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Fascism Past and Present, West and East - An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the

An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right

Herausgeber: Griffin, Roger; Umland, Andreas; Loh, Werner

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In the opinion of some historians the era of fascism ended with the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler. Yet the debate about its nature as a historical phenomenon and its value as a term of historical analysis continues to rage with ever greater intensity, each major attempt toresolve it producing different patterns of support, dissent, and even hostility, from academic colleagues. Nevertheless, a number of developments since 1945 not only complicate the methodological and definitional issues even further, but make it ever more desirable that politicians, journalists, lawyers, and the general public can turn to experts for a heuristically useful and broadly consensual definition of the term. These developments include: the emergence of a highly prolific European New Right, the rise of radical right populist parties, the flourishing of ultra-nationalist movements in the former Soviet empire, the radicalization of some currents of Islam and Hinduism into potent political forces, and the upsurge of religious terrorism. Most monographs and articles attempting to establish what is meant by fascism are written from a unilateral authoritative perspective, and the intense academic controversy the term provokes has to be gleaned from reviews and conference discussions. The uniqueness of this book is that it provides exceptional insights into the cut-and-thrust of the controversy as it unfolds on numerous fronts simultaneously, clarifying salient points of difference and moving towards some degree of consensus. Twenty-nine established academics, mostly German but including several prominent experts working in English, were invited by the periodical Erwägen Wissen Ethik (Deliberation Knowledge Ethics) to engage with an article by Roger Griffin, one of the most influential theorists in the study of generic fascism in the Anglophone world. The resulting debate progressed through two rounds of critique and reply, forming a fascinating patchwork of consensus and sometimes heated disagreement. In a spin-off from the original discussion of Griffin s concept of fascism, a second exchange documented here focuses on the issue of fascist ideology in contemporary Russia. This collection is essential reading for all those who realize the needto provide the term fascism with theoretical rigour, analytical precision, and empirical content despite the complex issues it raises, and for any specialist who wants to participate in fascist studies within an international forum of expertise. The book will change the way in which historians and political scientists think about fascism, and make the debate about the threat it poses to infant democracies like Russia more incisive not just for academics, but for politicians, journalists, and the wider public.

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03.07.2006

A review by Cyprian Blamires. A most remarkable event: an English scholar, native of an island legendary for its insularity and for its tenacious suspicion of all things Continental and ‘foreign’ dares to issue a challenge to his German counterparts to lay aside their inward-looking … Mehr A review by Cyprian Blamires. A most remarkable event: an English scholar, native of an island legendary for its insularity and for its tenacious suspicion of all things Continental and ‘foreign’ dares to issue a challenge to his German counterparts to lay aside their inward-looking preoccupations and enter an ongoing global debate! The English scholar, Roger Griffin, is an Oxford-based specialist in the topic of global (or ‘generic’) fascist studies, and his target is German academia’s allegedly insular refusal to take seriously the seething mass of new ideas and new approaches to global fascism which has emerged in the Anglo-American world of scholarship over the last forty years. The focus of discussion in this book is the particular theory of generic fascism propounded by Griffin, which he expounds in the opening chapter. The rest of the first half of the volume comprises the critical responses of a large number of scholars including his own Anglo-American colleagues as well as quite a number of German specialists. In the second half of the work Griffin is given a chance to respond to the numerous critiques of his approach and then the other contributors also exercise their right of reply to his response. He then rounds the book off with a final response to their critiques. An appendix at the end contains a different but related debate between A. James Gregor and Andreas Umland on the question of whether the Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin can be classed as a ‘fascist’. This then is quite an unusual book. We are all familiar with conference proceedings in which a large number of contributors look at different aspects of the same theme; we are familiar with Festschrifts in which the colleagues of a particular eminent individual contribute chapters on the basis of their own speciality; but this is something different. A volume in which many contributors home in on a particular theory of one scholar and express their approval or disapproval of it. And it has to be said that the sparks really do fly. What is at stake is the view of generic fascism which Griffin has been promoting tirelessly over the past fifteen years. He advocates – as a heuristic tool, not an absolute truth – a description of fascism as revolutionary palingenetic hypernationalism, i.e. a call for the ‘rebirth’ of a decadent (real or ideal) ‘nation’ through violent revolution. He claims that these core elements of fascism can be found in the regimes of both Mussolini and Hitler, so that Nazism was not to do with some Sonderweg followed by Germany but was simply the German version of an idea that transcended German culture. Griffin does not recognise any other regimes (such as Francoist Spain) as properly fascist, only a limited number of political movements in various countries both before the War and after it. He argues that fascism did not disappear in 1945 but simply mutated into a fragmented and largely leaderless movement competing for propaganda space in far less visible ways than the mass movements of the thirties. The responses in this book to Griffin’s ideas range from the adulatory to the vituperative. Some of the Anglophone scholars are very positive about his theory, especially Stanley Payne, one of the grey eminences of postwar fascist studies. Others are not at all convinced, in particular A. James Gregor, a specialist in Italian fascist thought. The ire of Gregor and of several others is aroused by Griffin’s rather cheeky claim that ‘a new consensus’ has emerged in anglophone fascist studies which supports some or all of his arguments. This claim is clearly rather propagandistic and the substance behind it seemingly amounts to no more than the coexistence of a number of sympathisers. Gregor’s splenetic denial of this consensus does look rather ostrich-like given that several Anglophone contributors to the volume do in actual fact openly express a greater or lesser degree of support for Griffin’s theses. Weniger

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