Holocaust
Studies: A Journal of Culture and History
Abstracts of
articles in Issue 15.1-2
FASCISM AND THE JEWS: ITALY AND BRITAIN
- Part I - FASCISM AND THE JEWS: ITALY AND BRITAIN
- Daniel Tilles & Salvatore Garau, Introduction
- Professor Aristotle Kallis, Fascism and
the Jews: From the Internationalisation of Fascism to a ‘Fascist
Antisemitism’
- The relationship between fascism, race
and antisemitism has troubled historians ever since the end
of the second world war.
While National Socialist ideology and praxis were evidently dominated
by an existential hatred of the Jews, discussion of antisemitism
in the context of generic/comparative fascism studies reveals
a wide variation amongst other fascist movements/regimes that
has impeded a historiographical consensus on this matter. This
essay examines how a particular, virulent form of (generic) ‘fascist
antisemitism’ emerged and spread during the 1930s, under
the radicalising influence and increasing kudos of the National
Socialist regime, resulting in a de facto internationalisation
of ‘fascism’ and a sense of a joint history-making
mission against the perceived forces of ‘decadence’.
However, the term ‘fascist antisemitism’ does not
imply simple imitation of an otherwise imported or imposed (Nazi)
model. Instead, long-term traditions and contemporary factors
particular to each national setting played a critical role in
shaping the relationship between fascism and antisemitism in each
branch of the fascist ‘new order’.
- Part II - THE EVOLUTION OF FASCIST ANTISEMITISM
- Salvatore Garau, Between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Science’:
The Emergence of Italian Fascist Antisemitism through the 1920s
and 1930s
- This study challenges the belief that
Italian Fascist antisemitism appeared only in 1938, as an
imitation of German racialism,
instead revealing and analysing the far earlier emergence of
antisemitism within specific sectors of Italian Fascism from
the early 1920s and demonstrating its derivation from native
traditions of Catholic and nationalist anti-Jewish thought.
It then outlines the combination of internal and external factors
that caused antisemitism to spread from certain internal strands
to the rest of Italian Fascism in the 1930s. Finally, it examines
more closely the dispute that arose within Fascism between those
who advocated a biological form of racism, and those who instead
accorded it a cultural or ‘spiritual’ basis.
- Dr Matthew Feldman, Make It Crude: Ezra
Pound’s Antisemitic
Propaganda for the BUF and PNF
- It is certainly not an established convention
to speak of ‘the
British Holocaust novel’. Indeed, many would see such
a label as a contradiction in terms. Within the last two decades,
however, a surprising number of British novels have dealt with
the Holocaust. This article reads a fairly wide selection of
such novels, arguing that they represent attempts to overcome
a deeply entrenched tension in the British discourse of remembrance:
the tension between a definitive national tradition of continually
re-presenting the Second World War on the one hand, and the
firmly established exemption of Britain from involvement in
the Holocaust on the other. Analysing different fictional strategies
for translating the Holocaust into British ‘memory culture’,
the essay traces a development that leads from gestures of substitution
to gestures of investigation, that is, from a literary practice
of de-realisation and counter-historical spatial extension of
the Holocaust towards literary endeavours of discovering traces
of the Holocaust even in the Britain of today.
- Dr Graham Macklin, A Fascist ‘Jihad’:
Captain Robert Gordon-Canning, British Fascist Antisemitism and
Islam.
- Little exists in the literature on British fascism to suggest
the pivotal importance of Palestine to British antisemites and
fascists during the interwar period. This lacuna is especially
surprising given that Britain was the Mandatory power in Palestine
from 1920 until 1948. This study explores the interaction between
British fascists and Palestinian Arabs during the interwar period
and the immediate aftermath of the Second World War through
the activities and views of Captain Robert Cecil Gordon-Canning
(1888-1967), one of the leading luminaries of the British Union
of Fascists (BUF). The study will examine the physical and ideological
connections of British fascism outside of its European context,
a focus that has dominated previous studies on the trans-national
rather than trans-continental, in order to offer some provisional
insights into the relationship between leading British and Islamist
extremists prior to the foundation of the State of Israel in
1948.
- Janet Dack, Conduct Unbecoming? Attitudes Towards Jews In The
British Fascist And Mainstream Tory Press, 1925-1939
- The study examines the employment of
antisemitism in the press of three interwar fascist organisations
in Britain – the
British Fascists, the Imperial Fascist League, and the British
Union of Fascists – demonstrating its differing use by
the three movements and its evolution over time. Furthermore,
comparison with the mainstream press demonstrates that, except
for one issue, the antisemitism of fascist publications does
not represent a reflection of the views and attitudes expressed
in mainstream media, and in many cases goes so far beyond what
was socially acceptable. However, attitudes to refugees in the
fascist press and the popular mainstream press do exhibit clear
similarities.
- Part III - JEWISH RESPONSES TO FASCIST ANTISEMITISM
- Dr Ilaria Pavan, An Unexpected Betrayal? The Italian Jewish Community
Facing Fascist Persecution.
- In the memoirs of Jewish victims, Italian
Fascism’s
antisemitic turn has typically been described as an unexpected
and sudden betrayal by Mussolini’s government, a ‘bolt
from the blue’ that struck the well integrated Italian
Jewish community without any forewarning. This study describes
the plight of Italian Jews and the choices they faced during
the first phase of the persecution (1938-1943). Furthermore,
by demonstrating that the antisemitic campaign was, in fact,
the final and most radical step in an increasing racialisation
of the regime’s stance over the 1930s, it tackles the
question of whether, in earlier years, there had been subtle
signs, or even clear warnings, that should have made the racial
laws if not foreseeable, at least ideologically conceivable
to the Italian Jewish community.
- Dr Elena Mazzini, Facing 1938: How the Italian Jewish Community
Reacted to the Antisemitic Laws
- Drawing on a representative sample of
the Italian Jewish press, this study explores a wide range
of contemporaneous reactions
to the Italian Fascist regime’s antisemitic turn of 1938.
It demonstrates not only the practical difficulties presented
to Italian Jews of all persuasions, who had been collectively
reduced to the status of non-citizens, but also the questions
that were raised over their Italian and Jewish identities, and
the relationship between the two. While for some, the solution
lay in returning to and embracing their Jewishness, such a path
remained troublesome for many within what had become a well
integrated and heterogeneous community.
- Dr Nigel Copsey & Daniel Tilles, Uniting
a Divided Community? Re-appraising Jewish Responses to British
Fascist Antisemitism,
1932-39
- Traditionally, work on Anglo-Jewish
responses to British fascism has concentrated on its ‘working-class’, activist
manifestations, particularly in east London over the period
1935-7, when Jews were prominently involved in confronting the
British Union of Fascists. Such a focus has neglected other
forms of Jewish activity, and this study examines two such aspects – early
responses in the period up to 1935, and the defence work of
the Board of Deputies of British Jews – drawing attention
to the varying forms that Jewish opposition to domestic fascism
took, as well as the different motivations that lay behind them.
Furthermore, it challenges the perception that the communal
leadership was unsympathetic to Jews who directly faced fascist
antisemitism and ineffective in protecting them from it. Finally,
it contests the belief that the debate over communal defence
caused divisions within Anglo-Jewry, demonstrating instead that,
while it certainly highlighted existing fissures, reflected
in the varied initial responses to British fascism, the fascist
threat eventually helped bring about greater unity and played
a significant role in wider shifts in communal identity and
power.