A Review of Where Have All The Fascists Gone?

Below please find a link to a favourable review by Andreas Umland of my Where Have All The Fascists Gone?

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/50960635/Review-of-Tamir-Bar-Ons-Where-Have-All-the-Fascists-Gone

Tamir Bar-On

What's Right?: A Review Essay

In 2009, the Journal for the Study of Radicalism published a review of my book Where Have All The Fascists Gone? by its editor Arthur Versluis. Here is the review below:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_for_the_study_of_radicalism/v002/2.2.versluis02.pdf


Tamir Bar-On

"Revolutions in World History"

I am helping to edit a journal at my university called Retos Internacionales. The new issue is about "Revolutions in World History". Here is my introduction below:

Dr. Tamir Bar-On, "Revolutions in World History"


This year is special in Mexico’s history. It is simultaneously the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence and 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. As a result, Retos Internacionales made the decision to explore the Mexican Revolution in the context of other revolutions in world history. I invite you to read the various pieces of “Revolutions in World History” with an eye to the unique historical, political, cultural, economic, and social circumstances surrounding revolutionary processes.

Revolution comes from the Latin word revolutio, meaning “a turn around.” Revolutions come in different forms. A revolution connotes a radical change of the existing political, economic, social, cultural, and institutional frameworks of a society and state. Examples of these types of often violent revolutions include the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the 1922 Fascist Revolution in Italy. However, a broader understanding of revolutions allows us to examine long-term revolutionary processes with no precise dates, which nonetheless engender profound and radical changes in society, its institutions, and its dominant values. The Industrial Revolution in the latter part of the 18th and 19th centuries is one such example. Another is the Quiet Revolution in Quebec (Canada) from around 1960-66, corresponding to the tenure of Liberal Quebec Premier Jean Lesage. The Quiet Revolution was indeed non-violent. Yet, it represented a profound change in state and societal mentalities; rejection of the conservative, rural-based, clerical, and authoritarian values of the past; and a turn towards processes of modernization, industrialization, secularization, civil rights, national assertiveness, and state involvement in the economy.

Revolutions can result in failure or success for revolutionaries themselves. A major failed revolution is the spectacular worker-students revolts of May 1968 in France. Another is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s failed revolution against the Mexican state in the mid-1990s. Do failed revolutionaries go gently into the good night, or continue the fight with different tactics or ideological colours? A successful revolution was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the worldwide and hypnotic pull of the internationalist, socialist revolution from the late 19th century until the official demise of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union in 1991.

Revolutions all have their springtime of hopes when revolutionaries are able to capture the state and offer radically new models of society and the state and sweep away the old “corrupt” order. Yet, revolutions also have their winters of discontent when the revolutionary ideals of the past are frozen in the coffins of rhetoric. New revolutionaries might arise to call for “a turn around” in which an alternative, radical society is proposed, or return to the "purity" of the original revolutionary ideals. From 1943-45, Benito Mussolini promised to take the pro-Nazi Italian Social Republic towards the original, “leftist”, “corporatist”, and revolutionary values of “movement fascism” in 1919 before Italian fascists captured the state.

Revolutions often have unexpected consequences for their own societies, but also regional and global repercussions. In these respects, the Industrial Revolution, the revolution born of the Information Age, and the biotechnological revolution have impacted diverse regions of the world in different periods with varied consequences. The struggle between competing revolutionary ideologies, whether liberal republicanism, socialism, and fascism, tore asunder Western societies in the 20th century and spawned world wars, totalitarianism, gulags, and concentration camps. Socialist ideas had great transnational pull until the official fall of the Soviet Union in diverse locations such as Nicaragua, Chile, Angola, Algeria, Yemen, Romania, and Vietnam, as well as among the Western and non-Western intelligentsia alike.

Moreover, there are often terrible human consequences with revolutions, but also perceived gains for individuals and societies. In his 1994 work Death By Government, R.J. Rummel estimated that the Stalinist, Maoist, and Hitlerian revolutions killed approximately 100 million people. Yet, revolutions are difficult to stop because they embody the hopes of selected elites or their societies for wholescale political, social, cultural, and economical changes, as well as the modernist desire to raze the “decrepit” order of the past and radically create new people, values, institutions, and even conceptions of time. Do revolutions perhaps represent an irrepressible human desire for change and a better world? The turn away from slave-holding societies in ancient times, or apartheid in South Africa in the mid-1990s were born of a desire for human betterment. The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries spawned a progressive desire of individuals and societies in Europe to turn away from the static, hierarchical universes of the Church, feudalism, and aristocracy. Its repercussions were eventually felt with the desire of Mexican revolutionaries to achieve social justice in the context of liberal republican and national values. When the United States of America elected Barack Obama as its first ever black President in 2008, liberal republican revolutionaries of the past from Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry to the civil rights movements in the 1960 helped to radically shift mentalities, which made Obama’s victory possible. In short, the Enlightenment set in motion unseen revolutionary processes, which eventually allowed for the rise of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, multiculturalism, and the election of President Obama.

Today there are those that question the merits of the Enlightenment project and the notion that through human reason individuals and societies can achieve a better, saner, and more just and free social order. Others like Francis Fukuyama boldly proclaimed the “end of history” and the worldwide triumph of liberalism in 1989 in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. If history has ended, we should ask why the rise of militant pan-Islamism in the mould of al-Qaeda, the proliferation of anti-globalization revolutionaries, or the rise of left-wing revolutionary populism in Venezuela and other parts of Latin America in the 1990s and into the new millennium? Might we say that the rapid spread of global capitalism and its attendant institutions worldwide, as well as the crashing of socialist and fascist revolutionary projects, highlight the demise of totalizing, revolutionary “grand narratives”? Or, might we read Fukuyama’s thesis as a call for human beings to take charge of their own lives and radically re-start history as revolutionary activists, movements, parties, and regimes have done since the erection of human communities?

Tamir Bar-On

International Conference at Universidad de Colima: 10-11 June 2010

On Friday June 11, 2010, the same day as the opening of the football (soccer) World Cup in South Africa, I will deliver a paper entitled "The Transnational Worldview and Influence of the French Nouvelle Droite" at the Universidad de Colima.  I have been generously invited to the conference by Dr. Avital Bloch, the director of the Centre for Social Research at the Universidad de Colima.  The conference's name is "International Colloquium of History and Social Sciences."

Tamir Bar-On

Review of Ocalan's Prison Writings

Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK (pictured above), sits in a Turkish jail since 1999. He has penned a book, Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation (2007), which I reviewed for the journal Millennium in 2008. The review, in conjunction with others, appears on the Web site for Ocalan's publisher. See the review below:

http://ocalan-books.com/reviews.html

As a footnote, Ocalan's lawyers are trying to pass him my review, but Turkish authorities insist it is translated into Turkish first. Ocalan's recent proposals for resolving the Kurdish-Turkish conflict along federalist lines are certainly interesting. A man that once lived by the gun, Ocalan now renounces ultra-nationalism, Marxism, and terrorist violence. Except the Turkish state is not so convinced about his change of heart.

Tamir Bar-On

My Summer Projects: Book, Article in Book, and Journal Article

As my teaching duties are completed at the TEC of Monterrey (Campus Queretaro) until August, here are my main summer projects below:

1) Write lots of chapters for my book, The French New Right: Three More Interpretations (2011-2012).

2) Complete my chapter on "Intellectual Right-Wing Extremism" for the book edited by Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau entitled The Extreme Right in Europe: Current Trends and Perspectives. The book is a joint project of the UMR Cultures and Societies in Europe (Strasbourg, France) and of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Social Research on Totalitarianism (Dresden, Germany). This chapter will be completed at the end of June.

3) Write an article on the transnational worldview and influence of the French nouvelle droite. I hope to complete this article by next week and send it to an academic journal.

4) Solicit academics from around the world to take part in the Advisory Board for a new journal I am editing at the TEC of MONTERREY called Retos Internacionales.

5) As the picture above shows, hopefully spend some time near a Mexican ocean (I love the Pacific coast!).

Tamir Bar-On

Fifth Academic Article: Nouvelle Droite and Empire!

Here is the title of my fifth academic article:

"Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The Dream of Pan-European Empire," Journal of Contemporary European Studies 16 (3) (December 2008), pp. 327-345.

Here is the abstract below:

The purpose of this paper is to trace continuity in the attachment of the nouvelle droite to a homogeneous notion of pan-European identity since its birth in 1968. Like the nouvelle droite, early post-war neo-fascism and significant fascist elements in Italy were similarly obsessed with the decline of homogeneous pan-European or Western identities. Despite the ultra-nationalistic origins of historical fascism, early post-war neo-fascism and the nouvelle droite in different historical periods, the thread tying them together is the notion of a strong, unified, homogeneous, pan-European empire regenerated in defense against the dominant 'materialist' ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, social democracy, socialism, capitalism and communism.

And the link to the full article:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/37770743/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-The-Dream-of-Pan-European-Empire

By the way, the map above is of the Roman Empire in C.E. 117. The nouvelle droite under its leader Alain de Benoist has stated as its geopolitical preference the recreation of a pan-European empire in which there is a "Europe of a Hundred Flags." Internally, the regions or states would be homogeneous (cleansed of immigrants) led by an imperial centre with an authoritarian, elitist, corporatist bent. Yes to a European union says the nouvelle droite, but no to the capitalist, technocratic European Union of today. A united imperial Europe, the nouvelle droite reasons, would be able to challenge the world's sole remaining superpower and its primary enemy, the liberal capitalist United States of America. 

Tamir Bar-On

Fourth Academic Article: Fighting Violence!

Excuse the violent title (!), but here is the name of my fourth academic article:

"Fighting Violence: A Critique of the War On Terrorism," International Politics (42) (June 2005), pp. 225-245.

Here is the link below:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33418617/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-Fighting-Violence-A-Critique-of-the-War-On-Terrorism-International-Politics-(42)-(June-2005)-pp-225-245

Here is the paper's abstract:

This paper reviews the various ways in which violence is resorted to in the service of political ends. While it is commonly thought that terrorism is an activity that is solely engaged in by political outsiders, this paper will demonstrate that even constitutionally legitimate political entities have been known to themselves engage in terrorist acts. From Robespierre to the World Trade Center, with numerous stops along the way in locations as diverse as Hiroshima, Buenos Aires, and Winnipeg, the paper aims to investigate just what exactly terrorism is, and therefore what the actual object of the war on terror ought to be.

I hope that the piece is useful for understanding the origins of the word terrorism and re-thinking some strategies in respect of the "war on terror". The paper also has a useful definition of terrorism, classifies terrorism along ideological types, and points out that terrorism can be committed by both state and non-state actors. I make no bones about it that governments, the right, and left all tend to excuse their political violence and simultaneously exaggerate the violence of their political foes.

I also have suggestions at the end of the piece for inching us towards a broader culture of peace.

Tamir Bar-On

Academic Leader at TEC of MONTERREY: Dr. Zahar

Yesterday we had the pleasure to hear a former colleague at McGill University, Dr. Marie-Joelle Zahar, speak at the TEC of Monterrey (Campus Queretaro). She is now a professor at the University of Montreal. Here is a link to the Academic Leaders' project she was involved with at my university (in Spanish):

http://lideresacademicos.net/node/195

Marie-Joelle Zahar is an expert on militias and war economies. Zahar tries to analyze how militias might exit from the armed struggle, or the reasons why they continue to take up arms after official "peace deals" are signed. As a specialist on fascism and neo-fascism, what we have in common is a focus on political manifestations of violence.

Tamir Bar-On

Memorial for Two TEC students today...

It is indeed a sad day. Today the TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY, the main campus in Monterrey, has a ceremony for two graduate students tragically killed by stray bullets on March 19, 2010. The two students are Javier Arredondo and Jorge Mercado. A Facebook site on their behalf has already generated close to 4,000 followers:

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=102480629787015&share_id=106326476063157&comments=1#!/group.php?gid=102480629787015

There are serious questions asked of the Mexican authorities on the site, including why they could not be identified as TEC students.

Today my heart is filled with sadness for the students that will no longer smell the arid, hot sun of Mexico, their families, friends, and colleagues that must endure terrible pain. YOU DO NOT WALK ALONE. This Political Science professor from TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY, CAMPUS QUERETARO, is with you. And so are millions around Mexico. Javier and Jorge, may your souls rest in peace.

Tamir Bar-On

My Third Academic Article!

In 2003-4, a heated debate about fascism took place in a German journal, Erwagen, Wissen, Ethik. In the debate, Roger Griffin, the esteemed historian of fascism, was invited to write a piece about contemporary fascism's "facelessness." Academics, including myself, were asked to respond to Griffin's article. Intellectuals from Germany, England, Canada, the United States, and numerous other countries responded. What was unique about the debate was the collaboration between German and Anglophone academics on Fascism.

My piece was entitled, “A Critical Response to Roger Griffin’s ‘Fascism’s new faces and new facelessness in the post-fascist epoch,’” Erwagen, Wissen, Ethik (Deliberation, Knowledge, Ethics) 15 (3) (April 2004), pp. 307-309.

The aforementioned article I wrote reappeared in the following book:

“A Critical Response to Roger Griffin’s ‘Fascism’s new faces" in Roger Griffin, Werner Loh, and Andreas Umland, (eds.), Fascism Past and Present, West and East (Ibidem-Verlag, 2006), pp. 85-92.

Here below is a link to the article and all other articles in the debate! A full 77 pages of text!

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/30279013/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-“A-Critical-Response-to-Roger-Griffin’s-‘Fascism’s-new-faces-and-new-facelessness-in-the-post-fascist-epoch”

Tamir Bar-On

Full Text of My Second Academic Article on the Nouvelle Droite!

Here is the full text of my second academic article:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/29067549/The-Ambiguities-of-the-Nouvelle-Droite-1968-1999

Please let me know your thoughts on this piece, which got me working on the French nouvelle droite and European New Right for many years!

Tamir Bar-On

My Second Academic Article: Figuring Out the Nouvelle Droite!

My second academic article was a kind of summary of my Ph.D. dissertation, which I completed at McGill University. It is about how far right-wing intellectuals coped with the post-World War Two period and the official defeat of Fascism.

The title of my second, peer-reviewed academic article is the following:

"The Ambiguities of the Nouvelle Droite, 1968-1999," The European Legacy 6 (3) (2001), pp. 333-351.

The article became cited as one of the standard references on the nouvelle droite, or broader European New Right (i.e., by other academics and in Wikipedia).

Here is the Wikipedia link to the Nouvelle Droite, which cites my name and ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite

And the link to my article:


http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713665584&db=all

Tamir Bar-On

My First Academic Article: Football, Politics, and Culture

In the next few days, I will post my academic work online...It was back in 1997 that I published my first peer-reviewed academic article on the relationship between football (soccer), politics, and culture in Latin America. Check out the abstract and article below and let me know what you think!

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/cgi-bin/abstract.pl?2/4/2.html


http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/4/2.html

Tamir Bar-On

Back from My Hiatus: At The TEC OF MONTERREY!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,




I was off managing my move to Queretaro and my new university, the TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY (CAMPUS QUERETARO) in Mexico. I teach in the Department of Humanities and International Relations. Here is a link to my university, one of the most highly rated in the Americas:

http://www.itesm.edu/wps/portal?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/migration/QRO2/Quer_taro/


(Please note that there is an English link too...And by the way, I am learning Spanish, but teaching in English. I teach International Relations Theories I and II, European Politics, and Geopolitics)...

Oh yes, and a link to the gorgeous colonial city of Queretaro:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quer%C3%A9taro,_Quer%C3%A9taro

In the next little while, I will post excerpts of my academic work throughout my career.

Peace and abrazos (hugs),

Tamir Bar-On