On comparing Nazism and Stalinism

This article discusses Richard Overy's book comparing the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. The book seeks not just to describe, but also to explain the way the two systems functioned. With this in view the book compares them on a detailed topic-by-topic basis and recognizes that the two systems were in important ways fundamentally different, while concluding that both based their power not just on the personality of the leader, but also on substantial popular support. The reviewer argues, however, that although the book contains valuable information and insights, it may nevertheless be a little too ready to squeeze the two systems into the same mould. Nazism was a uniquely malignant phenomenon not merely because of its crimes, but because of its ideas, which embraced far more than just racism. The reviewer argues that given the unique evil of Nazism, it cannot properly be likened to anything else.     

Heidegger's political judgment: Nazism and after

This paper focuses upon the paradox of Heidegger's political thought. Although Heidegger was a Nazi, in the post war period his thought has been influential in political philosophy precisely to the extent that it was able to intersect with a range of emancipatory discourses. This article traces the development of, and inspects the problems that remained with Heidegger's political judgment, even in its more ‘emancipatory’ aspect. This analysis is advanced against a broader background discussion of the general importance that the Heidegger case has for the public at large.     

Dictatorships and Revolutions in Portugal and Chile: Ethnography,Memory and Invisibilities

This article discusses the relation between ethnography and underexposure of memory. Displaying similar characteristics, the ethnographies we developed in Portugal and Chile dealt precisely with this thematic in different chronological periods. We are going to point out our fieldwork convergences, specifically in what concerns the data recollection process.     

Turkey's Modernization: Refugees From Nazism and Ataturk's Vision

In an era when Turkey is known more for its mediocre recordon human rights and freedom of speech, Arnold Reisman's Turkey'sModernization brings light to a lesser known phase of Turkishhistory, where Turkey, as a young republic, had opened its doorsto Jewish scholars escaping Nazi Europe. In fact, the storyof Jewish scholars taking refuge in the newly established TurkishRepublic has been a long neglected topic, a subject matter discussedmore as "popular knowledge" than "scholarly analysis." In thatregard, Reisman's book is an important contribution becauseit fills that gap with its rich visual     

Fascism,Nazism, and Japanism

ALEXANDER DE GRAND. Italian Fascism: Its Origins and Development. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982; PTERRE AYQOBERRY. The Nazi Question: An Essay on the Interpretations of National Socialism (1922–1975). Tr. by Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1981; WILLIAM MILES FLETCHER III. The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982; and BEN-AMI SHILLONY. Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.     

Nazism as modern magic: bronislaw malinowski's political anthropology

In the 1930s, the functionalist anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski embarked on a lecture tour of the United States in an attempt to alert the American public to the threat posed by Nazism. This article considers how Malinowski's public campaigning built on his anthropological studies, and suggests how the insights contained therein can still be an impetus to further augment our understanding of Nazism as a phenomenon.     

Relegating Nazism to the Past: Expressions of German Guilt in 1945 and Beyond

This article builds on a research thesis that confronting moralfeelings is essential to an understanding of the catastrophicpolitical success of Nazism in Germany and the way Germany developedafter its defeat in 1945. This research into a ‘moralhistory’ of Nazi Germany and its postwar echoes is carriedout through an interdisciplinary approach that, in essence,combines historical with philosophical analysis. In the immediatepostwar period, Germany continued to be stamped by discussionscentred on moral guilt arising from its Nazi past and from theHolocaust in particular. The article analyses the differentways this guilt was discussed in 1945 and how these discussionsechoed what can be described as a form of Nazi morality. Thearticle uses three main sources to explore these issues: first,the writings and interrogations with the Nazi lawyer and Governor-Generalof Nazi-occupied Poland, Hans Frank; second, the memoirs ofHitler's secretary Traudl Junge; and third, the essay The Questionof German Guilt by Karl Jaspers.     

The German Argentines between Nazism and Nationalism: The Patagonia Plot of 1939

Abstract

When seizing control of the US embassy In Tehran in November 1979 during the Iranian revolution, militant students not only took sixty-one US citizens hostage, but also captured thousands of pages of official documents. During the 1980s, they published seventy-seven volumes of selections in order to prove to the world that the United States had colluded with the Pahlavi regime, and to discredit Iranian moderates by revealing their former ties to US officials. In keeping with the militants' perception of the embassy's role in Iran's domestic politics, they entitled the publications Documents from the US Espionage Den (Asnad-i Lanah-yi Jasusi).¹ Surprisingly, among the papers published is one by Harvard University anthropologist Michael M. J. Fischer entitled ‘Religion and Progress in Iran’, apparently written for a state department colloquium on Iran held on 25 May 1979. In the introduction, Fischer characterizes the Islamic Republic as a ‘challenge to modernization theory’: ‘Iran has been a major test case for modernization theory throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It was the case where the constraint of capital was theoretically removed, and therefore the case where transformation from the third world into the first world was expected to be most feasible.’²