Fascism and Violence
Call for Papers — Forthcoming Event:
Second ComFas Convention
“Fascism and Violence,” Uppsala University, Uppsala Sweden, 25–27 September 2019
Violence has always played a central role in fascist ideology and political practices, either as a means by which to overthrow governments, or to achieve national rebirth and cleansing through the physical removal or annihilation of political enemies and “alien” ethnic or racial communities. Yet there were huge differences concerning the dynamics and magnitude of violence as a function of the political context in which fascists came to power and ruled. By and large, the relationship between fascism and violence has been explored in two separate streams of academic literature. On the one hand, experts on fascism have primarily focused on analyses of ideology, political culture and social activities, with violence playing a secondary role in those analyses. On the other hand, scholars from the field of Holocaust and genocide studies have usually focused on ideological modes of exclusion and the implementation of genocidal violence without necessarily dealing with fascist ideology per se, or with its appeal and ability to achieve mass mobilisation.
The Second Convention of the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies (COMFAS) aims at bringing the two fields together in order to help foster synergies and cross-fertilisation. This will be achieved by focusing on the following three themes of relevance for scholars from all subject fields:
- The role of violence in fascist ideology
- Political practice and violent interactions
- Social memory about fascism and violence
We invite comparative or case-study contributions exploring topics such as: READ MORE