Featured Image: Conference Center on the Via Cristoforo Colombo in EUR, Rome’s Fascist-Built District

The waning months of this year have demonstrated that bigotry, unfortunately, retains its loathsome voice here in the third decade of this 21st century. Hatred dwells still on American soil, demonstrated in flying colors by the actions of some of the most influential people in the public eye. A minority, I would argue, but a vocal one: a minority that has access to the screens of thousands upon thousands of impressionable media consumers.

I will soon submit a long-form piece titled “On Fascism and the Unending Scourge of Anti-Semitism,” which will discuss in greater detail the disturbing continuity of anti-Semitism in U.S. society as well as the neo-Nazi, neo-fascist, and far-right elements that are pushing it. It is a subject of great personal interest as well as emotion for myself, as a Jewish individual living through what appears to be an endless onslaught of horrifying posts, rhetoric, and even outright violence against my community.

It here, though, becomes useful to note that such elements and proponents of far-right ideologies in the United States are neither unique nor monolithic, as much as they would argue otherwise. Their views, furthermore, unimpeded by international boundaries thanks to the expanse of social media, have pushed their reach far and beyond impressionable American audiences. The QAnon conspiracy movement, for example, has demonstrated remarkable staying power not only in the United States but also in Germany, in the Netherlands, and in Canada. The Anti-Defamation League, a leading watchdog on extremism, describes this movement and its anti-Semitic subcurrents quite well.

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The international pervasiveness of such ideologies mirrors that of other far-right ideologies throughout the twentieth century. I would here recommend Kyle Burke’s 2021 Revolutionaries for The Right for Cold War-era internationalism on the far-right. I would also invoke my own article “Fascism: Transnational Frameworks,” peer-reviewed and published in The Webster Review of International History in April 2022. This article investigates how Italian fascists sought to and effectively transnationalize their ideas in interwar Europe using a set of frameworks that most definitely deserve some attention as far-right movements continue to persist in today’s world.

Abstract follows:

Fascism, as with other far-right movements, is oftentimes seen as inherently anti-international and anti-transnational due to prevailing ultra-nationalism. While fascist movements in the interwar period can be partly characterized in this way, they also included transnational dimensions. This article examines the question of transnationalism within Italian fascism as well as the wider applicability of the uniquely Italian movement through a review of relevant literature and documents from Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome.

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Bibliography

1. “Backgrounder: Qanon.” Anti-Defamation League, 2022, https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/qanon.

2. Bergengruen, Vera. “Germany’s Qanon-Inspired Plot Shows How Coup Conspiracies Are Going Global.” TIME, December 9, 2022, 2022. https://time.com/6239835/german-coup-qanon-conspiracies/.

3. Burke, Kyle. 2018. Revolutionaries for the Right Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

4. Cecco, Leyland. “‘Queen of Canada’: The Rapid Rise of a Freinge Qanon Figure Sounds Alarm.” The Guardian, August 23 2022, Americas. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/23/queen-of-canada-qanon-rise-conspiracy-alarm.

5. “The Spread of the “Great Reset” Conspiracy in the Netherlands.” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Updated February 23, 2021, https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/the-spread-of-the-great-reset-conspiracy-in-the-netherlands/.

6. Schwartz, Zachary P. “Fascism: Transnational Frameworks.” Webster Review of International History 2, no. 1 (2022): 2-11.