Europe's Century of Discontent: The Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism

About the Book

FROM PREFACE: This volume is based on papers delivered at an international conference “Reflections on Europe’s Century of Discontent: Confronting the Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism,” held at the Institute for European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 10–12 March 2002. The impetus for the conference were our feelings that with the demise of the Soviet Union and the...

About the Author

Shlomo Avineri ---

Prof. Dr. Shlomo Avineri teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at several universities, among them Yale, Oxford and the City University of New York, and also a visiting fellow to the Brookings Institution and the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. During 1975-1977, Mr. Avineri served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the National Democratic Institute (Washington, DC) international teams of observers to the first post-communist elections in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Estonia. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Middle Eastern affairs, political theory and international affairs.

Contents

CONTENTS

SHLOMO AVINERI
ZEEV STERNHELL     Preface vii

PART ONE

THE THEORETICAL DIMENSION

ZEEV STERNHELL From Counter-Enlightenment to the Revolutions of the 20th Century     3
MARK LILLA The Concept of Tyranny     23
HAUKE BRUNKHORST The Decay of the Nation State and People’s Sovereignty: The Origins of Totalitarianism Revisited     31

PART TWO

IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL DYNAMICS

CHARLES S. MAIER Taking Fascism Seriously     43
GABRIEL MOTZKIN Nazism, Communism and the Moral Consequences of the Ineffability of Memory     61
MICHELE BATTINI Rhetorics of Hierarchy: On Linguistic and Ideological Premises of Totalitarian Fascism     85
ANTÓNIO COSTA PINTO The Characteristics of Fascist Regimes: Elites, Single Parties and Political Decision-Making in Fascist Era Dictatorships     101

PART THREE

THEORY AND REALITY

ADAM MICHNIK Slogans Rather than Conversation     139
WOLFGANG MERKEL Totalitarian Regimes     151

PART FOUR

THE COMPARATIVE DIMENSION

CYNTHIA HOOPER The Problem of the Party in a “Police State”: Nazi and Soviet Comparisons     169
MARCELLO FLORES Ideology and Contingency in Totalitarianism’s Violence: A ComparativeApproach of Nazism, Communism, Fascism     189
BERNARD BRUNETEAU “Totalitarianism”: From an Instrumental Term in the Public Debate to an Analytical Category – The Interwar Debate in France     201

PART FIVE

AFTERMATH AND LEGACIES

LÁSZLO SÓLYOM Equality of Victims – Equality of Regimes?     215
MARIO SZNAJDER The Ambivalent Legacy of Fascism in Italy     233
PETER NIESEN Anti-Extremism, Negative Republicanism, Civic Society: Three Paradigms for Banning Political Parties     249
SHLOMO AVINERI In Lieu of an Epilogue: Ideology and Reality in Nazism and Communism     287

List of Contributors     291

An Excerpt from the Book

SLOGANS RATHER THAN CONVERSATION ADAM MICHNIK I Anti-Communism like anti-Fascism is not in itself a marker of human decency. The old lie – the lie of the Communists settling accounts with Fascism – simply becomes replaced by the new lie: the lie of anti-Communists settling accounts with Communism. The past is as difficult to foresee as the future. Examining debates, including Polish debates, over issues that are shocking and controversial to public opinion, one cannot escape the impressio...