Anglo-American Fascism: From Avant-Garde Manifestoes to Alt-Right Meme Warfare - Einzelansicht

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In the light of recent events in the US, the phenomenon of fascism has gained renewed attention. Yet what seems like a new development actually has a long history. Since the UK and the US were never ruled by fascist regimes, fascist ideas and tendencies thrive(d) especially in the cultural domain, but are occasionally brought into the political domain chiefly by extra-parliamentary actors. In this course, we will trace the development of fascism in the UK and US through a cultural lens, analysing key texts of the Anglophone Far Right, starting from early twentieth-century intellectual reactions against liberal democracy and the burgeoning emancipatory movements as found in the avant-garde to the full-fledged support for continental European fascist regimes by some Modernist authors. In the second part of the course, we will critically discuss subcultural literature of the Far Right and explore the use of memes in the battle for ‘cultural hegemony’. Our literary and cultural analyses will be supported by a robust theoretical framework on the nature of fascism and on new forms of contemporary right-wing extremism. This course is primarily targeted at advanced BA students.

The course will be mostly synchronous with some asynchronous options.

We will read excerpts from:

Wyndham Lewis et al. - BLAST

Ezra Pound - The Cantos

Andrew Macdonald/William L. Pierce - The Turner Diaries

These will be supplemented by shorter excerpts from various manifestoes of the Far Right (past and present), memes as well as various theoretical texts by, among others, Roger Griffin, Stanley Payne, Robert O. Paxton, and Zeev Sternhell.

All readings for this course will be supplied via moodle

Potsdam Studierende: Je nach der jeweiligen StO und PULS Belegung.

Erasmus: nach Bedarf der Home University/ des Learning Agreements