Conference
Conception: Benjamin Zachariah (Potsdam) and Debojit Thakur (Calcutta)

With: Sebastiaan Faber (Oberlin), Federico Finchelstein (New York), Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes), Irina Nastasă-Matei (Bucharest), Martina Bitunjac (Potsdam), Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe (Berlin), Antonio Costa Pinto (Lisbon), Jason Stanley (Toronto), Luisa Passerini (Florence), Richard Wolin (New York).

Tolerance towards other people’s fascisms has been a feature of political life. This is complicated by the ability of right-wing movements and states to work together. Internationalism is not often a concept associated with the right. It is undeniable, however, that both historically and in contemporary times, völkisch nationalists and fascist organisations have been more flexible in their ability to mobilise in cooperation with one another than a self-proclaimed left, who share, theoretically, similar internationalist concerns with one another. From the so-called ‘Fascist International’ in the 1920s to contemporary völkisch nationalists, dictatorial governments, and authoritarian movements, it appears that both pragmatic approaches to alliance-building and shared ideological propensities have enabled internationalist solidarities on the right. From the Axis itself to the admiration for Ataturk in some Nazi circles, to imagined pan-Aryan solidarities among Indian, Iranian, Irish, and Germanic nationalists, to contemporary alliances of right-wing, proto- or neo-fascist groups across continents, in Argentina, Brazil, India, Russia, or the United States, we can see a shared vocabulary, a style of politics, and cross-border organisation that transcends the apparent narrowness of specific völkisch or (proto-)fascist movements. How, then, do we make sense of this phenomenon?