The dissertation called "The Relationship between the Czechoslovak fascist and fascistoid Parties during in the Period of the First Republic" goes back to the period of the so called First Republic that is generally understood to be the Czechoslovak Republic from 28th October 1918 till 29th September 1938. The dissertation aspires to give the reader an outline of the relationship between the National Fascist Community and other parties having fascist tendencies. On the one hand, the dissertation will present the National Fascist Community as the main representative of the Czech fascism. On the other hand, it will focus on the National League of Jiří Stříbrný and also on the radical parts of the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party. Mutual relations in the Czech fascism were created mainly from this triangle. And other parties show themselves as well in these relations - the National Unity and the National Front. The dissertation will also take account of the personal relationships between Radola Gajda and Jiří Stříbrný. Their personal relationships had a strong influence on the fascism of the period of the First Republic. It will also be important to show how these two persons got to the Czech fascism. Radola Gajda was an outstanding general in Siberia in the First World War. Jiří Stříbrný was...

The purpose of the thesis is to examine the relationships between the Czech fascists and the National Democratic Party in all its forms. The thesis covers the analysis of these relationships and their displays. The author used analytical and comparative methods as well as available specialized literature and other sources. The dissertation is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter analyzes the fascist theory, its main characteristics and, in one of its subchapter, the specific Czech scheme for better understanding of the fascist environment during the First Czechoslovakian Republic era. The second chapter deals with fascists' actions and operation during the First Czechoslovakian Republic era. For important changes that took place in 1938, the political system of the so called "Second Republic" is briefly mentioned, as the political direction was extremely right wing oriented. The third chapter focuses on the National democratic party and analyzes the party's activities up to 1935. For better compression, the Czechoslovak political system is also outlined in this section. Chapter four is the key part of the dissertation as it deals with the relations and cooperation between the Czech fascists and National democracy and cooperation with the National Unity from 1935. To complete the...

Ukrainian paramilitary volunteer units became a key to fight threats of the russo-separatist hybrid war and their activity could be strongly reflected in the outcome of combat operations. This case study examines a phenomenon of volunteer battalions including myths and controversies that accompany them. The paper defines and analyzes four most controversial issues that are connected with volunteer units and confronts them with reality. Furthermore, it deals with roots and origins of these controversies and examines consequences of problematic units on the security and political situation in Ukraine. These topics include a spread of radical nationalism, fascism and neo-Nazism in volunteer units, criminal activities of volunteer fighters , the role of religion in the volunteer movement and links between volunteer units and political parties or oligarchs and related problems such as financing.

This thesis analyzes the origins and development of conceptions of the relationship between violence and politics characteristic of twentieth century fascist thought. It critiques existing approaches to fascism and fascist ideology in the interdisciplinary field of fascist studies and proposes and employs an alternate approach which centres and emphasizes the flexibility and mutability of fascist thought and denies that any particular complex of beliefs or concepts can be said to constitute an ‘essence’ or ‘heart’ of fascist ideology. Morphological studies are offered of four discursive traditions in fascist and fascist-adjacent thought with respect to violence and politics: German military theory of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the ‘new’ French nationalism of the fin-de-siècle; the genre of ‘future warfare’ around and after the First World War; and the work of Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt. The thesis concludes with some consideration of the continuities and discontinuities made apparent in the morphological studies, an argument that those results vindicate the initial framing, and some avenues for extending them into areas of concrete contemporary relevance. / Graduate

This dissertation traces the emergence of the air raid shelter as the paradigmatic architecture of air defense under the Nationalist Party government in China during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945). More broadly, it explores how air defense in general became an integral part of the Nationalists’ “war of resistance and reconstruction” (kangzhan jianguo), a fascist project derived from total war, the globally circulating military-political idea holding that modern warfare would enlist entire nations and their economies in war while also subjecting them to comprehensive enemy violence. The Nationalists joined the world in confronting aerial bombing after the Empire of Japan bombed Shanghai in 1932. In response, the government and its military constructed air defense, a political and technological complex combining mass mobilization, through air raid drills and air defense organizations, with material technologies, like searchlights, anti-aircraft guns, and bomb shelters. The Nationalists found in air defense more than a military technology. To them, it also offered a set of tools and resources for fortifying their flailing attempts to unite China in a common national project, and even recasting the substance of that project. Air defense could forge a new society that invested all Chinese people in war as a necessary precondition for overcoming China’s colonial subjection. Where democratic institutions collapsed and appeals to common heritage and customs failed, the Nationalists used air defense to turn survival (shengcun) into the bedrock value of the national community. Meanwhile, a group of young architects associated with the journal Xin jianzhu in Canton identified air defense as an organizing problem for the nascent professional field of architecture. Rather than the stale historicism endorsed in Nanjing, and against China’s craft building traditions, the group championed modernist architecture, especially the International Style, whose principles of simplicity, functionalism, and rationality they saw as necessary for building modern, industrial, and hygienic Chinese cities capable of enhancing human life. Moreover, they argued that the technological instrumentality informing modernism made it the only style capable of preserving Chinese cities and people from modern threats like bombing. After the fall of Canton in 1938, members of the group took their mission to Chongqing, where they joined the Nationalist government in building air defenses in the wartime capital. In particular, this dissertation argues that the air raid shelter and air defense focused contradictions in the Nationalists’ fascist project for uniting and revolutionizing China as it traveled to Chongqing following the Nationalist escape from Japan’s invasion of the coast. Over the course of the war, the principal technology of air defense shifted away from mass mobilization, as the Nationalists came to administer refugees and displaced people they had never governed before, and became located in infrastructure like city plans and air raid shelters. Air defense served to exclude surplus populations like women and the elderly, rendered redundant according to the state’s wartime needs for industrial production and conscripts, by dispersing them in satellite settlements outside the city, from which they constantly returned in search of work or material goods. Shoddy air raid shelters, in the meantime, revealed the fragile biology of real bodies beneath the fascist fantasy of the heroic political subject, as shelters failed to provide for basic needs like respiration. Over time, these two problems collided, as the state closed shelters in the city to dispersed people, exposing surplus populations to bombing, while civilians also languished in shelters that could still kill them. The goal of building national unity through survival collapsed into a confusion of inclusion and exclusion, life and death, with disastrous results, like the asphyxiation of around one thousand people in Chongqing’s largest public air raid shelter in June 1941. In these circumstances, professionals like the Cantonese architects and new state regulatory bodies produced proposals and standards for building better shelters, attempting a technical resolution of air defense’s political contradictions and consolidating the transformation of air defense into a primarily technological discipline.

This paper deals with the journalistic work and the single novel of Justin Steinfeld (1886 Kiel - 1970 Baldock), who fled in 1933 from Hamburg to Czechoslovakia. This work focuses on his articles, which he wrote during his Prague exile (1933-1939) for the German speaking magazine Die Wahrheit and on his only novel Ein Mann liest Zeitung (1984, 2020) which tells the story of an exile who, like Steinfeld fled from Hamburg to Prague from the Nazis. The first part of the thesis introduces Czechoslovakia as an exile country for refugees from Germany in the 1930s and cultural activities of the exiles are shortly commented on, especially in relation to leftist and anti-fascist circles. This is followed by a short portrait of Justin Steinfeld. The main part of this work consists of chapters about the work of Steinfeld. First, his articles for Die Wahrheit are analysed. The attempt is made to characterize his journalistic writing, to find and describe the thematic focuses of his articles. The next chapter is devoted to the novel Ein Mann liest Zeitung and describes how the subject of exile is presented in it. The concept of exile is understood in different ways - firstly as a (geographical and social) space, secondly as a social status and thirdly as a psychological status. Finally, the magazine articles...

The purpose of this master thesis is to study and compare conservative, fascist and nationalist youth movements active in Sweden during the 1930s and 40s. The political youth movements at the centre of this study are the Young Swedes (Ungsvenskarna), Swedish Rural Youth League (Svenska Landsbygdens Ungdomsförbund), Nordic Youth (Nordisk Ungdom) and National Youth League of Sweden/National League of Sweden (Sveriges nationella ungdomsförbund/Sveriges nationella förbund). During the early 1900s, youth was often described as both the reviver of society and the future of the nation. Regardless of different ideological and political alignments, the youth movements were all invested in shaping and educating young people to prepare them for the future. In this study, the focal point has been the question why these youth movements wanted the role as educators of young people, as well as what was expected of the young after this education. The main task of the political youth movements seems to have been to give young people ideals to fight for through physical and spiritual education. Through this education the young would realize what was expected of them and finally transform into an ideal youth that could inherit the responsibility as caretakers of the nation as well as the future. The view on the ideal youth varied between the studied youth movements. The Young Swedes wanted to create a conservative youth, actively engaged with the main political party of the movement, the Right (Högern). The ideal youth of the Swedish Rural Youth League were aware of their responsibilities towards the rights of the rural areas and agriculture. The ideal youth of Nordic Youth and National Youth League would have very similar personalities and would be ready to fight and sacrifice for the future rebirth of the nation into similar, yet different, fascistic utopias.

Given the social importance of understanding violence and why it is applied, this study offers a thorough discussion on antifascists actions and perceptions in relation to violence. While previous research has examined antifascism, a substantial understanding of the concept and justification of violence through individual frames has fallen short. With the objective to contribute to the field of peace and conflict through theoretical approaches in the discipline of sociology, this study aims to contribute to decreasing this gap. With the help of Erving Goffman’s Framing Analysis, previous research, and thematic analysis, this study accounts for the individual perceptions and meanings ascribed to social situations and violence within anti-fascism. By conducting eight semi-structured interviews with individuals who identify themselves as active antifascists, this study has been able to demonstrate the importance of recognising the subjective understanding of violence as a means for an antifascist goal. Indeed, the antifascist perceptions are highly individual, where the mere notion that is agreed upon is that fascism has to be countered. While certain individuals justify violence for an antifascist purpose, it is framed as self-defence – but that violence is justified for the greater aim of antifascism, is not proved as a commonality. / Med den sociala vikten av att förstå våld och varför det tillämpas, har denna studie ämnat att bidra med en djupgående diskussion om antifascistiska handlingar och uppfattningar i relation till våld. Även om tidigare forskning har undersökt antifascism, saknas det en grundlig förståelse för konceptet och rättfärdigandet av våld genom individuella ramar. Med syftet att bidra till området för fred och konflikt genom teoretiska angrepp inom sociologins disciplin, syftar denna studie till att minska detta gap. Med hjälp av Erving Goffmans ramanalys, tidigare forskning och tematisk analys, har denna studie kunnat redogöra för individuella uppfattningar och den inneboende meningen som tillskrivs sociala situationer och våldsamma handlingar. Genom att genomföra åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med individer som identifierar sig som aktiva antifascister har denna studie kunnat belysa vikten av att uppmärksamma de subjektiva förståelserna av våld som ett medel för ett antifascistiskt ändamål. De antifascistiska uppfattningarna är individuella, och den gemensamma uppfattningen som enar antifascister är att fascism måste motverkas. När våld är rättfärdigat av dessa individer är det inom ramen av självförsvar, men att våld är rättfärdigat för det större antifascistiska syftet, är bevisligen inte en konsensus.

Nancy Walters Aufsatz widmet sich dem Thema „Rosa Menzer. Eine Kommunistin und Jüdin im erinnerungskulturellen Diskurs der DDR“ und hinterfragt Prozesse und Konstitutionsmechanismen der memoria ideologie- und genderkritisch. Die Verfasserin geht von der starken Prägung von Erinnerungskulturen, insbesondere totalitärer Gesellschaften, durch geschichtspolitische Diskurse aus. In der DDR war es vordergründig das staatstragende ideologische Konstrukt des ‚Antifaschismus‘, das sich in einem bestimmten Typus der Erinnerung manifestierte und materialisierte. Die Verfasserin zeigt am Beispiel der Rezeptionsgeschichte und Legendenbildung Rosa Menzers (1886-1942), einer im KZ Ravensbrück inhaftierten und 1942 in Bernburg ermordeten Dresdner Jüdin und Kommunistin, wie dieser geschichtspolitische Diskurs, unter Ausblendung von gendersignifizierten Implikationen und Holocaust, die öffentliche Erinnerungskultur der DDR und Menzers Bild als kommunistische Widerstandskämpferin und vorbildliche, heldenhafte Antifaschistin prägte. Mit der kritischen Analyse dieser verkürzenden Identitätskonstruktion führt der Beitrag zugleich die Notwendigkeit intersektionaler Gender-Forschung vor.

There has been a rise in Right-wing extremism (RWE) mobilizing within what is known as the setter-colonial state of Canada, with some groups espousing values and narratives grounded in White nationalist ideology which have led to instances of violence and harm against community members. These incidents of harm and violence occur in the context of the Canadian state's claims to inclusive multiculturalism, civility and benevolence. While there are many looking into the presence of RWE groups to document their existence, mobilizing patterns and tactics, very little analysis exists that offers a deep analysis into these groups and situates their political ideology within the broader context of the Canadian state’s governance logics. Therefore, to push the discussion on this topic further, this project looks at the specific case of the Canadian Nationalist Front's (CNF), a White nationalist group in Canada, and unpacks the discourse shared on their blog. Through dissecting the CNF's blogpost with a theoretical framework of analysis that moves beyond understanding this group as merely a fringe group which holds fundamentally different values than the Canadian state, I make links to the existing literature that demonstrates the parallels between the two. I argue that the racialized governance logics of White nationalist groups, like the CNF, are also shared in the settler-colonial logics of the Canadian state's border governance strategies. Further, I highlight the ways in which groups like the CNF ground their movements in the superiority of Whiteness, while using the state's claims of inclusivity and multiculturalism to justify their entitlement to hold these exclusionary ideologies while presenting themselves as victims of those that they "Other". Finally, I contextualize their discourse within the context of neoliberalism, which has intensified the harms of racial capitalism in a way that has also impacted the White working class and allowed groups like the CNF to use economic grievances to mobilize their movements.