Ideocracies, or ideological dictatorships, such as the "Third Reich", the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China have, much more than any other kinds of autocracy, characterized the history of the 20th century. Despite their undeniable loss of significance, ideocracies have not disappeared from the world in the 21st century. This book explores the functioning of ideocracies and analyses the typical interplay of legitimation, co-optation and repression which autocratic elites use i...

The Western tradition of the constitutional state, with its ancient roots, defines political extremes as the epitome of that what must be absolutely rejected. It highlights tyranny, despotism, despotic rule, non-autonomy, ruthless enforcing of interests as ‘extreme’, contrasting this to a virtuous mean which guarantees moderation. In this volume, the culmination of twenty years of extensive research, Uwe Backes provides a conceptual history of the notions "extreme" and "extremism" from ant...

Civil Democracy Protection is an overview of attempts by organisations to oppose groups that are perceived to threaten democracy.The book traces the history of civil democracy protection actors from the establishment of democratic constitutional states up to the present day and develops a set of systematic and comparative approaches. The central question it explores is: What significance do civil actors have for the establishment and consolidation of democratic constitutio...

"After the Nazi Racial State offers a comprehensive, persuasive, and ambitious argument in favor of making 'race' a more central analytical category for the writing of post-1945 history. This is an extremely important project, and the volume indeed has the potential to reshape the field of post-1945 German history."---Frank Biess, University of California, San DiegoWhat happened to "race," race thinking, and racial distinctions in Germany, and Europe more broadly, a...

Over the past decade, immigration and globalization have significantly altered Europe’s cultural and ethnic landscape, foregrounding questions of national belonging. In Blood and Culture, Cynthia Miller-Idriss provides a rich ethnographic analysis of how patterns of national identity are constructed and transformed across generations. Drawing on research she conducted at German vocational schools between 1999 and 2004, Miller-Idriss examines how the working-class students and thei...

Following the German reunification process in the 1990s, a new movement appeared in Germany. This movement rejected all forms of nationalism, including the desirability and legitimacy of national communities, borders, and the existence of the nation-state itself.Against the Nation covers the background of this movement—the rise of Neo-Nazism, racist violence, restriction in immigration policies, and growing state power—as well as its urge to organize society around other p...

The European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism. Yet the idea of Europe has a long, problematic history--in medieval times, it was synonymous with Christianity; in the modern era, it became associated with "whiteness." Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Narratives of European integration emphasise the lessons of war and the Holocaust, but not the lessons of colonial history. The EU is about power as much as peace--an...

How the fate of the Jews has been shaped by the development of capitalismThe unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so imp...

Offering a dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the key issues at the heart of the study of German Fascism, Nazism as Fascism brings together a selection of Geoff Eley’s most important writings on Nazism and the Third Reich.Featuring a wealth of revised, updated and new material, Nazism as Fascism analyses the historiography of the Third Reich and its main interpretive approaches. Themes include:Detailed reflection on the tenets and character of Nazi ideology an...

An expansive investigation into the relationship between contemporary states and the far-rightIt is clear that the right is on the rise, but after Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the spike in popularity of extreme-right parties across Europe, the question on everyone’s minds is: how did this happen?An expansive investigation of the ways in which a newly configured right interconnects with anti-democratic and illiberal forces at the level of the sta...

In essays written jointly by specialists on Soviet and German history, the contributors to this book rethink and rework the nature of Stalinism and Nazism and establish a new methodology for viewing their histories that goes well beyond the now-outdated twentieth-century models of totalitarianism, ideology, and personality. Doing the labor of comparison gives us the means to ascertain the historicity of the two extraordinary regimes and the wreckage they have left. With the end of the Cold...

The Blackening of Europe is a critical analysis of the historical and ideological origins of the European Union, with special regard to the consequences of these developments for the indigenous Europeans who presently risk becoming demographic and political minorities in their own homelands.Broken into three volumes, Volume I. Ideologies and International Developments traces the seeds of the present-day EU to its earliest theoreticians and to the societies and his...