The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right

by Enzo Traverso

Overview

What is fascism in the twenty first century?

What does Fascism mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century? When we pronounce this word, our memory goes back to the years between the two world wars and envisions a dark landscape of violence, dictatorships, and genocide. These images spontaneously surface in the face of the rise of radical right, racism, xenophobia, islamophobia and terrorism, the last of which is often depicted as a form of "Islamic fascism."

Beyond some superficial analogies, however, all these contemporary tendencies reveal many differences from historical fascism, probably greater than their affinities. Paradoxically, the fear of terrorism nourishes the populist and racist rights, with Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the US claiming to be the most effective ramparts against "Jihadist fascism". But since fascism was a product of imperialism, can we define as fascist a terrorist movement whose main target is Western domination? Disentangling these contradictory threads, Enzo Traverso's historical gaze helps to decipher the enigmas of the present. He suggests the concept of post-fascism—a hybrid phenomenon, neither the reproduction of old fascism nor something completely different—to define a set of heterogeneous and transitional movements, suspended between an accomplished past still haunting our memories and an unknown future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788730464
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	01/29/2019
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Enzo Traverso is the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University. His publications, all translated into various languages, include more than ten authored and edited books, including The Marxists and the Jewish Question, The Jews and Germany, Understanding the Nazi Genocide, The Origins of Nazi Violence, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945 and Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Part I The Present as History

1 From Fascism to Postfascism 3

Definitions

Europe

Populism

Trump

'Anti-Polities'

Intellectuals

Nation

Macron

2 Right-Wing Identitarianism 41

Identity Politics

Laïcité

Intersectionality

Identity and Memory

Civil Religion

3 Spectres of Islam 65

Anti-Semitism

Islamophobia

Judeophobia

Islamic Fascism?

Part II History in the Present

4 Interpreting Fascism 97

Culture

Ideology

'Revolution'

The Public Use of History

5 Antifascism 131

Revisionisms

'Anti-Antifascism'

Syllogisms

Kquivalences

'Grey Zone'

6 The Uses of Totalitarianism 151

Stages in the History of a Concept

Shifting from Political Theory to Historiography

Comparing Totalitarian Violence

Historical Patterns

Comparing Nazi and Stalinist Ideologies

ISIS and Totalitarianism

Conclusion 183

Index 189

Editorial Reviews

A valuable intervention.”
—Natasha Lennard, Times Literary Supplement

“An essential contribution to the debate around the crisis in the EU and the rise of the far right.”
—Theory & Struggle

From the Publisher