This course covers the first decades of the twentieth century, focussing mainly on their social and intellectual aspects and introducing a comparative perspective, with special emphasis on the interwar period and our own days.

The notions and history of the Extreme Right and fascism are considered in international context. As regards Greece, the basic nodes of our course are the development of five separate authoritarian currents of thought and of antiparliamentary organisations in the late nineteenth and in the first decades of the twentieth century; the fundamentalist orthodox Extreme Right, the conservative Extreme Right, the fascist Extreme Right, the militarist Extreme Right, and the absolutist Extreme Right; the impact of modern war on political consciousness between 1912 and 1922; the sway of militarism in the interwar years, culminating in the Condylis and Metaxas Dictatorship; and the fascist tendencies of the interwar years, located mainly among the ruling strata.

1. General introduction. The framework, and basic analytical terms: Extreme Right, fascism, nazism; Counter-revolution, capitalist mode of production, capitalist world system, patriarchy and misogynist culture, racism, nationalism, imperialism, slavery, antisemitism, antiromanism.
2. Nineteenth century origins of the European Extreme Right. The French Revolution and Counter-revolution. Restoration and White Terror. Genocides, colonialism, and imperialism. Religion and science. Orientalism and social darwinism. Racism, antisemitism, antiromanism.
3. Historiographical and political approaches to fascism. Marxist schools, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, sociology, political science, history. Stanley Payne, Zeev Sternhell, George Mosse, Tim Mason, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin, Emil Nolte, Emilio Gentile.
4. Robert Paxton’s anatomy of fascism: an overview.
5. Marxist analyses of fascism: an overview.
6. The intellectual prehistory of fascism in European countries. Counter-revolution, antisemitism, antiromanism, justificatory discourses of imperialism, catholic, protestant and Orthodox reactionary discourses, orientalism, racism, antisemitism, antiromanism, social darwinism.
7. The birth of fascist movements around WWI. The fascist bid for power. Conservatives, liverals, and fascists.
8. Origins and forms of the Extreme Right in prewar and interwar Greece. The original five currents of the Extreme Right in Greece. Ion Dragoumes. National Schism, agrarian and refugee issues. Interwar dictatorships. Local mass movements.
9. Fascism’s bid for power in Interwar Europe crushed in WWIΙ. Postwar economic boom, corporatism, and marginalisation of the Extreme Right. Extreme Right and fascism during the Occupation and the Greek Civil War.
10. Extreme Right and fascism in postwar Greece, 1950-2010.
11. Fascism and antifascism reborn in Europe, 1970-2010. Ruptures and Continuities between the New Order and the European Union.
12. Liberal, conservative and fascist Extreme Right in the context of the terminal crisis of capitalism.
13. Recapitulation and overview. Discussion.

Projections of documentaries and films on fascism outside course hours.