This syllabus, designed around a typical 12-15 week university course, reflects the suggestions of contributors from across the globe. Submissions were solicited via Twitter and Facebook, debated in internet fora, and selected to serve as a snapshot of the best of current and past scholarship. It is not meant to be definitive. Instead, it should serve as a foundation or guide for future study into the commonalities and differences between fascist, populist, and authoritarian movements and what they can tell us about present day concerns.
Included here are films, memoirs, books and articles on many varieties of right-wing authoritarianism. Some material was produced at the time; others are reflections, scholarly as well as personal. We have provided links to Google Books whenever possible, to help readers locate these sources. University libraries are the best place to look to find many of them, although a good many of these sources may be found at your local library or ordered in via lending agreements. Ask your local librarian for help.
“Interrogating the Past” offers a historical overview of fascist, populist, and right-leaning and/or authoritarian movements around the globe. Because the wide availability of crowd-sourced syllabi on US American history, we have not replicated their work but rather focused on other regions. Trump Syllabus, Trump Syllabus 2.0 and Trump Syllabus 3.0 are good places to get started for readings on US American history. For commentary on the present moment in the United States and elsewhere, click “Interrogating the Present.”
This is a work in progress, with some sections richer in content than others. We welcome your suggestions for filling out the syllabus.
The syllabus includes materials that should be useful for discussion, debate, and critique. Inclusion of an item does not indicate NFS’s endorsement of the author’s analysis or opinion.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- Why a crowdsourced syllabus?
SELECT LITERATURE:
Caldwell, Ellen C. “Teaching Trump: The Rise of the Crowd-Sourced Syllabus.” JSTOR Daily. 1 December 2016.
Evans, Jennifer V. "The New Fascism Syllabus: Networked Knowledge in the Digital Public Sphere." Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 57, no. 3 (2021): 264-287.
Heineman, Elizabeth. “Why a ‘New Fascism’ Syllabus?” The New Fascism Syllabus. 19 November 2016.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- What are fascism, populism, and authoritarianism?
- How do we understand the relationships among them?
- How can we interrogate the relevance of these categories today?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Benjamin, Walter. "Theories of German Fascism on the Collection of Essays War and Warrior, edited by Ernst Jünger." Die Gesellschaft 7:2 (1930): 32-41.
Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.
Finkelstein, Federico. From Fascism to Populism in History. University of California Press, 2017.
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race. Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Belknap Press, 2002.
Gordon, Linda. "What Do We Mean by Populism? The “Second” Klan as a Case Study." Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association 55:6 (2017).
Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. Routledge, 1993.
—————. Fascism (Key Concepts in Political Theory). Polity Books, 2018.
Hawkins, Keith. "Is Chavez Populist? Measuring Populist Discourse in Comparative Perspective." Comparative Political Studies 42 (2009): 1040-67.
Ionescu, Ghita and Ernest Gellner, eds. Populism: Its Meaning and National Character. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969.
Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American Century. Cornell University Press, 1998. (Especially the "Introduction" and Chapter 1: "Inheritance.")
Lacquer, Walter. Fascism: Past, Present, Future. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Mann, Michael. Fascists. Cornell University Press, 2004.
Mosse, George. The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism. University of Wisconsin Press, 2021. (Collected Works)
Müller, Jan-Werner. What is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Mudde, Cas and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. University of Oxford Press, 2017.
Neumann, Franz. The Democratic and Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory. Free Press, 1957. (Especially pp. 270-300.)
—————. "Anxiety and Politics." tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. First published in 1957; Republished in 2017.
Norton, Robert E. "Ernst Kantorowic: Man of Two Bodies." Times Literary Supplement. February 22, 2017.
Orwell, George. "What is Fascism?" The Tribune. 1944.
Paxton, Robert O. “The Five Stages of Fascism.” The Journal of Modern History 70, no. 1 (1998): 1–23.
Sternhell, Zeev. "Fascist Ideology," in Walter Laqueur, ed., Fascism: A Reader's Guide — Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography. University of California Press, 1976, pp. 315-376.
Traverso, Enzo. The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right. Verso, 2019.
Woodward, C. Vann. "The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual." The American Scholar 29 (1959-60): 55-72.
MISCELLANEOUS RESOURCES:
Team Populism (Brigham Young University).
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did fascist, populist, and authoritarian parties and governments tap contemporary concerns to promote their agendas?
- What role did factors like race, nationalism, political economy, mass violence, and response to other political strands play in how they sought support?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Adamson, Walter. Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism. Harvard University Press, 1993.
Adorno, Theordor, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford. The Authoritarian Personality. Harper and Brothers, 1950.
Frederickson, George M. “The Rise of Modern Racism: White Supremacy and Antisemitism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” In Racism: A Short History. Princeton University Press, 2003.
Griffin, Roger. “I Am No Longer a Human I am a Titan! A god! The Fascist Quest to Regenerate Time.” In Mark Feldman, ed. A Fascist Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Havel, Vaclav. "The Power of the Powerless". 1978.
Mosse, George. The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. 1966.
Nolte, Ernst. The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
Paxton, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage, 2005.
Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism: 1914-1945. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Sternhell, Zeev. The Birth of Fascist Ideology. Princeton University Press 1995.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. New York: Routledge, 1928.
Le Bon, Gustav. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895.
Mussolini, Benito and Giovanni Gentile. "The Doctrine of Fascism." Enciclopedia Italiana. 1932.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- In what way did the years between 1919 and 1939 distill fascism into its modern elements?
- To what extend did fascism and authoritarianism shape everyday life?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Arthurs, Joshua, Michael Ebner, and Kate Ferris. The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy: Outside the State? Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.
Berend, Ivan T. Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe Before World War II. University of California Press, 1998.
Fallada, Hans. Little Man What Now? Melville House, 2009.
Ferris, Kate. Everyday Life in Fascist Venice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Fritzsche, Peter. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. Oxford, 1990.
Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism? Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Oxford University Press, 1999.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Benjamin, Walter. "Moscow Diary." October 35 (Winter 1985): 9-135.
Roth, John. What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933. New York: W.W Norton, 2004.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- What was Fascism's initial socio-political program? And to what extent did those early objectives change and evolve during its conquest of power between the mid- to late-1920s?
- Mussolini's dictatorship boasted itself as a "totalitarian" form of government, meaning that the State's authority was supreme, unquestioned, and permanent. But how "totalitarian" was Il Duce's Fascist Government in practice?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945. University of California Press, 2004.
—————, and Mia Fuller. Italian Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Bessel, Richard. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Bosworth, R. J. B. Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945. New York: Penguin, 2007.
Cardoza, Anthony L. Agrarian Elites and Italian Fascism: The Province of Bologna, 1901-1926. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Corner, Paul. The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Duggan, Christopher. Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. University of California Press, 2000.
Fogu, Claudio. The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy. University of Toronto Press, 2003.
De Grazia, Victoria. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945. University of California Press, 1992.
—————. The Culture of Consent: Mass Organisation of Leisure in Fascist Italy. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Griffin, Roger. Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Helstosky, Carol. "Fascist Food Politics: Mussolini’s Policy of Alimentary Sovereignty." Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9:1 (March 1, 2004): 1-26.
Landy, Marcia. Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema, 1931-1943. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Lazzaro, Claudia, and Roger J. Crum. Donatello Among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy. Cornell University Press, 2005.
Mammone, Andrea. Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Passerini, Luisa. Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Reich, Jacqueline, and Piero Garofalo. Re-Viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943. Indiana University Press, 2002.
Ricci, Steven. Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922–1943. University of California Press, 2008.
Rodogno, Davide. Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Stone, Marla. The Patron State: Culture & Politics in Fascist Italy. Princeton University Press, 1998.
Willson, Perry. Peasant Women and Politics in Facist Italy: The Massaie Rurali. Routledge, 2014.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Levi, Carlo. Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year. New York: Farrar, Straus And Company, 1947.
Mussolini, Benito and Giovanni Gentile. "The Doctrine of Fascism." Enciclopedia Italiana. 1932.
Stone, Marla. The Fascist Revolution in Italy: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- Hitler's Germany drew on nationalist principles from before the 20th century, honed and shaped through street fighting and democratic crisis. How did Germany's legacy differentiate Nazism from the fascism of Mussolini?
- What role did racial ideology, antisemitism, rapidly changing sexual and gender norms, and the experience of mass violence play in shaping the particular brand of authoritarianism that took root in Germany?
- How was Nazism experienced in Germany?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Adorno, Theodor W., and Thomas Y. Levin. "On the Question: 'What Is German?'" New German Critique, 36 (1985): 121-31.
Bergen, Doris. Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Bessel, Richard. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Harper Collins, 1992.
Burleigh, Michael and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Confino, Alon. A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. Yale University Press, 2014.
Eley, Geoff. Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany, 1930-1945. Routledge, 2013.
Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933-39. Harper Perennial, 1998.
Fritzsche, Peter. Germans Into Nazis. Harvard University Press, 1998.
Gellately, Robert. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism? Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Herzog, Dagmar “Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism,” in Sexuality and German Fascism, ed. Dagmar Herzog. New York, 2005, pg. 22-66.
Kaplan, Marion. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.
Kershaw, Ian. The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich. Oxford University Press, 1987.
Kersaw, Ian. Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. Penguin Books, 2001.
Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Bloomsbury, 2006.
Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003.
Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Harvard University Press, 2003.
Maier, Charles S. The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity. Harvard University Press, 1988.
Mosse, George. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. Grosset & Dunlap, 1964.
Roseman, Mark. The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: The Wannsee Conference and the 'Final Solution'. Penguin, 2002.
Steigmann-Gall, Richard. The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Teege, Jennifer. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Heritage. The Experiment, 2015.
Wachsmann, Nikolas. KL: A History of Nazi Concentration Camps. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016.
Zimmerer, Jürgen. From Windhoek to Auschwitz: Reflections on the Relationship Between Colonialism and National Socialism. De Gruyter, 2023.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
Cohen, Peter. Undergångens Arkitektur. Documentary, History, 1989.
Färberböck, Max. Aimee & Jaguar. Biography, Drama, Romance, 1999.
Haneke, Michael. The White Ribbon. Drama, Mystery, 2010.
Heller, André, and Othmar Schmiderer. Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary. Documentary, Biography, War, 2002.
Hirschbiegel, Oliver. Downfall. Biography, Drama, History, 2005.
Kraume, Lars. The People vs. Fritz Bauer. Biography, Drama, Thriller, 2015.
Rothemund, Marc. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Biography, Crime, Drama, 2005.
Shortland, Cate. Lore. Drama, Romance, Thriller, 2012.
Szabó, István. Mephisto. Drama, 1982.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Heck, Alfons. A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika. Phoenix: Primer Publishers, 2005.
Kaes, Anton, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- What were the origins of French fascism? Was fascism "indigenous" to France, or was it instead inspired by Italy and Germany?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Irvine, William. "Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu." The Journal of Modern History 63:2 (June 1991): 271-295.
Jenkins, Brian, ed. France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French Authoritarian Right. Berghahn Books, 2007.
Kennedy, Sean. Reconciling France Against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and Parti Social Français, 1927-1945. McGill Queen's University Press, 2007.
—————, and Samuel Kalman. The French Right Between the Wars: Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism. Berghahn Books, 2014.
Millington, Chris. A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front. Bloomsbury, 2019.
Passmore, Kevin. From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province, 1928-1939. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
—————. The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy. Oxford University Press, 2013.
—————. Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Soucy, Robert. French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933-1939. Yale University Press, 1986.
Sternhell, Zeev. Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France. University of California Press, 1986.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- Why do some scholars see the Iberian Peninsula as the crucible of conflict between fascism and communism?
- What were the historical conditions for the rise of fascism in Spain and Portugal, and what explains fascism's tenacity there?
- How was "clerico-fascism" or its variants experienced in Spain and Portugal?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Blinkhorn, Martin. "Conservatism, Traditionalism and Fascism in Spain, 1898-1937." In Blinkhorn, Martin ed. Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in 20th-Century Europe. Routledge, 1990: pp. 118-137.
Bowen, Wayne H. Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order. University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Cowans, Jon. Modern Spain: A Documentary History. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Crumbaugh, Justin. Destination Dictatorship: The Spectacle of Spain's Tourist Boom and the Reinvention of Difference. SUNY Press, 2009.
Costa Pinto, António. The Blue Shirts: Portuguese Fascists and the New State. Social Science Monographs, 2000.
—————. Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation. Social Science Monographs, 1996.
Ellwood, Shelagh. Spanish Fascism in the Franco Era: Falange Española de las Jons, 1936–76. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Gallagher, Tom. "Conservatism, dictatorship and fascism in Portugal, 1914-45." In Blinkhorn, Martin, ed. Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in 20th-century Europe. Routledge, 1990: pp. 157-175.
Kaplan, Temma. Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso's Blue Period. University of California Press, 1993.
Pack, Sasha. Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco’s Spain. Palgrave Macmilan, 2006.
Preston, Paul. "Populism and Parasitism: The Falange and the Spanish Establishment, 1939-1975." In Blinkhorn, Martin ed. Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in 20th-Century Europe, pp. 138-156. Routledge, 1990.
—————. The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in 20th Century Spain. Routledge, 1995.
—————. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain. W.W. Norton, 2012.
Ribera Payá, P., & Martínez, J. I. D. "The End of the Spanish Exception: The Far Right in the Spanish Parliament." European Politics and Society 22:3 (2021): 410-434.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
Cuerda, José Luis. Butterfly. Drama, 2000.
Del Toro, Guillermo. Pan’s Labyrinth. Drama, Fantasy, War, 2007.
—————. The Devil’s Backbone. Drama, Horror, 2001.
Loach, Ken. Land and Freedom. Drama, War, 1996.
Marias, Javier. Your Face Tomorrow. New York: New Directions, 2005.
Picasso, Pablo. Guernica. 1937.
Rodríguez, Alberto. Marshland. Crime, Thriller, 2014.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Gelhorn, Martha. The Face of War. Simon & Schuster, 1959.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Penguin Classics, 1980.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did East Europe's history of nationalism, agrarian populism, and client relationships to "Great Powers" shape the forms of right-wing authoritarianism that took root there?
- What was the experience of both "home-grown" and externally-imposed fascist or Nazi rule in East Europe?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Adriano, Pino and Giorgo Cingolani. Nationalism and Terror Ante Pavelić and Ustashe Terrorism from Fascism to the Cold War. Central European University Press, 2018.
Antić, Ana. Therapeutic Fascism: Experiencing the Violence of the Nazi New Order. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Berend, Ivan T. Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before WWII. University of California Press, 1998.
Clark, Roland. Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania. Cornell University Press, 2015
Hanebrink, Paul. In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism and Anti-Semitism, 1890-1944. Cornell University Press, 2006.
Haynes, Rebecca and Martyn Rady, eds. In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. I.B. Tauris & Co., 2011.
Ionid, Radu. "The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5:3: 419-453.
Iordachi, Constantin. "Charisma, Religion, and Ideology: Romania’s Interwar Legion of the Archangel Michael." In John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe. Central European University Press, 2013.
Lazaridis, Gabriella, Giovanna Campani, and Annie Benveniste. The Rise of the Far Right in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Mueller, Jan-Werner. What is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas. The Green Shirts and Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania. Center for Romanian Studies, 2001.
Paternotte, David and Roman Kuhar, eds. Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Riley, Dylan. The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Sandulescu, Valentin. "Fascism and Its Quest for the 'New Man': The Case of the Romanian Legionary Movement." Studia Hebraica 4 (2004): 349-61.
Yeomans, Rory. Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941—1945. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
Kadár, Ján, and Elmar Klos. The Shop on Main Street. Drama, 1966.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Goldstein, Slavko. 1941: The Year that Keeps Returning. New York Review of Books, 2013.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did Japan's extraordinary climb to Great Power status in a world dominated by the West evolve into ideologies of racial superiority and practices of colonialism?
- How did Japanese and colonial subjects experience Japan's years of right-authoritarian rule?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Yoneyama, Lisa. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Koga, Yukiko. Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People. Columbia University Press, 2015.
Hofmann, Reto. The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952. Cornell University Press, 2015.
Law, Ricky W. Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German-Japanese Relations, 1919–1936. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Tansman, Alan. The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Duke University Press, 2009.
Thomas, Julia Adeney, "Japan's War Without Pictures: Normalizing Fascism," in Thomas and Geoff Eley, Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right. Duke University Press, 2020.
Young, Louise. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Uchida, Jun. Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea 1876-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did Latin America's history of "strong-man" rule evolve into populism in the mid 20th century?
- Largely spared the devastation of World War II, Latin America found itself under intense pressure during the Cold War. How did external and internal forces shape the late 20th-century era of dictatorship and dirty wars?
- How did Latin Americans experience dictatorship, dirty war, and the transition to peace?
POPULISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM, 1930S-1960S:
Ching, Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940. University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.
Deutsch, Sandra McGee. Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890-1939. Stanford University Press, 1999.
Finchelstein, Federico. Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945. Duke University Press, 2010.
Knight, Alan. "Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico." Journal of Latin American Studies 30.2 (May 1998): 223-248.
Gould, Jeffrey. “Nicaragua.” In Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, eds. Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944-1948. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Malloy, James M, ed. Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977.
Plotkin, Mariano Ben. Mañana es San Perón: A Cultural History of Perón’s Argentina. Scholarly Resources, 2003.
Karush, Matthew B. and Oscar Chamosa, eds. The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina. Duke University Press, 2010.
Derby, Lauren. The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo. Duke University Press, 2009.
Turits, Richard Lee. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford University Press, 2004.
Power, Margaret. Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964-1973. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
DICTATORSHIPS AND DIRTY WARS, 1960S-1990S:
Davila, Jerry. Dictatorship in South America. Wiley Blackwell, 2013.
Schirmer, Jennifer. The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Feitlowitz, Marguerite. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Finchelstein, Federico. The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Argentina. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Stern, Steve J. Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973-1988. Duke University Press, 2006.
Weld, Kristen. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. Duke University Press, 2014.
LATIN AMERICAN POPULISMS, 2000-PRESENT:
De la Torre, Carlos. Populist Seduction in Latin America. Ohio University Press, 2010.
————— and Cynthia J. Arnson, eds. Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Desanzo, Juan Carlos. Eva Peron: The True Story. Biography, Drama, History, 1996.
Guzmán, Patricio. Chile, the Obstinate Memory. Documentary, 1999.
—————. The Battle of Chile: Part I. Documentary, 1975.
—————. The Battle of Chile: Part II. Documentary, 1976.
—————. The Battle of Chile: Part III. Documentary, 1979.
—————. The Pinochet Case. Documentary, 2001.
Martínez, Gabriela. Keep Your Eyes on Guatemala. Documentary. 2014.
Martínez, Tomás Eloy. The Perón Novel. Vintage International, 1999.
Puenzo, Luis. The Official Story. Drama, History, War, 1985.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Asturias, Miguel Angel. El señor presidente. Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 2000.
Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1986.
Berryman, Phillip E., tran. Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (two volumes). University of Notre Dame Press, 1993.
Rothenberg, Daniel, ed. Memory of Silence: The Guatemalan Truth Commission Report. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did the the legacy of colonialism and anti-colonial activity shape the Arab Middle East's response to European fascism? How did concerns about Zionism intersect with the response to European fascism?
- What are the characteristics of clerical and non-clerical authoritarian states in the Middle East in the late 20th and early 21st century?
- How did Zionism's intersecting concerns of liberalism, nationalism, and colonialism - together with Holocaust memory - intersect to create exclusionary authoritarian strands in Israel?
INTERWAR/WWII FASCISM:
Abbasi, Mustafa. "Palestinians fighting against Nazis: The Story of Palestinian Volunteers in the Second World War" War in History 26(2), 2017: 227-249.
Flores, Alexander. "The Arabs as Nazis? Some Reflections on 'Islamofascism' and Arab Anti-Semitism" Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012): 450-470.
Gershoni, Israel, ed. Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion. University of Texas Press, 2015.
————— and James Jankowski. Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s. Stanford University Press, 2009.
Goda, Norman. "Nazi Germany and the Arab/Muslim World: Recent Historical Directions" European History Quarterly, 47, 1 (2017): 99-106.
Herf, Jeffrey C. “Nazi Germany's Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings,” Central European History, 42, 4, December 2009: 709-736.
-------"Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazis and the Holocaust: The Origins, the Nature and Aftereffects of Collaboration,“ Jewish Political Studies Review, 26, 3/4, (Fall 2014): 13-37.
Motadel, David. Islam and Nazi Germany's War. Harvard University Press, 2014.
--------. Global Authoritarian Moment and the Revolt against Empire, The American Historical Review, 124, 3 (2019), 843–877.
Nicosia, Francis and Bogac Ergene, eds., Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Middle East: Arab and Turkish Responses. Berghahn, 2018.
Nordbruch, Götz. Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945. Routledge, 2009.
Tamir, Dan. "From a Fascist's Notebook to the Principles of Rebirth: The Desire for Social Integration in Hebrew Fascism, 1928-1942." The Historical Journal 57:4 (2014): 1057-1084.
—————. "Some Thoughts about Hebrew Fascism in Inter-War Palestine." Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 63:4 (2011): 364-381.
Wien, Peter. Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941. Routledge, 2006.
HOLOCAUST MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
Achcar, Gilbert. The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Metropolitan Books, 2010.
Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Translated by Haim Watzman. Henry Holt, 1991.
Zertal, Idith. Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Translated by Chaya Galai. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
AUTHORITARIANISM IN THE ARAB MIDDLE EAST:
Herf, Jeffrey C. “Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too Little-Known Fascist Charter” The American Interest (August 1, 2014)
-----, “Fascism with a Religious Face. Hamas at War with Israel. Forever,” American Purpose, (May 26, 2021).
Lust-Okar, Ellen. Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Pratt, Nicola. Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005.
Sassoon, Joseph. Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Schlumberger, Oliver, ed. Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes. Stanford University Press, 2008.
Tuğal, Cihan. The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism. Verso, 2016.
ZIONISM AND ISRAEL:
Aran, Gideon and Ron E. Hassner. "Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present." Terrorism and Political Violence 25:3 (2013): 355-405.
El-Or, Tamar and Gideo Aran. "Giving Birth to a Settlement: Maternal Thinking and Political Action of Jewish Women on the West Bank." Gender and Society 9:1 (1995): 60-78.
Yael Hirschhorn, Sara. City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. Harvard University Press, 2017.
Kuntsman, Adi and Rebecca L. Stein. Digital Militarism: Israel's Occupation in the Social Media Age. Stanford University Press, 2015.
Lustick, Ian S. "Making Sense of the Nakba: Ari Shavit, Baruch Marzel, and Zionist Claims to Territory." Journal of Palestine Studies 44:2 (2015): 7-27.
Robinson, Shira. Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State. Stanford University Press, 2013.
Robson, Laura. States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. University of California Press, 2017.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
Bakr, Salwa. The Golden Chariot. Garnet, 1995.
Mahfouz, Naguib. The Day the Leader Was Killed. Anchor Books, 2000.
Tamir, Zakariya. Tigers on the Tenth Day and Other Stories. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. Quartet Books, 1985.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Beshara, Adel. Antun Sa'adeh: The Man, His Thought: An Anthology. Ithaca Press, 2007.
Einstein, Albert, et al. “Einstein Letter Warning of Zionist Facism In Israel.” The New York Times. December 4, 1948.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How did the history of colonialsm and partition contribute to the rise of nationalist-right parties in India
- What are the particular characteristics of the Hindu Right?
BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP) AND HINDU NATIONALISM:
Doniger, Wendy and Martha Nussbaum ed. Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Basu, Amrita. Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
—————. "The Changing Fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party." In Atul Kohli and Prerna Singh, eds. Handbook of Indian Politics. Routledge, 2012.
Leidig, Eviane. "Hindutva as a variant of right-wing extremism," Patterns of Prejudice 54:3 (2020): 215-237.
WOMEN AND HINDU NATIONALISM:
Basu, Amrita. "Rethinking Communalism and Fundamentalism: Women's Activism and Religious Politics in India." Journal of Women’s History 10:4 (Winter 1999): pp. 136-172.
—————. "Hindu Women’s Activism and the Questions that it Raises," Betsy Reed ed. Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror. Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002.
Jeffery, Patricia and Amrita Basu eds. Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Sethi, Manisha. "Avenging Angels and Nurturing Mothers: Women in Hindu Nationalism," Economic and Political Weekly, 37:16 (2002): 1545-1552.
Menon, Kalyani. Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
INDONESIA
Bevins, Vincent. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World. Hatchette, 2020.
Mann, Michael. "Counterfactuals: India and Indonesia" in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Mark, Ethan. "Fascisms Seen and Unseen: The Netherlands, Japan, Indonesia, and the Relations of Imperial Crisis," in Julia Adeney Thomas and Geoff Eley, eds. Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth Century Rise of the Global Right. Duke University Press, 2020, pp.183-210.
Robinson, Geoffrey B. The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66. Princeton University Press, 2018.
Roosa, John. Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup D'Etat in Indonesia. University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
SELECT CULTURAL WORKS:
In the Name of Ram, dir. Anand Patwardhan, 1992.
Father, Son and Holy War, dir Anand Patwardhan, 1994.
The Boys in the Branch, dir. Lalit Vachani, 1993.
The Men in the Tree, dir. Lalit Vachani, 2002.
The World Before Her, dir. Nisha Pahuja, 2012.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Jaffrelot, Christophe, ed. Hindu Nationalism: A Reader. Princeton University Press, 2009.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- How should we define post-1945 movements and states, i.e. neo-fascism, post-fascism?
- How did the conditions of the Cold War and decolonization change far Right politics?
- What continuities can we identify from interwar and wartime fascism later in the century, or in the new millenium?
SELECT HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Art, David. Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Betz, Hans-Georg. Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 1994.
Chin, Rita, Heide Fehrenbach, Geoff Eley, and Atina Grossman. After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe. University of Michigan Press, 2009.
Ford, Robert and Matthew Goodwin. Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain. Routledge, 2004.
Geary, Daniel, Camilla Schofield, and Jennifer Sutton, eds. Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump. Manchester University Press, 2020.
Givens, Terri E. Voting Radical Right in Western Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Jackson, Paul and Anton Shekhovtsov, eds. The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right: A Special Relationship of Hate. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Kaplan, Jerry and Leonard Weinberg. The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right. Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Koehler, Daniel. Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century: The 'National Socialist Underground' and the History of Terror from the Far-Right in Germany. Routledge, 2017.
Kondor, Katherine and Mark Littler, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Far-Right Extremism in Europe. Routledge, 2024.
Macklin, Graham. Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Mammone, Andrea. Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
-------, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins. Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From Local to Transnational. Routledge, 2012.
Mudde, Cas. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Mulhall, Joe. British Fascism after the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939-1958. Routledge, 2021.
Reichardt, Sven. “What is Post-Fascism?” Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, June 4, 2025.
SELECT PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
Orbán, Victor. "Viktor Orbán's Speech at the 14th Kötcse Civil Picnic." Speech, Kötcse, Hungary, September 17, 2015. Website of the Hungarian Government.
Pierece, William Luther. The Turner Diaries (1978)
Yockey, Francis Parker. Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (1962).
