Daniel Little
One of the historians whose work I greatly appreciate is Tony Judt. I've posted about his seminal book about Europe after World War II (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (link, link)) and his history of the French left in Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981) (link). Some of his …
Continue reading "Tony Judt on memory and myth in the twentieth century"
The hate-based murders of at least nine young people in Hanau, Germany this week brought the world's attention once again to right-wing extremism in Germany and elsewhere. The prevalence of right-wing extremist violence in Germany today is shocking, and it presents a deadly challenge to democratic institutions in modern Germany. Here is the German justice …
How can the United States recover its culture of civility and mutual respect among citizens after the bitter, unlimited toxicity of the first three years of Donald Trump's presidency? Trump's political movement, and the President himself, have gone in for an unbridled rhetoric of hatred, suspicion, racism, and white supremacist ideology that seems to have …
What kind of political movement does Donald Trump represent? How did we get here? And what will be needed to defeat this divisive and anti-democratic political agenda? There is a tendency to see Trump as a bolt out of the blue, an anomaly -- an extraordinary showman who somehow conned just enough voters to gain …
Georg Lukács in 1962 used the colorful image of a fictional "Grand Hotel Abyss" to express his disappointment in the theorists of the Frankfurt School. Here is a passage in which the idea is described in "Preface to the Theory of the Novel" (link): A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have …
Several recent posts have commented on the rise of a nationalistic, nativist politics in numerous contemporary democracies around the world. The implications of this political process are deeply challenging to the values of liberal democracy. We need to try to understand these developments. (Peter Merkl's research on European right-wing extremism is very helpful here; Right-wing …
European research and policy organizations have devoted a fair amount of attention to the rise of extremist movements and intolerance in European countries in the past ten years. Attention has been directed towards both aspects of the problem that have been mentioned in earlier posts -- rising public attitudes of intolerance, and the mobilization and …
Continue reading "Survey research on right-wing extremism in Europe"
The last century gave us far too many examples of the rise of extremism in mass societies -- both democratic and authoritarian. Some of the political mechanisms of extremist seizure of power are well known -- paramilitary force, extremist organizations, demogogic leaders, hyper-heated rhetoric, appeals to nationalism and racism, and inflammatory mass media. But it's …
Image: resistance to Spanish fascism, Abraham Lincoln Brigade The crimes of fascist governments in Spain, Italy, and Germany are among the most terrible pages of twentieth-century history. And these governments commonly came to power by long mass-based mobilization by right-wing nationalist parties rather than by seizure of power by a strategically located minority. How was …
Image: book burning by National Socialist paramilitaries, 1933 Image: Ukraine peasants fleeing famine Image: street battle, Spanish Civil War Arthur Koestler was an articulate witness of the atrocities of the twentieth century; and much of what he witnessed was terrible. Reading his books gives one an intense and personal vision of fascism, dictatorship, mass murder, …
Understanding Society 