Many American fascist groups arose in the 1930s out of the Northern Ku Klux Klan (KKK) of the 1920s. We can see the continuity by using British socialist theorist Raymond Williams’ concept, a “structure of feeling.” The 1920s KKK targeted Catholic, Jewish, and other non-white Protestant immigrants – though never abandoning its anti-Black racism – and the fascists narrowed their target to Jews alone, but common to both was the construction of fear and then anger. Yet a fundamental difference between the Klan and the fascists is equally important: the Northern Klan was a mass, largely nonviolent movement that won major victories by relying on electoral politics, while the small fascist groups used violence as their primary tactic. Too often “fascism” has been used as a condemnation without specific content. Examining the Ku Klux Klan and the fascists side by side and focusing on what fascist groups did can yield better analyses. While there are commonalities among fascists in different contexts and different historical moments, the term is most useful when understood as a “cluster concept”: a cluster of ideas, values, and actions not all of which will be found in each exemplar of fascism.

While scholars in the United States have long regarded the prospect of “Fascism in America” as unlikely, they have begun to reconsider their views since the rise of Trumpism. In the past half-decade, an extended debate has raged in the USA about whether present-day right-wing political trends should be seen as fascist. To date, however, this debate remains unresolved. The introduction seeks to break this deadlock by surveying the debate’s origins, clarifying its stakes, and assessing its course. It then introduces the volume’s twelve chapters, all of which weigh in on the debate in different ways. They are grouped into four sections that seek to illuminate different aspects of American fascism. These areas of focus are: (1) “Strategic Thinking about Fascism”; 2) “Homegrown Nazis”; 3) “White Antidemocratic Violence and Black Antifascist Activism”; and 4) “Countering Fascism in Culture and Policy”.

This interview with Julia Pascal reveals the philosophy behind the concept and creation of her 2007 production of The Merchant of Venice/The Shylock Play at the Arcola Theatre, London. The Ghetto-on-Ghetto framing device is explored as a central motif. Vital to this re-vision of the text is the living presence of Polish Ghetto escapee, the actor Ruth Posner. Posner challenges the representation of the malevolent, male Jewish figure of Shylock that has historically dominated the image of Jews in the European imagination. The staging of the script, through Posner’s gaze, is explained as a provocative act to spotlight neglected female Shoah experience and to interrogate the view of the creation of Shylock as an example of Shakespeare’s humanism and philosemitism. Pascal discusses her reasons for heightening the experience of Black and Jewish characters to hint at a critical reading of the role of the Outsider figure at the birth of the British Empire. The interview reveals the decision to confront a text from rehearsal to critical reception. Included are questions surrounding the context of daring to add to and investigate the play within a climate of growing antisemitism in Britain.

This chapter focuses on the history of three Mozart monuments in Prague: a Mozart foundation in Prague’s university library established in 1837 to compete with the plans for a Mozart monument in Salzburg; a German Mozart monument that was to be built in the city center in 1914; and Bertramka, a suburban estate where Mozart supposedly lived during his Bohemian visits and where he purportedly finished Don Giovanni. All three commemorative sites were embroiled in various Czech–German national conflicts. The chapter focuses on the process through which Bertramka transformed into a national shrine and the patriotic myths that contributed to this transformation. Whereas Czech commentators viewed Bertramka as a monument to Mozart’s ties to the Czechs, German Bohemians considered it a symbolic site of German culture. Patriotic and nationalist concerns eventually imbued the myths about Mozart and Bertramka with an aura of truth.

A much smaller group of post-Cold War immigrants from the USSR has, by contrast with the Aussiedler, received a lot of public attention: Jewish “quota refugees.” This is mainly because of history: how could Germany of all places (after the Holocaust!) become a popular destination for Jewish emigration? Using autobiographical accounts (Dmitrij Belkin, Dmitrij Kapitelman) and fiction (Olga Grjasnowa et al.), the chapter reconstructs the history and – largely secular – identities of Jews in the Soviet Union, the push factors (economic hardship, antisemitism) and pull factors (Europe, no military service requirement as in Israel, a strong welfare state) for emigration to Germany, the relationship with the existing Jewish community (composed of the descendants of Polish DPs and down to 30,000 people in 1990), and the often difficult locus in mainstream German society. It explores a Soviet Jewish memory of the Second World War that emphasizes victory and heroism, not victimhood, but also shows how widespread poverty is among retirees – in contradistinction to Gentile German antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish wealth.

Chapter 1 describes the main ideological tenets of National Socialism, usually called Nazism, and explains their deep roots in European thought, culture, and religious tradition. The chapter identifies the core elements of Nazi ideology as biological racism, Social Darwinism, eugenics, romantic nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Marxism, and anti-liberalism. While some of these elements were of recent vintage, antisemitism was a centuries-old phenomenon in Europe. The racial antisemitism propagated by Nazism modernized a sentiment that had historically been based in religious and economic animosities. Hitler and other leading Nazis were not original thinkers, but rather they channeled these disparate ideological strands into a loose synthesis. The diffuse and disparate nature of Nazi ideology proved to be a practical political advantage inasmuch as it offered a menu of ideas and grievances from which potential followers could choose. The “Socialism” contained in the phrase National Socialism had nothing to do with the Marxist tradition, but rather hearkened back to the antisemitic Christian Socialism of the nineteenth century and was intended to signal solidarity with Germans who were resentful of the exploitative aspects of capitalism, which were often associated with Jews.

This chapter explores Freud’s publications on Biblical prophets in the new interdisciplinary journal Imago that Freud founded to specifically deal with non-medical applications of psychoanalysis. This chapter analyzes Freud’s anonymously published essay “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914) anew as an extension of and a direct consequence of the disputations over Jung’s Jonah-type and Maeder’s teleological function of dreams. In his essay on Michelangelo’s Moses, Freud would take up his defense in Rome, where Pope Leo X had excommunicated Luther in 1521. Disguised as “an untrained layman,” Freud sets up a new hermeneutical arena far from the site of Lutheran Biblical exegetics on Jonah and before the Catholic Renaissance master Michelangelo, an artist Jung claimed expressed the “Jonah-type” in his pietàs. Applying and parodying the aesthetic arguments Jung and Maeder utilized in their recent publicatins, Freud uses the trope of the “artless Jew” by shifting the dialogue from typological interpretations of stubborn Jewish prophets to German-language art historical interpretations of a Catholic representation of Moses.

Cheryl Foster examines Schopenhauer’s theory of genius, which she situates within a politics of knowledge. Many of our dominant social institutions devalue the arts which are overlooked as potential sources of knowledge. Foster argues that Schopenhauer (despite his own strong resources of bigotry) is in a position to address this injustice by making an argument for the distinction between talent and genius, or conceptual and intuitive understanding, and making a strong argument for the significance and distinctiveness of aesthetic, intuitive cognition. Foster looks carefully at Schopenhauer’s description of the experience of artistic inspiration, the receptivity distinctive of genius that enables artists to create aesthetically significant works. She finds that Schopenhauer has unexpected confirmation in the account Edith Wharton gave of her own artistic process. To realize the potential of Schopenhauer’s analysis, we need to free him from some of his reactionary investments, such as his anti-Semitism, misogyny, elitism, and mystifications. Foster carefully reconstructs a theory of genius and intuitive cognition that is both free from these elements and consistent with the phenomenology of artistic experience as reported by practicing artists. The result is a useful and accurate account of a vital source of nonconceptual knowledge.

By analysing material from and slightly after Heidegger’s brief time as rector of Freiburg University, I show that he conceives of the state and the educational system as means to sustaining a communal commitment to a philosophically inflected nationalism. Although it relies on a distinctly Heideggerian conception of the state, Heidegger’s nationalism is by most measures rather trivial. He does, however, try to philosophically justify his nationalism and antisemitism by recourse to what has become known as the history of being. I show that this period of Heidegger’s thought is marred by several assumptions and inferences that contradict his earlier and much more convincing social ontology. I thus find myself in a position to criticise Heidegger’s politics from within. More specifically, I criticise Heidegger for inconsistently attributing an exceptional type of world-disclosure to the Führer; for confusing ontic and ontological senses of community and the shared world; and, finally, for giving methodological priority to a radical form historicism over and above transcendentalism.

French North Africa (AFN), a complex constellation of tribes, cultures, and religions, was viewed as the Hexagon’s strategic hinterland. However, from 1942, the war’s momentum would thrust it into the front lines. Roosevelt’s policy had been to entice Vichy back into the war on the Allied side. When that collapsed, Washington’s target became Maxime Weygand, whose reputation as anti-German did not, alas, make him pro-Allied. When Weygand was recalled, both the Americans and the British looked for a French leader whom they could champion as a replacement for both Vichy and de Gaulle. Henri Giraud seemed to be the man who could bring together a conspiracy of Vichy dissidents in AFN orchestrated by American Consul in Algiers Robert Murphy, whose “actionable intelligence” that AFN stood ready to welcome the Allies with open arms helped to convince Roosevelt to launch Torch – the Allied invasion of AFN. Vichy counted on l’armée d’Afrique to defend AFN against an Allied invasion. However, that force had been undermined by defeat, honeycombed with Gaullist dissidence, and riven by racial and professional animosity. Darlan was utterly clueless about the looming Anglo-American invasion. More presciently, Juin believed that an Axis invasion of Tunisia was more likely. But Darlan forbade him to defend it, evoking the protection of the 1940 armistice. Vichy continued to view the war as deadlocked. As a result, Torch caught Vichy and AFN completely by surprise. Furthermore, their chain of command in AFN was reorganizing, which further confused the response.