L’apparition et la montée du fascisme en Italie sont des faits marquants du XXe siècle et plus précisément de l’entre-deux-guerres. Ce nouveau phénomène social a rapidement attiré l’attention de la communauté internationale. Il vient frapper les mentalités européennes dans le contexte de sociétés déjà polarisées par divers courants idéologiques. La Première Guerre mondiale a fait place à de fondamentales divergences d’opinions sur ce que devait être le futur, autant social qu’économique, des sociétés industrielles. S’étant imposé en Italie, le fascisme représente un de ses mouvements. Ce travail s’intéresse à la manière dont la société française a perçu la montée du fascisme italien. Pour ce faire, il retrace l’approche de plusieurs journaux français de 1919 à 1926 à l’égard de l’expérience italienne. L’analyse des grands journaux Le Temps, L'Humanité, Le Figaro et L'Action française permet un survol de l’opinion politique en France. La problématique avancée dans ce travail nous aide à en apprendre plus, non seulement sur l’apparition d’un phénomène majeur du siècle précédent, mais aussi, plus précisément, sur le regard porté sur lui par les grands courants politiques français. On a pu déceler plusieurs thèmes de prédilection abordés par la presse française. Premièrement, celle-ci a tenté de définir le fascisme, son origine et sa composition ainsi que le phénomène de la violence qui touchait la péninsule. Puis, le fascisme ayant accédé au pouvoir, elle a réfléchi sur le coup de force et ses répercussions. Finalement, elle a analysé la politique intérieure et extérieure du nouveau régime. Il en ressort une perspective unique grâce à l'analyse de quatre organes majeurs qui représentent et façonnent l'opinion publique en France. Notre analyse montre que le fascisme est un sujet préoccupant pour les contemporains par son caractère nouveau. Tous les journaux ont suivi l'évolution de ce mouvement avec attention. Les réactions en témoignent: ce fut, entre autres, l'exemple frappant d'une répression brutale pour les uns et l'émergence d'une idéologie susceptible de mettre fin à la terreur du bolchevisme pour les autres. Ce fut aussi un terrain d'affrontement idéologique. / The emergence and rise of fascism in Italy is a striking moment of the XXth century and more specifically of the interwar period. This new social phenomenon quickly attracted the attention of the international community. It influenced European mentalities greatly in the context of societies already polarised by different ideological trends. The First World War was followed by a period of divergent opinions on what should be the social and economic future of industrial societies. Fascism represents one of those movements that managed to impose itself in Italy This thesis examines the manner in which French society perceived the rise of Italian fascism. To that end, it retraces the narrative presented by major French newspapers from 1919 to 1926 when faced with the Italian experience. The analysis of the dailies Le Temps, L'Humanité, Le Figaro and L'Action française provides an overview of political opinion in France. The inquiry conducted in this dissertation allows us to learn more not only on the emergence of a major phenomenon of the past century but also, and more precisely, about the reaction to it by the main political trends in France. Several themes were taken up by the French press. First, it tried to identify fascism, its origins and composition and the phenomenon of violence that emerged in Italy. Then, once fascism was in power, it reflected on the seizure of power, followed by an analysis of both interior and foreign policy of the new regime. A unique perspective comes out of this study thanks to the analysis of four of the major organs that represent and help create public opinion. It shows that fascism, as a typically new phenomenon, was a subject of preoccupation for contemporaries. All of the dailies followed its evolution closely. It was, for some, the example of a brutal repression, among other things, and, for others, the emergence of a new ideology capable of ending the terror of bolshevism. It was also an issue for ideological confrontation.

This thesis contributes to the knowledge and understanding of the anti-racist movement in Sweden by describing its development from the early 1930s to the mid-2000s. It pays special attention to mapping and analyzing the ideas that have motivated anti-racist activities and their importance for mobilizing support and movement activity. Using the theoretical toolbox of the framing perspective, the strengths, weaknesses, possibilities and limitations of different anti-racist frames are discussed, as are the consequences of different types of intra-movement frame disputes and frame contests with external actors. By tracing and describing the historical development of the movement and different types of anti-racist frames, I create a typology of different anti-racist actors - what I call pragmatic, radical and moderate anti-racists. The activities of these types of actors are described throughout the long and winding history of the movement. In the thesis, the movement’s history is divided into four waves of protest. The movement’s roots stretch back to the 1930s and the struggle against Fascism and Nazism. It continues during the 1960s and onwards with the anti-apartheid movement, the 1980s mass mobilizations against domestic racist groups and the intensified struggles of the last decades against racist extremism, right-wing populism and various aspects of structural racism. Based on the typology, three cases are selected for further scrutiny. Pragmatic anti-racism is studied through the activities of Stoppa rasismen (Stop racism) in the 1980s, radical anti-racism through Antifascistisk aktion (Antifascist action, also known as AFA) during the 1990s and moderate anti-racism through Samling mot rasism och diskriminering (Gathering against racism and discrimination) at the turn of the millennium. By gaining access to extensive empirical material I have been able to follow each case from its first steps to its downfall. The material has been gathered from a variety of sources using different qualitative techniques. I have conducted semi-structured interviews with activists and analyzed protocols, pamphlets, journals, internal bulletins, mails, posters, speeches, web pages that have been disbanded, pictures, films and books. The analysis shows that the different types of actors face different challenges, and have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to mobilizing consensus and fostering participation. However, the three actors have also faced common challenges when trying to mobilize against racism given the national context, the self-image of Sweden as a tolerant, open and egalitarian country and the dominant views of racism, which taken together has turned racism into a serious but fairly marginal problem. The analysis also shows the effects of frame disputes and frame contests with regard to diagnostic, prognostic and motivational aspects of framing. At times the dividing lines have led to a broadening of the movement and its work, creating a wide mobilization potential and a strong multitudinous movement. During other periods the differences have contributed to long and profound conflicts that have drained the organizations and activists of time, resources and energy. Instead of focusing on combating their opponents, the anti-racist groups have been engulfed in internal strife, which has severely fragmented, divided and weakened the movement and hindered mobilization – contributing to turning the movement into a dispersed “milieu” by the mid-2000s. The thesis concludes with a chapter discussing how the empirical applicability of the framing perspective can be improved.

Šio darbo tikslas yra išsiaiškinti, kokio pobūdžio yra šiuolaikiniai kraštutinių dešiniųjų politiniai judėjimai, nustatyti jų vietą šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje bei Europos Sąjungos šalių valdymo sistemose. Nustatyta, kad sudėtinga šiuolaikinę kraštutinę dešinę griežtai apibūdinti kaip vienalytį judėjimą ar įtalpinti ją į aiškiai apibrėžiamus rėmus. Dažniausiai šios pakraipos judėjimai įvardijami kaip fašizmo atgimimas, šiuolaikinės visuomenės socialinių-ekonominių problemų išdava, protesto forma prieš esamą politinę situaciją, ksenofobinių nuotaikų šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje išraiška. Šiuolaikiniai kraštutinių dešiniųjų politiniai judėjimai akcentuoja tradicinių partijų nuošalyje paliktų postindustrinei visuomenei būdingų problemų sprendimo būtinumą. Tai pagrindinė jų pastaraisiais dešimtmečiais augančio populiarumo priežastis. Dėl įvairių priežasčių kraštutinių dešiniųjų politiniai judėjimai ne visose Europos Sąjungos šalyse susilaukia ryškaus palaikymo, tačiau jų įtaka sprendžiant šių dienų socialines, ekonomines ir politines problemas aiškiai juntama, tad jų analizė yra būtina norint susidaryti išsamų vaizdą apie Europos Sąjungoje vykstančius procesus. / The paper is aimed at highlighting the character of the present extreme right political movements and defining their place in modern society as well as in the governing system of the European Union countries. It has been determined in the paper that it is rather difficult to categorize the present extreme right wing as a homogenious movement or to fit it into a certain frame. The movements of this trend are mostly identified either as the revival of fascism, the outcome of the current social and economic problems, a protest form against the present political situation or as the expression of the xenophobic feelings in modern society.

In this thesis I trace the origins, morphology, and attributes of a particular strain of anti-materialism in the Western literary and cultural imagination of the second half of the twentieth century. With reference to previous work done on this topic I discuss how this anti-materialism rejects materialistic and rationalistic aspects of modernity and emphasises instead the importance of non-material aspects of society such as cultural integrity and cohesion, tradition, and instinct. I demonstrate that this strain relies on what Raymond Williams termed “organic form”, the fallacious belief that human society can and should follow a set of rules which can be objectively deducted from nature and I argue that it should be placed within the context of a long established anti-enlightenment tradition. Through an analysis of such writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, JRR Tolkien, Edward Abbey, James Howard Kunstler, Chuck Palahniuk, Brian Aldiss and others I show how a common feature of this anti-materialism is concern and anxiety over the potentially destabilising or degenerative effects of life in a technologically advanced society where mechanisation, mass production, and scientific advances have brought relative comfort and prosperity to most people in society and hence I refer to this particular strain of anti-materialism as anti-technologism. More specifically, I am interested in this thesis with examining the way in which this reaction allows for a curious confluence and convergence of progressive and reactionary tendencies. I argue that anti-technologism is a distinct and detectable mood in Western literature, and I trace its origins and influences. Without claiming to provide a functionalist analysis, I consider the role of anti-technologism in Western literature which I see as broadly facilitating an exploration and discussion of themes of cultural vitality and cohesion in the increasingly cosmopolitan and technologically advanced societies of the West.

This thesis has examined the course of foreign policy of Fascist Italy from the beginning of the Second World War, September 1, 1939, to Italy's formal entry into that war, June 10, 1940. This policy was virtually the will of Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator. Most deeply explored were Italy's relationships with Great Britain, France, and Germany. Explored to a lesser degree were Italy's relationships with the United States and the Soviet Union.This thesis sought to answer two basic questions: Why did Italy not go to war in September, 1939, as she was bound by treaty to do?, and, what finally prompted Italy to go to war, on Germany's side, when she did the following June? Accordingly, the various possible factors, political, diplomatic, economic and military, that brought pressure upon Mussolini to act as he did were also examined. These factors originated both from within Italy and without.

This dissertation examines the repertoire of governmental responses to neofascism and hate in post-World War II Europe and North America, focusing on the way in which they are problematized within the contexts of democratic political behaviour, free and restricted speech, criminality, and multicultural relations. Materials examined include academic literatures, state commissioned reports, media coverage, court cases, remedial programs for hate offenders and autobiographical materials. Governmental responses are marred by a series of impasses that demonstrate the constitutive inability of post-war authorities to respond to the political element at the core of neofascism and hate. Attempts to address them as pathological social phenomena or simply as criminal or legally actionable forms of speech and behaviour fail to recognize their properly political force. In particular the neofascist problem reveals the limits of. and what occurs at the limits of, the technological mode of government, the biopolitical administration of life, and the sovereign structure of political community. This phenomenon has been the uncanny product of postfascist society, a society whose ethico-political structure revolves around the express prevention of the return of Fascism in its various guises. It institutionalizes and naturalizes the cut produced by Fascism's exclusion from legitimate politics, inadvertently creating the conditions for neofascist revivals that exploit the discontents of this process. To initiate the critical thought necessary to prepare a way out of the impasses of postfascist politics - to begin to think what it would mean to live in a non fascist as opposed to a postfascist society - - I present a minor analysis of the lines of transformation that animate the relationship between postfascism and neofascism. This analysis reveals the diabolical properties of the emerging politics of the exception, a politics with clear analogues in the current `war on terror,' in which the distinction between Fascism and liberal democracy becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. It also reveals a line of becoming that indicates the possibility of embracing a truly nonfascist sociality. The pathway beyond fascism does not and cannot pass through the repertoire of postfascist solutions but only through a singular assemblage of revolutionary forces that would have as their effect a non-fascist form of life.

The Rexist movement led by Léon Degrelle was the principal francophone collaborationist grouping in German-Occupied Belgium during the Second World War. In the 1930s, the Rexists had been a movement on the Catholic right of the political spectrum who advocated the replacement of the outmoded parliamentary regime by a more authoritarian New Order which would enable a return to the spiritual values of the Catholic faith. Soon after the Belgian defeat of May 1940, they emerged as enthusiastic advocates of an agreement with the apparently victorious German invaders and in January 1941 Degrelle publicly declared his support for the Nazi cause. This resulted in a marked decline in popular support for Rex but did not bring it the German recognition which he craved. Only in the summer of 1941 with the formation of a Légion Wallanie which fought with some distinction alongside the German armies on the Eastern Front was the basis created for closer links between the German authorities and Rex. Subsequently, many Rexists were appointed by the Vehrmacht administrators of Belgium to positions of public responsibility and in January 1943 Degrelle announced the abandonment of his former belief in a unitary Belgian state in favour of the absorption of the francophone Walloons into a Germanic empire. During the latter war years, the Rexists were often the target of attacks by Resistance groups and the atmosphere of fear created by these attacks together with the opportunistic efforts of Degrelle to .forge an alliance with the SS led to a progressive radicalization of the movement. By 1944, the Rexists had become a beleaguered marginal grouping who increasingly resorted to violence to counter their many enemies and in September 1944 many Rexists fled from the Allied liberators to exile in the German Reich.

This thesis is a study of contemporary British fascist ideology as expressed in the texts produced by or in association with the British National Party (BNP). It differs from previous studies in that it starts at the depth of the ideology and examines its rhetorical and ideological structure. Drawing on the theory and methodology of critical discourse analysis, this thesis explores the rhetorical and presentational strategies used in contemporary British fascist texts. As such, it examines how constructions of us and the Other are deracialised, warranted and constructed as fact. The thesis also differs from previous studies in that it explores the pattern of contemporary British fascist ideology and emphasises its intrinsically gendered nature. Eugenics is taken as the core ideological theme of fascism, whose focus is on breeding a racially pure and healthy nation. The notion of breeding ensures that gender lies at the core of the ideology. Drawing on the idea of a polarised rhetorical and argumentative structure, this thesis also examines how fascism constructs the ideological opposites of eugenics. The first opposite to eugenics explored in this thesis is liberal ideology and specifically feminism. The analysis examines how fascist opposition to these is based on the essentialist belief in the fixed biological nature of both race and gender. The analysis looks at the presentational strategies as well as the argumentative content of antifeminist discourse in contemporary British fascist texts. The second opposite to eugenics explored is multiculturalism. The thesis explores how stories about rape simultaneously construct race and warrant arguments about the harmful effects of their presence on our society. The analysis examines the various presentational strategies used to portray üs as the victims of the Other. It is by studying the interconnection between these three themes that this thesis argues that fascism, with its eugenic orientation, is not only a racial ideology but a gendered one. The analysis of contemporary British fascist accounts undertaken in this thesis goes some way to providing an understanding of the relationship between gender and race that is at the essentialist core of fascist ideology.

Under the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945) a calculated killing of chronic “mentally ill” patients took place that was part of a large biopolitical program using well-established, contemporary scientific standards on the understanding of eugenics. Nearly 300,000 patients were assassinated during this period. Nurses executed this program through their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were already assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. My research aims to highlight the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life, and thus able to be killed. Using Foucauldian concepts of “biopower” and “State racism,” this discourse analysis is carried out on several levels. First, it analyzes nursing notes in one specific patient record and interprets them in relation to the kinds of scientific discourses that are identified, for example, in nursing journals between 1900 and 1945. Second, it argues that records are not static but rather produce certain effects; they are “performative” because they are active agents. Psychiatry, with its need to make patients completely visible and its desire to maintain its dominance in the psychiatric field, requires the utilization of writing in order to register everything that happens to individuals, everything they do and everything they talk about. Furthermore, writing enables nurses to pass along information from the “bottom-up,” and written documents allow all information to be accessible at any time. It is a method of centralizing information and of coordinating different levels within disciplinary systems. By following this approach it is possible to demonstrate that the production of meaning within nurses’ notes is not based on the intentionality of the writer but rather depends on discursive patterns constructed by contemporary scientific discourses. Using a form of “institutional ethnography,” the study analyzes documents as “inscriptions” that actively interven in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. Third, the study demonstrates how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients’ identities and how these “documentary identities” led to the death of thousands of humans whose lives were considered to be “unworthy lives.” Documents are able to constitute the identities of psychiatric patients and, conversely, are able to deconstruct them. The result of de-subjectification was that “zones for the unliving” existed in psychiatric hospitals long before the Nazi regime and within these zones, patients were exposed to an increased risk of death. An analysis of the nursing notes highlights that nurses played a decisive role in constructing these “zones” and had an important strategic function in them. Psychiatric hospitals became spaces where patients were reduced to a “bare life;” these spaces were comparable with the concentration camps of the Holocaust. This analysis enables the integration of nursing practices under National Socialism into the history of modernity. Nursing under Nazism was not simply a relapse into barbarism; Nazi exclusionary practices were extreme variants of scientific, social, and political exclusionary practices that were already in place. Different types of power are identifiable in the Nazi regime, even those that Foucault called “technologies of the self” were demonstrated, for example, by the denunciation of “disabled persons” by nurses. Nurses themselves were able to employ techniques of power in the Nazi regime.

No description available.