contribution, after a brief historical reconstruction of the development of the Italian railway network, focuses on the analysis of the railway transport system during the years of Fascism, highlighting how the regime, in a highly strategic sector such as transport, actually implemented timid political-institutional transformations. Specifically, the work analyses the establishment of the Ministry of Communications and the reorganisation of railway services.

Christian ministry
Administration (probate law)
State (computer science)
Telecommunications
Political science
Public administration
Engineering
Computer science
Law


The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Photographer And Event Organizer  at Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives is an offshoot of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade organization. American volunteers returning from the Spanish Civil War formed VALB in 1937 to continue the struggle against fascism and to provide support for their members and Spanish refugees. It continued as an activist organization known for supporting progressive causes. It was labeled a subversive organization by the US government and its members were persecuted by the FBI.


The Fascist Literary Criticism in Wyndham Lewis’s The Jews, Are They Human? (1939)

Faculty of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences, Islamic Azad University (Science and Research Branch), Tehran, IR

International Journal of Linguistics Literature & Translation

This scholarly inquiry delves into Wyndham Lewis’s The Jews Are They Human? (1939), a pro-Semitic book through the lens of Nathan Waddell’s ideologies, which focuses on the intersection of literature, politics, and cultural criticism during the rise of fascism. Waddell’s scholarship highlights how Lewis’s work navigates the complex terrain of fascist literary discourse, engaging critically with the ways in which literary criticism was employed as a tool of propaganda and ideological control. Drawing on Waddell’s insights, this analysis explores how Lewis’s satirical critique targets the absurdities of anti-Semitic rhetoric and the broader manipulations of fascist cultural criticism. In a broader sense, this paper argues that, as articulated by Waddell, Lewis’s approach is not just a rejection of fascist ideology but a deeper engagement with the mechanisms of literary criticism that fascism sought to exploit. Lewis’s work uses irony, parody, and counter-narratives to expose the pseudo-scientific racism and myth-making central to fascist criticism, revealing the ethical failings of intellectual complicity. By scrutinizing how Lewis subverts the language and tactics of fascist critics, this analysis illuminates his broader project of reclaiming literary criticism as a space for resistance against oppressive ideologies.

Criticism
Literary criticism
Art
Literature
Philosophy


Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI) Summer School 2023: conference report

Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti
Chiara Brogi
Karen Bertorelli

Associate Professor of Modern History, Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy

PhD student, Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy

Abstract This report is about the ASMI Summer School held in Pisa on 22–23 June 2023. The conference focused on twentieth-century history issues: gender studies, cultural studies, resistance studies, fascism studies and mafia studies, with the addition of a round table and two keynote lectures, which discussed the profession of the modern historian and the history of racism in Italy from the Second World War to the present.

Resistance (ecology)
History
World War II
Economic history
Archaeology


Whose Barbarianism? Exhibiting Antifascism, the Resistance, and the Holocaust in Postwar Italy and Now

The Holocaust
Exhibition
Resistance (ecology)
Narrative
Nazism
Politics
Nazi Germany
Period (music)
Dissent
Literature
Aesthetics
Art
History
Art history
Law
Political science


<i>Bonifica Umana</i> : the psychoanalysis of human reclamation

Sociology
Land reclamation
Human condition
Humanity
Epistemology
Politics
Agency (philosophy)
Id, ego and super-ego
Meaning (existential)
Environmental ethics
Law
Aesthetics
Philosophy
Psychoanalysis
Social science
History
Political science
Psychology
Archaeology


Causes and Consequences of the Destruction of the Belief in the Attainability of Truth: Philosophical Reflections with a Historical Example

College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures,

The essay explains the necessity of mechanisms that maintain a certain homogeneity of beliefs in human societies that rely on cooperation and discusses several causes for the decline of contemporary societies’ belief in the attainability of truth and the reliability of science, one being the replacement of epistemology by the sociology of knowledge. It analyzes on purely conceptual grounds the deleterious consequences that this decline must have for the stability of democracies and ends by showing some parallels between the rise of Fascism and National Socialism and the current situation.


The Thought of Yaroslav Stetsko Compared with the Views of Vojtech Tuka to 1941: On Two Variants of Integral Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe

Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

The inter-war period and the first years of the Second World War were a period when integral nationalism and Fascism were triumphant throughout Europe. The Ukrainian and Slovak national movements were no exception in this regard. These ideologies developed primarily within the framework of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, respectively. This article compares the thought of representatives of the more radical factions within these two organizations: Yaroslav Stetsko and Vojtech Tuka.

Nationalism
Philosophy
Ancient history
Political science
History
Law
Politics


Spinoza, Marx and <i>Anti-Oedipus</i>: A Labour Theory of Repression

Psychological repression
Psychoanalysis
Philosophy
Sociology
Psychology
Genetics
Biology


Concept Misformation in the Age of Democratic Anxiety: Recent Temptations and Their Downsides

Democracy
Anxiety
Political science
Psychology
Psychiatry
Politics


Irina Vasilkiv
Vera Kovrova
Alena Popel'

Vserossiyskiy institut povysheniya kvalifikacii MVD Rossii

All-Russian Advanced Training Institute of the Ministry of the Interior of Russian Federation

Vserossiyskiy institut povysheniya kvalifikacii  sotrudnikov MVD Rossii

VESTNIK ADVANCED TRAINING INSTITUTE OF THE MIA OF RUSSIA