The rise of a xenophobic, demagogic and nationalist political right is one of the most unexpected and controversial phenomena in contemporary times. This module will add a scholarly dimension to such timely debates by tracing the rise of fascism and nationalism from their early twentieth-century roots through the post-war period to their twenty-first century manifestations in Europe and the US. Through seminars and readings the historical arc of this socio-political phenomenon will be discovered, and its challenge to liberal values and democracy will be analysed. 

The module will provide the tools for students to get to grips with concepts such as nationalism, populism, and neo-fascism, and to identify the shared features of extremist movements, making it possible to assess the inter-play of ideology and historical evolution, cross-national and transatlantic interactions, illuminating both past and recent developments in European countries and the U.S. A further question to be addressed is whether the most recent far-right parties can be perceived as a new phenomenon, the product of the post-industrial era, and, consequently, distinctively different from all their historical ancestors. Students will be encouraged to take methodological clues from other social sciences – including anthropology, political science and sociology – while deepening their appreciation of how similar ideas can function differently in different historical contexts. 

By the end of the course students should be able to:

• Understand, and be able to reflect critically upon, historical and contemporary debates surrounding fascism and right-wing extremism
  
• Understand, and be able to reflect critically upon, the role of historical legacies in shaping contemporary political outcomes
  
• Understand, and be able to reflect critically upon, concepts such as ultra-nationalism, racism, and populism
  

Assessment: Presentation (10%), Essay (30% - best one out of two), Exam (60%).

Essential reading material 

Mammone, A., Godin E., and Jenkins, B., eds., Varieties of Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2012)

Mammone, A., Godin E., and Jenkins, B., eds., Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From local to transnational(London and New York: Routledge, 2012)

Mammone, A., Godin E., and Jenkins, B., eds., “The Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: History, Interpretations, Performances,” special edition of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 17(2), 2009

Paxton, R., The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Vintage, 2005)

Eatwell, R., Fascism: a History (London and New York: Pimlico, 2003)

Cento Bull, A., “Neofascism,” in R. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Readings (for seminars) 

Art, D., Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Bar-On, T., “Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivarly,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 10(3-4), 2009

Blee, K., Understanding Racist Activism(Routledge, 2018) 

Bosworth, R., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2009) 

Castelli Castelli Gattinara, P. et al., “The appeal of neo-fascism in times of crisis. The experience of CasaPound Italia”, Fascism, 2(2), 2013

Clover, C., Financial Times, 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/edb595d8-aeba-11e7-beba-5521c713abf4; 

Copsey, N., “‘Fascism… but with an open mind.’ Reflections on the Contemporary Far Right in (Western) Europe”,Fascism, 2(1), 2013

Copsey, N., “The English defence league: Challenging our country and our values of social inclusion, fairness and equality”, (Faith Matters, 2010) http://tees.openrepository.com/tees/bitstream/10149/116066/4/116066.pdf

Copsey, N., “Changing course or changing clothes? Reflections on the ideological evolution of the British National Party 1999–2006”, Patterns of Prejudice, 41(1), 2007

Copsey, N., “A comparison between the extreme right in contemporary France and Britain”, ContemporaryEuropean History, 6(1), 1997

Copsey, N. and Worley, M., eds.,Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The British Far Right since 1967 (Routledge, 2017)

Copsey, N., and Richardson, J., eds., Cultures of Post-War British Fascism(Routledge 2015)

Copsey, N., and Macklin, G., eds., British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2011)

Dorril, S., “Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism”, Modern History Review, 2018 https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/media/Documents/Magazines/Sample%20Articles/JanFeb%202018/ModHistRev20_4_Feb2018.pdf

Eatwell, R., Fascism: a History (Pimlico, 2003)

Finchelstein, F., From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press, 2017)

Finchelstein, F., Transatlantic Fascism (Duke University Press, 2010)

Ford, R. and Goodwin, M., Revolt on the Right. Explaining Support for the Radical Right inBritain(Routledge, 2014)

Gest, J. et al., “Roots of the Radical Right: Nostalgic Deprivation in the United States and Britain”, Comparative Political Studies, 2017 

Gest, J., The New Minority: White Working-Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Hillman, N., “‘Tell me chum, in case I got it wrong. What was it we were fighting during the war?’ The Re-emergence of British Fascism, 1945-58,” Contemporary British History, 15(4), 2001

Jackson, P., and Shekhovtsov, A., eds., The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right (Palgrave 2014) 

Kallis, A., “When Fascism Became Mainstream: The Challenge of Extremism in Times of Crisis”, Fascism, 4(1), 2015 

Kaplan, J. and Weinberg, L., The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right (Rutgers University Press, 1998) 

Laruelle, M., Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lexington, 2015) 

Lyttelton, A., ed., Liberal and Fascist Italy (1900-1945) (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Macklin, G., “Transnational Networking of the Far Right: The case of Britain and Germany,” West European Politics, 36(1), 2013

Macklin, G., “Transatlantic connections and conspiracies: A.K. Chesterton and the New Happy Lords”, Journal of Contemporary History, 47(2), 2012

Mammone, A., Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy (CUP, 2015)

Mammone, A., “The Eternal Return? Faux Populism and Contemporarization of Neo-Fascism across Britain, France and Italy,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 17(2), 2009

Mammone, A., et al., eds.,The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Italy (Routledge, 2015)

Mammone, A., et al., eds., Varieties of Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2012)

Mammone, A.,et al., eds., Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From local to transnational (Routledge, 2012) 

Mammone, A. and Veltri, G. A., eds., Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe (Routledge, 2010)

Michel, C., Right Wing Watch, 2017  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/the-rise-of-the-traditionalist-international-how-the-american-right-learned-to-love-moscow-in-the-era-of-trump/

Mudde, C., The Far Right in America (Routledge, 2018) 

Paxton, R., The Anatomy of Fascism (Vintage, 2005)

Rydgren, J., ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (OUP, 2018)

Shekhovtsov, A., Russia and the Western Far Right (Routledge, 2018)

Von Mering, S. and Wyman McCarty T., Right-Wing Radicalism Today. Perspectives from Europe and the US (Routledge, 2013)

Wodak, R. and Richardson J., eds.,Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text(Routledge, 2013)