Abstract

Bringing together leading scholars from a range of nations, Rethinking Antifascism provides a fascinating exploration of one of the most vibrant sub-disciplines within recent historiography. Through case studies that exemplify the field’s breadth and sophistication, it examines antifascism in two distinct realms: after surveying the movement’s remarkable diversity across nations and political cultures up to 1945, the volume assesses its postwar political and ideological salience, from its incorporation into Soviet state doctrine to its radical questioning by historians and politicians. Avoiding both heroic narratives and reflexive revisionism, these contributions offer nuanced perspectives on a movement that helped to shape the postwar world.

Xavier Tabet is Professor of Italian Studies at the Université Paris VIII. His research deals with Italian political thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including studies on Fascist political myths and literature. His latest book is La vie intellectuelle entre Fascisme et République: Italie 1940-1948 (2012). 

Cristina Clímaco is Associate Professor of Portuguese Modern History at the Université Paris VIII. Her research focuses on the opposition to the Estado Novo, specifically Portuguese political exiles of the 1930s. She has published numerous articles and the forthcoming book Republicanos, Anarquistas e Comunistas no exilio, 1927-1936.

Hugo García is Associate Professor of Modern World History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. His publications include The Truth about Spain: Mobilizing British Public Opinion, 1936-1939 (2010), and he edited the Contemporary European History special issue on Transnational Anti-Fascism: Agents, Networks, Circulations in November 2016.

Mercedes Yusta is Professor of Spanish History at the Université Paris VIII and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She has published numerous books on antifascist political culture, most recently Madres coraje contra Franco: La Unión de Mujeres Españolas en Francia, del antifascismo a la Guerra Fría (2009).

“This rich and comprehensive book opens up around the historiographical question of antifascism a series of passionate debates of which the last word has not been said.” • Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire

“…the volume makes a significant contribution to the international research field as it introduces the very latest studies on antifascism by Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French researchers to scholars in the English-speaking world…[It] makes a strong stand against revisionism and a significant contribution to the analysis of the limits and possibilities of antifascism, while refusing to reduce it to a form of totalitarianism.” • The International Newsletter of Communist Studies

“Comprised of seventeen eruditely informed and informative articles of impeccable academic scholarship, Rethinking Antifascism: History, Memory and Politics, 1922 to the Present, is a seminal body of studies that is unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Political Science references collections in general, and Fascism/Antifascism supplemental studies reading lists in particular.” • Midwest Book Review

“This is an important book. Examining antifascism from the twin perspectives of historical experience and historical memory, it offers an invaluable contribution to the newly developing field of antifascist studies. An impressive work of international scholarship, its expansive range gives readers access to a succession of fascinating events and debates from the 1920s to the present.  This book makes a statement: it succeeds in ‘internationalising’ the study of anti-fascism and deserves the widest possible readership.” • Nigel Copsey, Teesside University 

“Rethinking Antifascism does a commendable job of offering, for the first time in English, a panoramic view of the antifascist experience that resists the temptation to elaborate an ‘antifascist minimum,’ and instead embraces its multitude of individual and international varieties.” • David Ward, Wellesley College