Ruth Ben-Ghiat | |
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Born | United States | April 17, 1960
Occupations |
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Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | The formation of a Fascist culture: the Realist movement in Italy, 1930–43 (1991) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Institutions | New York University |
Main interests | |
Notable works | Strongmen:Mussolini to the Present |
Website | ruthbenghiat |
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an American historian and cultural critic. She is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders. [1] Ben-Ghiat is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University.
Born in the United States to a Scottish mother and an Israeli-born Sephardi father,she grew up in Pacific Palisades,California. [2] [3] [4] She has a degree in history from UCLA and obtained her Ph.D. in comparative history at Brandeis University. A member of the American Historical Association since 1990, [5] she is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. [6] She regularly writes for CNN, The Atlantic ,and The Huffington Post . [7]
On February 13,2023,it was announced that Ben-Ghiat would take up temporary residency at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as the Spring 2023 Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals. [8]
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in the fictionalized version of 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic. The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.
Anthony James Gregor was an American political scientist and eugenicist and professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, known for his research on fascism, Marxism, and national security.
Clerical fascism is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role. It is a Christian form of the more general concept of Theofascism, where religious ideology is combined with Theocracy.
The March on Rome was an organized mass demonstration and a coup d'état in October 1922 which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy. In late October 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned an insurrection to take place by marching on the capital. On 28 October, the fascist demonstrators and Blackshirt paramilitaries approached Rome; Prime Minister Luigi Facta wished to declare a state of siege, but this was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, who, fearing bloodshed, persuaded Facta to resign by threatening to abdicate. On 30 October 1922, the King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, thereby transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict. On 31 October the fascist Blackshirts paraded in Rome, while Mussolini formed his coalition government.
The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an elite minority. Fascism has also been connected to the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Fascism styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. From the same era, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of the nation.
Historic recurrence is the repetition of similar events in history. The concept of historic recurrence has variously been applied to overall human history, to repetitive patterns in the history of a given polity, and to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.
Italian fascism, also known as classical fascism or simply fascism, is the original fascist ideology as developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini. The ideology is associated with a series of two political parties led by Benito Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR) that ruled the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism is also associated with the post-war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and subsequent Italian neo-fascist movements.
What constitutes as a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars ever since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".
The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. It was succeeded, in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, by the Republican Fascist Party, ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
Lo squadrone bianco is a 1936 Italian film directed by Augusto Genina. The plot features a cavalry lieutenant, unlucky in love, who redeems himself by battling the "rebels" of Tripolitania. The film won the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Festival, during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
The Italian Nationalist Association was Italy's first nationalist political movement founded in 1910, under the influence of Italian nationalists such as Enrico Corradini and Giovanni Papini. Upon its formation, the ANI supported the repatriation of Austrian held Italian-populated lands to Italy and was willing to endorse war with Austria-Hungary to do so. The party had a paramilitary wing called the Blueshirts. The authoritarian nationalist faction of the ANI would be a major influence for the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini formed in 1921. In 1922 the ANI participated in the March on Rome, with an important role, but it was not completely aligned with Benito Mussolini's party. Nevertheless, the ANI merged into the Fascist Party in October 1923.
Fascism has a long history in North America, with the earliest movements appearing shortly after the rise of Fascism in Europe. Fascist movements in North America never gained power, unlike their counterparts in Europe.
The Italian racial laws, otherwise referred to as the Racial Laws, were a series of laws which were promulgated by the Mussolini government in Fascist Italy (1922–1943) from 1938 to 1944 in order to enforce racial discrimination and segregation in the Kingdom of Italy. The main victims of the Racial Laws were Italian Jews and the native African inhabitants of the Italian colonial empire (1923–1947). In the aftermath of Mussolini's fall from power and the invasion of Italy by Germany, the Badoglio government suppressed the laws in January 1944. They remained enforced and were made more severe in the territories ruled by the Italian Social Republic (1943–1945) until the end of the Second World War.
Propaganda in Fascist Italy was used by the National Fascist Party in the years leading up to and during Benito Mussolini's leadership of the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power and the implementation of Fascist policies.
Proto-fascism refers to the direct predecessor ideologies and cultural movements that influenced and formed the basis of fascism. A prominent proto-fascist figure is Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Italian nationalist whose politics influenced Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism. Proto-fascist political movements include the Italian Nationalist Association, the German National Association of Commercial Employees and the German National People's Party.
Gazzetta del Popolo was an Italian daily newspaper founded in Turin, in northern Italy, on 16 June 1848. It ceased publication on 31 December 1983 after 135 years of operation. Italian novelist Alberto Moravia is among the former contributors to the paper.
The Great Appeal is a 1936 Italian war film directed by Mario Camerini and starring Camillo Pilotto, Roberto Villa and Lina d'Acosta. It is sometimes known by the alternative title The Last Roll-Call.
Trumpism is an authoritarian movement that consists of the political ideologies and political movement associated with Donald Trump and his political base. Scholars and historians have identified Trumpism as consisting of a wide range of right-wing ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism, neo-nationalism, and neo-fascism. Trumpist rhetoric heavily features anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nativist, and racist attacks against minority groups. Other identified aspects include conspiracist, isolationist, Christian nationalist, protectionist, anti-feminist, and anti-LGBT beliefs. Trumpists and Trumpians are terms that refer to individuals exhibiting its characteristics.
Il Selvaggio was a political and arts magazine that existed between 1924 and 1943. It was a media outlet of an intellectual group called Strapaese.
When you grow up in Southern California with immigrant parents (Scottish mother, Israeli father) and your closest non-nuclear family members are all 11–14 hours away by plane, you know that seeing family is a luxury...Any available vacation time and money my parents had were spent going to England (where many of my parents' siblings lived) and to Israel, sometimes on the same trip.