tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/fascism-5146/articlesFascism – The Conversation2024-02-28T14:24:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244882024-02-28T14:24:04Z2024-02-28T14:24:04ZThe word ‘populism’ is a gift to the far right – four reasons why we should stop using it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578095/original/file-20240226-32-7wbj6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C53%2C5946%2C3898&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">microstock3D/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the storming of the US Capitol on the January 6 2021, to the similar uprising in Brazil in 2023, far-right politicians are infringing on democratic ideals across the world. If we are serious about meeting the challenge they pose, we must stop treating them as legitimate, democratic actors and instead see them as the threat they really are.</p>
<p>A very big part of this effort is also quite a simple step. We must stop referring to far-right politics as “populist”. </p>
<p>In recent years, serious research on populism has reached somewhat of a consensus which makes it clear that it is secondary, at best, in defining any kind of politics. The <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02633957211007053">two main schools of thought</a> broadly disagree on whether populism is a thin ideology which involves a moralistic element (by pitting a “pure” people against “corrupt” elite) or whether it is simply a discourse that constructs a people as being against an elite, without any further specificity attached to those two groups.</p>
<p>Crucially, though, both agree that the populist element of any given movement comes second to politics and ideology. Parties of the left and right may both use populist rhetoric, but this tells us little about how they actually govern. </p>
<p>But populism has nevertheless become a buzzword. Countless academics have jumped on the bandwagon in search of funding and citations, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/whats-in-a-buzzword-a-systematic-review-of-the-state-of-populism-research-in-political-science/D9CD5E7E13DFA30FD05D41F32E6C122B">often failing to do due diligence to the literature on the topic</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Number of articles containing the words ‘populist’, ‘populism’ or ‘populists’ on Web of Science</strong></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that the number of academic papers containing the word 'populism' has increased dramarically since 2017." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578097/original/file-20240226-32-sofnsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A surge in academic papers referring to populism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aurelien Mondon/Alex Yates</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Beyond poor academic practice, the careless use of the word has also had a deleterious impact on wider public discourse. These four consequences should hopefully convince you to stop using the word “populist” to describe someone who is actually just a rightwing extremist.</p>
<h2>1. It masks the threat posed by the far right</h2>
<p>It should not come as a surprise that many far-right politicians, from France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, to Italy’s <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41269-023-00327-1">Matteo Salvini</a>, have embraced the term “populism”. Even when it is used by their opponents as an insult, far-right politicians prefer the term to more accurate, but also more stigmatising terms, such as “extremist” or “racist”.</p>
<p>This could be witnessed, for example, in the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263395720955036">Guardian’s 2019 six-month-long series on “the new populism”</a>. More often than not, the word populism was used in this series to describe far more sinister politics than the simple opposition between the elite and the people. Political personalities such as Steve Bannon are far better described as far or extreme right. These terms are not only more precise, but make the threat they pose far clearer than the murky “populism”.</p>
<h2>2. It exaggerates the strength of the far right</h2>
<p>When we use the term “populist”, we often create a semantic link between the word and “the people”. So when we allow the far right to be described as populist, we are incorrectly implying that they are tapping into what the people want or that they speak for the “silent majority” – something Nigel Farage and others love to claim.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578295/original/file-20240227-16-jdy3wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Far-right parties and politicians are mounting election campaigns all over the world in 2024. Join us in London at 6pm on March 6 for a salon style discussion with experts on how seriously we should take the threat, what these parties mean for our democracies – and what action we can take. Register for your place at this <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/social-science-perspectives-on-the-far-right-tickets-838612631957?aff=theconversation"><strong>free public session here</strong></a>. There will be food, drinks and, best of all, the opportunity to connect with interesting people.</em></p>
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<p>The myth is further entrenched by the perception that the rise of “populism” is the result of choices made by people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder – whether they are defined as the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1552440?journalCode=gide20">white working class</a>”, the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380261231186021">left behind</a>” or the “losers of globalisation”. This ignores analysis which shows that much of the support for reactionary politics <a href="https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/whiteness-populism-and-the-racialisation-of-the-working-class-in-the-united-kingdom-and-the-united-states/">comes predominantly from affluent groups</a>.</p>
<p>Being allowed to claim to speak on behalf of the voiceless is particularly useful at a time of widespread distrust in mainstream politics, so we shouldn’t be surprised that far-right politicians like to be called populists. It allows them to falsely posit themselves as the alternative to the status quo.</p>
<h2>3. It legitimises far-right politics</h2>
<p>By being erroneously tied to “the people” via the word “populism”, far-right demands are mistaken for democratic demands. It is therefore now common to see mainstream parties absorbing the politics of the far right on the flawed assumption that these ideas are “what the people want”.</p>
<p>The rights of minoritised communities such as migrants, asylum seekers, racialised people, LGBTQ+ communities, women and/or disabled people have all been under various levels of threat by mainstream elite actors, whether through policy, political campaigning or news coverage. Often, the people threatening these rights benefit from the pretence that they are simply responding to public opinion. Supposedly <a href="https://www.identitiesjournal.com/blog-collection/rethinking-nativism-the-racist-discourse-of-rishi-sunak-and-giorgia-meloni-and-the-increasingly-blurred-lines-between-the-mainstream-and-the-far-right">“centre-right”</a> governments are, therefore, given carte blanche to adopt draconian immigration policies. After all, it is in the name of “the people”.</p>
<h2>4. It blocks democratic progress by distracting us</h2>
<p>Populist hype is generally accompanied by a rise of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/14/anti-populism-politics-why-champions-of-civility-keep-losing">anti-populist discourse</a>, which portrays “populism” as an existential threat to liberal democracy. Thinly concealed behind this pejorative use of the term “populism” is at best a distrust, if not outright antipathy, towards “the people”. </p>
<p>By blaming “the people” for the problems in our democracies, elites are absolved from having to interrogate their own role in facilitating the crisis. They can also use the very real threat posed by the far right to justify the need to support the status quo by warning “we are bad – but they are worse”.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>Reducing the far right to a “populist” threat allows the mainstream off the hook. When combating the far right, we must be honest about the decisions that have led us to this reactionary moment. If the mainstream does not take responsibility, it has no chance of defeating the monster that it has helped to create. This applies particularly to those who have a privileged access to shaping public discourse such as the media, politicians and academics to a lesser extent.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/look-to-the-mainstream-to-explain-the-rise-of-the-far-right-218536">Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right</a>
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<p>The first step on this journey is using terms correctly. Calling the far right “populist” keeps us in our inertia. To activate the appropriate sense of urgency needed to defeat these trends, we must be honest about the kind of politics that we see in front of us. If the far right proudly wears the badge of “populism”, we must ask how it helps them. They know it grants them legitimacy. Why, then, should we play into the hands of extremists whose loathing of democracy has been repeatedly demonstrated?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224488/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Yates receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council South West Doctoral Training Partnership. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aurelien Mondon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Extremists benefit when we use euphemisms that confer on them an air of legitimacy.Aurelien Mondon, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of BathAlex Yates, Postgraduate Researcher in Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210602024-01-29T16:38:17Z2024-01-29T16:38:17ZThrough Cable Street Beat, music became a potent antifascist weapon against the far right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569832/original/file-20240117-19-rb5x8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C2%2C1552%2C1178&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Cable Street Mural by Dave Binnington Savage, Paul Butler, Ray Walker and Desmond Rochfort (1979 – 1983).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cable_Street_Mural_(36609425822).jpg">Amanda Slater/Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, Britain’s far right was on the rise. Fascist parties <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Contemporary_British_Fascism.html?id=DvyHDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">fielded over 100 candidates</a> in the 1983 general election. And culturally, the far right was also making ground. </p>
<p>“White power” bands like Skrewdriver and Peter and the Wolf began drawing sizeable crowds and selling thousands of records. In 1987, Skrewdriver’s frontman founded Blood & Honour, a music network that soon <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Music_Youth_and_International_Links_in_P.html?id=maU2DwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">gained followers and branches throughout the US and Europe</a>.</p>
<p>Blood & Honour’s emergence caused tremors among the UK antifascist movement. Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), the dominant antifascist group of the time, struck back with their own musical network: Cable Street Beat (CSB). </p>
<p>This is the story of how music became a battleground in the 1980s and 1990s, as antifascists fought fascism with guitars and microphones.</p>
<h2>Cable Street Beat</h2>
<p>Cable Street Beat was named after the antifascists’ celebrated victory over Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. Before the second world war, British MP Oswald Mosley had commanded a growing fascist movement that had been fiercely resisted by antifascists.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of Oswald Mosley" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569834/original/file-20240117-17-9ndz39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">British MP Oswald Mosley commanded a growing fascist movement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oswald_mosley_MP.jpg">National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
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<p>On October 4 1936, Mosley amassed his Blackshirts to march through the East End of London. However, around 100,000 militant antifascists gathered on Cable Street to oppose them, ultimately preventing the fascists’ march. </p>
<p>The first CSB gig was held on October 8 1988 at the Electric Ballroom in London. Newtown Neurotics, The Men They Couldn’t Hang and punk poet Attila the Stockbroker electrified a 1,000-strong crowd.</p>
<p>Crucially, the audience also heard a powerful speech from Solly Kaye, an antifascist veteran of the actual Battle of Cable Street five decades earlier. <a href="https://files.libcom.org/files/cable-street-beat-issue-1.pdf">Kaye warned</a> the assembled concertgoers that fascist “songs” were “poison put into the minds of young people”.</p>
<p>Brendan, an AFA and CSB organiser and horn player with antifascist punk band the Blaggers, described to me how CSB was needed: “Firstly as a way to draw people who might be attracted to the far right into a more progressive type of politics … Secondly it was needed to bring people together from different cultures. Thirdly, just to stick two fingers up to the far right.”</p>
<h2>The power of punk</h2>
<p>CSB drew energy from the UK’s frenetic punk scene. Bands such as the Angelic Upstarts, Snuff and Yr Anhrefn all enthusiastically took up CSB’s cause. They shared the stage with antifascist activists who gave rousing speeches.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Punk poet Attila holds a microphone in one hand and beer in the other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569836/original/file-20240117-23-euyf98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Punk poet Attila the Stockbroker in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attila_The_Stockbroker,_Calstock_10.jpg">Madchickenwoman/Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Punk, and in particular the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/24/4/606/1671204">working-class focused, aggressive Oi! subgenre</a> and related skinhead subculture, was an area that the far right had long tried to colonise.</p>
<p>Blood & Honour wanted to believe otherwise, but the skinhead movement (which originated in the 1960s) had roots in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article/38/1/157/927064?login=true#no-access-message">Jamaican culture and reggae</a>. Indeed, few skinheads had any interest in white power. </p>
<p>“If far-right politics helped inform the identity of some within the … skinhead subculture,” <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uV0yDwAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">says historian Matthew Worley</a>, “then the vast majority resisted and rejected the substance of the fascist message.”</p>
<p>CSB gained considerable ground in this battle. High-profile bands like The Specials and The Selecter played benefit gigs. Multiple other bands – including The Oppressed, Knucklehead and Spy Vs Spy – put out AFA fundraising CDs. </p>
<p>Thomas “Mensi” Mensforth, the charismatic lead singer of the Angelic Upstarts’ (who sadly passed away in 2021), even narrated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9zvOU3JpV0">an AFA documentary</a> produced for the BBC in 1993.</p>
<h2>Unity Carnivals</h2>
<p>CSB’s most high-profile strategy was its Unity Carnivals. The first, held in Hackney Downs Park in 1991, attracted 10,000 attendees. This made it the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beating_the_Fascists.html?id=gnNaKQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">biggest public antifascist event in a decade</a>. Bands including Gary Clail’s On U Sound System, The 25th of May and The Blaggers kept the vast crowds dancing all day under the banner of antifascism.</p>
<p>But the partying was punctuated with serious political rhetoric. Throughout the day activists gave speeches and handed out flyers. Brendan was part of the team that organised the carnival. </p>
<p>“It’s a cliché,” he told me, “but that carnival really did unite people. It brought a really diverse crowd together in Hackney and really got the political messages across.”</p>
<p>Two more carnivals followed: another in Hackney in 1992 and one in Newcastle in 1993, where The Shamen headlined with their chart-topping song Ebeneezer Goode.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ebeneezer Goode by The Shamen.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Freedom of movement</h2>
<p>CSB was wound down in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, music remained a central element of AFA’s activism. </p>
<p>By the early 1990s, electronic dance music had taken off in the UK. Antifascists immediately saw the potential and in Manchester local DJs and AFA set up the Freedom of Movement campaign in 1993 to mobilise these ravers. AFA’s magazine, Fighting Talk, <a href="https://files.libcom.org/files/FIGHTING%20TALK%2007_0.pdf">declared Freedom of Movement’s aim</a> was to “politicise the previously apathetic dance club scene, raising issues of racism and fascism”.</p>
<p>From 1993 to 1996, AFA put on a series of antifascist club nights in cities from Edinburgh to London. They also released an AFA benefit album, This is Fascism, featuring prominent DJs and producers including Carl Cox, Drum Club and Fun-Da-Mental.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Blaggers had close links to AFA, playing multiple benefit gigs.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Fascism is on the march again. The far right in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63351655">Italy</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/who-is-javier-milei-argentina-new-president-far-right-what-does-he-stand-for">Argentina</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/26/far-right-normalised-mainstream-parties-geert-wilders-dutch#:%7E:text=Geert%20Wilders'%20Party%20for%20Freedom,issues%20of%20immigration%20and%20multiculturalism.">the Netherlands</a> have all recently experienced electoral victories. Many other countries – such as the <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/04/25/quantifying-the-rise-of-americas-far-right">US</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-64299892">Brazil</a> and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/india-hindu-nationalism-violence/">India</a> – have experienced explosions in far-right activity.</p>
<p>Findings from <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Cumulative_Extremism.html?id=kyEIyQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">my own research</a> and others’ demonstrate that fascists are adept at using culture to achieve their goals. It enables them to <a href="https://musicandartsinaction.net/index.php/maia/article/view/whitepowermusic">transmit their hateful ideology</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Riot-Story-Combat-18/dp/1908479795">generate money</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Music_Youth_and_International_Links_in_P.html?id=maU2DwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">forge networks across countries</a>.</p>
<p>But the successes of CSB and AFA provide us with valuable lessons. Music can send a powerful message and mobilise hundreds of thousands to resist racism. Its emotive nature can change listeners’ worldviews, and help create a shared culture that is antithetical to the far right’s divisive goals.</p>
<p>This is an area where antifascists can make real gains against their foes: uniting antifascism and music is a tried-and-tested method for winning over the hearts and minds of people against hatred.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This is the story of how music became a battleground in the 1980s and 1990s, as antifascists fought fascism with guitars and microphones.Alexander Carter, Research Fellow, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181822023-12-07T09:57:58Z2023-12-07T09:57:58ZRussian fascism: the six principles of Putin’s nationalist ideology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563674/original/file-20231205-25-p5gwuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2700%2C1794&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin at the Piskarevsky Cemetery laying flowers at the World War II memorial in January 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/es/image-photo/st-petersburg-russia-january-27-2014-1624870828">Akimov Igor/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ruscism, also known as rashism, russism or simply Russian fascism, is the ideology that forms the backbone of Vladimir Putin’s decades-long dictatorial rule. The term was <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article-abstract/31/1/1/418/Fascism-and-the-New-Russian-Nationalism?redirectedFrom=fulltext">coined by journalists</a> to describe Russian ultranationalism in Chechnya and Georgia in the late 1990s. However, it began to crystallise into a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/magazine/ruscism-ukraine-russia-war.html">fully-fledged ideology</a>, complete with an omnipresent symbol – the Latin letter Z – after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. </p>
<p>Ruscist ideology undoubtedly has deep fascist roots. Its foundations were laid by Russian political ultranationalist thinker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ilyin">Ivan Ilyin</a> (1883–1954), whose work <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/26/how-fascist-are-putins-views">Putin has frequently referenced in speeches</a>. More recently, <a href="https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-god-russian">Putin has been inspired by the works of modern far-right thinkers Alexander Dugin and Timofey Sergeytsev</a>. The latter published an <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-published-in-russian-media-reflects-putin-regimes-ruthless-plans-in-ukraine-181006">article in April 2022</a> calling for the total destruction of the Ukrainian state and its national identity.</p>
<p>Ruscism, like other forms of fascism, upholds an ultranationalist and dictatorial political system with a strong supreme leader who demands complete obedience from citizens (including <a href="https://dgap.org/en/events/russkiy-mir-russian-world">all those living in Russian speaking territories</a>).</p>
<p>It does, however, have some distinguishing characteristics with regard to other far-right ideologies. These include <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html">a total disregard for objective reality</a> and a strong focus on Russia’s role in world history.</p>
<p>Putin’s principles for governing are very clear, and we have identified six here that define his domestic and international politics.</p>
<h2>1. Russia won World War II</h2>
<p>Ruscism leans heavily on history. According to <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/05/09/behind-russia-s-obsession-with-1945-victory-lies-cult-of-endless-war_6025977_23.html">the propaganda</a> <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/audio/crumbling-memory-russian-propaganda-world-war-ii-and-invasion-ukraine">disseminated by Putin and his followers</a>, Russia (then the USSR) won the second world war single-handed. This victory gives Russia a special, perpetual pass for any sins it may commit.</p>
<p>This means that failures such as the Cold War, the Soviet fiasco in Afghanistan, and the brutal, ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022 – along with any complications they cause – are irrelevant. What really matters to Putin is that Russia defeated Nazism. For this reason, <a href="https://english.nv.ua/nation/top-five-myths-of-russian-propaganda-about-wwii-debunked-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-50240734.html">Putin makes constant references to WWII and the anti-Hitler coalition in his speeches</a>. Indeed, the initial justification given for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to liberate and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/24/putin-denazify-ukraine/">“denazify” the country</a>. </p>
<h2>2. Russia is a global superpower</h2>
<p>Putin argues that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057">catastrophe of the 20th century</a>, and his mission is to restore Russia to its former glory. </p>
<p>To achieve this goal, Putin believes that Russia must demonstrate its military power and demand the respect of the international community. Therefore, the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, as well as its involvement in Syria, are not isolated incidents, but rather <a href="https://www.egmontinstitute.be/syria-the-middle-east-and-the-war-in-ukraine/">a pattern of deliberate, aggressive political strategy</a>.</p>
<h2>3. Russia is a nuclear superpower</h2>
<p>The Russian President has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8gZUQMqDAI&t=93s">implied or openly stated</a> on several occasions that the West must take Russia’s nuclear capabilities into consideration. He has also <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-revokes-russias-ratification-nuclear-test-ban-treaty-2023-11-02/">dropped out of international agreements to control nuclear weapons</a>, and has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65077687">stationed nuclear missiles in neighbouring ally Belarus</a>. </p>
<p>He believes Russia’s nuclear arsenal will prevent any country from ever daring to directly attack it, and frequently reminds the world of this.</p>
<h2>4. Dissent must be crushed</h2>
<p>Anyone who opposes Putin is to be tightly controlled, regularly harassed, imprisoned, and, if need be, physically eliminated. The foremost example of this is the lawyer, opposition leader and activist Alexei Navalny, who has been repeatedly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/02/jailed-putin-critic-alexei-navalny-faces-new-charges">imprisoned on spurious charges</a>, and even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/24/novichok-diagnosed-within-days-say-alexei-navalnys-german-doctors">poisoned with nerve agent novichok</a>.</p>
<p>A lot of other domestic opposition to Putin – such as the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and, more recently, the populist nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – seems to present little threat to his indefinite rule.</p>
<h2>5. Support pro-Russian dictators</h2>
<p>By supporting pro-Russian dictators, such as <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220228-russia-s-growing-ties-to-syria-amid-military-backing">Bashar al-Assad in Syria</a> or <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6364a92e-0939-4cbe-9a4b-f7e05d80e2c2">Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus</a>, Russia can demonstrate its political relevance to the West. It also indicates loyalty to Russian allies, who can count on Russia regardless of their crimes and policies. </p>
<p>Most of Russia’s allies are not democracies. In fact, Russia has recently made a commitment to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-it-will-build-close-ties-with-north-korea-in-all-areas-2023-10-26/">strengthening ties with North Korea</a>, a country widely regarded as having one of the <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/country/north-korea/freedom-world/2022">worst human rights records on the planet</a>. Supporting countries such as these points to a more classically Fascist element of Putin’s ideology: he wants the world to know that democracy is not the only feasible governing model.</p>
<h2>6. Blame the West</h2>
<p>According to Russian propaganda, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putins-new-story-about-war-ukraine">the West is the only responsible party for the Russian invasion of Ukraine</a>.</p>
<p>Americans seem to be the most useful, universal scapegoat. They are blamed for Ukraine seeking membership of the EU & NATO, and Russian news sources have even gone as far as holding the US accountable for <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-russia-accuses-climate-weapons/">bad weather</a>. </p>
<p>By portraying the West, in its entirety, as an enemy to Russian interests, Putin provides himself with a limitless supply of arguments and justifications for Russia’s continued aggression and invasions.</p>
<p>Attempts to question Russia’s motivations are often met with defensive retorts against Western powers. These have included <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/03/putin-ukraine-russia-nato-kosovo/">questioning NATO’s actions in Serbia and Kosovo</a> and <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/28/crying-genocide-use-and-abuse-of-political-rhetoric-in-russia-and-ukraine-pub-56265">highlighting American settler violence against Native Americans</a>.</p>
<h2>Fascism takes root</h2>
<p>Ruscism is now, to all intents and purposes, the Russian state ideology. It existed before the current war in Ukraine, but the conflict has catalysed its spread in institutions, and the population at large. Though it is a complex system that builds on centuries of global conflict, its aim is clear: one ideology, one leader, one state, one nation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christo Atanasov Kostov no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.</span></em></p>Putin’s ideological propaganda leans heavily on Russian historyChristo Atanasov Kostov, International Relations, Cold War, nationalism, Russian propaganda, IE UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179582023-11-20T19:16:45Z2023-11-20T19:16:45ZThe media must stop enabling Trump’s attention-seeking use of fascist rhetoric<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-media-must-stop-enabling-trumps-attention-seeking-use-of-fascist-rhetoric" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Donald Trump is campaigning for the presidency of the United States the same way that Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy campaigned almost 100 years ago.</p>
<p>Trump recently travelled to New Hampshire and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/">delivered a speech</a> that included a pledge to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” </p>
<p>This was just the latest in a long string of Trump’s dehumanizing, <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/donald-trump-violent-rhetoric-violence-fear-2024.html">violent rhetoric</a>. </p>
<h2>Rhetoric of fascism</h2>
<p>The use of the word “vermin” was particularly noteworthy. It was the same language that Mussolini used in his <a href="https://bibliotecafascista.blogspot.com/2012/03/speech-of-ascension-may-26-1927.html">1927 Ascension Day speech</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s recent comment about undocumented immigrants “polluting the blood of our country” is in the same style, as are the ideas emanating from his campaign team <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-plans-to-deport-millions-if-he-is-re-elected-says-report/7351479.html">to deport millions of immigrants</a> and quarantine others in massive camps. This is the rhetoric of fascism, and <a href="https://www.un.org/en/hate-speech/understanding-hate-speech/hate-speech-and-real-harm">it inevitably leads to violence</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s staff and supporters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/us/politics/trump-vermin-rhetoric-fascists.html">have denied that his rhetoric is fascist</a>. And <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/donald-trump-and-the-media">the media has struggled over how to cover his comments</a>. </p>
<p>Often, journalists will say that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary">Trump is “echoing”</a> fascist talking points. Echoing means to hear a sound again, and the sound that we hear is a copy of the original. The implication is that the echo is not the real thing, or is somehow an imitation of an original, perhaps slightly weaker.</p>
<p>That leads to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21521958/what-is-fascism-signs-donald-trump">arguments about whether Trump is truly fascist</a>, giving his supporters and staff an opportunity to use pedantic distinctions as an excuse. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1725641717653659795"}"></div></p>
<h2>Repetition is powerful</h2>
<p>The media should not debate whether Trump is an American Hitler. That allows him to leverage the appeal of Hitler among his far-right base, and provides him with fresh allegations about how the media treats him unfairly. The debate itself plays right into his rhetoric and his followers’ grievances. </p>
<p>Instead, the media, historians and political commentators should make clear that Trump is repeating and amplifying fascist rhetoric — and explain why he’s doing so. Trump’s intent is seemingly to grab the public’s attention and ultimately persuade them to believe that certain people in society deserve <a href="https://dangerousspeech.org/dangerous-metaphors-how-dehumanizing-rhetoric-works/">to be dehumanized</a>. </p>
<p>Media reporting and commentary should focus on what repeating a word like “vermin” is meant to achieve, and not whether its use makes Trump the new Mussolini. </p>
<p>When journalists report that Trump is <a href="https://www.ucdavis.edu/curiosity/blog/conversation-does-trumps-violent-rhetoric-echo-fascist-commitment-destructive-rebirth-society">echoing fascism</a> and engage in the debate over what constitutes fascism, they end up circulating that rhetoric more widely. </p>
<p>Disseminating this rhetoric, even if it’s aimed at pointing out Trump’s unsuitability for re-election, has consequences. It normalizes the use of dehumanizing, objectifying rhetorical tropes. More importantly, it amplifies those tropes, allowing them to reach ever-wider audiences.</p>
<h2>Attention-seeker</h2>
<p>Trump’s rhetorical skill is in <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/donald-trump-the-attention-economy-s-most-potent-stimulus-1.6343440">commanding attention</a>. He knows that repeating fascist phrases will get the media to take notice and will result in the amplification of his message. </p>
<p>Avoiding further amplifying Trump’s fascist messages could go some distance in stopping their circulation, at least through mainstream broadcast outlets. When those news organizations tie Trump to Hitler or Mussolini, they may actually strengthen his appeal with his base, who see him as a stronger leader than he really is. </p>
<p>So how <em>should</em> the media report on Trump’s use of this rhetoric? By making clear he’s repeating fascist phrases in order to dehumanize people and make violence against fellow citizens seem justifiable. That would undermine Trump’s goal of associating himself with Hitler. </p>
<p>Circulating and amplifying Trump’s fascist rhetoric runs the risk of further eroding democracy by normalizing fascist modes of talking about, and thinking about, our political opponents and fellow citizens. </p>
<h2>Threatening democracy</h2>
<p>In a fundamental way, we all learn to <a href="https://nesslabs.com/mimetic-learning">communicate through imitation</a>. Trump wants his followers to imitate his rhetoric so it spreads and becomes a normal feature of our everyday lives. </p>
<p>But democracies cannot survive if it becomes commonplace to talk about our fellow citizens as vermin or infestations or impure. To the extent that the media plays an essential role in the health of democracy, repeating and amplifying fascist rhetoric threatens the very system that makes a free press possible and democratic norms achievable.</p>
<p>Trump has already normalized fascist rhetoric and a disdain for democracy. </p>
<p>The media shouldn’t be unwittingly helping him further advance his fascist goals. Instead of giving his remarks a wider audience, news organizations must plainly point out that Trump uses this language to dehumanize his fellow citizens, create a path to violence and destroy democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Danisch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Instead of giving Trump’s fascist rhetoric a wider audience, news organizations must simply point out he’s attempting to dehumanize his fellow citizens, create a path to violence and destroy democracy.Robert Danisch, Professor, Department of Communication Arts, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114652023-08-14T15:40:07Z2023-08-14T15:40:07ZContested memory in Giorgia Meloni’s Italy: how her far-right party is waging a subtle campaign to commemorate fascist figures<p>Since coming to power, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party Brothers of Italy have repeatedly raised the question of who and what is remembered in Italy. They have paid particular attention to how the experience of Italian fascism is told.</p>
<p>Writing on the front page of newspaper <a href="https://www.governo.it/it/node/22468">Corriere della Sera,</a> Meloni questioned the way the nation marks April 25 – the day Italy remembers its liberation from Nazi-fascism and honours the victory of the Italian resistance. She implied that those with rightwing political views are effectively locked out of the commemoration. She suggested that “the category of fascism” is used as a “weapon of mass exclusion” so that certain groups or people are not included on the “list” of those allowed to celebrate the anniversary. </p>
<p>The implication was that people associated with fascism should also be recognised for their contribution to the democratic republic. Referring to the Italian Social Movement, founded in 1946 by people who wanted to revive fascism and fight communism, Meloni wrote: “those who were excluded from the constitutional process for obvious historical reasons undertook to lead millions of Italians into the new parliamentary republic, shaping the democratic right wing”. Several Brothers of Italy leaders cut their teeth in the party’s youth group, including Meloni.</p>
<p>Meloni’s letter, published on a day intended to mark freedom from fascism, was remarkable for its failure to mention “antifascism” once.</p>
<p>Since its foundation a decade ago, Brothers of Italy has made the memory of the Italian far right and commemoration of its victims a priority. The party advocates for a broad national memory culture that even honours former fascists, dissolving the fascist-antifascist binary upon which the democratic republic was built. </p>
<p>It is behind <a href="https://www.thelocal.it/20160523/jewish-community-angered-by-rome-mayor-hopefuls-vow-to-name-road-after-fascist">longstanding calls</a> to dedicate a road in Italy’s capital to Giorgio Almirante, founder and leader of the Italian Social Movement. Almirante was a minister in the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-23893-4_8">Italian Social Republic</a> – the second incarnation of the fascist state between 1943 and 1945 – and an editor of <a href="https://museoebraico.roma.it/en/rivista-la-difesa-della-razza/">The Defence of the Race</a> magazine, which promoted biological racism. </p>
<p>Most recently, Brothers of Italy co-founder Ignazio La Russa, <a href="http://ttps//www.liberoquotidiano.it/video/liberotv/35369883/terraverso-ignazio-la-russa-immigrazione-arma-puntata-contro-italia.html.">president of the Italian Senate, asserted</a> that the partisans involved in the 1944 Via Rasella attack – an attack by the Italian resistance in Nazi-occupied Rome – had killed a “semi-retired band” of musicians. The real victims were Nazis. Casting partisans as villains, these historical inaccuracies poke at the moral foundations of the antifascist republic, distorting and confusing the past.</p>
<h2>The original contested memory</h2>
<p>Fascists recognised the significance of gaining control of commemoration as early as 1924. This is when Benito Mussolini introduced a series of restrictions designed to banish the memory of antifascist victims. His move came in response to antifascists leaving red carnations in memory of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti at the site in Rome where he was kidnapped in 1924. Matteotti was a staunch and vocal opponent of Mussolini and was murdered by Mussolini’s henchmen. His body was found on August 16 1924 just outside the city. </p>
<p>In the six weeks between his disappearance and the recovery of his body, tributes were laid, removed and replaced at the kidnap site, creating a grassroots site of memory. A cross was drawn on an embankment wall and red wreaths and carnations laid – material symbols of an emerging antifascist memory culture.</p>
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<img alt="A black and white photo of a man bending down to take a close look at a huge pile of flowers placed in memorial." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542590/original/file-20230814-27-7vutg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A makeshift memorial emerges at the site of Matteotti’s kidnap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Giacomo_Matteotti#/media/File:1924_13_giugno_-_Roma,_lungotevere_Arnaldo_da_Brescia_-_on._Bruno_Buozzi_reca_l'omaggio_della_CGdL_a_Giacomo_Matteotti.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mussolini responded with a ban on flowers, commemorative ribbons and gatherings within ten metres of the site. He even tried to force Matteotti’s family to adopt a new name. In January 1925, he accepted “political, moral and historical responsibility” for Matteotti’s murder in a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benito-mussolini-declares-himself-dictator-of-italy">pivotal speech</a>. He then introduced a series of laws that banned opposition parties, curtailed press freedoms, introduced a secret police force and made the head of government accountable only to the King. It was the cementing of a dictatorship.</p>
<p>Mussolini’s ban pushed memory into private space in Italy. But commemoration of Matteotti abroad was public, persistent and popular. It occurred as far away as Australia, the United States and Venezuela and closer to home in Paris, London and Vienna.</p>
<p>Monuments to Matteotti went up as far away as Buenos Aires, where a statue of him is dedicated to all workers and emigrants. His name was visible in urban space: the social housing complex in Vienna named <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/matteotti-hof-vienna--345651340122558362/">Matteotti Hof still stands today</a>, and there are several streets named after him in France. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration of Mussolini and other fascists murdering people with bodies floating through a river of blood." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542375/original/file-20230811-35944-ygvzgi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Swiss anarchist publication illustrated the violence of the fascist regime after Matteotti’s murder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Giacomo_Matteotti#/media/File:Guerre_et_Fascisme_%E2%80%93_Rome_1924.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Mussolini resigned in July 1943, Matteotti’s name returned to Italian public space. As Allied forces and Italian partisans fought to free the country from fascism city by city, streets dedicated to fascist heroes were renamed. Matteotti’s name became more visible – a marker of the progress of Italy’s liberation. Today, more than 3,200 sites bear Matteotti’s name in Italy.</p>
<p>Far from being the decision of a few gatekeepers, this overwriting of fascist heroes was official policy in the new, democratic republic. With Brothers of Italy in power, the names of far-right figures could return to public space. Earlier this year, the centre-right city council in Grosseto laid out its plans for a new district of the city. Its main road – National Pacification Street – will fork with a road dedicated to Enrico Berlinguer on the left, honouring the longstanding leader of the Italian Communist Party, and another honouring Giorgio Almirante on the right. </p>
<p>There is more at stake than just political wins. This is a dangerous attempt to undermine the values on which the republic was founded by reframing the way Italy remembers its past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Brothers of Italy want streets named after fascist figures and the far-right’s ‘contribution’ to democracy recognised on national days of memory.Amy King, Lecturer in Modern European History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2072772023-06-19T12:25:08Z2023-06-19T12:25:08ZFascism lurks behind the dangerous conflation of the terms ‘partisan’ and ‘political’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532069/original/file-20230614-20687-lrdq4n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4885%2C3256&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters, including one wearing a t-shirt bearing former President Donald Trump's photo that says "Political prisoner," watch as Trump departs the federal courthouse after arraignment, June 13, 2023, in Miami.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXTrumpClassifiedDocuments/6b13a7ec06c746b8ac6362222e5bf49a/photo?Query=Trump%20supporters&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=13151&currentItemNo=24">AP Photo/Gerald Herbert</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-personal-is-political">The personal is political!</a>” is a well-known rallying cry, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.31">originally used by</a> left-leaning activists, including feminists, to emphasize the role of government in personal lives and systemic oppression. </p>
<p>It seems that now, it could be equally popular among right-wing politicians and their followers to communicate the idea that “everything is political.” </p>
<p>Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of former President Donald Trump’s recent indictment by the Department of Justice. Trump supporters say that the <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/political/donald-trump-supporters-question-indictment-claim-its-politically-motivated">decision to charge Trump was “political</a>.” If the department hadn’t charged Trump, that decision would likely have been seen by others as “political.” </p>
<p>In both cases, the critics would have meant that the prosecutors’ decision was influenced by partisan bias, based on whether the decision was good or bad for the Republican or Democratic party. U.S. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/politics-law-drive-supreme-court-decisions-poll/story?id=99168846">Supreme Court decisions are often criticized</a> as “political.” So are actions taken by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/facing-harassment-and-death-threats-some-election-workers-weigh-whether-to-stay">election officials</a>, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/22069-polarization-climate-science.html">scientific findings</a>, and even <a href="https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/heres-the-long-list-of-topics-republicans-want-banned-from-the-classroom/2022/02">topics taught in school</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.rit.edu/directory/lgtghs-lawrence-torcello">professor of political philosophy</a>, I worry that when both elected officials and citizens use the word “political” to accuse others of partisan bias, it means people no longer understand the distinctions between political and partisan, or public and private, which are vital to liberal democracy. </p>
<p>The preservation of such distinctions is crucial to rejecting <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tyranny-could-be-the-inevitable-outcome-of-democracy-126158">less democratic and more authoritarian</a> forms of government – including fascism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white flag with a religious symbol and the American flag combined on it and the words 'Proud American Christian.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532070/original/file-20230614-17-zmkmo9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When partisanship gains momentum, people begin to advocate for legislation defining marriage, reproductive rights - as these anti-abortion protestors are doing - and other issues in ways that reflect narrow private and religious values.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pro-life-supporters-gather-on-the-national-mall-in-news-photo/1246394597?adppopup=true">Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is liberal democracy?</h2>
<p>In political philosophy terms, the United States is a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberal-democracy">liberal democracy</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.concordmonitor.com/The-meaning-of-democracy-32817134">Liberal democracy comes in multiple forms</a> ranging from constitutional monarchies – such as the United Kingdom – to republics, such as the United States. </p>
<p>Although no democracy achieves the ideals of liberalism perfectly, under liberal democratic governments, citizens have rights and private lives protected from the actions of government. For example, in the U.S. it is inappropriate for legislation to be <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1220/james-madison">crafted based on a religious belief</a>, even if some particular belief or sect is privately endorsed by a majority of citizens.</p>
<p>One way to view the purpose of a liberal democracy is to preserve and nurture the right of every citizen to have a private life independent of the government. In that private life, citizens pursue their own goals and develop connections, associations and activities that are of personal value. </p>
<p>Separate from that private life is the public arena, in which citizens come together to discuss and decide issues of common concern, such as national defense, economic policy and other issues that affect everyone. This is the world of elections, of legislatures, courts and officials.</p>
<p>People with divergent, or even very similar, personal lives could have different views on how to handle matters of public concern. But they can work together to rise above their differences to arrive at solutions to collective problems that benefit society as a whole. </p>
<p>A good example of this is the institution and funding of public educational systems, civil services and public parks, to help ensure every citizen has at least a minimum level of access to goods and services necessary for a healthy private and civic life. </p>
<h2>The rise of politics</h2>
<p>The philosopher Aristotle described <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a">humans as political animals</a>, meaning that we depend upon the formation of cooperative political structures in order to flourish as human beings. </p>
<p>This human need for support networks that allow for mutual cooperation over time is the genesis of politics. In this sense, the concept of politics transcends more narrow partisan affiliations. </p>
<p>Political parties are just one aspect of political development – one, in fact, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-we-need-political-parties-in-theory-theyre-the-sort-of-organization-that-could-bring-americans-together-in-larger-purpose-199723">George Washington warned against</a> in his farewell address – that begins to blur the line between the public good of politics and narrower group interests. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A vintage portrait of a man with white hair, dressed in a black coat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532233/original/file-20230615-13634-3rtdan.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington warned about the potentially malign influence of political parties on democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/george-washington-portrait-painting-by-constable-hamilton-news-photo/507014168?adppopup=true">Constable-Hamilton, NY Public Library, Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Some of my own work pertains to how people’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12179">commitments to partisan identity</a> undermine their ability to understand scientific issues of public concern, such as human-caused climate change, and influence the spread of <a href="https://theconversation.com/bad-beliefs-misinformation-is-factually-wrong-but-is-it-ethically-wrong-too-196551">disinformation</a>. </p>
<h2>Lurking fascism</h2>
<p>As partisanship gains momentum, citizens and elected representatives alike become <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-all-polarization-is-bad-but-the-us-could-be-in-trouble-173833">less likely to constructively engage</a> with those they disagree with. People who differ on issues come to see each other as threats to their own private values. </p>
<p>Government power begins to be used not in service to the citizenry at large, but as a tool of narrow interest groups. This is where people begin to advocate for legislation defining marriage, reproductive rights and other issues in ways that reflect narrow private and religious values. </p>
<p>Whereas “the personal is the political” was originally meant to flag ways in which government decisions unfairly affect and define personal lives, the mindset that “<a href="https://erraticus.co/2020/02/19/suspending-politics-save-democracy-private-lives-political/">everything is political</a>” creates a situation of perpetual conflict between divergent groups. </p>
<p>That’s the opposite of what politics is for and what a liberal democracy does: A liberal democracy specifically guards against using <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-populist-challenge-to-liberal-democracy/">government power to further the agendas of distinctive groups</a>. It seeks to prevent government encroachment into the private lives of individuals, and vice versa, in order to constrain the worst impulses of politicians and citizens alike. </p>
<p>Fascism, by contrast, seeks to make government power an aspect of every dimension of its citizens’ lives. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/">Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt</a> conceptualized politics as an all-consuming and literal life and death struggle between friends and enemies.</p>
<h2>Partisan dysfunction</h2>
<p>The current state of polarization in the U.S. highlights the problems that arise when liberal democracy’s division between private and public realms disappears.</p>
<p>Trump has posed many challenges for the United States’ constitutional democracy – <a href="https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/legacies-january-6">not least the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection</a>. His current situation is another. <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-indictments-wont-keep-him-from-presidential-race-but-will-make-his-reelection-bid-much-harder-197677">There is no constitutional obstacle</a> preventing him from running, or serving, as president even if he is found guilty of some of the charges against him, not even if he is sentenced to prison.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-indictments-wont-keep-him-from-presidential-race-but-will-make-his-reelection-bid-much-harder-197677">practical obstacles</a> to serving as president while in a prison are obvious. Even someone who agrees with Trump’s views on key issues can recognize the challenges an incarcerated president would face. </p>
<p>If the nation were <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-all-polarization-is-bad-but-the-us-could-be-in-trouble-173833">less polarized</a>, less focused on winning or losing the power to impose regulations on Americans’ private lives, lawmakers and the public might equally prioritize avoiding such an obvious problem. They’d seek to preserve the rule of law in a way that would benefit the nation as a whole.</p>
<p>But they haven’t. Instead, Trump supporters will <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-not-politically-motivated-clinton-emails-biden.html">dismiss his indictments as “political</a>” maneuvers intended to influence the balance of power in the U.S. government, rather than as necessary checks on abuses of that power.</p>
<p>And if Trump is eventually cleared of the charges, or avoids a prison term if convicted, I believe his critics will view those developments as a product of politics, of the struggle for power, rather than the operation of a deliberative justice system.</p>
<h2>Shifting perspectives</h2>
<p>As political partisanship takes hold, <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-polarization-is-about-feelings-not-facts-120397">citizens come to trust only those institutions</a> that are run by members of their favored party. They no longer engage in the work of democracy and do not seek to ensure that independent, democracy-wide systems and institutions are protected from partisanship.</p>
<p>Rather than a means to living together peacefully, politics is treated as a <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-politics-of-enemies/">contest between combatants</a>. Government institutions meant to serve all are treated as if they are inevitably capable of only serving a particular few – and the struggle begins over which few they are to serve.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the full solution to this problem is, but I believe one step in the right direction is for people to identify themselves more as supporters of liberal democracy itself than as members of, or backers of, any particular partisan political party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lawrence Torcello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When everything is seen as political – indictments, Supreme Court decisions, scientific findings – a democracy may be on its way to fascism.Lawrence Torcello, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2003442023-03-16T19:11:19Z2023-03-16T19:11:19ZFor Australian Jews in the 1940s and 1950s, remembering the Holocaust meant fighting racism and colonialism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511555/original/file-20230221-23-8a55wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C1119%2C1832%2C2025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2707491263/view?partId=nla.obj-2707505174#page/n0/mode/1up">National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Readers are advised this piece contains some racist terminology.</em></p>
<p>Today, the Australian public mostly sees a conservative Australian Jewish communal leadership that has, since the 1990s, rarely spoken out on anything unrelated to Israel or the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Both issues are often drawn together. <a href="https://www.zfa.com.au/zionist-federation-of-australia-welcomes-the-un-resolution-condemning-holocaust-denial/">Arguments for Israel’s defence</a> are often bolstered by the memory of the Holocaust. That the Holocaust is an inevitable cause of conservatism and Zionism has become part of a commonsense idea of, and about, Australian Jews.</p>
<p>But as I argue in my book, <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-10123-6">Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism</a>, the seemingly natural connection made between Israel and Holocaust memory has shifted over time. </p>
<p>In fact, Australian Jewish communities have long fought internally over the best strategy to achieve Jewish safety. </p>
<p>The memorialisation of the Holocaust was key to the ideas and practice of the popular Australian Jewish antifascist left in the 1940s and 1950s.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-covid-has-shone-a-light-on-the-ugly-face-of-australian-antisemitism-154743">How COVID has shone a light on the ugly face of Australian antisemitism</a>
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<h2>A popular Jewish antifascist left-wing movement</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Jewish Council produced leaflets calling on Australians to oppose fascism." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511553/original/file-20230221-28-lflp5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Jewish Council to Combat Facism and Anti-Semitism produced many leaflets in Australia calling on Australians to oppose fascism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2707491263/view?partId=nla.obj-2707505174#page/n0/mode/1up">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1940s and 1950s, I found, Holocaust memory was key to a popular Jewish antifascist discourse that was left-wing, non-nationalist and universalistic. </p>
<p>For these Jewish antifascists, memorialising the Holocaust meant fighting fascism and racism. These were seen as ongoing international threats that could only be defeated through solidarity with progressive forces and other oppressed people.</p>
<p>The main organisation of the Jewish antifascist left in Australia was the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, sometimes shortened to “the Jewish Council”.</p>
<p>Formed in Melbourne in 1942, the Jewish Council represented, in the words of <a href="https://cat2.lib.unimelb.edu.au/search%7ES30?/arechter/arechter/1%2C12%2C23%2CB/frameset&FF=arechter+david&1%2C%2C2">historian David Rechter</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>in institutional form the broad-based antifascist leftism enjoying considerable vogue both within the Jewish community and in society at large.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It monitored and responded to incidents of antisemitism and actively linked the threats of antisemitism and fascism. Its strategy was to fight these threats by allying the Jewish community with progressive political forces. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Jewish Council pamphlet from the 1950s." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511878/original/file-20230223-1458-v5en8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Jewish Council pamphlet from the 1950s warns of the threat of Nazism to Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-43361144/view?partId=nla.obj-43361153#page/n0/mode/1up">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 1943 the Jewish Council was popular enough for the Victorian Jewish Advisory Board (the official representative body for Victorian Jewry) to vote to give it “full moral and financial support”. It was given responsibility for all official Jewish community public relations activities.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1940s, the Jewish Council had widespread support. It had hundreds of members and many committees (including special committees of doctors and lawyers and, later, a very active ladies auxiliary committee and youth section).</p>
<p>The philosophy and practice of the Jewish Council is summed up in a 1950 editorial in the popular Jewish left-wing magazine <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2066914">Unity</a>, which warned that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Goebbels’ spectre is still alive. Hitler’s lies and exploded theories are being refurbished.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It raised alarm about the widespread distribution of propaganda in Melbourne from a white supremacist organisation known as the “All Aryan World Movement”.</p>
<p>The editorial continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Shall we ignore such ridiculous and poisonous material? Some people in the community because of their sheltered lives in Australia have never really felt or understood the impact of Nazism on the Jewish people. They are advocates of silence. Their counterparts in Hitler’s Germany only learned the folly of their inactivity on the threshold of the gas chamber […] The spreading of fascist and anti-Semitic doctrines threatens us not only as Jews but strikes at the very foundations of our democracy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the late 1940s, the Jewish Council was especially focused on the alarming numbers of Nazis and Nazi collaborators migrating to Australia under the <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1778528">Displaced Persons scheme</a>.</p>
<p>Some were infamous Nazis and had harassed Jews in migrant reception centres.</p>
<p>In one dramatic <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=lwAAEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT291&lpg=PT291&dq=Sam+Goldbloom+bonegilla+SS+tattoos&source=bl&ots=ACOszp4Lu5&sig=ACfU3U1OTutb4aP_UtJwWUwl3RarvFzI3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjni5Tqtqr9AhUPwzgGHU9RCcwQ6AF6BAgHEAM#v=onepage&q=Sam%20Goldbloom%20bonegilla%20SS%20tattoos&f=false">incident</a> of intelligence gathering, the Jewish Council’s Sam Goldbloom disguised himself as a plumber and sneaked into the shower block at the <a href="https://www.bonegilla.org.au/">Bonegilla migrant reception centre</a>. He photographed the scars under migrants’ left armpits, where they had removed their SS tattoos.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1364848044794019842"}"></div></p>
<h2>The broader fight against racism and colonialism</h2>
<p>For the Jewish Council, the struggle against antisemitism was connected to fighting racism and colonialism more generally.</p>
<p>In 1947, during a period of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443050309387852?journalCode=rjau20">persistent attack by the press and conservative forces on Jewish refugees</a>, Jewish Council activist Norman Rothfield <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1765472">proclaimed</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We must attack reaction, no matter whence it comes. Dutch aggression against the Indonesia Republic is our concern, as is also the lynching of negroes [sic] in America, or the maltreatment of Aborigines [sic] in Australia […] We Jews can only be secure in a secure world. It is a world situation of conflict and strife together with a situation in Australia of intense class conflict which lays the ground for a campaign of anti-Semitic prejudice greater than any previous attacks in this country against a racial or religious minority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Jewish Council frequently compared the Holocaust with other instances of colonialism and racism.</p>
<p>A 1952 editorial from the Jewish Council-affiliated magazine The Clarion criticised Australia’s allies’ involvement in the Korean War, suggesting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Master Race theory of Nazism has reached a new peak in the war circles of America and Britain: for what is the difference between exterminating “Gooks” [sic] in Korea and “Yids” [sic] in Europe? Both are fruits from the same tree of evil.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Yosl Bergner, antifascist artist</h2>
<p>The famous artist Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) presents another example of Jewish antifascist Holocaust memorialisation. </p>
<p>The war years saw the emergence of <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3298450">a new pan-Aboriginal movement</a> led by Aboriginal activists <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nicholls-sir-douglas-ralph-doug-14920">Doug</a> and <a href="https://www.firstpeoplesrelations.vic.gov.au/lady-gladys-nicholls">Gladys Nicholls</a>. </p>
<p>Bergner encountered this movement through Jewish antifascists and left cultural organisations, as well as his membership of the Communist Party of Australia. </p>
<p>He frequently painted urban Aboriginal people, rejecting the typical settler artist imagery of Aboriginal people as a “dying race”. Instead, his work depicts Aboriginal people as complex modern subjects, displaced and dispossessed in a world of urban poverty inseparable from the wider social relations of Australia. </p>
<p>In the mid-1940s, Bergner often exhibited these works along with his paintings of Polish Jews. He sought to suggest strong connections between the plight of the two oppressed peoples.</p>
<h2>‘A Nazi Writes Home’</h2>
<p>Another example is a short satirical story titled “A Nazi Writes Home”, written under the initials “L.F.” and published in Unity magazine in July 1951. </p>
<p>In this fictional letter of furious irony, a Nazi in Australia named “Fritz” writes his Nazi friend back in Germany. </p>
<p>He describes initially fearing Australia was “a spineless democracy-loving country, rotten with worship of the masses”. He changed his mind, however, after seeing how brutally Aboriginal people were treated. He goes on to celebrates Australia as an exemplary country of white supremacy – “the true Aryan theory”. </p>
<p>After seeing a white child racially abuse an older Aboriginal woman, Fritz suggested:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australia is a land where the principles of National-Socialism are not altogether foreign.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The writer isn’t just drawing a clear link between the ongoing fascist threat and the racism of Australian colonialism. The story also links discrimination against Aboriginal people with the plight of Jews in the Holocaust and racial segregation laws in the United States. </p>
<p>“A Nazi Writes Home” places the oppression of Aboriginal people within an international antifascist context. It suggested antifascists needed to fight the entrenched structural racism of Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-jewish-womans-story-of-surviving-the-holocaust-by-passing-as-catholic-and-sheltering-with-nazis-is-rightly-hard-to-read-191003">This Jewish woman's story of surviving the Holocaust by passing as Catholic and sheltering with Nazis is (rightly) hard to read</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Max Kaiser has received funding from the Commonwealth government for his PhD research. </span></em></p>The memorialisation of the Holocaust was key to the ideas and practice of the popular Australian Jewish antifascist left in the 1940s and 1950s.Max Kaiser, Adjunct lecturer, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999972023-02-21T09:40:14Z2023-02-21T09:40:14ZSouth Africa and Israel: new memorial park in the Jewish state highlights complex history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510859/original/file-20230217-16-6qx4p0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Israeli officials and Jewish South African activists <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-723790">inaugurated</a> a memorial park in Tel Mond, a city north of Tel Aviv, in November 2022. Gan Siyabonga (We Thank You Garden) commemorates several dozen Jewish South African anti-apartheid activists who had personal connections to Israel. </p>
<p>The main sponsors of Gan Siyabonga are the <a href="https://www.jnfsa.co.za/">Jewish National Fund South Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.sazf.org/">South African Zionist Federation</a>. The park’s creation is a milestone in the South African Jewish community’s decades-long introspection into its complex relations with the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>This memorial site is unique in Israel, where an <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-south-africa-home-white-colonialists">estimated</a> 20,000 South Africans live.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is the first site in Israel to highlight the involvement of Jews in the anti-apartheid struggle. It is also unique because it calls attention to a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist, or at least not anti-Zionist. The combination is considered unconventional today. That’s because <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">Zionism</a>, the political ideology that favours a Jewish state, is largely associated in South Africa with collaboration with apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians. </p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is a reminder that relations between Zionism and apartheid, and between Israel and South Africa, were complex and multilayered. In the last few years I have been working on a PhD dissertation that explores this complexity. Digging into archives and historical periodicals revealed a fascinating story that defies some assumptions. </p>
<h2>Israel’s troubled relations with apartheid</h2>
<p>Israel is commonly remembered as one of the last allies of apartheid South Africa. From the mid-1970s, the Israeli government maintained <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/unspoken-alliance-israels-secret-relationship-apartheid-south-africa-sasha-polakow-suransky">close relations</a> with the minority white regime in Pretoria. </p>
<p>It was one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/17/israel-imposes-sanctions-on-south-africa/70cbb4f4-77b9-4898-8df7-dc39c2c5a500/">last countries</a> to enforce full sanctions on Pretoria. As a result, many anti-apartheid activists, including Jewish ones, held fierce anti-Zionist stances. These were amplified by the strong alliances South African liberation movements forged with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">Soviet Union</a> and the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220609-the-plo-at-58-and-the-anc-at-110-how-they-evolved-and-where-do-they-stand-today/">Palestinian Liberation Organisation</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-push-led-by-south-africa-to-revoke-israels-au-observer-status-is-misguided-168013">Why the push led by South Africa to revoke Israel’s AU observer status is misguided</a>
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<hr>
<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution">accusation</a> that Israel practises apartheid-like policies against Palestinians is another reason Israel hasn’t been seen as anti-apartheid. Recent anti-Zionist rhetoric by some Jewish veterans of the South African struggle, such as <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/17/how-stop-apartheid-israel">Ronnie Kasrils</a>, strengthened this feeling of unbridgeable contradiction between Israel and anti-apartheid values.</p>
<h2>Support for Israel</h2>
<p>But anti-apartheid activism and Zionism were not always in conflict. Up until the late 1960s, many radical anti-apartheid activists were sympathetic towards Israel and Zionism’s more progressive strands.</p>
<p>In 1948, most radical activists in South Africa supported the establishment of the State of Israel and its war against the invading Arab armies in Palestine. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/362107/pdf">The Guardian</a>, the main radical weekly in South Africa at the time (linked to the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>), rooted for an Israeli <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1626615101770936322">victory</a>. </p>
<p>Young Israel was a symbol of opposition to racial persecution and fascism. Those two themes strongly resonated with South African anti-apartheid activists. They tended to see the Afrikaner <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a> as an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2021.2009014?tab=permissions&scroll=top">ideological relative</a> of the Nazis. </p>
<p>The initial <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/who_saved_israel_1947.pdf">Soviet support for Israel</a>, and a prominent socialist element within Zionism, also contributed to these feelings, especially among South African Marxists.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-search-of-advantages-israels-observer-status-in-the-african-union-165773">In search of advantages: Israel’s observer status in the African Union</a>
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<p>From the late 1950s, many anti-apartheid activists cherished Israel’s stances against South Africa <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/132/559/1440/4831456">at the United Nations</a>. Similarly its <a href="https://www.academia.edu/90295451/_We_Are_Returning_to_Africa_and_Africa_is_Coming_Back_to_Us_Israels_Evolving_Relations_With_Africa">support for decolonisation</a> in Africa. By the early 1960s, Israel had become the most anti-apartheid country in the “western” camp of the Cold War. In 1963, it <a href="https://www.jta.org/archive/south-african-premier-attacks-israel-for-recall-of-envoy-israel-mum">recalled its envoy</a> and supported international sanctions against South Africa. Israeli archives contain many <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1524773424324923393">letters</a> from South African liberation movements <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b071706800399c8/File/0b071706804bc4fc">thanking Israel</a> for its support at the UN and elsewhere. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old typed letter signed by an ANC official praises Israel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Letter from ANC officials praising Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Israel State Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1960s, Israel offered covert material support to anti-apartheid groups, perhaps even <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2013-12-20/ty-article/.premium/mandela-and-the-mossad/0000017f-e66d-dc7e-adff-f6eda1960000">to Nelson Mandela</a>. Israeli experiences inspired the early stages of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress’ (ANC) military wing, for example through <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/arthur-goldreich">Arthur Goldreich</a>. It also had stable communication channels with the <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b0717068031bdef/File/0b0717068062f0ae">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>. </p>
<h2>Post-1967</h2>
<p>Sympathy towards Israel diminished considerably after the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4325413">Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973</a>. But relations between anti-apartheid activism and Zionism remained complicated.</p>
<p>Many Jewish individuals who joined the struggle against apartheid had been active in Zionist youth movements. The socialist-oriented <a href="https://habonim.org.za/">Habonim</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Shomrim_in_the_Land_of_Apartheid.html?id=ZMltAAAAMAAJ">Hashomer Hatzair</a> stand out. Those who joined the anti-apartheid struggle (such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slovo_the_Unfinished_Autobiography.html?id=9QxzAAAAMAAJ">Joe Slovo</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Revolutions_in_My_Life.html?id=vQYwAQAAIAAJ">Baruch Hirson</a>) typically abandoned Zionism. But they acknowledged its role in forming their radical worldview.</p>
<p>Jewish South African individuals were prominent in the liberal strand of the anti-apartheid struggle too. They usually used their professional skills to challenge the apartheid regime. Lawyers like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/advocate-israel-isie-aaron-maisels">Isie Maisels</a>, parliamentarians like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-suzman">Helen Suzman</a>, journalists like <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/benjamin-pogrund.html">Benjamin Pogrund</a>, and rabbis like <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/rabbi-ben-isaacson-a-maverick-soul-finds-rest/">Ben Isaacson</a> were examples. Jewish liberal activists usually expressed support for Israel in various ways.</p>
<p>Developments since the mid-1970s have largely overshadowed the complex history of Zionism’s engagement with the apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid struggle became tightly associated with the Palestinian struggle. And, after its rise to power in 1994, the ANC reaffirmed its commitment to its Palestinian allies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
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</em>
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<p>Since then, relations with Israel have largely remained chilly. The ANC <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/s-africas-ruling-party-anc-reaffirms-boycott-israel-resolution">supports</a> the movement to boycott Israel and Pretoria <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/south-africa-israel-anc">downgraded</a> its representation in the Jewish state. South African foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-713140">called</a> for Israel to be declared an “apartheid state”. </p>
<h2>A step in the right direction</h2>
<p>Israel and South Africa’s Jewish communities have a long and ambiguous history of entanglement with race politics. There were admirable moments in this history. But there were also periods of complicity with racism. In Israel, both sides of this history are largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is an important first step in placing this history in the Israeli public sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Lubotzky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.Asher Lubotzky, PhD Candidate, History, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984612023-01-25T11:33:22Z2023-01-25T11:33:22ZDante was the founder of Italy’s right wing, claims culture minister – an expert explains why he’s wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506123/original/file-20230124-25-hsg7ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C31%2C1851%2C1592&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dante in Verona, by Antonio Cotti (1879).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/17089/lot/149/">Bonhams</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Dante was the founder of right-wing thinking in our country,” proclaimed Italy’s culture minister, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/italys-culture-minister-says-dante-was-father-of-italys-right-wing-nt2bghzlf">Gennaro Sangiuliano</a>, at an electoral meeting of the prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia, in January.</p>
<p>He <a href="https://video.repubblica.it/politica/cultura-il-ministro-sangiuliano-dante-e-il-fondatore-del-pensiero-della-destra-italiana/435962/436928">went on to say</a> that “Dante’s vision of mankind and relationships, as well as his political construction, are deeply right-wing.”</p>
<p>The statement caused uproar in Italy. Among leftwing politicians and literary critics, the collective mood feels ready to shout, with one voice: <em>Giù le mani da Dante</em> (hands off Dante). </p>
<p>The reality is there are many interpretations of Dante. Sangiuliano’s reading is not particularly sophisticated, but it requires attention because of his allusion to Dante as a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/354/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2778767">totem of Italian nationalism</a>.</p>
<h2>‘The most Italian of all Italians’</h2>
<p>Poet and philosopher <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-dantes-divine-comedy-84603">Dante Alighieri</a> (1265-1321) – whose work includes the <a href="https://headofzeus.com/books/9781786690791">Divine Comedy</a>, one of the landmarks of western literature – is considered a source of national pride in Italy. As the celebrations for the <a href="https://indiplomacy.it/en/dante-in-the-world-anniversary/">seventh centenary</a> of his death in 2021 demonstrated, Dante’s memory and Italian identity are deeply intertwined.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of Dante in side profile, wearing red robes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506129/original/file-20230124-11-oq1c2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Posthumous portrait of Dante by Sandro Botticelli (1495).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The identification between Dante and Italy dates back to the process of unification of Italy (the <em>Risorgimento</em>). At that time, Dante <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/11560/chapter-abstract/160372107?redirectedFrom=fulltext">was proclaimed</a> <em>padre della patria</em> (father of the country) by many, including two of the most influential Italian intellectual leaders – writer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584628.003.0002">Ugo Foscolo</a> (1778-1827) and politician <a href="https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197264317.003.0010">Giuseppe Mazzini</a> (1805-1872).</p>
<p>The historian Cesare Balbo (1789-1853) called Dante <a href="https://www.liberliber.it/online/autori/autori-c/carlo-cattaneo/vita-di-dante-di-cesare-balbo/">“the most Italian of all Italians”</a>. Philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) who was later minister of education under Mussolini’s government and a member of the Italian Fascist Party, asserted that, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40166133#metadata_info_tab_contents">“with Dante the idea of Italy began to take hold”</a>.</p>
<p>In recent times, Dante has been equated with an abstract idea of Italy by leftwing politicians too, like former Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini, who in 2021 <a href="https://www.beniculturali.it/comunicato/20241">stated</a> that “Dante is the very idea of Italy.” In the same year, President Sergio Mattarella <a href="https://www.quirinale.it/elementi/50535">argued</a> that “Dante is actually the great prophet of Italy.”</p>
<h2>The many appropriations of Dante</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ici-berlin.org/publications/metamorphosing-dante/">Appropriations of Dante</a> are typical of many different cultural environments, but rightwing speakers tend to add a dash of nationalism in order to generate populist ideologies.</p>
<p>There have been – predictably – Catholic appropriations, with three official papal documents published on Dante: Benedetto XV’s encyclical <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40166133#metadata_info_tab_contents">In Praeclara Summorum</a> (1921), Paul VI’s apostolic letter <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19651207_altissimi-cantus.html">Altissimi Cantus</a> (1965) and Francis I’s apostolic letter, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20210325_centenario-dante.html">Candor Lucis Aeternae</a> (2021).</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photograph of Engels with side parted hair and long beard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506139/original/file-20230124-12-ukeqa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Friedrich Engels (pictured in 1868) dubbed Dante ‘both the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Engels_1856.jpg">George Lester</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There have been communist appropriations. In the preface to the Italian edition (1893) of Marx and Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party, Dante is <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1893">defined</a> as “both the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times”.</p>
<p>And there have also been fascist appropriations. During Mussolini’s regime (1922-1945), two books were published associating Dante and Mussolini: <a href="https://archive.org/details/VenturiniDanteEMussolini">Dante Alighieri e Benito Mussolini</a> (1927) by historian Domenico Venturini and Dante e Mussolini (1934) by critic Tommaso Vitti.</p>
<p>The fascist militant Pietro Jacopini, captain of the Royal Guardia di Finanza, in <a href="https://opac.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/bncf-prod/resource?uri=CUB0339450&v=l">a 1928 essay</a> dedicated to a political reading of canto six of Purgatorio, went to the extent of proclaiming that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dante is a forerunner of Fascism and, if he had lived today, he would certainly have honoured us with his company, holding his truncheon against all the socialists and communists.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The dangers of evoking Dante</h2>
<p>Sangiuliano is free to take inspiration from whatever sources he wishes but as these antecedents demonstrate, his words lean dangerously towards fascist interpretations.</p>
<p>For many readers of Dante, there is in fact no connection between Dante and rightwing thinking. </p>
<p>If rightwing thinking implies individualism, Dante was <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Dante-the-Lyric-and-Ethical-Poet-Dante-Lirico-E-Etico/Baranski/p/book/9780367602390">communitarian</a> (believing that we are moulded by our communities). If typical rightwing values are aggression, competition and authoritarianism, Dante’s message is fraternity, solidarity and free-will. If identity and nationalism mark rightwing policies, the Divine Comedy is all universalism, based as it is on a series of meetings that explore the variety of human nature.</p>
<p>As an expert in Dante’s writing, I would urge Sangiuliano to read and reread Dante. What we need to <a href="https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2015/war-and-peace-in-dante/">learn from him</a> in our time of enduring conflicts and ideological divides is his curiosity about human nature, nurtured with intellectual challenges and moral questions, rather than making him fit within any political system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefano Jossa is Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London. He has received a British Academy / Leverhulme SRG for research on the Ridolfi collection at the Archives of Royal Holloway. He also works for the Universita` degli Studi di Palermo. </span></em></p>For many readers of Dante, there is in fact no connection between his writing and rightwing thinking.Stefano Jossa, Honorary Research Fellow in Italian Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1889672022-11-07T13:34:06Z2022-11-07T13:34:06ZWhy some people think fascism is the greatest expression of democracy ever invented<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492858/original/file-20221101-24-gxmzky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=74%2C0%2C8256%2C5475&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump is one of many political leaders through history who has claimed he embodies the voice of 'the people' – but which people he means matters quite a lot.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-u-s-president-donald-trump-speaks-at-a-save-america-news-photo/1435729108">Brandon Bell/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Warnings that leaders like Donald Trump hold <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/01/joe-biden-donald-trump-january-6">a dagger at the throat of democracy</a> have evoked a sense of befuddlement among moderates. How can so many Republicans – voters, once reasonable-sounding officeholders and the new breed of activists who claim to be <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1117171029/how-the-hard-right-turn-in-the-arizona-gop-is-an-anti-democracy-experiment">superpatriots committed to democracy</a> – be acting like willing enablers of democracy’s destruction?</p>
<p>As a political philosopher, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xruNAnYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> spend a lot of time <a href="http://www.thecritique.com/articles/trumpandliberalism/">studying</a> those who believe in authoritarian, totalitarian and other repressive forms of government, on both the right and the left. Some of these figures don’t technically identify themselves as fascists, but they share important similarities in their ways of thinking.</p>
<p>One of the most articulate thinkers in this group was the early-20th-century philosopher <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315125954/origins-doctrine-fascism-giovanni-gentile-james-gregor">Giovanni Gentile</a>, whom Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Giovanni-Gentile-Philosopher-of-Fascism/Gregor/p/book/9780765805935">the philosopher of fascism</a>.” And many fascists, like Gentile, claim they are not opposed to democracy. On the contrary, they think of themselves as advocating a more pure version of it.</p>
<h2>Unity of leader, nation-state and people</h2>
<p>The idea that forms the bedrock of fascism is that there is a unity between <a href="https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf">the leader, the nation-state and the people</a>.</p>
<p>For instance, Mussolini famously claimed that “<a href="http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html">everything is in the state</a>, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the state.” But this is not an end to be achieved. It is the point from which things begin. </p>
<p>This is how Trump, according to those around him, can believe “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/us/politics/trump-fbi-classified-documents.html">I am the state</a>” and equate what is good for him is by definition also good for the country. For while this view may seem inconsistent with democracy, this is true only if society is viewed as a collection of individuals with conflicting attitudes, preferences and desires.</p>
<p>But fascists have a different view. For example, <a href="https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/19015/6919293.PDF?sequence=1">Othmar Spann</a>, whose thought was highly influential during the rise of fascism in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s, argued that society is not “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203806944">the summation of independent individuals</a>,” for this would make society a community only in a “mechanical” and therefore trivial sense. </p>
<p>On the contrary, for Spann and others, society is a group whose members share the same attitudes, beliefs, desires, view of history, religion, language and so on. It is not a collective; it is more like what Spann describes as a “super-individual.” And ordinary individuals are more like cells in a single large biological organism, not competing independent organisms important in themselves.</p>
<p>This sort of society could indeed be democratic. Democracy is intended to give effect to the will of the people, but it doesn’t require that society be diverse and pluralistic. It does not tell us who “the people” are.</p>
<h2>Who are the people?</h2>
<p>According to fascists, only those who share the correct attributes can be part of “the people” and therefore true members of society. Others are outsiders, perhaps tolerated as guests if they respect their place and society feels generous. But outsiders have no right to be part of the democratic order: Their votes should not count.</p>
<p>This helps explain why Tucker Carlson claims “<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-democracy-functioning">our democracy is no longer functioning</a>,” because so many <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-demographic-shift-isnt-driving-white-people-to-the-right">nonwhites</a> have the vote. It also helps explain why Carlson and others so vigorously <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/17/republicans-have-invoked-the-great-replacement-theory-over-and-over-and-over">promote</a> the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/us/replacement-theory-shooting-tucker-carlson.html">great replacement theory</a>,” the idea that liberals are encouraging immigrants to come to the U.S. with the specific purpose of diluting the political power of “true” Americans. </p>
<p>The importance of seeing the people as an exclusive, privileged group, one that actually includes rather than is represented by the leader, is also at work when Trump <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/rino-just-means-disloyal-to-trump-now.html">denigrates Republicans who defy him</a>, even in the smallest ways, as “Republicans in Name Only.” The same is also true when other Republicans call for these “in-house” critics to be cast out of the party, for to them any disloyalty is equivalent to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/16/david-ball-toomey-pennsylvania-gop/">defying the will of the people</a>.</p>
<h2>How representative democracy is undemocratic</h2>
<p>Ironically, it is all the checks and balances and the endless intermediate levels of representative government that fascists view as undemocratic. For all these do is interfere with the ability of the leader to give direct effect to the will of the people as they see it.</p>
<p>Here is Libyan dictator and Arab nationalist Moammar Gadhafi on this issue in 1975:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-green-book.pdf">Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people</a>, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. … A parliament is … in itself … undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, to be democratic, a state does not need a legislature. All it needs is a leader.</p>
<h2>How is the leader identified?</h2>
<p>For the fascist, the leader is certainly not identified through elections. Elections are simply spectacles meant to announce the leader’s embodiment of the will of the people to the world.</p>
<p>But the leader is supposed to be an extraordinary figure, larger than life. Such a person cannot be selected through something as pedestrian as an election. Instead, the leader’s identity must be gradually and naturally “revealed,” like the unveiling of religious miracle, says Nazi theorist <a href="https://theconversation.com/carl-schmitt-nazi-era-philosopher-who-wrote-blueprint-for-new-authoritarianism-59835">Carl Schmitt</a>.</p>
<p>For Schmitt and others like him, then, these are the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262192446/political-theology/">true hallmarks of a leader</a>, one who embodies the will of the people: intense feeling expressed by supporters, large rallies, loyal followers, the consistent ability to demonstrate freedom from the norms that govern ordinary people, and decisiveness.</p>
<p>So when Trump claims “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/trump-rnc-speech-alone-fix-it/492557/">I am your voice</a>” to howls of adoration, as happened at the 2016 Republican National Convention, this is supposed to be a sign that he is exceptional, part of the unity of nation-state and leader, and that he alone meets the above criteria for leadership. The same was true when Trump announced in 2020 that the nation is broken, saying “<a href="https://www.politico.com/video/2020/08/20/trump-at-2016-rnc-i-alone-can-fix-it-085403">I alone can fix it</a>.” To some, this even suggests he is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/25/rick-perry-donald-trump-chosen-one">sent by God</a>.</p>
<p>If people accept the above criteria for what identifies a true leader, they can also understand why Trump claims he attracted bigger crowds than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/us/politics/donald-trump-npr-interview.html">President Joe Biden</a> when explaining why he could not have lost the 2020 presidential election. For, as Spann wrote a century earlier, “<a href="https://worldcat.org/title/1292075168">one should not count votes</a>, but weigh them such that the best, not the majority prevails.” </p>
<p>Besides, why should the mild preference of 51% prevail over the intense preference of the rest? Is not the latter more representative of the will of the people? These questions certainly sound like something Trump might ask, even though they are actually taken from <a href="http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-green-book.pdf">Gadhafi</a> again. </p>
<h2>The duty of the individual</h2>
<p>In a true fascist democracy, then, everyone is of one mind about everything of importance. Accordingly, everyone intuitively knows what the leader wants them to do. </p>
<p>It is therefore each person’s responsibility, citizen or official, to “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777300000382">work towards the leader</a>” without needing specific orders. Those who make mistakes will soon learn of it. But those who get it right will be rewarded many times over. </p>
<p>So argued Nazi politician <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777300000382">Werner Willikens</a>. And so, it appears, thought Trump when he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/donald-trump-subpoenas.html">demanded</a> absolute <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-unitary-executive-and-the-scope-of-executive-power">loyalty and obedience</a> from his administration officials. </p>
<p>But most importantly, <a href="https://nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/capitao-rioters.html">according to their own words</a>, so thought many of the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-trump-dozen-capitol-rioters-trumps-guidance/story?id=75757601">insurrectionists</a> on Jan. 6, 2021, when they tried to prevent the confirmation of Biden’s election. And so Trump signaled when he subsequently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/01/trump-jan-6-rioters-pardon/">promised to pardon</a> the rioters.</p>
<p>With that, the harmonization of democracy and fascism is complete.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark R. Reiff is a registered Democrat. He does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no other relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some fascists claim that democracy and fascism have the same goal – to give effect to the will of the people. But who the people are is where the ideologies divide.Mark R. Reiff, Research Affiliate in Legal and Political Philosophy, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899592022-11-01T03:07:56Z2022-11-01T03:07:56ZDemocracy spreads in waves – but shared cultural history might matter more than geography<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492418/original/file-20221030-78928-42ycn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C391%2C4243%2C2278&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sergi Reboredo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent events like the war in Ukraine, conflicts over Taiwan and the rise of authoritarian ideology have renewed interest in the foundations of modern democracy. </p>
<p>They have raised questions about why some nations are more democratic than others, and how democratic institutions, freedoms and values are spread or lost. </p>
<p>We tend to think of this variation in terms of geography – democratic Western Europe or autocratic Middle East. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A world map showing democratoc freedoms." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491577/original/file-20221025-24-4mditm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Global variation in democratic freedoms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Freedom House data for 2020</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>But in a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/shared-cultural-ancestry-predicts-the-global-diffusion-of-democracy/90C7A170B924FC305DD66FF8853799FC#">new analysis of 220 years of political data</a>, we show that deep cultural connections between countries such as shared linguistic or religious ancestry matter more than geography.</p>
<h2>Waves of democratisation</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A graph showing the three waves of democratisation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491570/original/file-20221025-14-150qlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The three waves of democratisation, based on three democracy indicators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Evolutionary Human Sciences</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The emergence of modern democracy coincides with the rise of nation states in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. Democracy spread across European nations and their colonies, over <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave:_Democratization_in_the_Late_Twentieth_Century">three waves</a>. </p>
<p>The first wave lasted about a century, from 1828 to 1926, halting after the first world war. A second, rapid wave (1945-1962) followed the second world war and decolonisation. </p>
<p>The third wave began in 1974 and continues today. It encompassed political transitions and new countries in Europe, Latin America and the Pacific. </p>
<p>Each wave was followed by a period of reversals when nations turned to autocratic regimes, junta or fascism. Indeed, some researchers speculate we are heading into <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029">another period of reversal</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-democracy-really-on-the-ballot-in-the-us-midterm-elections-193050">Is democracy really 'on the ballot' in the US midterm elections?</a>
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<h2>What drives modern democracy?</h2>
<p>Scholars traditionally considered factors internal to a country – economic growth, rates of education or the natural environment – as the drivers of these waves. However, the geographic clustering of democracy and the wave-like pattern of expansion suggest the process may also involve a kind of contagion where democracy passes from one nation to another. </p>
<p>One explanation for this is that democratic change spreads across borders, so that neighbouring countries end up with similar levels of democracy. </p>
<p>Culture provides another explanation. Neighbouring countries tend to share a common cultural heritage, such as related languages or religions. This shapes national institutions, norms and values. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions-191116">How Hitler conspiracies and other Holocaust disinformation undermine democratic institutions</a>
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<p>In our research, we tested the idea that common cultural ancestry explains variation and change in democracy around the globe. We brought together 220 years of democracy data with information on the cultural relationships between nations. The cultural relationships we examined were based on languages and religious beliefs.</p>
<p>For example, Portugal is linguistically closer to Spanish-speaking Argentina and Spain than to England and Germany (which speak Germanic languages). Likewise, Myanmar, a Theravada Buddhist country, is religiously closer to Mongolia (where Vajrayana Buddhism is predominant) than to Muslim Malaysia.</p>
<h2>Culture is more important than geography</h2>
<p>The democracy data we studied cover 269 modern and historical nations and three widely-used democracy indicators, measuring democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions (<a href="https://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html">Polity 5</a>), electoral participation and competition (<a href="https://www.prio.org/data/20">Vanhanen Index</a>) and individual rights and freedoms (<a href="https://freedomhouse.org/">Freedom House</a>). </p>
<p>Across all three indicators of democracy, we found countries that share linguistic or religious ancestry tend to have more similar democracy scores. These shared cultural ties were better predictors of democracy than geography, especially during the third wave of democratisation. </p>
<p>Knowing the democratic status of a country’s linguistic or religious relatives helps predict that country’s future level of democracy five, ten or even 20 years later. </p>
<p>These effects were not just due to countries sharing a language (for example, the English-speaking world) or religion (such as the Sunni Islam majority countries). This suggests deeper cultural connections between countries are important. </p>
<h2>What this means for the spread of democracy</h2>
<p>These effects could be the result of a number of processes. </p>
<p>One possibility is that countries directly inherited institutions along the same pathways they inherited cultural features like language. For instance, Aotearoa New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries inherited the British legal system along with the English language. </p>
<p>Another possibility is that cultural similarities might make countries more likely to maintain ongoing social connections, including foreign relations, which then aid the spread of institutions. For example, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-arab-spring-changed-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-forever-161394">Arab Spring</a> spread among a set of countries with common linguistic and religious heritage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People attend a rally in Tunis to mark the anniversary of the Arab Spring." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492670/original/file-20221031-16-z67zka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People attend a rally in Tunis to mark the anniversary of the Arab Spring.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yassine Gaidi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>A third possibility is that inherited cultural values could steer countries towards similar institutions. For example, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0769-1">in previous research</a> we found that tolerance of diversity (cosmopolitan values) promotes a shift to more democratic institutions, but the reverse is not true. Democratic institutions do not shift tolerance. </p>
<p>Countries that have inherited cosmopolitan values as part of their shared cultural ancestry may be more likely to shift towards democracy. If this theory is correct, it calls into question the assumption that democratic institutions can endure without sustained efforts to promote the cultural values that support them. The US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq may be tragic examples of this. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-populist-and-a-dictator-the-ancient-greeks-have-answers-191719">What is the difference between a populist and a dictator? The ancient Greeks have answers</a>
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<p>Our findings indicate cultural history matters for understanding the spread of democracy around the globe. This does not mean culture is the only factor at play (our analyses still leave a lot of variation unexplained). Neither do our findings speak to a population’s ultimate potential to achieve democratic outcomes, but we see this as within the reach of all populations. </p>
<p>This means those wishing to support democracy at home or abroad should take cultural barriers seriously. We cannot assume that institutions that work well in one cultural setting can be easily transplanted to another, very different setting, with different values, norms and traditions. We should pay more attention to culturally closely related countries that have succeeded at merging local norms and values with democratic institutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke J. Matthews received funding for this research from University of Auckland (NZ). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Quentin Douglas Atkinson received funding for this research from Royal Society Te Apārangi. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thanos Kyritsis received funding for this research from the University of Auckland (NZ). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Welch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research suggests countries with cosmopolitan values may be more likely to
shift towards democracy, but democratic institutions can’t endure without sustained
efforts to promote such values.David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLuke J. Matthews, Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist, RANDQuentin Douglas Atkinson, Associate Professor in Evolutionary Psychology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauThanos Kyritsis, PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1933682022-10-28T12:39:37Z2022-10-28T12:39:37ZMarch on Rome: uncomfortable moment for Italy as Giorgia Meloni becomes prime minister a century after fascist takeover<p>Between the end of October and the beginning of November 1922, Benito Mussolini’s so-called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/19/march-on-rome-and-coming-to-power-of-mussolini-1922">march on Rome</a> took place in Italy. This moment was of global importance. It marked the first fascist takeover of power in the world, set in place a regime which would govern for 20 years, and inspired other far-right movements. The recent election victory of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni has led to much discussion about the roots and ongoing presence of fascism in Italian society.</p>
<p>It could reasonably be argued that without the march on Rome, Hitler’s rise to power might never have happened, and the second world war would not have taken place. It has been the subject of much <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/italys-divided-memory">historical and political debate</a>. Some called it a bluff, some a farce, some a coup. Italian fascists claimed that the march had been a revolution. For them, 1922 was year zero.</p>
<p>From October 27 1922 onwards, blackshirted fascists (known as <em>squadristi</em>) attacked and occupied government buildings, barracks and prisons across Italy. They were often heavily armed.</p>
<p>The local insurrections came on the back of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4886/chapter-abstract/147259786?redirectedFrom=fulltext">violent activity</a> that had effectively destroyed local democracy in numerous towns and cities and driven many socialists and trade unionists underground or into exile.</p>
<p>The plan was then to take the capital itself, and thousands of blackshirts began to march, or take trains, towards Rome. Given this situation, King Victor Emmanuel III (the head of state) was faced with a choice – mobilise the army against the fascists, or give in. He chose the <a href="https://www.italyonthisday.com/2017/10/mussolini-appointed-prime-minister-victor-emmanuel.html">latter option</a> and Mussolini was appointed prime minister.</p>
<p>It seems likely that the king felt he could not count on the army to remain loyal in the face of the march. But there was also an element of self-interest. By appointing the head of an insurrection as prime minister, the king legitimised fascist violence and set himself up as a co-leader of the state.</p>
<p>Once thousands of blackshirts finally reached Rome, the king saluted them from his balcony as they filed past. There was then an orgy of violence in the capital itself, directed largely against oppositionists, the free press and anti-fascists. Dozens of people were killed. Others were threatened. Many saw their homes trashed and sacked. It was a warning. Mussolini was in charge of this violence, and could unleash it at any time – a threat he made explicitly in parliament soon afterwards.</p>
<p>The Liberals who voted for Mussolini’s government (the fascists had only won 35 seats in the previous elections) assumed that they could control the blackshirts. But this was a fatal error. Soon, fascism would turn on the Liberals themselves, who were beaten, intimidated and killed.</p>
<p>Within a few years, the world’s first fascist dictatorship was in place, and Italian democracy had been destroyed. Mussolini had never accepted the results of the 1919 elections, and had vowed to overturn those “shameful” results by any means necessary. He did not claim those results were fraudulent, just that they were politically unacceptable and “anti-national”.</p>
<p>Mussolini would rule until 1943, when he was arrested on the orders of the king as Italy’s war effort fell apart. His ignominious <a href="https://www.history.com/news/mussolinis-final-hours">end</a> saw him hung up by his feet in front of a baying crowd in Milan, after being shot by Communist partisans as he tried to escape disguised as a German soldier.</p>
<h2>Brothers of Italy rise to power</h2>
<p>Exactly a century later in 2022, a new prime minister has <a href="https://theconversation.com/italys-election-is-a-case-study-in-a-new-phase-for-the-radical-right-92198">come to power in Italy</a>. Her name is Giorgia Meloni. As a teenager, she joined the youth wing of the neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano.</p>
<p>The party went through splits and name changes over the years and now calls itself Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) – a reference to a line in the national anthem. Within the Fratelli d’Italia symbol is a flame, which, according to some, represents the permanent flame on Mussolini’s grave, in his birthplace of Predappio in central Italy.</p>
<p>Meloni doesn’t like to talk about fascism. She has criticised the movement’s destruction of democracy and its anti-semitic measures, but when asked for more, she slightly deflects the question. She says she is against all regimes, be they communist of fascist.</p>
<p>Meloni has grown up in a democracy, and has come to power through <a href="https://theconversation.com/giorgia-melonis-win-in-italy-proves-even-a-seemingly-successful-government-can-fall-victim-to-populism-191278">legitimate elections</a>, not violence. But you don’t have to dig too far to find more explicit <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/pilgrims-to-mussolinis-birthplace-pray-that-new-pm-will-resurrect-a-far-right-italy">Mussolini love and nostalgia</a> or the regime of the 1920s and the 1930s amongst her followers, and amongst many of her ministers and deputies. Even just the fact that she doesn’t publicly denounce such tendencies in her followers is an issue.</p>
<p>Italy as a nation has nothing planned to mark the 100th anniversary of the march on Rome. Perhaps this anniversary will be completely ignored, although it is being marked at a local level by conferences, commemorations and discussions. In Predappio, as on every such occasion, many will gather to pay homage to Mussolini’s tomb. They will do so undisturbed by the police, despite laws against the “reconstitution of the fascist party”.</p>
<p>Does this matter? Isn’t fascism something very much about the past rather than the present? Yes and no. The normalisation of an ambiguous attitude to fascism is something we should be worried about. But Italian democracy is robust and the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/106591294800100301?casa_token=BHTcOoXtmVoAAAAA:qXx9FqZsRHsitDAfv2iq6H2_IXY09GPcluA5zLgJU9KvbTbkP9SJhI9NMPvSeIy3fG2bvn5Xjxnh">constitution is expertly drawn up</a> with these dangers in mind.</p>
<p>That said, most Italians have no living memory of fascism at all. Anti-fascism has therefore been in decline for decades. In 1994, when post-fascist politicians entered Silvio Berlusconi’s first government, there were huge anti-fascist marches in Milan and elsewhere. This is no longer the case – and perhaps this lack of active opposition to fascism is the most worrying trend of all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193368/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Foot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A century since the dictator staged a coup, a party with fascist roots is once again in power.John Foot, Professor of Modern Italian History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906552022-09-26T06:04:27Z2022-09-26T06:04:27ZWhat will its first far-right leader since WWII mean for Italy?<p>“Una vittoria storica” – a historic victory. That’s how the website of one of Italy’s major newspapers, the <a href="https://www.corriere.it/">Corriere della Sera</a>, reacted to the <a href="https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2022/09/25/-centre-right-ahead-in-opinio-rai-exit-poll-with-41-45-_75e4546a-fce5-4bc3-8863-8999d2974a3a.html">exit polls</a> released after voting closed in Italy’s general election on Sunday night.</p>
<p>With a predicted vote share of between 40-45%, the right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni looks on course to secure at least 230 of the 400 seats in the Lower House, giving it a clear majority.</p>
<p>Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, was the big winner on the right, with various agencies estimating it at around 25% of the vote. This was more than the combined total of her two main allies, as Matteo Salvini’s League was tipped to receive approximately 8-9%, with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia just below that.</p>
<p>In just four years, Brothers of Italy has gone from minor to major player on the right. In 2018, they took 4.4% compared to the League’s 17.4% and Forza Italia’s 14%. And, if we look further back, Italy’s right-wing coalition has moved from having been dominated for over 20 years by a centre-right populist party (Forza Italia), to being dominated now by a far-right populist one (Brothers of Italy).</p>
<p>Brothers of Italy’s victory represents several firsts. Italy will have its first woman prime minister. And both Italy and Western Europe will have their first far-right majority government since the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War.</p>
<h2>Who is Giorgia Meloni?</h2>
<p>Meloni’s trajectory owes much to that history. Beginning as an activist of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement in the Roman working-class district of Garbatella in the early 1990s, Meloni rose to prominence in a political milieu that didn’t deny its heritage.</p>
<p>She stated in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoXr-zjqas&ab_channel=INAPolitique">interview</a> with French TV in 1996 that Mussolini was a “good politician” and “all that he did, he did for Italy”.</p>
<p>While Meloni <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da4OO5mLZv0&ab_channel=GuardianNews">now says</a> Italy has consigned fascism to history, vestiges of her party’s political roots remain. For example, the <a href="https://citynews-romatoday.stgy.ovh/%7Emedia/original-hi/67277628313202/fdisim-2.jpg">flame</a> in the party’s symbol is taken from the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, and there have been recent instances of its politicians and supporters <a href="https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/12/31/napoli-dirigenti-e-militanti-di-fratelli-ditalia-in-posa-mentre-fanno-il-saluto-romano/6442006/">performing fascist salutes</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/giorgia-meloni-and-the-return-of-fascism-how-italy-got-here-190866">Giorgia Meloni and the return of fascism: how Italy got here</a>
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<p>Meloni and her party’s success can be traced back to Berlusconi’s entry into politics in 1994. His centre-right Forza Italia movement legitimised two smaller radical right parties (the northern regionalist League and the National Alliance) by bringing them into a coalition that easily won that year’s general election.</p>
<p>The coalition that will soon take power almost 30 years later contains the same three ingredients, but their internal balances have now drastically changed.</p>
<p>While some commentators focus on the continuity the new government will represent, there’s a historic change here. The pendulum on the right has shifted from Berlusconi’s centre-right populist governments with a far-right edge in the 1990s and 2000s, to Meloni’s far-right populist government with a centre-right edge in 2022.</p>
<h2>What do these results mean for Italian politics?</h2>
<p>Within the overall success of the right, there are winners and losers. Meloni is obviously the former, and Salvini is the latter.</p>
<p>Salvini is the politician who, having revitalised his party between 2013 and 2019, has now overseen a huge fall in its support from <a href="https://twitter.com/duncanmcdonnell/status/1574170616084643840/photo/1">over 35%</a> in the polls in July 2019 to under 10% today. Only the lack of an obvious successor may save Salvini from losing his party’s leadership.</p>
<p>For the main party on the Left, the Democratic Party, it’s yet another bad day. Having dropped to under 20% in the 2018 general election, they look unlikely to do much better than that this time. Their failure to find a campaign narrative beyond “stop the far right” and to create a broader coalition underlined the strategic ineptitude that has long undermined the Italian left.</p>
<p>Another “first” of this election is the turnout, which has <a href="https://thewest.com.au/politics/low-turnout-as-italy-elects-new-parliament-c-8354488">slipped below two-thirds</a> for the first time in Italian post-war history, declining from 73% in 2018 to 64% in 2022. This speaks to the image of a country in which large swathes of the population, especially in the South, are disillusioned with decades of politicians who have promised the earth and delivered little.</p>
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<p>In economic and foreign policy terms, Italy may not change much in the short-term. Meloni will be keen to show Italian and international elites that she’s a responsible leader. Powerful domestic interest groups, such as the employers’ federation “Confindustria”, must be kept onside. As must the European Union which supports Italy through its post-COVID recovery plan.</p>
<p>But much could change for the far-right’s “enemies of the people”: ethnic, religious and sexual minorities; immigrants; and those judges, intellectuals, and journalists who dare to criticise the new regime.</p>
<p>Things will also change for those far-right Italians who, as Meloni <a href="https://www.lastampa.it/politica/2022/09/21/video/meloni_e_lambiguita_della_frase_ricorrente_ai_suoi_comizi_sogno_una_nazione_in_cui_nessuno_debba_abbassare_la_testa_per_c-9091284/">recently put it</a>, have had to “keep their head down for so many years and not say what they believed”. So, while the Brothers of Italy’s conservation of the post-fascist flame may be more smoke than fire for some groups, for others it will be incendiary.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/giorgia-meloni-the-political-provocateur-set-to-become-italys-first-far-right-leader-since-mussolini-190116">Giorgia Meloni – the political provocateur set to become Italy's first far-right leader since Mussolini</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duncan McDonnell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sofia Ammassari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Italy will have its first woman prime minister. And both Italy and Western Europe will have their first far-right majority government since the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War.Sofia Ammassari, PhD researcher, Griffith UniversityDuncan McDonnell, Professor of Politics, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908572022-09-20T12:42:23Z2022-09-20T12:42:23ZItaly election: why Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party is almost guaranteed to win<p>When Italy last held an election in 2018, the Fratelli d’Italia – Brothers of Italy – were minnows, taking a mere 4.4% of the vote. Now, ahead of the 2022 vote on September 25, opinion polls suggest the far-right group is on course for a historic victory that would make them the largest party in Italy. </p>
<p>If this comes to pass, the Brothers of Italy would enter government at the head of a three-party coalition (already agreed with Matteo Salvini’s the League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia). Party leader Giorgia Meloni would be prime minister. </p>
<p>This is significant because Brothers of Italy’s historic lineage traces back to the neo-fascists of the post-war period. Indeed, its very symbol (a tricoloured flame) is the same as that of its predecessor, the National Alliance, and of its predecessor, the Italian Social Movement – which was founded by veterans of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing how the Brothers of Italy have massively increased their support in recent years." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485087/original/file-20220916-14-xnmf00.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rise of the Brothers of Italy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.istitutopiepoli.it/">Istituto Piepoli</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The result of this election is already considered a foregone conclusion. That is not just because the margin of difference in polling is so great, but also because the parties of the centre and left have failed to construct a pre-electoral coalition.</p>
<p>In Italy, this is a form of political suicide. The <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/italys-odd-turn-to-the-right/">electoral system</a> – part majoritarian and part proportional – favours those parties which make pre-electoral pacts and form large coalitions. Yet, the Democrats rejected a pact with the Five Star Movement because of its role in bringing down the government of <a href="https://theconversation.com/italian-government-collapse-the-political-chess-moves-behind-mario-draghis-resignation-187648">Mario Draghi</a>. </p>
<p>The centrist <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/italys-renzi-creates-third-pole-with-centrist-ally-ahead-of-elections/2659198">“third pole”</a> created by two smaller parties then rejected the Democrats because they were flirting with the Green Left. This fragmentation means not just that the right-wing coalition is unsurpassable but that it could, with over 40% of the vote, secure more than two-thirds of the seats in the Italian parliament.</p>
<h2>Alarm bells ringing</h2>
<p>A majority of that size would enable the government to amend the constitution and introduce a directly elected presidency – an idea on which all three parties in the coalition seem to agree. When a politician of the far right like Meloni speaks of replacing parliamentary democracy with a “democracy of the people”, it sends a shiver down the spines of many Italians. </p>
<p>Fears of a return to the fascism of the past may nevertheless be overstated. A detailed look at any policy area (European integration, migration, the energy crisis, Ukraine) reveals significant differences between the three parties of the right. It is not at all clear that they are capable of producing coherent government, let alone see through on a radical constitutional overhaul.</p>
<p>The positions adopted by the Brothers of Italy also often seem incompatible, if not contradictory with each other. This is because Meloni is speaking to two audiences. One needs reassuring that she will not be too extreme if elected. The other comprises party members, militants and sympathisers who need to hear about ideologically motivated changes to come, and who are more interested in the tone and big picture than the details.</p>
<h2>Europe and Russia</h2>
<p>Meloni’s position on Europe is another cause for concern. Although she declares herself to be committed to the EU, she also wants to review various financial arrangements with the bloc. And the other parties in her coalition are well known for their eurosceptism. Their programme (“For Italy”) says it wants <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-italian-elections-and-the-threat-to-european-integration/">a more political and less bureaucratic EU</a>, and there is concern as to what this might mean.</p>
<p>A Meloni-led government also brings potential ramifications for the sanctions on Russia and the arming of Ukraine. Both Europe and Moscow are wondering if the election outcome might see a change in the Italian government’s position that undermines Europe’s united front. For all Meloni’s apparent commitment to the European position, <a href="https://www.politicanews.it/quotidiani/la-repubblica-la-destra-si-divide-su-putin-84142">Salvini</a> and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-accept-vladimir-putin-demands-italy-silvio-berlusconi-tells-europe-1708918">Berlusconi</a> are sceptics, if not outright opponents. </p>
<p>The American National Security Council recently <a href="https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2022/09/15/news/soldi_russia_italia_documento_usa-365703569/?ref=RHTP-BH-I365694626-P1-S1-T1">revealed</a> evidence that Russia secretly channels funds to a large network of (as yet unnamed) parties (including Italian ones), in order to disrupt democratic processes and garner support for Moscow. This has fuelled suspicions that the parties of the right may all be involved.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Italy finds itself in a significantly deteriorating economic scenario and is especially exposed to the Russian gas crisis. The IMF has estimated that an embargo on Russian gas would see an <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2022/07/19/how-a-russian-natural-gas-cutoff-could-weigh-on-europes-economies/">economic contraction in Italy</a> of over 5% – higher than all other EU nations but Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. </p>
<p>The country will also be affected by the European Central Bank’s decision to scale back its stimulus programme by raising interest rates and stopping the purchase of national bonds. Small wonder that investors have been selling off Italian bonds and hedge fund investors have been betting <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5cef309f-9daf-4337-bdc6-f6b2ef8ffe02">against them on a mammoth scale</a>. The markets, in short, are worried, although they are, as it were, building in expectations of a right-wing victory, which may therefore offset a dramatic post-election fall.</p>
<h2>Deja vu?</h2>
<p>It should be noted that Italy has been in a similar political position before. There were widespread fears ahead of the 2018 general election about what would happen if the populists came to power – and, sure enough, they did. The Five Star Movement, with an extraordinary 32.7% of the vote, formed a government with Salvini’s League. Yet, the government proved to be hopelessly divided (some would say incompetent) and collapsed a year later. On today’s opinion polling evidence, Five Star is now a relatively minor political force.</p>
<p>True, what makes 2022 different is that this will be the first time the heirs of neo-fascism have come to power. But it should not be forgotten that Italy’s political system is difficult to monopolise, and even more difficult to reform. In short, the jury on the threat represented by Meloni is still out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190857/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin J Bull does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the opposition all but giving up, a party with origins in post-war fascism is poised to form a government.Martin J Bull, Professor of Politics, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1790632022-03-30T12:39:06Z2022-03-30T12:39:06ZYes, Putin and Russia are fascist – a political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455087/original/file-20220329-13-1i0hsmb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C23%2C7924%2C4766&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin on stage during a rally in Moscow on March 18, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-attends-a-concert-marking-news-photo/1239294261?adppopup=true">Sergei Guneyev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-russia-news-vladimir-putin-orders-attack-as-explosions-are-reported.html">unleashed an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022</a>, the Ukrainian media, public and policymakers almost unanimously began calling the Russian president and the state he leads “rashyst.” The term is a hybrid of a derogatory moniker for Russia – “rasha” – and “fascist.”</p>
<p>Ukrainians did so for two reasons. First, they were countering Putin’s absurd insistence that the Ukrainian authorities – including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/02/25/zelensky-family-jewish-holocaust/">Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy</a> – <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-claim-to-rid-ukraine-of-nazis-is-especially-absurd-given-its-history-177959">were Nazis</a> and that Ukraine needed to be “de-Nazified.” Since <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment">Ukraine’s tiny number of right-wing extremists</a> are about as influential as the Proud Boys in the United States, what Putin really had in mind was Ukrainians with a distinct Ukrainian identity. De-Nazification thus meant de-Ukrainianization.</p>
<p>Second, Ukrainians were drawing attention to those features of Putin’s Russia that indicated that it was fascist and thus in need of “de-Nazification.” Putin’s Russia was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/europe/russia-ukraine-propaganda-censorship.html">aggressive, anti-democratic</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soaring-during-the-russia-ukraine-crisis-but-its-unlikely-to-last-177302">enamored of Putin himself</a>. Unsurprisingly, his Russia’s resemblance to the regimes built by Mussolini and Hitler had not gone unnoticed by <a href="https://archive.transatlanticrelations.org/publication/putins-russia-moderate-fascist-state-vladislav-inozemtsev/">Russian</a> and Western <a href="https://asiaabc.news/2022/02/28/is-putins-russia-fascist/">analysts</a> in the last decade or so. </p>
<p>Few policymakers, scholars and journalists listened, however, as the term fascism struck <a href="https://www.illiberalism.org/marlene-laruelle-is-russia-fascist-unraveling-propaganda-east-and-west/">many</a> as too vague, too political or too loaded to serve as an accurate description of any repressive regime. Having written about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48610431">Putin’s Russia as quasi- or proto-fascist </a>already in the mid-2000s, I know from personal experience that few took my claims seriously, often arguing tautologically that Putin had constructed a “Putinist” system. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/about-us/have-you-met-rutgers-newark/alexander-motyl">political scientist who studies Ukraine, Russia and the USSR empirically, theoretically and conceptually</a>, I believe Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine suggests that a reconsideration of the term’s applicability to Russia is definitely in order.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a dark cloth coat next to a line of soldiers, several of whom are carrying wreaths." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One day before his army invaded Ukraine, Russian President Putin attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Moscow on Feb. 23, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-attends-a-wreath-laying-news-photo/1238699927?adppopup=true">Alexey Nikolsky/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Defining fascist states</h2>
<p>But, first, a brief foray into the classification schemes that social scientists like to use, which most people find incomprehensible.</p>
<p>Classifications are essential for good social science, because they enable scholars to group political systems according to their shared features and to explore what makes them tick. <a href="https://findanyanswer.com/what-were-aristotles-six-types-of-government">Aristotle</a> was one of the first to divide systems into those ruled by one, those ruled by a few and those ruled by many.</p>
<p>Contemporary scholars <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-system/Issues-of-classification">usually classify states as being democratic, authoritarian or totalitarian</a>, with each category having a variety of subtypes. Democracies have parliaments, judiciaries, parties, political contestation, civil societies, freedom of speech and assembly, and elections. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/authoritarianism">Authoritarian states</a> rest on the state bureaucracy, military and secret police; they usually circumscribe most of the features of democracies; and they typically are led by juntas, generals or politicians who avoid the limelight. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism#:%7E:text=Totalitarianism%20is%20a%20form%20of,does%20not%20permit%20individual%20freedom.">Totalitarian states</a> abolish all the features of democracy, empower their bureaucracies, militaries and secret police to control all of public and private space, promote all-encompassing ideologies and always have a supreme leader.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Common-characteristics-of-fascist-movements">Fascist states</a> share all the features of authoritarianism, and they may also share the features of totalitarianism, but with two key differences. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley">Fascist leaders have genuine charisma</a> – that ephemeral quality that produces popular adulation – and they promote that charisma and the image that goes with it in personality cults. The people genuinely love fascist leaders, and the leaders in turn <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Introduction-to-Political-Theory/Graham-Hoffman/p/book/9781408285923">present themselves as embodiments of the state, the nation, the people</a>.</p>
<p>The bare-bones <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article-abstract/49/1/25/599/Putin-s-Russia-as-a-fascist-political-system?redirectedFrom=fulltext">definition</a> of a fascist state is thus this: It is an authoritarian state ruled by a charismatic leader enjoying a personality cult. </p>
<p>Seen in this light, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain/Francos-Spain-1939-75">Franco’s Spain</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/pinochet/overview.htm">Pinochet’s Chile</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Colonels">Greece of the colonels</a> were really just your average authoritarian states. In contrast, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/world-war-iis-less-famous-fascist/2020/12/31/b124694a-3e37-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html">Mussolini’s Italy</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/china-authoritarian-fascism-totalitarian-uyghurs-surveillance/">Xi Jinping’s China</a> are clearly fascist, as were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/china-authoritarian-fascism-totalitarian-uyghurs-surveillance/">Hitler’s Germany</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@arthurtruth0716/joseph-stalin-the-fascist-dictator-who-betrayed-communism-9d2c81b93c49">Stalin’s USSR</a>. Fascist states can thus be on the right and on the left.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in military uniforms, with medals on their chests. One man wears a Nazi swastika armband." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), German and Italian fascist dictators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/adolph-hitler-and-benito-mussolini-german-and-italian-news-photo/113634229?adppopup=true">Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>‘Dismantled’ democratic institutions</h2>
<p><a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article-abstract/49/1/25/599/Putin-s-Russia-as-a-fascist-political-system?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Putin’s Russia also fits the bill</a>. The political system is unquestionably authoritarian – some might say totalitarian. </p>
<p>Putin has <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-putin-lead-the-way-in-exploiting-democracys-lost-promise-94798">completely dismantled</a> all of Russia’s nascent democratic institutions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-plans-to-win-russias-parliamentary-election-no-matter-how-unpopular-his-party-is-160078">Elections are neither free nor fair</a>. Putin’s party, <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-parliamentary-win-by-putins-united-russia-has-been-years-in-the-manufacturing-168351">United Russia, always wins</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-vladimir-putin-and-other-autocrats-ruthlessly-repressing-the-opposition-is-often-a-winning-way-to-stay-in-power-159605">oppositionists are routinely harassed or killed</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-has-kremlin-battling-for-hearts-and-minds-at-home-177991">media have been curbed</a>; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/28/anti-war-protesters-jailed-freedom-speech-russia/6947053001/">freedom of speech and assembly no longer exists</a>; and <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-autocrats-like-vladimir-putin-ruthless-repression-is-often-a-winning-way-to-stay-in-power-156172">draconian punishments are meted out</a> for the slightest of criticisms of the regime. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-rise-in-nationalism-in-putins-russia-threatens-the-countrys-science-again-41403">hypernationalist</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-fresh-warning-that-africa-needs-to-be-vigilant-against-russias-destabilising-influence-178785">imperialist and supremacist ideology</a> that glorifies all things Russian and <a href="https://theconversation.com/settler-colonialism-helps-explain-current-events-in-xinjiang-and-ukraine-and-the-history-of-australia-and-us-too-176975">legitimates expansion as Russia’s right and duty</a> has been both imposed on and willingly accepted by the population. </p>
<p>War is worshipped and justified by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-has-kremlin-battling-for-hearts-and-minds-at-home-177991">state’s mendacious propaganda machine</a>. As the brutal invasion of Ukraine shows, war is also practiced, especially if it is directed against a people whose very existence Putin regards as a threat to himself and to Russia. </p>
<p>Finally, secret police and military elites, together with a corrupt bureaucracy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-russias-oligarchs-a-group-of-men-who-wont-be-toppling-putin-anytime-soon-178474">form the core of the political system</a> headed by the infallible Putin, who is the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/14/lets-call-putin-fascist-autocrat-00016982">undisputed charismatic leader glorified as the embodiment of Russia</a>. One of Putin’s minions once <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/10/23/no-putin-no-russia-says-kremlin-deputy-chief-of-staff-a40702">noted</a> that “if there is no Putin, there is no Russia!” There’s a striking similarity with French King Louis XIV’s <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/l%27%C3%A9tat,%20c%27est%20moi">assertion</a>, “L’état, c’est moi” – “The state is me” – and <a href="https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerEinVolkEinReichEinFuhrer">Hitler’s</a> “One people, one empire, one Führer.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Presidents-Oligarchs-and-Bureaucrats-Forms-of-Rule-in-the-Post-Soviet/Klein-Schroder-Stewart/p/book/9781138278790">Fascist states are unstable</a>. Personality cults disintegrate with time, as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210461">leaders grow old</a>. Today’s <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/956120/is-vladimir-putin-ill">Putin, with his bloated face</a>, is no match for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/26/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia.html">vigorous Putin of 20 years ago</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html">Fascist regimes are overcentralized</a>, and the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin">information that reaches the supreme leader</a> is often sugarcoated. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/18/russia-putin-ukraine-war-three-weeks/">Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine</a> may have been partly due to his lacking accurate information about the condition of the Ukrainian and Russian armies. </p>
<p>Finally, fascist states are prone to wars, because members of the secret police and generals, whose raison d'etre is violence, are <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-science-terms-and-concepts/fascism">overrepresented in the ruling elite</a>. In addition, <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-25-4-mussolini-and-the-rise-of-fascism.html">the ideology glorifies war and violence</a>, and a militarist fervor helps to legitimate the supreme leader and reinforce his charisma. </p>
<p>Fascist states usually prosper at first; then, intoxicated by victory, they make mistakes and start losing. <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-russia-president-1999-chechnya-apartment-bombings/30097551.html">Putin won decisively in his wars in Chechnya</a> <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-georgia-war-fifth-anniversary-/25068841.html">and in Georgia</a>, and he <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/measuring-out-putins-defeat-in-ukraine-russia-war-miscalculation-liberate-battle-nato-11648236532?mod=opinion_featst_pos3">appears to be headed for defeat</a> in Ukraine.</p>
<p>I believe Putin’s fascist Russia faces a serious risk of breakdown in the not-too-distant future. All that’s missing is a spark that will rile the people and elites and move them to take action. That could be an increase in fuel prices, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/08/1071198056/theres-chaos-in-kazakhstan-heres-what-you-need-to-know">the development that led to a citizen revolt in Kazakhstan</a> earlier this year; <a href="https://apnews.com/article/international-news-ap-top-news-europe-72e43a8b9e4c56362d4c1d6393bd54fb">a blatantly falsified election, such as the one that led to riots in autocratic Belarus</a> in 2020; or thousands of body bags returning to Russia from the war in Ukraine.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Motyl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Russia invaded Ukraine, its leader was immediately labeled “fascist” by Ukrainians and others. A political scientist explains why that label fits.Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1799902022-03-24T17:47:19Z2022-03-24T17:47:19ZUkraine Recap: game theory and psychology shed light on negotiations<p>As the war approaches the one-month mark, this week a lot of the thinking has shifted to how negotiations might bring the violence to an end. As western leaders gather in Brussels to discuss what might be done to pressure Russian leader Vladimir Putin to call a halt to hostilities, negotiators from Ukraine and Russia continue to meet, and there have been some reports of progress.</p>
<p>But still the killing continues, and it’s hard to think how the two sides can get any closer round the negotiating table while the Russian military continues to bombard civilians in many of the large cities. Amelia Hadfield, an expert in Russian politics, considers what <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-game-theory-can-tell-us-about-how-negotiations-might-go-179784">game theory might tell us</a> about how negotiations might proceed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-game-theory-can-tell-us-about-how-negotiations-might-go-179784">Ukraine war: what game theory can tell us about how negotiations might go</a>
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<p>The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called on Putin to meet him for one-on-one talks. The Kremlin has indicated its willingness for the two leaders to get together but only after the text of an agreement had been inked in and signed by the foreign ministers of both countries. Zelensky has eyeballed Putin before and will be aware of the kind of man his opponent is. </p>
<p>Psychologists Magnus Linden and George Wilkes have studied Putin’s “dark personality” and have <a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-the-psychology-behind-his-destructive-leadership-and-how-best-to-tackle-it-according-to-science-179823">given us a rundown</a> on the sort of man who brought a big dog into talks with the former German chancellor, Angela Merkel – who famously hates dogs.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-the-psychology-behind-his-destructive-leadership-and-how-best-to-tackle-it-according-to-science-179823">Putin: the psychology behind his destructive leadership – and how best to tackle it according to science</a>
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<p>A lot of labels have been used in association with the Russian leader and his regime: revolutionary, totalitarian and fascist to use but three. But language is key to understanding, and Richard Shorten, an expert in political theory, has parsed all these labels and tells us Putin is in fact a <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-not-a-fascist-totalitarian-or-revolutionary-hes-a-reactionary-tyrant-179256">reactionary tyrant</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-not-a-fascist-totalitarian-or-revolutionary-hes-a-reactionary-tyrant-179256">Putin's not a fascist, totalitarian or revolutionary – he's a reactionary tyrant</a>
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<img alt="Ukraine Recap weekly email newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This is our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></strong>
<br><em>The Conversation, a not-for-profit news group, works with a wide range of academics across its global network to produce evidence-based analysis. Get these recaps in your inbox every Thursday. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapTop">Subscribe here</a>.</em> </p>
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<h2>Bogged down</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, the war isn’t progressing as Putin would have planned. As we noted last week, the lightning advance in Ukraine prompting Kyiv’s capitulation failed to materialise. Instead, Russian troops have become bogged down and have adopted attritional siege tactics, using airstrikes and artillery to reduce some cities to rubble. </p>
<p>In the process, Russia is incurring a lot of casualties, including – incredible as it might sound – five generals, according to Ukrainian reports. <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-why-are-so-many-russian-generals-being-killed-179517">Jonathan Jackson reports</a> that, despite attempts at reform, Russia’s military remains inefficient and corrupt. The presence of generals on the front line is affording Ukrainian snipers opportunities to strike at some of their enemies’ most senior officers. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-why-are-so-many-russian-generals-being-killed-179517">Ukraine war: why are so many Russian generals being killed?</a>
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<p>Things have apparently become so bad that there is speculation that Putin is putting pressure on Belarus to enter the war to support Russia. There’s little doubt that Belarus president, Alexandr Lukashenko, is more than responsive to Putin’s will. But sending his troops into Ukraine would leave Lukashenko dangerously exposed at home, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-the-complex-calculations-that-will-decide-whether-belarus-enters-the-conflict-on-russias-side-179816">write Stefan Wolff and Anastasiya Bayok</a></p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-the-complex-calculations-that-will-decide-whether-belarus-enters-the-conflict-on-russias-side-179816">Ukraine: the complex calculations that will decide whether Belarus enters the conflict on Russia's side</a>
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<p>Zelensky, meanwhile, continues to implore Nato leaders to do more to help. Yet still they resist, arguing that the dangers of the war in Ukraine escalating to a bigger conflict involving Europe and the US are too great. </p>
<p>The risk is already high. Last week Russian shells struck a military base just a few kilometres from the Polish border, and Putin has said he considers convoys supplying arms and equipment to Ukrainian forces from Nato countries to be fair game. Kenton White, who has researched Nato politics, tells us that there are also <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-what-might-happen-if-the-war-spreads-to-a-nato-country-179434">differing opinions within Nato</a> as to how different countries might react to an attack on an ally. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-what-might-happen-if-the-war-spreads-to-a-nato-country-179434">Ukraine: what might happen if the war spreads to a Nato country</a>
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<h2>Butcher’s bill</h2>
<p>Every day brings a fresh butcher’s bill. Many of those paying the price are civilians either trying to escape to safety or trapped in cities under fire. Russia steadfastly refuses to admit targeting civilians in Ukraine, but this was very much part of its playbook after Putin intervened in Syria in 2015, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-russian-denial-of-civilian-casualties-follows-tactics-used-in-syria-179583">says Lily Hamourtziadou</a>, an expert on the death toll of war who runs the Iraq Body Count site monitoring civilian deaths there. She also says the US has often been less than candid about the civilian casualties of its military interventions, instead coining the euphemism “collateral damage”.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-russian-denial-of-civilian-casualties-follows-tactics-used-in-syria-179583">Ukraine war: how Russian denial of civilian casualties follows tactics used in Syria</a>
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<p>Another group of people under daily threat from the Russian violence are the aid workers who are trying to help the trapped civilians. There’s a depressing irony that some of the most endangered people in modern wars are the humanitarian workers who are committed to neutrality, impartiality and independence and are supposed to be protected under international law, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-aid-workers-were-forced-out-of-syria-the-same-thing-could-happen-in-this-war-179781">writes William Plowright</a>, an expert in humanitarian operations in conflict zones.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-aid-workers-were-forced-out-of-syria-the-same-thing-could-happen-in-this-war-179781">Ukraine: aid workers were forced out of Syria – the same thing could happen in this war</a>
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<h2>War’s other victims</h2>
<p>While human lives are clearly the most important currency being expended in this illegal war, spare a thought for the animals in Ukraine’s zoos, whose terror at the constant bombardment would be made far worse by their lack of understanding. Samantha Ward has researched the fate of animals in other conflicts and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraines-zoos-what-is-happening-to-all-the-animals-179147">tells us</a> that while London zoo survived two world wars, the trauma being suffered by Ukraine’s zoo animals must be enormous.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraines-zoos-what-is-happening-to-all-the-animals-179147">Ukraine's zoos: what is happening to all the animals</a>
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<p>Zoos aside, Putin’s war machine is destroying much of Ukraine’s cultural heritage – an unimaginable tragedy for posterity. One safe haven so far has been the city of Lviv in the far west of the country. But the war steadily approaches and there are fears that soon the bombs will rain down on this beautiful city, which historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-central-european-miracle-why-the-city-of-lviv-is-so-important-for-ukraine-179332">Christopher Mick describes</a> as an ethnic and cultural melting pot and looked on as the “soul of Ukraine”.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-central-european-miracle-why-the-city-of-lviv-is-so-important-for-ukraine-179332">'A central European miracle': why the city of Lviv is so important for Ukraine</a>
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<p><em>Ukraine Recap is available as a weekly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapBottom">Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The best of the past week’s coverage of the war in Ukraine.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792562022-03-17T17:16:29Z2022-03-17T17:16:29ZPutin’s not a fascist, totalitarian or revolutionary – he’s a reactionary tyrant<p>Talk of a “new cold war” in this century began in the time between the war in Iraq and the global recession of 2008. It roughly coincided with the attention focused on <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/new-cold-war-9781408859285/">the murder of Alexander Litvinenko</a> by polonium-210 poisoning at the hands of Russians in London. </p>
<p>Such talk was quietly forgotten while the consequences of global recession played out. Europe and the United States were distracted by dealing with their own – self-imposed – problems: Trump, Brexit and a general upturn in support for anti-system political movements. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the topic has returned glaringly.</p>
<p>What language is helpful for shaping the crucial judgements now necessary? Much damage has been done to common political vocabulary in recent years. “Enemies of the people” is a Stalinist phrase, but was used to push through Britain’s extrication from the European Union. The frequently relied-on “populism” is a vague, all-too-muted descriptor. “Imperialism” has been stretched thin by over-censure of humanitarian liberals.</p>
<p>Today we see similar harm being done. A Guardian editorial recently described a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/the-guardian-view-on-russian-dissent-a-slide-to-totalitarianism">slide into totalitarianism</a>” in Russia. Likewise, The Daily Telegraph published a comment piece: “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/03/05/russias-war-journalism-another-step-towards-totalitarian/">Russia’s war on journalism is another step towards the totalitarian</a>”. But Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not totalitarian. Neither accurate political understanding, nor suitably directed moral criticism, is best served by this framing. </p>
<p>Ideologically, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernism-Totalitarianism-Rethinking-Intellectual-Stalinism/dp/0230252079">totalitarianism has three markers</a>: utopia, exaggerated trust in science, and revolutionary violence. What Putin retains from the Soviet era is not its utopianism but its late-period security obsession, via his personal background in the KGB. </p>
<p>He does not carry his belief in science into dogma. He is not – like Marx and Lenin were – interested in science as a grand legitimiser of historical vision: he is only interested in technologies of communication for the purposes of control. And his belief in violence is utilitarian and calculating (even if miscalculated in practice), rather than revolutionary and geared towards social renewal.</p>
<p>Totalitarianism today in Russia would need to be a “post-totalitarian totalitarianism”. The legacy of the original totalitarianism – thanks to inherited trauma of the Soviet era – is a population not enthused into grand, confident collectivism but far more cowed into suspicion, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318687/the-future-is-history-by-masha-gessen/">“self-isolation” and “state paternalism”</a>. Repression, <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-russia-how-the-ex-kgb-strongman-has-gradually-turned-the-clock-back-to-soviet-repression-179127">which has increased</a>, is not actually a very specific marker of totalitarianism. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-russia-how-the-ex-kgb-strongman-has-gradually-turned-the-clock-back-to-soviet-repression-179127">Putin's Russia: how the ex-KGB strongman has gradually turned the clock back to Soviet repression</a>
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<p>Using clear terminology to represent the experience of people living under toxic regimes is important for thinking about the possibilities of dissent balanced by the pressures to conformism. But this must be done accurately.</p>
<h2>Not fascism</h2>
<p>Neither is Putin’s regime “fascist” by ideology. The appearance since the start of the invasion of the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/z-is-the-symbol-of-the-new-russian-politics-of-aggression">swastika-looking “Z” symbol</a> on posters and people’s clothing (but to begin with on Russian tanks) has been widely reported. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/570367/the-road-to-unfreedom-by-timothy-snyder/">Historians</a> have noted the revival of previously overlooked Russian-born fascist thinkers, such as <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/">Ivan Ilyin</a>, whose remains Putin repatriated and reburied in 2008.</p>
<p>The reason the issue is on the table is Putin’s own claim to <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/03/the-truth-about-putins-denazification-fantasy">freeing Ukraine by “denazification”</a>. This is laughable in itself, but richly relevant to this question of what kind of past political language will prosper in the present. Putin meets only one of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569317.2017.1306959">three criteria for ideological fascism</a>: strong, ethnic nationalism, which is the basis for the solidarity of self-styled white nationalists abroad when they promote the “Z”.</p>
<p>Two other criteria for fascism are absent entirely. Putin’s policies do not glorify the state over the individual. And, as opposed to compelling public participation, Putin cautions people to stay out of public life – even, as a rule, the oligarchs his rule has indulged. Neither do his policies express “transcendence” (or going beyond present limits) – whereas recognisably fascist movements aim at <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/5/2/article-p130_3.xml?language=en">creating “new men”</a>. Re-embracing <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/02/03/vladimir-putin-embraces-the-russian-church">Russian Orthodox Christianity</a> is one ideological sign to the contrary, since it looks back not forwards.</p>
<h2>Putin’s reactionary regime</h2>
<p>Putin is really a “reactionary tyrant”. This reflects the structure of rule he has evolved, and also the main lines of his legitimising discourse. This discourse may not have taken root deeply, but is nonetheless present in the regime’s rhetoric. Like totalitarianism, like fascism, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Ideology-of-Political-Reactionaries/Shorten/p/book/9781032122700">reactionism has three main ideological themes</a>.</p>
<p>The first is decrying decadence – evident in Putin’s explicit anti-westernism. So Ukraine’s west-oriented leadership are portrayed as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/its-not-rational-putins-bizarre-speech-wrecks-his-once-pragmatic-image">drug addicts</a>”, or the west is described as weak because it is <a href="https://krytyka.com/sites/krytyka/files/sperling_0.pdf">effeminate</a>.</p>
<p>The second feature is inventing conspiracy theories. Among others targets, Putin fulminates at a homosexual lobby, which is accused – by conflation with paedophiles – of conspiring to steal children. This has been brilliantly highlighted by the <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/masha-gessen-russia-gay-demons/">journalist and activist Masha Gessen</a>. </p>
<p>Such stances explain why Putin has been appealing, not just for extreme “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Men-Who-Hate-Women/Laura-Bates/9781398504653">manosphere</a>” white supremacists, but also for more “mainstream” western reactionaries attracted by an unapologetic social conservatism. Hence, in France, the praise for Putin from two hard-right presidential contenders, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, each of whom now has hastily tried to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-05/ukraine-war-dominates-french-election-that-helps-macron-s-chances">retract previous positions</a>.</p>
<p>The third feature is the hardest to spot. This feature is the indignation of a population group: its righteous anger, hitherto suppressed, but now liberated – and politically tapped. In western countries, indignation has had a common, anti-immigrant wellspring. And politicians have prospered by alleging the unacceptability of expressing <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class">white working-class anger</a> in a “politically correct” time. </p>
<p>Putin also understands that he can win a significant number of people’s loyalty by recognising and stressing shared humiliations. His message is that – unlike citizens of other countries – his fellow Russian nationals have been denied access to an acceptable historical memory. Thanks to Stalinism, cold war defeat and Soviet Russia’s chequered record of anti-fascism (the minimising of Jewish suffering in preference for a broader tale of Soviet sacrifice), many Russians are unable to look back in pride. </p>
<p>Anti-fascism is a record Putin’s leadership continues to blot, even against the background of this complaint about burdensome memories. Witness the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60588885">destruction of the Holocaust monument at Babyn Yar</a> in Ukraine.</p>
<p>Putin is a reactionary tyrant. The tyranny language is important. Inside Russia, the vocalisation of conscience against him has been brave and points to the noblest traditions of resisting tyrants. Any meaningful ideas lack root. So, like Caesar to the gladiators entering the arena, Putin is what people on both sides of the war are being asked to die for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Shorten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In ideological terms, Putin’s regime is neither totalitarian nor fascist. But it is reactionary, and in a way that begs questions about the recent maltreatment of language in Western politicsRichard Shorten, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1789762022-03-17T12:12:12Z2022-03-17T12:12:12ZUkraine’s foreign fighters have little in common with those who signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452241/original/file-20220315-27-f7uz43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4037%2C3088&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman hugs a Polish volunteer before he crosses the border to go and fight against Russian forces.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PolandUkraineInvasion/c6f8da8c6dc449bf83ef64b729a3ec6e/photo?Query=volunteer%20fight%20ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=now-30d&totalCount=57&currentItemNo=41">AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When an aging <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">Abe Osheroff recalled</a> why, as a 21-year-old kid from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, he had volunteered to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he framed it as a personal, ethical decision.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some of my friends were already going over. Some of them had been killed and wounded. … Then I began to see pictures of what was going on. … Bombardments, civilians getting plastered all over the place. … I knew that if I didn’t go, I’d be ashamed all my life.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, his words seem to echo those of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">individuals from around the world</a> who are willing to risk their lives to help Ukraine in its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion.</p>
<p>“Sitting by and doing nothing? I had to do that when Afghanistan fell apart, and it weighed heavily on me. I had to act,” a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">U.S. veteran confessed</a> to a New York Times reporter before he headed east. </p>
<p>Encouraged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">volunteers are signing up</a> – according to some reports, by the thousands – to join the ranks of what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">The Guardian has called</a> “the most significant international brigade since the Spanish civil war.”</p>
<p>The Guardian is not the first to draw an analogy between 1930s Spain and today’s Ukraine. But tempting as it is to compare the two, doing so does more to obscure than to explain either of the conflicts.</p>
<p>In some instances, I see the analogy relying on distorted frames inherited from the Cold War; in others, it seems to be driven by blatant opportunism. </p>
<h2>Surface-level similarities</h2>
<p>The Spanish Civil War <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/scw/simpletimeline2/">broke out in the summer of 1936</a> after an attempted military coup, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, failed to overthrow the government of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10618-9_6">the Popular Front</a>, a liberal-progressive coalition that had been democratically elected to lead the Second Spanish Republic. But while the Republican government managed to hold on to Spain’s largest cities and about half of the national territory, the right-wing rebels took control of the other half. They proceeded to wage a bloody war.</p>
<p>Republican forces faced a well-equipped rebel army that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260240">had supplied with soldiers, planes, weapons and tanks</a>. By contrast, other democracies left the republic to fend for itself, with more than two dozen countries signing a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822037844834&view=1up&seq=1">nonintervention pact</a>. The republic was also shut out of the international arms market, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/177867/the-spanish-civil-war-by-hugh-thomas/">leaving only the Soviet Union and Mexico as sources of military support</a>. After the republic’s defeat in 1939, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/17/spain">a repressive military dictatorship</a> headed by Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years.</p>
<p>Osheroff was one of roughly <a href="https://alba-valb.org/who-we-are/faqs/">2,800 U.S. volunteers</a> – <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-civil-war-foreign-nationals-volunteer">and more than 35,000 from around the world</a> – who flocked to Spain to help fight fascism. These foreign fighters were largely recruited through communist organizations, although many were not communists. What they had in common was their <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">staunch opposition to everything fascism stood for</a>. Upon arriving in Spain, the volunteers became fully integrated members of the Spanish Republican Army, where most of them served in one of five International Brigades. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of men in suits pose on a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of the International Brigade that fought for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, on their way home from Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/veterans-of-the-abraham-lincoln-brigade-the-american-news-photo/3435272?adppopup=true">Keystone/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LngKgQEAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of the Spanish Civil War and its legacy</a>, I can see why many people would be tempted to read the war in Ukraine through a Spanish lens. </p>
<p>Much as in civil war Spain, Ukrainian cities are being bombarded and civilians are dying, while those attacked are putting up an unexpectedly persistent defense against a much stronger enemy. As in Spain, the war <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/opinion/ukraine-refugees-europe.html">is producing seemingly unending streams of refugees</a>. And, as in Spain, the war seems to reflect an unusual degree of moral clarity – “It’s a conflict that has a clear good and bad side,” one U.S. veteran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">told The New York Times</a> – while the fate of the world seems to hang in the balance.</p>
<h2>Motivated by class solidarity</h2>
<p>Yet historical analogies are never perfect, rarely useful and often misleading. For one thing, the geopolitics of today has little connection to the 1930s. In 1936 there was no NATO, only a weak and ineffectual <a href="https://www.ungeneva.org/en/history/league-of-nations">League of Nations</a>, and no threat of nuclear war.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the volunteers who joined the International Brigades in 1936 from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia have little in common with the combat veterans and Ukrainian nationalists who are signing up today, and whose politics, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084113728/a-closer-look-at-the-volunteers-who-are-signing-up-to-fight-the-russians?t=1647154946037">as NPR has reported</a>, are vague and may skew to the right or far right. While the Russian invasion clearly violates Ukrainian sovereignty, those defending Ukraine represent ideologies that cover the entire political spectrum. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in military fatigues walks through parking lot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A British combat volunteer heads toward the Ukrainian border from Poland to fight the invading Russian army in March 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-combat-volunteer-who-did-not-want-to-be-identified-news-photo/1382495979?adppopup=true">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, very few of the volunteers in Spain had military training or experience. And if Osheroff knew that the Spanish war was also his to fight, it was, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">as he explained</a>, because he’d grown up steeped in progressive politics.</p>
<p>He and his fellow brigaders were driven by the internationalist solidarity that’s the bedrock of the labor movement, but they also knew they had a personal stake in the struggle. <a href="https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/american-jews-spanish-civil-war/about-the-project/">Many of them were Jews and immigrants</a>; they belonged to a generation that, as the historian <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/they-went-to-spain">Helen Graham has written</a>, was resisting “attempts, by fascism, either alone or in coalition, violently to impose ethnic and class hierarchies both old and new across the whole continent.” </p>
<p>The analogy falters in other ways as well. The half-million Spanish refugees who fled Spain in the last months of the war were not welcomed with open arms. The French government put them in <a href="https://archive.org/details/surveygraphic28survrich/page/678/mode/2up">concentration camps</a>, while most countries around the world closed their borders, with some notable exceptions, such as Mexico. During Germany’s occupation of France, as many as 15,000 of the Spanish Republicans interned in France were deported to <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487521318/spaniards-in-mauthausen/">Nazi camps</a>, where some 5,000 died.</p>
<p>And yet in 1945, as Europe was liberated from fascism, the Allies decided to leave Franco alone and let him retain his grip on Spain. By the 1950s, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-04-op-meisler4-story.html">Franco had become a U.S. ally in the Cold War</a>. </p>
<h2>Distorting history</h2>
<p>That same Cold War reshaped how the story of the Spanish Civil War was told. In the U.S., it became common to paint the anti-fascist volunteers as communist dupes. In 1984, U.S. President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/10/world/remark-by-reagan-on-lincoln-brigade-prompts-ire-in-spain.html">Ronald Reagan famously said</a> the Americans in Spain had joined the wrong side. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Prompted by the Ukraine war, some of these Cold War clichés are slipping back into mainstream journalism. The New York Times reporter covering Zelenskyy’s international fighters, for instance, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">wrote that the adventure of the Americans in Spain</a>, “often romanticized as a valiant prelude to the fight against the Nazis,” had “ended badly.” In reality, many of those who fought fascism in Spain went on to join the Allied armies in World War II. Others <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">formed the backbone</a> of the resistance movements in Nazi- and fascist-occupied territories.</p>
<p>Invoking the Spanish Civil War to frame the invasion of Ukraine as a clash between fascism and anti-fascism, moreover, plays into the Kremlin’s narrative, which seeks to portray the “special military operation” as an effort to “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1083677765/putin-denazify-ukraine-russia-history">denazify</a>” its western neighbor. </p>
<p>Ironically, one of the most opportunistic invocations of the historical analogy occurred in Spain itself. In early March 2022, when Spain’s progressive governing coalition decided to send arms to the Zelenskyy government, the country’s largest newspaper, <a href="https://elpais.com/opinion/2022-03-03/la-legitimidad-de-las-armas.html">El País, ran a supportive editorial</a> stating: “Today, the weapons to defend Ukraine are the weapons that the Second Spanish Republic did not have 80 years ago.” In fact, the controversial decision to provide arms was dividing the governing coalition; the paper’s heartstrings-tugging invocation of the embattled Spanish Republic was an obvious attempt to end the debate.</p>
<p>If there is one way in which the Ukrainian analogy with Spain applies, it is the tragic way the country is being used as a proxy <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/5/22955197/russia-ukraine-war-europe-america-world-war-3">in a battle between the world’s great powers</a>.</p>
<p>In July 1937, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, journalist Martha Gellhorn and novelist Ernest Hemingway visited the White House to screen “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8q6VAyTi8">The Spanish Earth</a>,” Ivens’ documentary about the war. Gellhorn recalled <a href="https://alba-valb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Gellhorn_Letter.pdf">in a 1938 letter</a> that after President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the film, he remarked, “Spain is a vicarious sacrifice for us all.” </p>
<p>The same terrible fate seems to be reserved for Ukraine and its people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastiaan Faber chairs the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an educational nonprofit based in New York.</span></em></p>According to some reports, thousands of people from around the world are signing up to fight on behalf of Ukraine. But comparisons to the Spanish Civil War’s International Brigades are misguided.Sebastiaan Faber, Professor of Hispanic Studies, Oberlin College and ConservatoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1578672021-04-04T20:35:09Z2021-04-04T20:35:09ZThe great movie scenes: Bernardo Bertolucci broke the rules to skewer fascism in The Conformist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393350/original/file-20210404-15-2w3z0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C1%2C991%2C598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Conformist (1970)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
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<p>Great Italian directors of the 1960s and 1970s were skilled visual stylists. Cinematic examples include <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053619/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_7">L’Aventura</a> (1960), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057091/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Leopard</a> (1963) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067445/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Death in Venice</a> (1971). </p>
<p>Bernardo Bertolucci’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065571/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Conformist</a>, released in 1970, came out of this stunning era of Italian filmmaking. </p>
<p>Each frame of this film is a masterclass in cinematography, editing and design. Yet, the director breaks all the rules to challenge our expectations about what cinema can be. </p>
<p>In the opening shots, Marcello visits his mother’s villa. But with his unusual framing and coverage of space, Bertolucci creates a very different opening sequence. </p>
<p><em>See more <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-great-movie-scenes-61548">video analysis of great movie scenes here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Thanks to Shelagh Stanton (Digital Media, University of Sydney) for editing and mixing the audio.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this 1970 Italian classic, director Bernardo Bertolucci uses the camera frame to throw the audience off-kilter again and again.Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539472021-02-25T13:27:39Z2021-02-25T13:27:39ZWhat is fascism?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384567/original/file-20210216-17-1q0gdrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C45%2C5885%2C3847&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Donald Trump supporter wears a gas mask and holds a bust of him after he and hundreds of others stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-wears-a-gas-mask-and-news-photo/1230458006?adppopup=true">Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since before Donald Trump took office, historians have debated whether <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164170">he is a fascist</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://history.case.edu/faculty/john-broich/">teacher of World War II history</a> who has <a href="https://abramsbooks.com/product/blood-oil-and-the-axis_9781468314014/">written about fascism</a>, I’ve found that historians have a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-twentiethcentury-political-thought/fascism-and-racism/CFB19146B5E63D20089DF0AAC5CD84D9">consensus</a> definition of the term, broadly speaking. </p>
<p>Given the term’s current – and sometimes erroneous – use, I think it’s important to distinguish what fascism is and is not.</p>
<h2>Race-first thinking</h2>
<p>Fascism, now a century old, got its start with Benito Mussolini and his Italian allies. They named their movement after an ancient Roman emblem, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fasces">the fasces</a>, an ax whose handle has been tightly reinforced with many rods, symbolizing the power of unity around one leader.</p>
<p>Fascism means more than dictatorship, however. </p>
<p>It’s distinct from simple authoritarianism – an anti-democratic government by a strongman or small elite – and “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stalinism">Stalinism</a>” – authoritarianism with a dominant bureaucracy and economic control, named after the former Soviet leader. The same goes for “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/">anarchism</a>,” the belief in a society organized without an overarching state.</p>
<p>Above all, fascists <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NLiFIEdI1V4C&q=%22racial+thought+for+political+purposes%22#v=snippet&q=%22racial%20thought%20for%20political%20purposes%22&f=false">view nearly everything through the lens of race</a>. They’re committed not just to race supremacy, but maintaining what they called “<a href="https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1093/embo-reports/kve217">racial hygiene</a>,” meaning the purity of their race and the separation of what they view as lower ones.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/racethinking-before-racism/02AAE753AAD57BAFB03A2F003EF12538">That means</a> they must define who is a member of their nation’s legitimate race. They must invent a “true” race.</p>
<p>Many are familiar with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s so-called <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-5/breeding-new-german-race">Aryan race</a>, which had no biological or historical reality. The Nazis had to forge a mythic past and legendary people. Including some in the “true race” means excluding others.</p>
<h2>Capitalism is good</h2>
<p>For fascists, capitalism is good. It appeals to their admiration of “the survival of the fittest,” a phrase coined by <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/herbert-spencer-survival-of-the-fittest-180974756/">social Darwinist Herbert Spencer</a>, so long as companies serve the needs of the fascist leadership and the “Volk,” or people. </p>
<p>In exchange for protecting private property, fascists demand capitalists <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis">act as cronies</a>. </p>
<p>If, for example, a company is successfully producing weapons for foreign or domestic wars – good. But if a company is enriching nonloyal people, or making money for the imagined subrace, the fascists will step in and hand it to someone deemed loyal.</p>
<p>If the economy is poor, the fascist will divert attention from shortages to plans for patriotic glory or for vengeance against internal or external enemies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Benito Mussolini in Agro Pontino, Italy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benito Mussolini taking part in the inauguration of the first rural settlements in Agro Pontino, Italy, on Oct. 29, 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/head-of-government-benito-mussolini-taking-part-in-the-news-photo/141555664?adppopup=true">Mondadori via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Might makes right</h2>
<p>Important to most fascists is the idea that the nation’s “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260578?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">patriots</a>” have been let down, that “good people” are humiliated while “bad people” do better.</p>
<p>These grievances cannot be answered, fascists say, if things remain under the status quo. There needs to be revolutionary change allowing the “real people” to break free from the restraints of democracy or existing law and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130930081524/http:/www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html">get even</a>. </p>
<p>For fascists, might makes right.</p>
<p>Since for them the law should be subservient to the needs of the people and the need to crush socialism or liberalism, fascists encourage party militias. These enforce the fascist will, break <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14058/14058-h/14058-h.htm">unions</a>, distort elections and intimidate or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss-and-police">co-opt the police</a>. </p>
<p>The historical fascists of Germany and <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/01/mussolinis-racial-policies-in-east-africa-revealed-italian-fascists-ambitions-to-redesign-the-social-order.html">Mussolini’s Italy</a> extended the might-makes-right principle to expansion abroad, though the British fascists of the 1930s, led by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-49405924">Oswald Mosley</a> and his British Union of Fascists, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/1932729.pdf">preferred isolationism</a> and preached a sort of internal war against an imagined Jewish enemy of the state.</p>
<h2>What fascists reject</h2>
<p>First and foremost, fascists want to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/128540/the-anatomy-of-fascism-by-robert-o-paxton/">revolt against socialism</a>. That’s because it threatens the crony capitalism that fascists embrace. </p>
<p>Not only does socialism aim for equal prosperity no matter the race, but many socialists tend to envision <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tH0jwbnj7BgC&q=%22withering+away+of+the+state%22#v=snippet&q=%22withering%20away%20of%20the%20state%22&f=false">the eventual extinction</a> of separate nations, which offends the strong fascist belief in nation states.</p>
<p>Along with getting rid of aristocrats or other elites, fascists are prepared to displace the church or seek a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/265794658/pope-and-mussolini-tells-the-secret-history-of-fascism-and-the-church">mutually beneficial truce with it</a>. </p>
<p>Mussolini, Hitler and the <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/02/spains-civil-war-produced-a-fascist-movement-that-was-disorganized-but-just-as-authoritarian-as-italys.html">Falangists in Spain</a> learned that they had to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state">live with</a>, not replace, the church in their countries – as long as their regimes weren’t broadly attacked from the pulpit.</p>
<p>Fascists also reject democracy, at least any democracy that could potentially result in socialism or <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-or-who-is-antifa-140147">too much liberalism</a>. In a democracy, voters can choose social welfare policies. They can level the playing field between classes and ethnicities, or seek gender equality. </p>
<p>Fascists oppose all of these efforts. </p>
<h2>Fascism grows from nationalism</h2>
<p>Fascism is the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Extreme-nationalism">logical extreme of nationalism</a>, the roughly 250-year-old idea that nation states should be built around races or historical peoples. </p>
<p>The first fascists didn’t invent these ideas out of nothing – they just pushed nationalism further than anyone had before. For the fascist, it’s not just that a nation state makes “the people” sovereign. It’s that the will of righteous, real people – and its leader – comes before all other considerations, including facts. </p>
<p>Indeed, the will, the people, their leader and the facts are all one in fascism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Given the current, often erroneous, use of the term ‘fascist’ to describe political movements and leaders, it’s important to determine what fascism is and is not.John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1531462021-01-15T11:10:56Z2021-01-15T11:10:56ZWhy it’s no surprise that pro-Trump rioters sang Bob Marley songs outside the Capitol<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378627/original/file-20210113-23-1qxqzws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C0%2C5000%2C3315&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In recent decades, musicians have been quick to object to the use of their material by the far-right</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://webgate.epa.eu/thumb.php/56604544.jpg?eJw1jrEOgkAMht-ls0Ovtly5zbBgIpqIiToZTjgX4yAyie9uhTh9-fv9afuGYgUhNfe-W0BRQgAwniA4w3nCZg2BDFuT3eN2GfrGOpUlyTJkYf7Fw9Stp2pdQGBDNc9MvZ6D7T_Oeg_BI1qs_mJnAvQaJXe5F6dEy9h6FXWSGPMmecdoV-xVIBSSkZBQx9iq_RBVJSFyK_D5AiG9Mb8~">Etienne Laurent/EPA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid the serious criminal offences committed during the recent breach of the US Capitol, one prominent trespass was against good taste. Numerous commentators, including original I Three singers <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20210110/inappropriate-use-song-written-i-three-marcia-griffiths-surprised">Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt</a>, took exception to Trump supporters <a href="https://www.dancehallmag.com/2021/01/07/news/pro-trump-protesters-vibe-to-bob-marley-after-us-capitol-riot.html">singing</a> Bob Marley classics “Three Little Birds” and “One Love”.</p>
<p>The sound of white nationalists appropriating Afro-Caribbean music (though <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article-abstract/38/1/157/927064?redirectedFrom=fulltext">all too familiar</a> in the UK of the 1970s-80s) was considered both offensive and surprising. Ideologically, such groups are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139505963.008">more often associated</a> with fetishising “white” classical music and eschewing “black” culture. One of the early warning signs of UK singer Morrissey’s far-right leanings was his 1986 comment “<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/music/morrissey-from-reggae-to-royalty-a-timeline-of-the-singer-s-most-controversial-opinions-a3857906.html">reggae is vile</a>”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1346957374410661892"}"></div></p>
<p>Some may find it surprising to realise that the alt-right can enjoy Bob Marley as well as death metal and Wagner. But this might be less of an example of deliberate <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Twerking-and-Cultural-Appropriation-%3A-Cyrus/7b73eb8d9a4411f82eb3a7913426e52b3808ff55">cultural appropriation</a> than a pragmatic example of how music works when organising a crowd. </p>
<p>The lyrics of “One Love” unify its listeners, forming an in-group against an implicit other. The choruses of both songs are effortless to sing. Above all, the tempo is perfect. The Capitol mob neither goose-stepped nor surged: it shuffled slowly. Famously, it even <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/01/capitol-when-mob-entered-chamber-pictures-tourists/617586/">kept between the guide ropes</a>. Marley’s songs, with their relaxed, off-beat rhythm, are the perfect soundtrack for a movement that mostly mills about.</p>
<p>Still, this wasn’t the first time that the far-right’s choice of song has come out of left field. Here are five more instances when history has sounded a little out of tune.</p>
<h2>2014: UKIP Calypso</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mike Read’s 2014 “UKIP Calypso”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2014, the anti-immigration UK Independence Party featured a song at its annual conference penned by former BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYOBZ3Seeio">UKIP Calypso</a>” – a travesty of Trinidadian music sung in an accent that, in the views of many, bordered on minstrelsy. Bona fide calypso star Alexander D Great responded with his own song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BN0RgaCi9o">Copycat Crime</a>”.</p>
<h2>1934: La Marseillaise</h2>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HM-E2H1ChJM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“La Marseillaise” in its more common anti-fascist incarnation: 1942’s Casablanca.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yes, that Marseillaise: the anthem of liberty written by
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and France’s national song. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2013.845447">In 1934</a> the British Union of Fascists needed a song of its own. But its publication Fascist Week rejected Elgar’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tW0QqiT2LU">Land of Hope and Glory</a>”, a far-right favourite then as now, because “it stands for ideals we regard as obsolete”. The Italian fascist anthem “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLclQf9ecjc">Giovinezza</a>” was deemed too, well, Italian. Instead, asked Blackshirt magazine (the British Union of Fascists’ newspaper), “Who is to be the first ‘Rouget de Lisle’ to give the Movement a ‘Marseillaise’?”</p>
<p>The anti-democratic right had a precedent here: <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Miscellaneous_Essays_naval_moral_politic.html?id=VTtcAAAAcAAJ&redir_esc=y">in 1799</a>, reactionary Royal Navy chaplain Alexander Duncan also proposed imitating the Marseillaise. But the idea never caught on, and today Britain’s far-right <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaA3Ewa6EeI">favours</a> “Keep St George In My Heart” sung to the tune of the hymn “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_in_My_Lamp">Oil in my Lamp</a>”, most commonly associated with small schoolchildren.</p>
<h2>2015: Nicolas</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Marine Le Pen sings “Nicolas” in 2015.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Few far-right figures have embraced song in quite the manner of the leader of the French political party Rassemblement National (National Rally), Marine Le Pen. <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/video-marine-le-pens-love-song-for-nicolas-sarkozy-gddsnll5ln2">In 2015</a> she was filmed ironically serenading former French president and political rival Nicolas Sarkozy with the 1979 love song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DL_Fq7122I">Nicolas</a>”. But the joke may have been on the anti-immigration Le Pen – “Nicolas” was made a hit by French singer Sylvie Vartan, born in Bulgaria and of Armenian and Jewish heritage.</p>
<h2>1936: <em>Das Lied der Deutschen</em></h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">German players and fans sing their anthem at Euro 2006.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most extreme case of misappropriation is surely the German national anthem. Its 1797 tune was penned by Haydn for the Habsburg emperor. So when August Heinrich Hoffman gave it new words in 1841, he was reappropriating a royalist song for republican ends. </p>
<p>Its infamous opening “<em>Deutschland, Deutschland über alles</em>” was a call for the disparate German states to form a liberal union, putting their shared identity above allegiance to petty monarchs. Its lyrics are essentially peaceful, unlike bloodthirsty lines found in “God save the King”, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, or the “Marseillaise” itself. But since its appropriation by the Nazis, broadcast worldwide at the Berlin Olympics, its message has been tainted, and now only the third verse is officially sung.</p>
<h2>2009: If You Tolerate This…</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Manics’ 1998 song in its official setting.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent decades, musicians have been quick to object to the appropriation of their material. Though Neil Young <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/08/neil-young-drops-lawsuit-against-donald-trump">has abandoned</a> his fight against Trump’s use of “Rockin’ in the Free World”, Tom Petty did successfully prevent the Bush campaign from playing “I Won’t Back Down” in 2000. As a former Bush spokesman said: “<a href="https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/wont-back-down-petty/">we backed down</a>”. And when in 2009 the British National Party plumbed new ironic depths by pirating the Manic Street Preachers’ anti-fascist anthem “If You Tolerate This”, the band’s label were swift to <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/manic-street-preachers-138-1318336">take action</a>.</p>
<p>There’s little room for nuance when a movement takes a fancy to a slogan. The ultimate example is Bruce Springsteen’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPhWR4d3FJQ">Born in the USA</a>” – meant as a critique of the Vietnam War and its effect upon veterans. Knowing this, some commentators sneer at its use by jingoistic nationalists and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories">birthers</a>”. But its verses require concentrated listening, whereas the macho, stadium-rock chorus is simplicity itself. </p>
<p>Perhaps we should suspend our knowing impulses, and accept that in practice, a song’s meaning is determined in performance, not in the intentions of its author.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oskar Cox Jensen receives funding from UK Research and Innovation via his work on Our Subversive Voice: see <a href="https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT006390%2F1">https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT006390%2F1</a></span></em></p>After rioters outside the US Capitol sang Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’, here are more global instances when history has sounded a little out of tune.Oskar Cox Jensen, Senior Research Associate, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1530722021-01-13T22:03:22Z2021-01-13T22:03:22ZTrump impeached a second time – but Trumpism will live on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378437/original/file-20210112-21-1ugnfjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4159%2C2770&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump yells while visiting a portion of the border wall in Alamo, Tex. on Jan. 12, 2021.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just a week after the U.S. Capitol was attacked by his supporters, Donald Trump has become <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-impeachment-vote-capitol-siege-0a6f2a348a6e43f27d5e1dc486027860">the first president of the United States to be impeached twice</a>. But regardless of how Trump leaves the White House — <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-impeachments-capitol-siege-mitch-mcconnell-29ca8c7dff7943c3daf2952d4a809097">the Senate won’t act on the impeachment</a> before Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — the domestic terrorism he has inspired <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/opinion/gop-trump.html">will not end there</a>.</p>
<p>Democrats in the House of Representatives — as did 10 brave Republicans, none of whom voted in favour of Trump’s first impeachment a year ago — made a compelling case for removing the president in the final days of his administration.</p>
<p>During Trump’s four years in office, lies, ignorance and a thirst for violence have desensitized America to the point where a right-wing mob could attack police in broad daylight, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-allies-helped-plan-promote-rally-led-capitol/story?id=75119209">break into the U.S. Capitol and occupy the Senate chamber</a>.</p>
<p>America no longer lives in the shadow of authoritarianism. It has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html">tipped into the abyss</a>.</p>
<p>The domestic terrorism of Jan. 6 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/opinion/gop-trump.html">will not end there</a>. This was Trumpism in full bloom, in all its ignorance and lawlessness, proving again that fascism <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/trump-capitol-dc-protests.html">begins with language and ends with violence</a>.</p>
<p>Trumpism is a new political formation, blending white supremacy, voter suppression, market fundamentalism and authoritarianism, and it will survive <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/donald-trump-white-working-class-trumpism">long after Trump leaves the White House</a>.</p>
<p>The travesty in Washington had been building for years in the dark recesses of conspiracy theories, lies, the dark web, white rage and hatred of those its adherents consider <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/protests-trump-disinformation.html">“enemies of the people.”</a></p>
<p>The mob on Capitol Hill was reminiscent of thugs roaming the streets of Germany in the 1930s brutalizing dissenters and “others” in the deranged Nazi notion of racial and political cleansing.</p>
<h2>Fanning the flames</h2>
<p>Trump has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/10/donald-trump-us-election-misinformation-media">fanned fascist impulses</a> consistently through the language of violence and division, <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/weaponized-social-media-is-driving-the-explosion-of-fascism/">aided by right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart</a>.</p>
<p>The storming of the Capitol reaches far beyond Trump’s toxic personal politics, incompetency and corruption. Such violence —rooted in ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, white supremacy, systemic police violence and anti-immigration bigotry — has a long history in the U.S. It has lately been normalized as a right-wing populist movement, which Trump brought to the surface of American politics and has worn like a badge. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fury-in-us-cities-is-rooted-in-a-long-history-of-racist-policing-violence-and-inequality-139752">The fury in US cities is rooted in a long history of racist policing, violence and inequality</a>
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<p>He came to power by seizing upon the fears of whites and white supremacists who imagined themselves under siege. Since then, <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/irish-author-fintan-otoole-explains-the-suspension-of-disbelief-that-made-trumps-destruction-of-america-possible">he has deliberately energized those followers</a>.</p>
<p>Trumpism refers less to a person than to a dangerous movement and social base.</p>
<p>As a new cultural and political construct, it merges a ruthless capitalist rationality, growing inequality and commitment to white nationalism. <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/president-trump-white-supremacy-and-the-confederate-flag/">These forces have deep historical roots</a>. </p>
<p>They have congealed under Trump into an emotionally charged, spectacularized and updated form of authoritarianism. He has merged it with the apparatus and regressive values of a cruel capitalism to undermine democratic institutions and values.</p>
<h2>Political chasm</h2>
<p>As an anti-democratic ethos, it has opened a political chasm in which any attempt to unify the nation appears almost impossible, creating <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12132">a toxic breeding ground for violence, cruelty, exclusion and racial cleansing.</a> </p>
<p>In plain view, Trump flouted, ignored and destroyed institutions of accountability. He degraded political speech. He openly used his office to enrich himself. He publicly courted dictators.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Trump smiles at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378440/original/file-20210112-15-1yrs774.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea, in June 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His extremist supporters, like the Proud Boys, seethe with racism. They value violence as the only remedy that can provide relief and gratification.</p>
<p>Trumpism is intent not only on capturing institutions of the state for personal and political gain, but also controlling language, media and popular culture as a way of emptying politics of substance and reducing it to spectacle.</p>
<p>Criticism has become “fake news” unworthy of serious reflection or analysis. Trumpism shreds shared values and national unity into distrust and fear. It disdainfully views the common good and democratic values as registers of weakness and resentment.</p>
<p>Molded in the crucible of populist, racist, and authoritarian nationalism, Trumpism produced a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/protests-trump-disinformation.html">tsunami of repressive political, economic, and social policies</a>. </p>
<h2>Children caged</h2>
<p>Children of undocumented immigrants were caged. Military forces were deployed to attack peaceful demonstrators in cities like Portland.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-america-needs-a-reckoning-with-the-trump-era">Trumpism pollinated politics, culture and everyday life</a> with authoritarian impulses. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/vigilante-militia-patrol-us-mexico-border/559753001/">Self-appointed militiamen patrolled the southern border</a> and state governments waged wars on people of colour <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/nov/07/which-us-states-hardest-vote-supression-election">through voter suppression laws</a>.</p>
<p>Near the end of Trump’s term, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-voter-fraud-lies-encouraged-riot-gop-allies-are-n1253509">many Republicans boldly attempted to use fabricated allegations</a> of fraud to overthrow the election.</p>
<p>Trumpism emerged from the wider crisis of neoliberalism, which could no longer lay claim to democratic values while accelerating wars and fostering an unprecedented degree of inequality of wealth and power.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">What exactly is neoliberalism?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Trumpism is more of a cult than an ideology. Trump’s egregious bungling of the COVID-19 pandemic had profoundly lethal consequences, yet his actions did little to undermine his support, especially under the moral and political blackout legitimated <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/">by a Vichy-like Republican Party</a>. </p>
<p>Trumpism is a giant disinformation machine that aims to colonize culture and public consciousness by emptying them of democratic values and destroying institutions that nurture critical thought and civic courage.</p>
<h2>Lessons of history vanish</h2>
<p>Making use of modern cultural constructs such as Twitter and Facebook and friendly media outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax and Breitbart, his efforts married power and civic illiteracy. The public sphere has become a barrage of bomb-like daily events that obliterate the space and time for contemplating the past, while freezing the present into a fragmented display of shock. Under such circumstances, the lessons of history disappear.</p>
<p>The logical outcome is a rush to the comfort of strongmen who offer the swindle of fulfilment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Trump raises his fist as he steps off Air Force One." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378439/original/file-20210112-17-7vrl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump raises his fist as he steps off Air Force One upon arrival in Harlingen, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trumpism defines power as immunity from the law. <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/strongmen-scholar-explains-donald-trumps-authoritarian-weaponization-of-the-legal-system/">How else to explain the pardoning of grifters, political cronies and war criminals?</a></p>
<p>Until it is understood as a broad cultural crisis rather than simply as an economic and political crisis, Trumpism will continue to undermine the ability of individuals and institutions to think critically.</p>
<p>There is no democracy without an educated citizenry and no democracy can survive this glut of ignorance, fear, precarity, commercialization, concentration of power and illusion of freedom.</p>
<p>If Trumpism is to be resisted, America needs a new language, politics and sense of purpose.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of Trump’s second impeachment, Joe Biden’s administration must establish a national effort — criminal investigations, hearings, trials and public assemblies — to hold accountable those who committed crimes under the Trump regime and <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/11/the-centrality-of-critical-education-in-dark-times-a-tribute-to-noam-chomsky-on-his-92nd-birthday/?fbclid=IwAR3Qz70HeZ5aw_lmBjzl6e5J3eLJELQAFn4u_8xYg4_UjhETOyxrb-B_Kwo">to educate the public</a>.</p>
<p>The time has come for America to reclaim its utopian ideals of justice, compassion, freedom and equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Giroux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump has become the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. But the ignorance and lawlessness of Trumpism will have a dangerous afterlife even after Trump has left Washington.Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1532772021-01-13T18:25:29Z2021-01-13T18:25:29ZHow Donald Trump’s populist narrative led directly to the assault on the US Capitol<p>The January 6 assault on the Capitol may have been a fitting end to Trump’s presidency. It was the embodiment of his trademark violation of norms and desacralization of institutions. It was also the logical culmination of four years of violently partisan rhetoric. </p>
<p>Donald Trump is of course less the cause but rather the natural expression of a populism run amok, and one for which Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement were the harbingers. Still, he is an impressive – and appalling – expression of American populism. As the only representative elected by all Americans, the US president has both institutional and rhetorical power given his unique media exposure. The “commander-in-chief” is also the “storyteller-in-chief.” His January 6 <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-supporters-prior-the-storming-the-united-states-capitol">“Save America” speech</a> is a perfect illustration of the way a populist narrative can sway the masses. It is essential to understand its mechanism and to recognize its characteristics if we want to prevent a repeat.</p>
<h2>Turning the crowd into “the people”</h2>
<p>Populism is a complex and contested political concept. It is nevertheless identifiable by certain characteristics. First, of course, it often involves some form of demagoguery, a rhetorical device that Donald Trump masters perfectly, as rhetoric professor Jennifer Mercieca <a href="https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781623499068/demagogue-for-president/">has shown</a>. “You’re stronger, you’re smarter. You’ve got more going than anybody,” he told his audience on January 6. He also praised the crowd’s pride and supposed patriotism, calling out “a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts […] an overwhelming pride in this great country.” But flattery in itself does not define populism.</p>
<p>As political scientist <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15615.html">Jan-Werner Müller</a> has demonstrated, what characterizes populism is above all a very restrictive and exclusive definition of “the people.” In his <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-14">inaugural speech</a>, President Trump contrasted the “forgotten people” with a corrupt elite. When he addressed his supporters on January 6, he said: “You are the real people” which he defined as “the people that built this nation”, and contrary to “the people that tore down our nation”. Trump’s “American people” are also the people who “do not believe the corrupt fake news anymore”.</p>
<p>As used by Trump, “the people” is both a rhetorical construction and an embodied metaphor found in phrasing like “the incredible patriots here today” and “the magnitude of the crowd” stretching “all the way to the monument in Washington.” For the president, size is a sign of moral virtue: “As this enormous crowd shows,” he says, “we have truth and justice on our side.” </p>
<p>As many observers have noted, Trump is obsessed with crowd size. One of the very first lies from his spokesperson regarded the size of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited">2016 inauguration crowd</a>, how it was bigger than Obama’s in 2009, despite clear evidence to the contrary. This was the first of thousands of “alternative facts” that came to define Trump’s presidency.</p>
<h2>A victimized people</h2>
<p>Another characteristic of Trump’s “people” is their victim status. They are the victims of a corrupt system and the “fake news media”. He also makes a link between “the country that has had enough” and a <em>we</em> who will “not take it any longer” because “that’s what this is all about.” Trump’s people identify with him through this victimization. Hence the use of the subject pronoun <em>we</em>. “It’s incredible what <em>we</em> have to go through” he laments, building a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09557571.2019.1575796">cognitive bias</a> that favors adherence to his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/">numerous falsehoods</a>.</p>
<p>Victimization is an essential element of the populist discourse. It emphasizes the innocence and the purity of the people (and their leader). It makes any future action, even illegal, morally justifiable. “When you catch someone in the act of fraud,” said the president, “you’re allowed to follow very different rules.” In other words, it gives a blank check for illegal actions that will happen next.</p>
<h2>An inner enemy</h2>
<p>This rhetoric of victimization is also illustrated by the construction of the figure of an enemy who is no longer a foreign outsider but fellow Americans, as I have analyzed thoroughly <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/angles/498">elsewhere</a>.</p>
<p>In Trump’s “Save America” speech, this enemy is primarily the news media. They “suppress speech,” and even “thought”. They are the “enemy of the people” and “the biggest problem we have in this country”. The expression “enemy of the people” is not new: it has its origins in the Roman Republic and was used during the French Revolution. But there is a certain irony in Trump using a term made particularly popular by the Soviet Union while comparing the suppression by the media to “what happens in a communist country.” </p>
<p>This view of the “enemy press” echoes that of Richard Nixon, as outlined in a recent <a href="https://arizonastatelawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Jones_Pub.pdf">article by RonNell Andersen Jones and Lisa Grow Sun</a>. But Trump is much more vehement in his public attacks. And the enemies he mentioned are not limited to the press: he also attacked the “big tech” who “rigged the election,” the Democrats and the “radical left” that will “destroy our country,” the Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and Liz Cheney who refused to back his false claims, or the Supreme Court that “hurts our country”.</p>
<h2>An existential threat</h2>
<p>The populist discourse also requires the construction of a permanent crisis. The enumeration of numerous enemies leads to an implacable logic: “Our country has been under siege.” This type of war lexicon is all the more effective that the emotional charge is reinforced with the evocation of children:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They also want to indoctrinate your children at school by teaching them things that aren’t so. They want to indoctrinate your children. It’s all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This threat of “indoctrination of children” validates the policy in favor of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/21/to-trumps-education-pick-the-u-s-public-school-system-is-a-dead-end/">private schools put in place by the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos</a>. It may also echo QAnon’s conspiracy theories that portray Donald Trump as the hero of a struggle against the “deep state” and a supposed <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/politics/qanon-child-welfare/index.html">cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities baselessly accused of abusing children</a>. But, more generally, what is at stake is the very existence of the nation: “If you don’t fight like hell,” the president warned, “you won’t have a country anymore.” So now, said the president, “the American people [are] finally standing up and saying, "No”.</p>
<h2>Virtuous strength versus shameful weakness</h2>
<p>By standing up and fighting, Trump’s “people” can become heroic. It is common for US presidents to rely on the trope of the hero, a figure whose strength is always kept in check by virtue. Donald Trump presents a very different narrative where heroism is exclusively defined by unchecked strength, to the point that strength is a virtue in and of itself, as I developed previously <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9861">in my research</a>. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” he repeated, and members of Congress who promised to oppose the certification of votes became “warriors.”</p>
<p>The claim that “We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies” is also a way to refuse to be weak. After repeating the term “weak Republicans” several times, Trump clearly showed he enjoyed this expression, insisting he was going to use the term from then on.</p>
<p>This binary view of strength vs. weakness echoes a very conservative and gendered narrative that appeals to Donald Trump’s base, especially evangelicals: Trump’s hypermasculinity is contrasted to the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/28/928336749/trump-has-weaponized-masculinity-as-president-heres-why-it-matters">Democrats’ enlightened masculinity, portrayed as weak and feminine</a>. An extreme incarnation of this hypermasculinity can be found in the neo-fascist organization <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys">Proud Boys</a> present among his supporters. </p>
<p>At the end of his speech, when Trump encouraged his supporters to take action by going to Capitol Hill, he asked the crowd to “give our Republicans – the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help […] – the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country”. </p>
<p>As the speech reached its crescendo, Trump emphasized his supporters’ strong emotional bond with him, and his with them. “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you”, he promised, as if they would be protected by a Christ-like presence that did not even have to materialize – and it didn’t. Instead, as what was now a mob moved toward the Capitol, Trump was driven back to the White House, where he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html">watched the assault unfold on live television</a>. </p>
<h2>The remains of the day</h2>
<p>The tragic events of January 6 and their aftermath are now well known. Five people died, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html">police officer Brian Sicknick</a>. Despite the violent attack, Congress was able to reconvene and formally recognize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris. But the risk was grave and the wounds deep.</p>
<p>All of this was made possible by Donald Trump ability and willingness to heighten and take advantage of his supporters’ sense of exclusion (economic, social or otherwise), fear of cultural and identity dispossession, and distrust toward US institutions. Trump’s populist narrative and coded language gave them a feeling of empowerment and encouraged them to imagine that a violent attack on Congress would be a patriotic, heroic act.</p>
<p>After the violence on Capitol Hill, Trump’s approval rating has fallen sharply, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/">yet remains at 38%</a> (though a new <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/01/15/biden-begins-presidency-with-positive-ratings-trump-departs-with-lowest-ever-job-mark/">Pew Research poll puts him at 29%</a>). By comparison, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/how-the-watergate-crisis-eroded-public-support-for-richard-nixon/">Richard Nixon’s was 24%</a> when he resigned in 1974. If Trump’s popularity among those who voted for him has also declined, it is still close to 80%, and about one in five Republicans (<a href="https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/oakpejbjqvr/Topline%20Reuters%20Capitol%20Unrest%20Overnight%20Survey%201%2008%202021.pdf">22% according to Reuters-Ipsos</a>, or nearly 15 million Americans) claims to support the rioters’ actions. Most importantly, a significant majority of them continue to believe <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/trump-tweets-legacy-of-lies-misinformation-distrust.html">Trump’s endlessly repeated false claims</a> that the election was “rigged” and that it was he who won, not Joe Biden.</p>
<p>With the beginning of a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/house-trump-impeachment-vote-01-13-21/index.html">second impeachment trial</a> against Donald Trump and the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/14/online-extremists-ignoring-trump-calls-calm-459535">threat of further attacks</a> by his supporters on American institutions and elected officials in Washington and across the nation, as well as a worsening pandemic, the coming weeks and months could prove crucial for American democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>In his January 6 speech in Washington DC, Donald Trump urged his supporters to force their way onto Capitol Hill, is a perfect compendium of his inflammatory populist rhetoric.Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, CY Cergy Paris UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1529512021-01-12T19:09:22Z2021-01-12T19:09:22ZHow can America heal from the Trump era? Lessons from Germany’s transformation into a prosperous democracy after Nazi rule<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378297/original/file-20210112-21-1m1nob1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4868%2C3216&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 61. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-clash-with-police-and-security-forces-as-news-photo/1230454153?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comparisons between the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-video.html">United States under Trump and Germany during the Hitler era </a> are once again being made following the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/">storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6</a>.</p>
<p>Even in the eyes of German history scholars like myself, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-hitler-comparisons-too-easy-and-ignore-the-murderous-history-92394">who had earlier warned of the troubling nature of such analogies</a>, Trump’s strategy to remain in power has undeniably proved that he has fascist traits. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/06/910320018/fascism-scholar-says-u-s-is-losing-its-democratic-status">True to the fascist playbook</a>, which includes hypernationalism, the glorification of violence and a fealty to anti-democratic leaders that is cultlike, Trump launched a conspiracy theory that the recent election was rigged and incited violence against democratically elected representatives of the American people. </p>
<p>This is not to say that Trump has suddenly emerged as a new Hitler. The German dictator’s lust for power was inextricably linked to his <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology">racist ideology</a>, which unleashed a global, genocidal war. For Trump, the need to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/">satisfy his own ego</a> seems to be the major motivation of his politics. </p>
<p>But that doesn’t change the fact that Trump is just as much of a mortal danger to American democracy as Hitler was to the Weimar Republic. The first democracy on German soil <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/">did not survive the onslaught of the Nazis</a>. </p>
<p>If America is to survive the attacks of Trump and his supporters, its citizens would do well to look to the fate of Germany and the lessons it offers Americans looking to save, heal and unite their republic.</p>
<h2>From Nazi ideology to democracy</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Weimar-Republic">Weimar Republic, the first democracy on German soil</a>, was a short-lived one. Founded in 1918, it managed to survive the political turmoil of the early 1920s, but succumbed to the crisis brought about by the Great Depression. It is therefore not the history of the failed Weimar Republic but rather that of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Formation-of-the-Federal-Republic-of-Germany">Federal Republic, founded in 1949</a>, that provides important clues. </p>
<p>Just like Weimar, the West German Federal Republic was founded in the aftermath of a devastating war, World War II. And, just like Weimar, the new German state found itself confronted with large numbers of citizens who were deeply anti-democratic. Even worse, many of them had been involved in the Holocaust and other heinous crimes against humanity. </p>
<p>During the first postwar decade, a majority of Germans still believed that Nazism <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Postwar/10oPnprPjcgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Nazism+was+a+good+idea,+badly+applied%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover">had been a good idea, only badly put into practice</a>. This was a sobering starting point, but Germany’s second democracy managed not just to survive but even to flourish, and it ultimately developed into one of the most stable democracies worldwide. </p>
<p>How?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="German war crimes defendants sitting in a courtroom at the Nuremberg trials." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German war crimes defendants sitting in a courtroom at the Nuremberg trials in November 1945. Among them are Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Joachim Von Ribbentrop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-war-crimes-defendants-sitting-in-a-courtroom-of-the-news-photo/158743770?adppopup=true">Mondadori Portfolio by Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Denazification: ‘Painful and amoral process’</h2>
<p>For one, there was a legal reckoning with the past, beginning with the trial and prosecution of some Nazi elites and war criminals. That happened first at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/18/landmarks-in-law-the-first-trial-where-the-word-genocide-was-spoken">the Nuremberg Trials</a>, organized by the Allies in 1945 and 1946, in which leading Nazis were tried for genocide and crimes against humanity. A further significant reckoning happened during the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/auschwitz-ssalbum/frankfurt-trial">Frankfurt Auschwitz trials</a> of the mid-1960s, in which 22 officials of the SS, the elite paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, were tried for the roles they played at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. </p>
<p>To protect the new German democracy from the political divisions that had plagued parliamentary government during the Weimar period, an electoral law was introduced that aimed to prevent the proliferation of small extremist parties. This was <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-does-the-german-general-election-work/a-37805756">the “5 percent” clause</a>, which stipulated that a party must win a minimum of 5% of the national vote to receive any representation in parliament.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html">Article 130 of the German Criminal Code</a> made “incitement of the masses” a criminal offense to stop the spread of extremist thought, hate speech and calls for political violence.</p>
<p>Yet as important and admirable as these efforts were in exorcising Germany’s Nazi demons, they alone are not what kept Germans on a democratic footing after 1945. So, too, did the successful integration of anti-democratic forces into the new state.</p>
<p>This was a painful and amoral process. In January 1945, the Nazi Party had <a href="https://www.crl.edu/collections/topics/germany">some 8.5 million members</a> – that is, significantly more than 10% of the entire population. After the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, many of them claimed that they <a href="http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/topics/denazification.html">had been only nominal members</a>.</p>
<p>Such attempts to get off scot-free did not work for the Nazi luminaries tried at Nuremberg, but it certainly did work for many lower-level Nazis involved in countless crimes. And with the advent of the Cold War, <a href="https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-kept_secret_newly_declassified_files_confirm_united_states_collaboration_with_nazis/">even people outside of Germany were willing to look past these offenses</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?type=article&did=History.Denazi.i0003&id=History.Denazi&isize=M">Denazification, the Allies’ attempt to purge German society, culture and politics</a>, as well as the press, economy and judiciary, of Nazism, petered out quickly and was officially abandoned in 1951. As a result, many Nazis were absorbed into an emerging new society that officially committed itself to democracy and human rights.</p>
<p>Konrad Adenauer, the first West German chancellor, said in 1952 that it was time <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-the-role-ex-nazis-played-in-early-west-germany-a-810207.html">“to finish with this sniffing out of Nazis.”</a> He did not say this lightheartedly; after all, he had been an opponent of the Nazis. To him, this <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wNd9Zp1A1a4C&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=hermann+l%C3%BCbbe+communicative+silencing&source=bl&ots=g5dLTJ6zYy&sig=ACfU3U0aXiIxejpQVKvX4vVsiImuFRi9sQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxxfzg_JTuAhUFYawKHdmiCM0Q6AEwB3oECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=hermann%20l%C3%BCbbe%20communicative%20silencing&f=false">“communicative silencing”</a> of the Nazi past – a term coined by the German philosopher Hermann Lübbe – was necessary during these early years to integrate former Nazis into the democratic state. </p>
<p>Where one was going, advocates of this approach argued, was more important than where one had been.</p>
<h2>A dignified life</h2>
<p>For many, this failure to achieve justice was too heavy of a price to pay for democratic stability. But the strategy ultimately bore fruit. Despite the recent <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/shockwaves-in-berlin-as-far-right-afd-lends-support-to-mainstream.html">growth of the far right and nationalist “Alternative for Germany” party</a>, Germany has remained democratic and has not yet become a threat to world peace. </p>
<p>At the same time, there were increasing efforts to confront the Nazi past, especially after the upheaval of 1968, when a new generation of young Germans challenged the older generation <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/68-movement-brought-lasting-changes-to-german-society/a-3257581">about their behavior during the Third Reich</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young people at a demonstration in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1968." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1968, young Germans demonstrated against the older generation about many concerns, including their behavior during the Third Reich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-with-banners-on-sunday-in-front-of-the-news-photo/1074504810?adppopup=true">Karl Schnörrer/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another crucial factor helped make Germany’s democratic transition a success: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Political-consolidation-and-economic-growth-1949-69#ref297761">an extraordinary period of economic growth in the postwar period</a>. Most ordinary Germans benefited from this prosperity, and the new state even created <a href="https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/75/10/Postwar_Oct1975.pdf">a generous welfare system</a> to cushion them against the harsh forces of the free market. </p>
<p>In short, more and more Germans embraced democracy because it offered them a dignified life. As a result, philosopher <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2008-05-03/constitutional-patriotism">Jürgen Habermas’ concept of “constitutional patriotism” – as one interpreter put it</a>, that citizens’ political attachment to their country “ought to center on the norms, the values and, more indirectly, the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution” – eventually came to replace older, more rabid forms of nationalism.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our most insightful politics stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>In the coming weeks and months, Americans will debate the most effective ways to punish those who instigated the recent political violence. They will also consider how to restore the trust in democracy of the many millions who have given their support to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-field-guide-to-trumps-dangerous-rhetoric-139531">Donald Trump and still believe the lies of this demagogue</a>.</p>
<p>Defenders of American democracy would do well to study carefully the painful but ultimately successful approach of the Federal Republic of Germany to move beyond fascism. </p>
<p>The United States finds itself in a different place and time than postwar Germany, but the challenge is similar: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the powerful enemies of democracy, pursue an honest reckoning with the violent racism of the past, and enact political and socioeconomic policies that will allow all to lead a dignified life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia Taschka is not a member of the Democratic party, but has volunteered for them during election periods.</span></em></p>The US faces many of the same problems Germans faced after World War II: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the enemies of democracy. There are lessons in how Germany handled that challenge.Sylvia Taschka, Senior Lecturer of History, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1482392020-10-20T13:10:40Z2020-10-20T13:10:40ZCan America survive the re-election of Donald Trump?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364344/original/file-20201019-23-1i9kqq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Carson City Airport on Oct. 18, 2020, in Carson City, Nev. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2020 presidential election may be one of the most significant and far-reaching events of the 21st century. The stakes almost defy comprehension — suggestive less of a competition over who will become the president of the United States, but whether people will vote to either retain the ideals and promises of an already wounded democracy or to sanction a further slide of American society into the abyss of authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Noam Chomsky has argued that Donald Trump represents not simply a threat to democracy, but to the planet itself. Chomsky situates the possible re-election of Trump within an era that he terms “<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/09/noam-chomsky-world-most-dangerous-moment-human-history">the most dangerous moment in human history</a> owing to the climate crisis, the threat of nuclear war and rising authoritarianism.”</p>
<p>The editorial board of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html?searchResultPosition=3"><em>New York Times</em> argues</a> that Trump’s “re-election poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.”</p>
<p>Many other pundits and commentators believe Trump will not only refuse to address these threats to humanity, but will exacerbate them. Yet the focus shouldn’t be on Trump alone, because that risks personalizing politics in such a way as to lose sight of the conditions that made Trump’s political career possible in the first place.</p>
<h2>U.S. on a downward slide since the 1980s</h2>
<p>The fear of emerging fascism in the United States is not without foundation. Since the 1980s, American society has taken on the appearance of a failed state. All the signs are in full view and have been made more visible in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis: widening inequality, widespread alienation, the collapse of civic culture, the dismantling of the social contract, long-standing systemic racism and ballooning civic illiteracy, among other forces.</p>
<p>As democratic values were replaced by market values, public assets were strip-mined in order to serve private interests while <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/feature/analysis-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act">enriching the financial elite</a> and further decimating the hopes, dreams and security of the middle and working classes.</p>
<p>The bonds of trust and solidarity have been replaced by the bonds of fear, suspicion and a growing culture of bigotry. All of these have deepened among the American public a growing sense of anxiety, social atomization and powerlessness.</p>
<p>With the rise of the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/924625825/dont-censor-stop-the-hoaxes-facebook-twitter-face-a-catch-22">corporate-controlled social media that functioned as a disimagination machine</a> that accelerated a culture of distraction, language has succumbed to the esthetics of vulgarity. Drained of civic values and lacking a commanding vision, the institutions of liberal democracy atrophied, further undermining civic literacy, historical memory and the capacity to discern the truth from falsehoods.</p>
<p>The underlying forces that created the conditions for Trump to win the presidency became more visible after 2016. In the midst of both an economic and a health crisis, he has sowed social divisions and resurrected the discourse of racial cleansing and white supremacy.</p>
<h2>Defender of white supremacy</h2>
<p>Not only has he refused to criticize <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/30/politics/proud-boys-trump-debate-trnd/index.html">racist groups like the Proud Boys</a>, Trump has elevated himself to the defender of a white supremacist notion of white America. He has defended maintaining Confederate monuments along with their insidious values, and has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/trump-nascar-bubba-wallace-confederate-flag-349730">criticized NASCAR for removing the Confederate flag from its racing events</a>. He has used his rallies to fan the flames of racism and bigotry while putting the lives of his followers in danger by refusing to abide by restrictions designed to stop the spread of COVID-19.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women are cheering as they wear red T-shirts with the words Oregon Women For Trump" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364348/original/file-20201019-13-x9ecsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women cheer as members of the white supremacist group known as the Proud Boys and other right-wing demonstrators rally in Portland, Ore., in September.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Allison Dinner)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump has also enacted a range of regressive policies, with the help of a syncophantic Republican Senate. He has accelerated and expanded the conditions leading to extreme inequality in wealth and power, revelled in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-20000-false-or-misleading-claims/">his role as a pathological liar</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/10/us/trump-properties-swamp.html">enriched himself</a> in violation of the emoluments clauses in the U.S. constitution, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/10-voter-fraud-lies-debunked">falsely claimed an epidemic of voter fraud</a>, lied about the seriousness of the pandemic and failed miserably in addressing the COVID-19 crisis that has claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Americans.</p>
<p>Trump has also weakened American institutions. <a href="https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/65580-rsn-after-the-vote">As Stephen Eric Bronner of Rutgers University observes</a>, the president has “trampled traditional political and constitutional norms, and — perhaps most important — reorganized once independent state institutions to serve his needs.” Drawing on a fascist playbook, Trump believes he is above the law and that his immunity from it is central to his wielding of power.</p>
<p>And yet, in spite of this long list of political, cultural and economic horrors, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/">more than 40 per cent of the American population still support Trump</a>. </p>
<h2>What if Trump wins again?</h2>
<p>What lessons are to be learned about the United States if Trump is re-elected?</p>
<p>One key lesson is that democracy is fragile and without the proper institutions, values and social connections that make it possible, it can give way to updated modes of authoritarianism. A Trump victory on Nov. 3 would prove it.</p>
<p>Trump’s re-election would represent a deliberate U.S. turn towards authoritarianism stemming from a loss of vision and a belief that there’s no alternative to America’s brutal form of capitalism. According to this logic, all problems are a matter of individual responsibility and there is no way to change the current socio-economic-political order.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Lincoln Memorial is in the foreground as TV lights illuminate a sitting Donald Trump" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364349/original/file-20201019-17-zjtini.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For the most part, Trump has limited his media interviews to Fox News, such as this townhall that was held last May at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Fox News has allowed the president to go unchallenged as he spreads falsehoods.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The existing depth and wide-ranging influence of such views among the American people is in part due to a conservative, hermetically sealed disinformation media ecosystem. As democratic institutions wither alongside the public spaces that nourish critically engaged citizens, limited political horizons become normalized along with a diminished sense of hope.</p>
<p>Under Trump, the degradation of language reinforces the late Italian philosopher Umberto Eco’s remark that education plays a role in fascism. Eco noted one of the central features of <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/">what he called “Ur-Fascism”</a> was its undermining of civic literacy through fascist schoolbooks that “made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” </p>
<h2>Trump is the outcome of the past</h2>
<p>Trump represents a distinctive and dangerous form of American-bred authoritarianism. But condemning him for this isn’t enough if we are to understand the forces at work in Trump’s potential re-election and the slide of the United States into the pit of fascism.</p>
<p>Trump is the outcome of a past that needs to be remembered, analyzed and engaged for the lessons it can teach us about the present.</p>
<p>His attacks on democracy, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/14/trump-said-hes-cozier-with-tougher-and-meaner-dictators-calls-them-smarter-than-biden/#56e196e85392">his alignment with corrupt and ruthless dictators</a> and his willingness to sacrifice social needs and human lives to the cruel script of raw power and a ruthless market-driven society should force us, as global citizens, to ask questions we have never asked before about capitalism, power, politics, the demands of citizenship, the purpose of education and civic courage itself.</p>
<p>There will be no real movement for real change in America without addressing a revolution in consciousness, one that makes education central to politics. </p>
<p>Americans can survive Trump — and even a second term of Trump — if they resurrect a language of critique and possibility, and develop a mass movement that draws from history and provides the economic, cultural and political conditions to lift the U.S. out of the present-day socio-political morass.</p>
<p>Americans need a vision they can fight for, not just a fear they can overcome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Giroux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans can survive a second Trump term if they resurrect a language of critique and possibility that draws from history and shields the U.S. from authoritarianism.Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.