Heyman Center for the Humanities, Common Room
Columbia University
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Columbia University Seminars
The Heyman Center for the Humanities
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Department of Political Science
The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College
Fascism is a category and concept that has had broad historical analysis. Based on European experience in the twenthieth century, historians have reconstructed and analyzed its theoretical foundations, ideological components, and its political expression as a movement, and then as a political regime, that has radically upset constitutional liberal governments, repressed individual liberties (civil and political), and put an end to social conflicts through a systematic work of repression and violent coercion. Militarism, colonialism, and imperial expansion have accompanied the fascistization of some European societies to the point of becoming a fatal threat to international coexistence and peace. The decades between WWI and WWII have been the theater of this anti-liberal and anti-democratic regime; post-WWI economic unrest and the first Great Depression gave fascist movements and governments strong arguments against the moderate liberal governments’ incapacity to tackle with social and economic crisis. Fascist regimes, as Ira Katznelson write in his book Fear Itself (2013), challenged parliamentary systems and constitutional governments with the accusation of being incompetent to deal with radical crises because of their institutional and procedural structures, which relied upon consent, political pluralism, and accountability of political functions. The factual alliance of liberal government with capitalism made Fascist accusation quite successful since fascism nourished itself with a populist ideology that pointed to the “fat cats” of finance as the locusts that razed national wellbeing, and to the myth of peace and liberty which had meanwhile enervated both political elites and ordinary citizens. A new bold set of ideas and political projects based on nationalism, racism, and attacks against minorities coagulated into an anti-democratic movement that would change the face of Europe and the world in just a few years.
Although fascism as a regime disappeared in the West after World War 2, it is undeniable that its ideology did not. In fact, the present economic crisis has the effect of stimulating the birth of new forms of fascist movements in many countries, not only in Europe. Just to mention the most threatening example: on 11 March 2013, the Hungarian parliament approved substantial changes to the constitution that limited civil liberties and the powers of the Constitutional Court.
Contemporary democracies are witnessing a striking paradox: the democratic political system enjoys the support of public opinion and even a universal allure (the same Hungarian reforms were propagandized in the name of defending “Hungarian democracy”), and yet, its existing mechanisms are under pressure and criticism principally as a result of a decline in trust. The growth of Fascist and nationalist movements in Europe and the decline of legitimacy of European Union are correlated phenomena that demand critical attention and analysis. Recent elections for the renewal of the European Parliament marked a turning point in the reappearance of the political right-wing as a European phenomenon: xenophobia,ethnocentric nationalism, anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism are the basic components of this new form of cultural fascism.
These are the historical, theoretical, and culture premises that motivate the design of an International Conference on Fascisms across Borders. The conference looks at the constellation of concepts that fascism concocts historically – populism, nationalism, Nazism—and their renewal in neo-fascist movements and ideologies both in their specificity and their historical actualizations across the globe, but specifically in Europe and Latin America.
http://heymancenter.org/events/fascism-across-borders/
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
April 1st
Columbia University, Common Room of The Heyman Center for the Humanities
8:30 – 9:15 Coffee & Pastries
9:15 – 9:30 Opening Remarks
Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University, Department of Political Science
9:30 – 11:15 Panel I, Past and Present of Fascism
Chair: Federico Finchelstein (The New School for Social Research)
Enzo Traverso (Cornell University)
Post-fascism: the Politics of Xenophobia and the Legacy of the Twentieth Century
Geoff Eley (University of Michigan)
Violence, Breakdown, Consent: Fascism and the Technologies of Crisis
Discussant: Turkuler Isiksel (Columbia University)
11:15 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 – 1:15 Panel II, Old and New Ideological Borders
Chair: Jean Cohen (Columbia University)
Kostis Karpozilos (Princeton University)
Contemporary Fascisms and the Limits of Historical Analogies
Michele Battini (University of Pisa)
Time Borders and Space Borders: The Italian Intellectuals and Fascist Anti-Semitism
Discussant: Ruth Ben-Ghiat (New York University)
1:30 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 4:15 Panel III, Within the Fortress of Europe 1
Chair: Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University)
Dimitris Kousouris (University of Konstanz)
Fascism(s) in Europe’s Center and Periphery Through the Crises of the 1970s and the 2010s
Hubertus Buchstein (University of Greifswald)
The Neo-Nazi Restructuring After 1989
Discussant: Jose Moya (Columbia University)
4:15 – 4:30 Coffee Break
4:30 – 6:15 Panel IV, Within the Fortress of Europe 2
Chair: Andrew Arato (The New School for Social Research)
Kriss Ravetto (University of California Davis)
Fascist Branding: Constructing the Spectacle of Ethnos in the Balkans
Giulia Albanese (University of Padova)
The Crisis of Liberal Institutions in Mediterranean Europe
Discussant: Jeremy Varon (The New School for Social Research)
6:15 – 7:30 Reception
April 2nd
The New School for Social Research, Wolff Conference Room
8:30 – 9:00 Coffee & Pastries
9:00 – 11:15 Panel V, The Evolution of Populism in Latin America
Chair: Stathis Gourgouris (Columbia University)
Carlos de LaTorre (University of Kentucky)
Populism and the Politics of the Extraordinary in Latin America
Juan F Gonzalez Bertomeu (ITAM School of Law, Mexico) and Maria Paula Saffon (Columbia University)
Populism and Redistribution in Latin America: Conceptualizing a Threshold of Acceptance
Carlos Forment (The New School for Social Research)
Is There Still Fascism in Latin America?
Discussant:Pablo A. Piccato (Columbia University)
11:15 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 – 1:15 Panel VI, Challenges in the Age of New Media Technology
Chair:Neni Panourgiá (The New School for Social Research)
Seraphim Seferiades (Panteion University, Athens)
Fascism As a Mass Phenomenon: Should We Be Calling It a “Movement?”
Eleni Varikas (University Paris 8 and Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris (CRESPPA/ CNRS)
Repressed Genealogies of “Race” and Empire in the Critical Responses to the new European Fascisms
Discussant: Silvana Patriarca (Fordham University)
1:15 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 4:30 Round Table
Fascism and Beyond
Chair: Andreas Kalyvas (The New School for Social Research)
Panelists: Victoria De Grazia (Columbia University); Federico Finchelstein (The New School);Stathis Gourgouris (Columbia University); Neni Panourgiá (The New School for Social Research); Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University).
