The paradigmatic genocidal campaign in modern history, the Holocaust, was the product of a regime considered by many, but not all, historians to have been a ‘fascist’ one. But what was the precise relation between fascism and extermination? Was there something distinctly fascist about the National Socialist eliminationist impulse, as some historians argue? Or was it, as others have claimed, a unique feature of National Socialism, the outcome of a racist obsession so pervasive as to set Nazism apart from all other fascist regimes and ideologies? While violence and extremism are regularly associated with interwar fascism, it is less common to treat this theme from a comparative perspective, or to pay attention to the specificities of fascist violence. The aim of this special volume of The Journal of Holocaust Research is to zoom in on the question of fascist extremism up to, and including, extermination.
The issue’s five essays explore the theme of fascism, extremism, and extermination from both comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, presenting the insights of historians and philosophers. The articles examine a wide range of historical examples of fascist (and to a lesser extent, non-fascist) extremism and extermination in different periods and places across the globe: from the genocide of Native Americans in the mid-eighteenth century, to Italian colonialism in the early twentieth century, up to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. From a variety of vantage points, these studies address a series of significant questions involving fascist extremism: How should fascist extremism best be conceived? Was it the result of a revolt against civilization, or in contrast, was it an exacerbation of a genocidal pattern inherent in Western civilization? Was fascist violence indeed distinguished from earlier atrocities committed by other modern regimes, and if so, in what ways? How did fascism innovate in that sphere when compared to eliminationist practices and theories in Western history? Was it the culmination of Western racism and imperialist aggression, or did it qualitatively leap beyond them? Finally, was fascist extremism conceived or prefigured by important (proto-) fascist authors and politicians?
Carroll P. Kakel’s essay, ‘Patterns and Crimes of Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Fascist and Non-Fascist Extermination,’ opens the volume with a wide-ranging comparative analysis of different patterns of colonial violence. Drawing multiple comparisons between historical periods, countries, and political regimes, the article explores an ‘archive of imperialism.’ Three non-fascist cases (American Western imperialism, Japanese colonial imperialism, and German colonial imperialism) and two fascist cases (Japanese wartime imperialism and Nazi Eastern European imperialism) are surveyed. The essay illuminates the continuities between fascism and imperial–colonialism, as well as the fascist exacerbation of a genocidal pattern. The author concludes that fascist atrocities were not only preceded by past imperialisms and embedded in them, but were also indispensably inspired by them.
Giuseppe Finaldi’s article, ‘Fascism, Violence, and Italian Colonialism,’ provides a provocative examination of the role of violence in Italy’s imperial ventures, scrutinizing the differences, as well as the parallels, between the Liberal and Fascist eras. Dealing with an important and often ignored topic, the essay sheds light on brutal and murderous strains of colonial thought and practice in Liberal Italy. Examining the Italian massacre of Libyans in Tripoli in 1911, the Italian reconquest of Libya in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and finally the brutal massacre of civilians that took place in Ethiopia in 1937, the author looks into the nature of Italian colonial violence and asks what role Fascism played. The article compellingly argues that large-scale political and military violence, often directed against civilians, had deep practical and ideological roots in the Italian imperial project. It concludes that while Liberal Italy was more than capable of atrocities, the dark side of Italian colonialism could find its fullest expression only within the context of Mussolini’s expansionist, militaristic, ultra-nationalist dictatorship, free of most ethical and institutional inhibitions.
In ‘The Magic of the Extreme: On Fascism, Modernity, and Capitalism,’ Ishay Landa critically examines the relationship of fascism to modernity and capitalism. The essay first outlines the major contributors to the debate, notably the Frankfurt School and Zygmunt Bauman, who have advanced what may be called the ‘dark side of modernity’ thesis—namely that fascism represents the fullest expression of modernity’s defining characteristics. The analysis then moves on to suggest a more dialectical approach to this question, stressing the deep ambivalence characteristic of fascist attitudes to both modernity and capitalism. The author argues that while fascism was a quintessential product of the modern era, its primary objective was to destroy modernity as a political and normative project. He further maintains that fascism should be seen, simultaneously and paradoxically, as an intensification of capitalism’s aggressive and volatile sides and as an extreme reaction against its civilizing aspects.
In ‘Ordering Space: Intersections of Space, Racism, and Extermination,’ Ulrike Jureit scrutinizes a critically important aspect of National Socialist extremism that was fatally linked to its exterminatory drive: the concept of Lebensraum and its specific ideological inflection. While National Socialist expansionism was in many ways a continuation of past colonial traditions, it also departed from the habitual patterns by imagining conquered space not as a subjugated one to be administered and exploited, but also as a racially cleansed one. In this regard, it was a colonialism infused by an element of further extremity, discarding any heterogeneity, no matter how hierarchically conceived, in its pursuit of homogenous, racial purity. The extraordinary destructiveness of the National Socialist eastward expansion was thus centrally motivated by the conviction that ‘blood is our border.’
The final essay in the special issue, Bernhard H. F. Taureck’s ‘Civil Mass Murder: Nietzsche’s Political Options and the Shoah,’ addresses the philosophical underpinning of National Socialist extremism. The article revisits the perennial question of Friedrich Nietzsche’s contribution to fascist atrocities, focusing specifically on its most radical example: the Shoah. Acknowledging the facts that Nietzsche was not an antisemitic thinker, and that a significant interval of time separates his writings from the brutalities of World War II, the author nevertheless refuses the customary exculpation of Nietzsche’s thought. It is argued that the philosopher’s groundbreaking ideas advocating the extermination of ‘failures,’ with the aim of the mass elimination of civilians, provided the Nazis with an indispensable ideological platform, which they then further radicalized, adjusted for their own aims, and transformed into a political deed.
The issue’s contributions richly explore different dimensions of fascist extremism from a variety of innovative, and at times provocative, perspectives. Readers of the essays—scholars and students interested in the subjects of fascism and the Holocaust—will come away with multiple insights into the nature of fascist extremism and/or extermination and their place in modern history, politics, society, and culture. While differing in their approaches, methodologies, and conclusions, these essays uniformly show that fascism continues to be a subject of intense scholarly interest and debate.
Notes on contributors
Ishay Landa is an Associate Professor of modern history at the Israeli Open University, in Ra’anana. His research interests include political theory – especially fascism, Marxism, and liberalism – and popular culture. He has written four books: The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lexington, 2007), The Apprentice’s Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition and Fascism (Brill, 2010), The Roots of European Fascism: 1789–1945 (in Hebrew, the Open University Press, 2015), and Fascism and the Masses: The Revolt Against the Last Humans, 1848–1945 (Routledge, 2018). His essays and lectures deal with diverse topics such as fascism, consumerism, religion and atheism, and take on different writers and thinkers, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, or J. R. R. Tolkien. He has won several scholarships, among them a Post-doc fellowship with distinction: “Gerhard Martin Julius Schmidt Minerva Fellowship,” for a research conducted at TU Braunschweig, Germany (2006-2008), and, more recently, the Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Young Researchers, awarded by the Council of Higher Education, Israel (2009–2012).
Michal Aharony is the Deputy Editor of The Journal of Holocaust Research, and a teaching fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her research interests include history of political ideas in modern political thought and Holocaust studies. She is the author of the book Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality and Resistance (Routledge, 2015). Her recent articles include “Nihilism and Antisemitism: The Reception of Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night in Israel,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol. 19, no. 1 (2015); “Über das Lager - die Vernichtung des Menschen als Menschen in der totalen Herrschaft,” in: Julia Schulze Wessel, Christian Volk, und Samuel Salzborn (Hrsg.), Ambivalenzen der Ordnung - Der Staat im Denken Hannah Arendts, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013; and “Hannah Arendt and the Idea of Total Domination,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24 (2) (2010): 193–224.