New article in Fascism – Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies

The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition as a Common Framework of Fascism and the Contemporary Far Right

Published an article about the connection between fascism and the far right. As I see, there is a split among those scholars who connect fascism to far right forces, and those would not recommend this. I belong to the first camp, and use Zeev Sternhell’s theory of the anti-Enlightenment tradition to explain similarities. I think this is one of my most important articles I published about this problem. You can reach it here , or through clicking on the image below. The abstract is as follows:

The relationship between far-right political streams and fascism is a recurring topic in scientific literature. However, we find a low number of academic publications which try to create a framework for their similarities. This article uses Zeev Sternhell’s theory of fascism as a tool to measure different interpretations of fascism and the far right. According to its basic statement, there exists an anti-Enlightenment tradition in the Western world, which could serve as a substratum of these streams. This proves two points. Firstly, that there are several political groups which share a very similar political vision, even if their levels of aggression and radicalism are different. This is the reason why many neo-fascist, post-fascist, ‘populist’ and conservative parties have interchangeable rhetorical clichés and ideological patterns. Second, it shows that Western countries could successfully fight the rise of upcoming anti-democratic forces through strengthening the values of the Enlightenment-tradition.