CasaPound Italia’s cultural imaginary

ABSTRACT

CasaPound Italia (CPI) is an Italian extreme-right movement. It has its headquarters in Rome but the movement has branches in other northern and southern cities. Members of CPI define themselves as ‘Fascists of the Third Millennium’. Bulli’s article focuses on the mix of cultural imaginaries that the organization offers to its members and sympathizers as well as for public consumption. The movement is able to function at different levels of political mobilization—and to recruit members by presenting a targeted set of incentives designed to engage them politically—which include various forms of cultural identification. All these levels are linked by a common idealized subjectivity that brings together classic elements of historic Fascism, including cultural references to the ‘speed of action’ typical of Futurism, with an overcoming of the party-centred post-Fascist Italian political subculture. Bulli’s article emphasizes CPI’s strategic construction of a multifaceted cultural imaginary in which language, communication and codes of conduct play a role comparable to values and ideology.     

A Day in the “Swamp”: Understanding Discourse in the Online Counter-Jihad Nebula

The counter-jihad scene can be understood variously as a collection of parties, pundits, and movements all linked by a common belief that the West is being subjected to takeover by Muslims. In this article, I seek to improve academic understanding of this collection of movements, parties, and ideas by analyzing the discourse presented by a collection of online advocates whom I describe as the counter-jihad nebula. The findings suggest a need to at least partially re-evaluate the role of the nebula within the wider counter-jihad scene as well as the relationship between the wider counter-jihad scene and mainstream political discourse as expressed through various media outlets.     

Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism: The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition of 1938

ABSTRACT:

This essay explores an imperial state exhibition held in Tokyo in 1938 and explains how the exhibition displayed a fascist worldview of historical crisis and national regeneration that was taking shape in Japan in the late 1930s. The exhibition – entitled the Thought War Exhibition (Shisōsen tenrankai) – was curated by the Japanese state's newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya Department Store in downtown Tokyo. Comprised of materials related to the Communist International, the Spanish Civil War, the national liberation struggle in China, and the communist and anticolonial movements inside the Japanese Empire, the Exhibition portrayed Japan's invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 as an extension of a global thought war against communism, requiring all imperial subjects to purify themselves of foreign influences and mobilize for national thought defense. While on the surface this Exhibition was an example of prewar state propaganda, it also expressed a fascist worldview that was coalescing in the Japanese state in the late 1930s. This essay investigates how this fascist worldview was exhibited in a sequence of displays, including dioramas, panoramas, illuminated maps, and display cases, and how these displays revealed constitutive contradictions that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan.     

The Extreme Right in Britain: Still an ‘Ugly Duckling’ but for How Long?

In recent years the far right in Britain has received increased support in local, national, and European elections. Examining these results researchers have pointed toward a wider potential support base for parties such as the BNP. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with the BNP leadership, strategists, and organisers this paper argues that both the party's environment and the party itself must be incorporated if we are to provide a satisfactory account of recent success. Through cross-national co-operation and influence from far right parties elsewhere the BNP has embarked upon a concerted attempt to build political legitimacy. This paper examines this process whilst also highlighting some general policy implications emerging from recent BNP gains.     

Guarding the honor of the nation and the prosperity of the state: National Defense of Lithuania ‘Iron Wolf’ (1928-1930)

The radical right, semi-clandestine, and paramilitary organization called the National Defense of Lithuania ‘Iron Wolf’ (1928–1930) is, perhaps, the best known and the only example of an attempt to introduce a fascist form of governance in interwar Lithuania. Established and controlled by the Lithuanian Nationalist Union (Lietuvi? tautinink? s?junga) authorities, its first and foremost task was to protect the new nationalist regime from its political opponents, spread propaganda, as well as report any acts of societal disloyalty and disobedience. The short-lived organization was shut down due to conflict between the highest authorities and the threat that ‘Iron Wolf’ was beginning to pose to President Smetona’s rule.     

‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition

In October 1945 an ‘anti-alien’ petition was launched in the London Borough of Hampstead that, under the pretext of securing homes for returning ex-servicemen, campaigned for the removal of the district's predominantly Jewish refugee population. By examining the nature of support and opposition to the petition Macklin's local case study provides further evidence to suggest that reactions to those who had fled Nazi terror remained complex. Those who did find sanctuary were characterized by the local press not as ‘deserving victims’, but as the cause of the problems created by their Nazi persecutors. A detailed examination of the rhetoric of the petition movement reveals how this defence of local amenities against ‘alien‘ encroachment can rightfully be defined as ‘antisemitic’. Following an analysis of the role of the local press, Macklin examines its impact on, and interaction with, local and central government policy regarding reconstruction and immigration, which continued to be dominated by the dogma that harmonious race relations necessitated the strict control of immigrants, regardless of the desperation of their plight. He concludes by examining the media's symbiotic relationship with extremist and fascist politics.     

Whitewashing Hitler: ‘Revisionist’ history‐distorters at work

In April 1983 Canadians were shocked to learn of a politically active school teacher in Alberta who taught his students an antisemitic view of history. The teacher was dismissed but he had expressed antisemitic views in the classroom for years.     

The use of antisemitism in the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War saw an outburst of antisemitism in the Nationalist-controlled areas of the peninsula and in the Moroccan protectorate, an antisemitism influenced by the work of ultra-right-wing intellectuals associated with the Acción Española review. All the factions of the Nationalist camp interpreted the civil war as a crusade against the 'Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevist' conspiracy. In mainland Spain, where there were only a few Jewish families, antisemitism was largely confined to the written word. In this way, it was used mostly as a rhetorical tool to attack the Nationalists' real and imaginary enemies: the Republican forces, the French and the Soviets. Although there was no systemic persecution of the Jews, some aggressive acts took place in Seville and Barcelona. The situation of the larger Jewish community in Spanish Morocco was quite different. The Moroccan Jews were adversely affected by the Nationalists' efforts to enlist the support of the Muslim population against the Republicans and by the German presence in the protectorate. They were also victimized by the Falangists who confiscated their property and imposed heavy fines on them. The military authorities of Morocco tried to restrain these excesses as they realized that blatant antisemitism could hurt the rebels' image abroad. They also believed that Jewish wealth and connections could serve the Nationalist cause.     

Foreword

Recent political statements have revitalized the debate over Fascist antisemitism and the response by Italians to Benito Mussolini’s anti-Jewish campaign. Luconi offers an overview of the current reassessment of the attitude of Italians towards Jews during Il Duce’s rule in English- and Italian-language scholarship. Contrary to previous findings that have tended to emphasize the Italian people’s effective contribution to efforts to help Jews under the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation of their country, more recent research has stressed that, notwithstanding remarkable exceptions, Italians—both inside and outside the Fascist hierarchy—were far from being immune to antisemitism and, therefore, did not refrain from actively participating in the discrimination, persecution and deportation of Jews in the pre-war and war years.     

Erecting fascism: nation,identity, and space in Trieste in the first half of the twentieth century

This article discusses the transformation of the urban space after World War I in the former Habsburg port city of Trieste. It reveals the key role played by the newly annexed northeastern Adriatic borderland in the national symbolism of postwar Italy, and it indicates how slogans and notions of Italian nationalism, irredentism, and fascism intertwined and became embodied in the local cultural landscape. The analysis is mostly concentrated on the era between the two world wars, but the aim of the article is to interpret the interwar years as part of longer term historical developments in the region rather than a break in its history. Looking at how monuments, buildings, and spatial planning in general functioned as ideological and national marking, and how this helped to shape the nation in a multi-ethnic town, this article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of changes as well as continuities in the modern history of south-central Europe. It argues that even if the cityscape had undergone drastic changes in its aesthetics after World War I, its ideological language was rooted in prewar nationalism and continued to support the local urban palimpsest in the Cold War.