The Rise of the Far Right in Europe

History E-1225, Fall 2021

Wednesdays, 5:10-7:10 pm EST, via Zoom

Instructor: John Boonstra (jboonstra@fas.harvard.edu)

Office hours: Mondays, 5:30-6:30 pm EST and by appointment (via Zoom)

 

Description of Course: 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 Franco and 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 seminar, we will ask: first, how has the present wave of far-right parties in western and central Europe tapped into notions of national decline, instability, and changing demographics? Second, 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nationalist sentiment to their interwar predecessors and back again, and through a consideration of novels, films, historical documents, speeches, and monuments, among other sources, the course will seek to uncover how anxieties of migration, race, and empire—as well as changing roles of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.

Course Assignments and Grading: This will be a reading- and writing-intensive course. Accordingly, you are expected to have read each week’s texts before we meet. You will each write three short papers—and give one short in-class presentation, in pairs—over the course of the semester, as well as one final project. In addition, you will post at least five short reading responses to a week’s reading or in response to a given prompt. Participation will also be an important component (worth 25%) of your final grade. Please consult the Assignments tab for more information about course assignments. In addition, you're encouraged to take advantage of the Harvard Extension School Writing Center for your writing assignments.

Your first assignment will be a 4-5 page close reading of a passage, podcast, or song, OR a visual analysis of a photograph, film still, or monument. This source should come from the first five weeks of the syllabus, and will be due on Friday, October 1 at 11:59 pm EST. The paper will be worth 15% of your final grade.

Your second assignment will be a 5-6 page argument-based essay on a novel or film from the first two thirds of the semester. It will be due on Friday, November 5 at 11:59 pm EST. It will be worth 15% of your final grade.

You will also each give one short (10-12 minute) in-class presentation, in pairs, on a theme of a particular week's reading, and with questions for discussion. For this, you should correspond and/or meet with me before class and prepare a 1-2 page outline, due by 9 am EST on Wednesday. This will be worth 10% of your final grade.

For your final project, you will write a 8-10 page argument-based essay about a particular aspect of Far Right politics, ideology, or history, as reflected through any of the texts or historical contexts we have studied. You will draw on both primary and secondary sources, from the syllabus as well as through external research. The final paper will be due on Friday, December 17 at 11:59 pm EST and will amount to 20% of your final grade.

Your five discussion posts will be worth a total of 15% of your final grade. These may include questions for discussion as well as short responses to prompts given the previous week (250 words maximum), and should be posted on Canvas by 11:59 pm on Tuesday before class. At least two of these responses should be posted during the first seven weeks of the semester.

Graduate-credit students will have the option to expand their writing and research assignments, in consultation with the instructor, if they choose to.

Grades will be assessed as follows:

• Participation: 25%
• Discussion posts: 15%
• Close reading: 15%
• Critical essay: 15%
• Presentation and outline: 10%
• Final paper: 20%

Course Policies: Please read and refer to the Course Policies page carefully. We will be going over these during the first class meeting.

Assigned Texts: The following books are available for purchase (used or new), at the Harvard Coop, through Library Reserves, and as ebooks whenever possible . PDFs of other readings are available on the course Canvas site, where films will also be available for streaming. If you encounter any problems (financial or otherwise) accessing course material, please get in touch with me.

- Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, and Future (Oxford Univ., 1996)

- Hannah Arendt, On Violence (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969)

- Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis (2001), transl. Anne McLean (Vintage, 2003)

- Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (1963), transl. Jenny McPhee (New York Review, 2017)

- Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française (2004), transl. Sandra Smith (Vintage, 2007)

- Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair (1947), transl. Paul Rubens (New York Review, 2013)

- Bernhard Schlink, The Reader (1995), transl. Carol Brown Janeway (Vintage, 1997)

- Pap Khouma, I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan (2006), transl. Rebecca Hopkins (Indiana Univ., 2010)

- Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder (1997), transl. Joanna Kilmartin (Univ. of California, 1999)

* n.b. Syllabus is subject to change throughout the semester!

 

Course Schedule:

I. The Far Right Emergent

Week 1 (Wednesday, September 1). Legacies of the Far Right

Anthony Faiola and Stephanie Kirchner, “In Germany, the language of Nazism is no longer buried in the past,” Washington Post, December 9, 2016 

Thomas Chatterton Willliams, “The French Origins of ‘You Shall Not Replace US:’ The European Thinkers Behind the White-Nationalist Rallying Cry,” The New Yorker, November 27, 2017

Rachel Donadio, “The New Populist Playbook,” The Atlantic, September 5, 2019 (pdf version here)

Tobias Buck, “Facing up to Franco: Spain fifty years on,” FT Magazine, May 8, 2015

* Short in-class [ungraded] writing assignment *

Week 2 (Wednesday, September 8). The F-Word: Fascism across Boundaries

Robert Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” Journal of Modern History 70 no. 1 (1998), 1-23

Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, and Future (1996), “The Essence of Fascism” and “Fascist Doctrine,” pp. 13-27

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), Ch. 1, “The Mythic Past,”  Ch. 5, “Hierarchy,” and Ch. 6, “Victimhood,” pp. 3-23, 78-108

 

II. Nationalism Resurgent

Week 3 (Wednesday, September 15). Germany: Terrorism and Totalitarianism

Katrin Bennhold et al., “Day X,” New York Times podcast, Part II: In the Stomach (36 minutes) and Part III: Blind Spot 2.0 (39 minutes)

Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1969) [87 pp]

Laqueur, Fascism, “Terror,” pp. 50-56

Week 4 (Wednesday, September 22). France: Politics and Poverty

Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine (1995) [film] [97 minutes]

Alain Mabanckou, “Letter to France” [pdf] in Tricia Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, eds., Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness (2012), pp. 88-95

Ted Swedenburg, “Beur/Maghribi Musical Interventions in France: Rai and Rap,” The Journal of North African Studies, 20:1 (2015), 109-126

Optional [songs]:

“Partir Loin” [“Go Far Away”] (2005), by 113 with Reda Taliani (with lyrics and translation)

"Don't Panik" (2008), by Médine (with lyrics and translation)

"Même pas fatigué" ["Not Even Tired"] (2009), by Khaled and Magic System (with lyrics and translation)

Week 5 (Wednesday, September 29). Italy: Monuments and Moderns

Bolzano Victory Monument (1928) [Permanent Exhibition and Documentation Centre videos]

Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana [Palace of Italian Civilization] (1938) [images and descriptions from Wikipedia and Rome's official tourist site]

Il Mausoleo delle Fosse Ardeatine [Mausoleum of the Ardeatine Caves] (1949) [images, descriptions, Audio Guide] 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Modernity is Just Over There: Colonialism and Italian National Identity,” interventions 8, no. 3 (2006), 380-393

Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism (2007), “Introduction,” Ch. 1, “History: 1869-1943,” and Ch. 5, “Colonial Modern," pp. 1-38, 107-136

Ben-Ghiat, “Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?” The New Yorker, October 5, 2017

[Audio recording of class available here]

* FIRST PAPER DUE Friday, October 1 at 11:59 pm EST *

Week 6 (Wednesday, October 6). Spain: Martyrs and Monsters

Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) [118 minutes]

Alex W. Palmer, “The Battle Over the Memory of the Spanish Civil War,” Smithsonian Magazine, July/August 2018

Sebastiaan Faber, Exhuming Franco: Spain's Second Transition (2021), Introduction and Ch. 1, “How Dead Is He?” pp 1-42

[Audio recording of class available here]

III. Fascism Ascendant

Week 7 (Wednesday, October 13). Spain: Violence and Victors

Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)

Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis (2001/2003) [246 pp]

Julian Casanova, Ch. 3, “The Faces of Terror: Violence during the Franco Dictatorship,” in Jerez-Farran and Amago, eds., Unearthing Franco’s Legacy (2010), pp. 90-120

Optional [film version]:

David Trueba (dir.), Soldados de Salamina (2003)

[Audio recording of class available here]

Week 8 (Wednesday, October 20). Italy: Fascism and Families

Benito Mussolini, “The Social and Political Doctrine of Fascism” (1932), from Marla Stone, ed., The Fascist Revolution in Italy: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford-St. Martin's, 2013), pp. 77-86

Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (1963) [190 pp]

Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1993), Ch. 4, “The Family Versus the State,” pp. 77-115

Week 9 (Wednesday, October 27). France: Occupation and Collaboration, Part I

Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française (2004), Part I, "Storm in June," pp. 1-204

Laqueur, Fascism, “France,” pp. 105-110

[Audio recording of class available here]

Week 10 (Wednesday, November 3). France: Occupation and Collaboration, Part II

Némirovsky, Suite Française, Part II, “Dolce,” pp. 205-372

Julian Jackson, “Occupied France: The Vichy Regime, Collaboration and the Resistance,” in Zeiler, T and Dubois, D (eds.), A Companion to World War II (Blackwell-Wiley: 2013), pp. 825-40

* SECOND PAPER DUE (Friday, November 5 at 11:59 pm EST) *

Week 11 (Wednesday, November 10). Germany: Degeneracy and Despair

Guide to the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition (1937)

Victoria & Albert Museum, "'Entartete Kunst': The Nazis' inventory of 'degenerate art'" 

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair (1947) [214 pp]

Laqueur, Fascism, “Fascist Culture,” and “Germany,” pp. 60-65, 110-115

 

IV. Extremism Resistant

Week 12 (Wednesday, November 17). Reading the Far Right

Bernhard Schlink, The Reader (1995) [218 pp]

Konrad H. Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (2002), Ch. 11, “Survival in Catastrophe: Mending Broken Memories,” pp. 317-341

[Recording of class available here]

* NO CLASS Wednesday, November 24 (Thanksgiving holiday) *

Week 13 (Wednesday, December 1). Selling the Far Right

Pap Khouma, I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan (2006/2010) [138 pp]

Italo Calvino, “Il Duce’s Portraits: Living with Mussolini,” The New Yorker, January 6, 2003, pp. 34-39

Laquer, Fascism, "Italy," pp. 100-105

[Recording of class available here]

Week 14 (Wednesday, December 8). Researching the Far Right

Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder (1997/2014) [128 pp]

Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (1991), “Introduction: The Neurosis,” pp. 1-14

Optional:

Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome, Ch. 6, “Vectors of Memory,” pp. 219-271

[Recording of class available here]

Week 15 (Wednesday, December 15). Comparisons and Compromises

Samuel Moyn, “The Trouble with Comparisons,” New York Review of Books (May 19, 2020)

Laqueur, Fascism, “The Prospects of Fascism,” pp. 217-235

 

* FINAL PAPER DUE (Friday, December 17 at 11:59 pm EST) *