The Rise of the Far Right in Europe

Far-right movements have, in recent years, gained striking momentum across Europe. From France's anti-immigrant National Front and neo-Nazis in Germany to efforts to rehabilitate Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini in Spain and Italy, forces of extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and imperial nostalgia have increased in prominence as well as popularity. The current moment is not, of course, the first time that the continent has experienced a rise in right-wing extremism. Fascism, from the 1920s onward, likewise offered violent, totalitarian solutions to the tensions of mass politics and populist resentment in polarized societies. How, precisely, do today's reactionary political formations relate to their fascistic forebears? What social and cultural dynamics is each responding to and, perhaps just as significantly, what historical legacies are they drawing on? In this course, we ask how has the present wave of far-right parties in western and central Europe tapped into notions of national decline, instability, and changing demographics? What can we learn about these movements by studying histories of European fascism in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy? And finally, how have these histories been obscured and rehabilitated in different ways in each of these countries? By moving from contemporary cases of resurgent nationalist sentiment to their interwar predecessors and back again, and through a consideration of novels, films, historical documents, speeches, and monuments, the course seeks to uncover how anxieties of migration, race, and empire—as well as changing roles of religion, gender, and nationhood—shaped political animosities and allegiances within the European far right both a century ago and today.