In Persepolis Marjane Satrapi depicts elderly Nazis clandestinely indoctrinating german youth in the 1980s.

Can you talk about the survival of Nazism in Germany as an underground movement in the late 20th century movement. To what extent is the rise of neo-nazi movements in Germany and Austria in the 1980s and 1990s (or earlier?) a direct inheritance from surviving unreformed nazis? Or was neo-nazism more of an "organic" movement of young people discovering and interpreting Nazi writings on their own?

a message from /u/commiespaceinvader

"Thank you for having me a second time on the podcast team. It's been a pleasure :).

Also, please know that not only am I in a different time zone but also on a biref trip this weekend, so I might take some time to answer any additional questions people have but I'll definitely answer them.

In addition, here is a selection of the sources I used for the podcast:

• Robert Paxton: The Anatomy of Fascism (2004).

• Leon Trotsky:Bonapartism and Fascism (1934).

• August Thalheimer: On Fascism (1940).

• Timothy Mason: Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class: Essays (1995).

• Enzo Traverso: The Origins of Nazi Violence (2003).

• George L. Mosse: The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism (1999).

• Antonio Costa Pinto (ed.): Rethinking the Nature of Fascism: Comparative Perspectives (2011).

• Walter Laquer: Fascism: Past, Present, Future (1966).

• Emilio Gentile: The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918–1925 (2005).

Thank you for listening and I look forward to a discussion of this podcast."

and of course I misspelled Fascism* in the title, but yknow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Is this a historian only thing? Or are there political theory experts involved as well? If not it would be good to involve a professor of political theory since issues like fascism, communism etc. fit into the field of political science as well.

For anyone who's interested, I put together a transcript of the episode and it's available as a pdf here.

And thank you guys for doing the podcast, it was a very interesting listen!

1. In various lectures, Timothy Snyder has brought up the Russian intellectual Ivan Ilyn, and paraphrases Ilyn's alleged claim that the White faction in the Russian Civil War had early elements of fascism to it. (Ilyn's perspective as Snyder relates it is apparently pro-fascist, and lamenting a missed opportunity for fascism in Russia). Are you familiar with such a claim? Do scholars of fascism identify common precursors to fascist thought throughout early interwar Europe, and is it just a coincidence that Mussolini's Italy was the place where this thought rose to power? Or was Mussolini and the Fascist party a "thought-leader" with respect to fascism.

2. Again according to Snyder, Ilyn continued to advocate for fascism after 1945 (though apparently Ilyn disapproved of Nazism) while teaching as a university professor in the United States.

Can you talk about the "afterlife" of fascism after 1945? How rare would it be for European or American public intellectuals to advocate for fascism after 1945? If it was common, would their rhetoric usually emphasize states like Franco's Spain, or Portugal, while disavowing the brutality of Nazi Germany?

I'm still listening to the podcast, so apologies if this question is premature.

If the ideological drive for a mystical golden age dominated by a "pure" society is a defining feature of fascism, does that correlate with certain sects of Islam driving for a society ruled by a "pure" Islam? Would "islamofascism" in that sense be politically or historically accurate?

(Please note I am not taking about Islam in general. Only, for example, groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda.)

You don't talk at all about Japan. What makes Japan clearly not a fascist state?

Could you expand on the modern criticisms of works like Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism? What specifically do you see as missing, outdated, or wrong? What does she get (or similar authors) get right?

Also, given how incredibly controversial some of Arendt's other works like Eichmann in Jerusalem are, can you comment on what the state of scholarly debate is on these works?

Thanks for a very interesting podcast!

Hey, so I was considering the definition of fascism you bring up, and I'm wondering if, by that standard, the Jim-Crow South post-reconstruction, circa-say 1900? could be considered fascist?

• It was obsessed with regaining an idealized passed glory in the form of the idealized antebellum south
• The white south saw itself as in conflict with the north and the black south, in such a way that required constant violence in the form of lynchings, and pushes away from democracy (voting restrictions) A political ideology obsessed with purity, longing for an idealized passed, obsessed with conflict; both geographic and racial; and ready to resort to both violence and the abandonment of democratic suffrage seems to describe the American Jim Crow South at the Nadir of Race Relations very well.

Would you say that this is a fair characterization, because I very rarely see them characterized this way even though it seems to fit perfectly, so I want to see if I'm missing something.

Also, would this, by extension, make the Dunning school some of the first fascist historians?

Is it really appropriate to include Evola as a fascist thinker? As he clearly criticized fascism from the right and wanted an organic state. Evola despised populism and the idea of a populist dictator.

Very interesting podcast!

As someone who is not knowledgeable in the topic of political ideologies, I am just missing a few things in understanding what is fascism.

1. Are there any explicitly identifiable elements in political systems of the past that makes them fascist and not anything else? Aesthetics were mentioned, but it's hard to imagine that as being an identifier of fascism only.
2. Is fascism a concept (or an -ism) that can be a definition on its own, or is there a need to re-evaluate it?
3. How connected can we say fascism is to communism and religious fundamentalism? While I can understand the differences, there are a lot of parallels that we can draw between all three political ideologies (e.g. authoritarian / totalitarian, explicit theory of political management, anti-capitalist).

I took a look at your Youtube in the hopes of finding it subtitled (being deaf, sound is not exactly an option for me). The latest one was Episode 26 from seven months ago, and it wasn't even subtitled by Google.

Is there a transcript somewhere I'm not seeing, or is this something I won't be able to enjoy?

Is the YouTube channel still being updated? Unless I'm missing something, it seems like it only has the first 26 episodes.

Just finished to listen and a question came to mind.

You mention the idea of constant struggle, of being surrounded by enemies as a defining trait; which ties in with the cult of violence. I noted that this is often posed as a "constant threat" to one's survival.

In the Italian case, I usually find violence described from a positive annd not negative point of view; as promoting expansion instead of fending off assaults. If life is struggle of nations/peoples/ideas, than the one who fights more, who pushes harder, is more alive; it's an act of power more than one of sacrifice.

Would consider this a significant difference between National Socialism and Italian Fascism? One that may be explained through the different experiences of ww1 - and maybe even the personality of the leaders (which may be a bit reductive), as Mussolini considered himself (and in fact was to many extent) a man who had been successful in life, since early age - with a few step backs - and Hitler seemed to have seen himself for a long time as a man who was rejected from life.