Why is There No History of Fascist International Thought?

Abstract

Notwithstanding recent efforts, historians of international thought have yet to adequately address the highly heterogeneous and often paradoxical ideas espoused by international thinkers of a fascist persuasion. Instead, fascist international thought has commonly been ignored or otherwise reduced to an antiquated Darwinian realism. This article aims to present a case for how and why this fragmentary situation should be corrected. Specifically, it advocates for a closer interdisciplinary engagement between the history of international thought and the field of fascist studies. It thus implores the former to consider salient thematic and methodological developments within the latter and adapt them accordingly. The consequent research agenda that emerges feasibly offers novel insight into (I) unexplored avenues in the history of international thought and the disciplinary history of International Relations, alongside presenting both (II) theoretical and (III) normative implications for the discipline as such.

Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas d’Histoire de la pensée fasciste internationale?

Introduction

In Martin Wight’s inaugural paper presented before the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, he posed the question, ‘why is there no international theory?’. ¹ Alterations to Wight’s iconic question have headlined similar agenda-setting or otherwise provocative pieces. Justin Rosenberg has questioned why there is no international historical sociology, ² while Qin Yaqing highlights the absence of a distinct Chinese International Relations (IR) theory. ³ From the lack of queer voices to the dearth of non-Western international theory, scholars have identified multiple parochialisms and concomitant omissions within the discipline. ⁴

This paper addresses a different type of paucity, one pertinent to IR scholars concerned with the history of international thought, namely a failure to adequately engage with fascist speculation on world politics and the history thereof. Following Roger Griffin’s oft-cited definition, fascism may be understood as ‘a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism’. ⁵ While the term ultra-nationalism alludes to connotations of extreme nationalism – clearly a core feature of fascism – Griffin specifies that the prefix ultra is used per its Latin root to imply ‘beyond’; that is, the fascist vision of the nation is ‘irrevocably beyond the spectrum of social ideals compatible with liberal democracy’, such as egalitarianism, individualism, and humanism. ⁶ Fascism, therefore, encompasses a reactionary component. However, it should not be conceived primarily as such. ⁷ Fascism was foremost a revolutionary creed, ‘a totalizing vision of national or ethnic rebirth’. ⁸ The imagined revolution and its prophecy of communal revivification were imbued with a regenerative national vision and a type of anthropological transformation to realise the lauded new fascist man. ⁹

A heterogeneous body of fascist international thought exists, both scholarly and lay. From Hitler’s apocalyptic vision adumbrated within his so-called Second Book and Oswald Mosley’s proselytizing of a fascist peace, to the world corporatism of Italian actualist philosopher Ugo Spirito, fascist speculation on international affairs abounds. ¹⁰ Thus, it is not that fascist international thought is non-existent, nor has the subject been devoid of investigation among historians and political scientists associated with the field of fascist studies. Instead, the problem occupying this article is such that enquiry within IR has been, with some notable deviations, scant and often unsatisfactory. To provide the obligatory alteration on Wight’s classic phrase, while fascist international thought is characterized by ‘moral poverty’, it is not necessarily typified by ‘paucity’ nor a lack of ‘intellectual’ substance. ¹¹ Nevertheless, it remains ‘scattered, unsystematic, and mostly inaccessible to the layman’. ¹²

This opens the quandary of answering why scholars ought to retrieve fascist thought from the recesses of obscurity. Developing non-Western and queer international theory, or recovering such perspectives, is of value in comprehending various phenomena in world politics. Moreover, these pursuits may retain a progressive sensibility by excavating marginalized thinkers. Unlike efforts to recover such voices, the intent herein is not to highlight the absence of fascist thought as a prelude to arguing its positive attributes. There are valid ethical reasons why this body of thought should remain in the realm of oblivion. Its recovery is not only susceptible to charges of ‘scholastic antiquarianism’, ¹³ but the accusation that ‘by “taking fascist ideas seriously”. . . is somehow to justify them’. ¹⁴ However, as is increasingly the norm within fascist studies, one can research fascism in an empathic fashion while continuing to approach the matter ‘in a strictly. . . non-revisionist sense’. ¹⁵ Consequently, I argue that historical IR should more thoroughly pursue an interdisciplinary engagement with fascist studies. This article implores the former to adapt salient thematic and methodological developments within the latter as a basis on which to take fascist ideas ‘seriously’ as a subject of enquiry. ¹⁶ In turn, this opens a broader research agenda that holds insight into unexplored avenues in the history of international thought and IR’s disciplinary history, alongside both conceptual and normative implications for contemporary IR theory and the discipline.

To clarify, while I allude to possible reasons for the comparative dearth of research, this is not my primary intent. ¹⁷ Rather than treating the titular question as one to be answered literally, it is interpreted as a provocation for further scholarship. Towards this end, I first survey histories of international thought since the March on Rome to detect the extent to which and how the discipline has approached fascist rumination. Second, I outline the empathic approach within fascist studies, its disciplinary divide from the history of international thought, and elaborate grounds for increased interdisciplinarity. Third, I explain why this omission within IR should be corrected, highlighting prospective historical, conceptual, and normative implications.

The History of International Thought, or: Where are All the Fascists?

Fascism and Formative Scholarship

The antecedents of the history of international thought can be dated to the interwar period. ¹⁸ Within formative histories, however, fascism was scarcely subjected to impartial scholarship. Melian Stawell’s The Growth of International Thought is emblematic, expunging fascism from the entire gamut of international thought. ¹⁹ As Graham Evans suggests, Stawell’s survey ‘is more an exercise in normative political indoctrination than a history of thought’. ²⁰ The evolution of international thought is framed in a Whiggish fashion, its contemporary incarnation construed as ‘synonymous with support for the League’. ²¹ This was part of a broader trend. Indeed, British advocates of the League coined the phrase ‘international thought’; the intent was ‘to denote a usable past rather than to create a critical history’. ²² More generally, anti-fascist attitudes dominated interwar IR journals, the fledgling discipline constituting a mimetic front in the battle of ideologies. This normative opposition is laudable, a point to which this article will return. Nonetheless, such polemics contain obvious limitations if the endeavor is to decipher the actual content of fascist thought.

Accounts over subsequent decades ceased to be animated by a comparable political subtext. Nevertheless, fascist international thought remained relatively neglected within post-war histories. F. H. Hinsley’s Power and the Pursuit of Peace is almost entirely devoid of comment on fascism, ²³ while The Philosophy of International Relations by F. Parkinson evidences a comparable omission. ²⁴ Similarly, Michael Doyle’s association of liberalism and socialism with distinct patterns of theory begs consideration of whether one may construct a parallel fascist tradition. ²⁵ In general, post-war accounts excluded fascist thought or otherwise reduced it to a type of ‘ideological glorification of power politics’. ²⁶

One must also mention the close relationship from the 1980s onwards between the ascension of normative IR theory and the history of international thought, the former retaining an integral role in the latter’s evolution. As Chris Brown notes, the development of a normatively inclined international political theory à la Andrew Linklater and Charles Beitz ‘stimulated the emergence of contemporary historians of international political thought’. ²⁷ Naturally, fascist thinkers were banished from sensible discussion. After all, one tends not to turn towards fascist thought as a basis for understanding contemporary world politics nor as a foundation for normative theorizing, notwithstanding the literature surrounding Carl Schmitt among critical theorists. The suggestion here is neither to recommend that IR deploy nor embrace fascist thinkers. It is simply to argue that the instinctual avoidance of such dubious figures is part of the reason why one can find, for example, published accounts of Kant’s international thought, but not that of Giovanni Gentile.

Exceptions exist. Carsten Holbraad alludes to the idea that fascism constituted a form of conservative internationalism, albeit he fails to sufficiently elaborate. ²⁸ The starkest deviation can be found within Wight’s scholarship. As Wight inferred, fascist political thought is centred around ‘the state and society’, yet ‘considerable discrimination. . . [is required] to elicit the principles or theories of international politics by which they believed they were guided’. ²⁹ Wight sought to elicit such principles by categorizing them in relation to the realist, rationalist, and revolutionist traditions. As Wight submits, ‘for purposes of political theory it is necessary to define counter-revolutionism as a mode of revolutionism’. ³⁰ While Wight ascribed this label to fascism, it would be incorrect to deduce therefrom a purely reactionary connotation. Hitler’s counter-revolutionism was profoundly revolutionary by virtue of his alternative vision for international order. This imaginary reflected a form of ‘doctrinal imperialism’, ³¹ one anticipating ‘not only. . . a new order in Europe, but. . . a reconstitution of the world on biological principles’. ³²

Wight’s account contains two pertinent limitations, however. First, his procrustean triad lacks sufficient granularity to distinguish between superficial similarities among thinkers or traditions and points of historically-bounded intellectual antecendents and interaction. ³³ Second, while presenting a sound synopsis of Hitler’s doctrinal imperialism, alternative imaginaries – such as those envisaging a fascistized society of sovereign states – are not considered. Indeed, Wight’s account of Italian fascism fails to capture the heterogeneous proposals emanating from this ideological creed. Italian fascism lacked a revolutionary zeal independent of its negations, its counter-revolutionary qualities a mere by-product of its anti-Bolshevism. Juxtaposed against Hitler’s ‘creed of racial hierarchy’, Italy conducted ‘a policy of aimless restlessness’, while Mussolini was nothing more than ‘a bombastic journalist of mediocre political ability’. ³⁴ Evidently, Wight’s comments revealed a contempt for Il Duce. ³⁵

Fascism Since the ‘Historiographical Turn’ ³⁶

Since the mid-1990s, IR’s disciplinary history and the international thought pervading the Twenty Years’ Crisis have been re-evaluated. One revisionist faction has challenged the ‘noble myth’ that the discipline immaculately emerged in 1919 with the mission of eliminating the scourge of war. ³⁷ In its place, scholars have highlighted the less palatable imperial and racist side of liberal internationalism and IR’s disciplinary origins. ³⁸ Another group of revisionists have focused on correcting misconceptions about, and recovering the nuances of, interwar debates and so-called ‘idealist’ international thought. ³⁹ In one exemplary contribution, Lucian M. Ashworth challenges the caricatured realist-idealist dichotomy of the ‘First Great Debate’. Discourse was in actuality characterized by various debates organized around three main axes: the relationship between war and capitalism, the issue of fascist revisionism, and the validity of American isolationism. ⁴⁰

Both revisionist avenues have therefore rectified the distorted image of interwar thought. However, by recovering the arguments propounded by progressive internationalists or the debates among IR’s formative figures, much revisionist historiography has inadvertently placed fascist thought beyond its purview. As Casper Sylvest notes, ‘[t]he historiography is skewed in left-liberal directions’. ⁴¹ There is a comparative silence on the political right and ‘the intellectual underpinnings of a more sceptical, conservative stance on international politics, except as they have been (not always reliably) relayed by their ideological opponents’. ⁴² This observation is equally applicable to fascism’s place within the subfield.

There are exceptions to this trend, the clearest of which surrounds the expanding literature on Schmitt among critical theorists and historians of international thought alike. ⁴³ Elsewhere, Leonie Holthaus investigates the legacy of German thinking in British international thought, while her co-edited volume alongside Jens Steffek illuminates, inter alia, how Germany figured within the international thought of interwar IR. ⁴⁴ Azar Gat provides a superb treatment on the intersection between fascist modernism and warfare, especially regarding the thought of military theorist-cum-fascist J. F. C. Fuller. ⁴⁵ Alternatively, Katharina Rietzler interrogates the curious case of Friedrich Berber, a legal adviser in Nazi Germany and later Nehru’s India. ⁴⁶ Meanwhile, Torbjørn L. Knutsen’s panoramic survey of international thought represents an exception among similar accounts by addressing, albeit briefly, fascist rumination. ⁴⁷ Some have also explored the paradoxical idea of fascist internationalism. I have elsewhere synthesized the English School framework with literature from within fascist studies to offer insight into the contradictions besetting radically illiberal versions of solidarism. ⁴⁸ Of particular note, Steffek’s seminal scholarship on technocratic internationalism has probed illiberal currents of thinking, including the thought of Italian diplomat and corporatist thinker Giuseppe de Michelis. ⁴⁹ Similarly, Marco Moraes explores the case of Joseph Avenol, the second Secretary-General of the League of Nations, as a means of complicating the dichotomy between world corporatism and liberal functionalism. ⁵⁰ Some initial forays have also been made into the evolution of IR under Italian and German dictatorships. ⁵¹

Notwithstanding recent contributions, fascism has garnered vastly less attention compared to other strands of thought, whether realist, liberal, socialist, subaltern, imperial, or white supremacist. For Alexander D. Barder, the study of fascism from a comparative and global angle ‘remains missing in the field of international relations’. ⁵² Identifying a comparable omission, Bell concludes that the history of international thought has, with few exceptions, been absent of research into ‘radical and reactionary forms of internationalism, from Communist through to Nazi’. ⁵³ Indeed, fascism remains curiously absent even when this should seemingly not be the case. For example, Karma Nabulsi’s idea of ‘martialism’, a tradition centred on the transcendent value of war and the right to conquest, is one largely pervading interwar fascist thought. ⁵⁴ While Nabulsi astutely recognizes this symbiosis, she states that her study is not to recover how this tradition manifested in fascist thought, but rather illuminate its oft-neglected prevalence among British thinkers of other ideological persuasions. This absence is similarly conspicuous in Jens Bartelson’s study of ‘ontogenetic war’. ⁵⁵ As Antoine Bousquet opines, ‘it is rather surprising that fascism does not receive a single mention throughout since its ideology and political manifestations arguably represent the apogee of such a view’. ⁵⁶ Even within the panoramic surveys of international thought provided by Edward Keene and Ashworth, fascism receives scant attention. ⁵⁷

Aside from the aforementioned exceptions, one tends to identify ad hoc remarks reducing fascist international thought to some antiquated Darwinian realism or a biological debasement thereof. As Ashworth mentions regarding one Francesco Coppola, his form of realism was in the minority; it was neither representative of pre-1939 realism nor akin to late-twentieth-century strands. ⁵⁸ The fascist-inclined Coppola, alongside similar-minded ‘advocates of national interest’ within democratic states, promoted ‘war and state conflict. . . [to maintain the] vitality of civilization’. ⁵⁹ In essence, this mode of thinking constituted ‘a 20th-century continuation of the social Darwinist ideas of the late 19th century’. ⁶⁰ The brutalist simplicity, ‘Machiavellian opportunism’, ⁶¹ and Darwinian character of fascist thought thus appears starkly juxtaposed against the diversity and substance germane to currents of liberal and socialist international thought, alongside manifestations of realism expressed by E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, or Reinhold Niebuhr. Indeed, Knutsen suggests that one of the foremost challenges in the study of fascist international thought is its anti-intellectualism. While admitting exceptions, ‘fascists tend to be actors rather than analysts’. ⁶² The intellectual history of fascist international thought may therefore appear somewhat of a misnomer: what intellectual substance could possibly be found in the worldview of thugs equipped with castor oil and a repertoire of conspiracy theories and demagogy? Mosley captured this sentiment in a presentation before the English-Speaking Union: ‘when you read that I was to lecture on “The Philosophy of Fascism”, probably many of you said: “What has this gangster to do with philosophy?”’. ⁶³ The conclusion that fascists prioritized deed over dogma is not necessarily incorrect. As the Fascist Quarterly stated: ‘Fascism is a creed of life in action’, a creed for the ‘modern man. . . [that] has become over-weary of dogmas, theses and ideas’. ⁶⁴ To highlight the salience of anti-intellectualism should not, however, be at the expense of recognizing the heterogeneous ideas and intellectual inspirations contained therein.

Moreover, scholarship has yet to systematically investigate how fascist thinkers engaged with and were impacted by (or perhaps on) Anglo-American discourse on international affairs. For example, within Ashworth’s expansive body of scholarship on interwar Anglophone thought, fascists are relegated to the periphery. While debates occupying contemporary commentators centred around fascist revisionism, the ‘voice’ of fascist thinkers remains unusually absent in prevailing accounts. This omission appears to be an outdated oversight. The surge of scholarship within the subfield on race and empire is emblematic of a sustained effort to study less palatable individuals, or facets of otherwise familiar thinkers, alongside the more questionable aspects of IR’s disciplinary history. Consequently, the comparative neglect of the extreme right is an even more conspicuous absence. The question thus remains: where are all the fascists?

Disciplinary Divisions and Complementarities

Given the state of the literature, this section argues that historical IR ought to systematically build on the research output and methodological insights developed within fascist studies, especially its concept of ‘methodological empathy’, as a basis on which to engage with the history of fascist international thought.

In the late 1990s, Roger Griffin controversially claimed that a ‘new consensus’ had developed within fascist studies. While numerous scholars have diverged from the minimalist ideal-typical heuristic proffered by Griffin, it may nevertheless be argued that scholars have broadly converged on the view that fascism should be approached as neither an anti-modern reactionary movement nor one lacking in ideological substance. ⁶⁵ As Griffin notes, this notion ‘has become part of the common sense of the discipline’. ⁶⁶ Rather than reducing fascism to its negations or merely construing it as some type of dictatorship of capital, ⁶⁷ scholars have built on what the pioneering historian George Mosse dubbed ‘methodological empathy’. ⁶⁸ While by no means affording moral validity, the injunction of this ‘cultural’ or ‘empathic’ approach encourages one to examine fascism from the perspective of its proponents and thereby consider its ‘positive’ axioms. ⁶⁹ I use ‘positive’ not to imply ‘laudable’, but merely to reflect the reality that fascists promoted an alternative modernity, a professed mission to revolutionize society and the state. ⁷⁰ Fascism, Michael Mann summarizes, ‘must not be dismissed as crazy, contradictory, or vague’. ⁷¹

Subsequent to the embrace of this empathic approach – and often reflecting its core tenets, implicitly or otherwise – scholars of fascism have increasingly co-opted the precepts of transnational history. ⁷² Reflecting such thematic, ontological, and methodological shifts, a sizable literature has recounted the transnational connections between fascists and the far right, the practical efforts to adapt or export fascism, and the ideological beliefs underpinning such efforts. ⁷³ This represents progress within a field that had remained beholden to the ontological silos of methodological nationalism and, in the scant comment on the matter, reduced fascist internationalism to bogus propaganda. ⁷⁴

While fascist international thought has scarcely been considered within IR, this has not been the case within fascist studies. For scholars belonging to the latter, the question heading this article may appear odd, if not misleading. The intent here is not to marginalize the immensely productive output of fascist studies nor reaffirm disciplinary divides. It is the opposite. Beyond the rare exception, ⁷⁵ there has been negligible cross-pollination between these cognate endeavors, a disconnect to the detriment of not only historical IR, but fascist studies too. Despite the laudable extent of relevant scholarship within fascist studies, this otherwise eclectic historiography has often been underpinned by the aforementioned transnational approach, the latter focused on cross-border interactions between networks, regimes, and movements. By contrast, in-depth study into the international thought of fascist agitators, their intellectual pedigree, and the specific debates they were engaged in are often not at the forefront of analysis. This distinction is, however, a matter of degree. Intellectual and transnational history are not antithetical. To use David Armitage’s pithy paraphrasing of Kant, ‘intellectual history without material history will be empty, while material history uninformed by intellectual history will be blind’. ⁷⁶ Furthermore, studying fascist international thought – in particular, the transmission and reception of ideas – requires attentiveness to transnational networks and ideational transfers across national borders. ⁷⁷ In this respect, the ethos of the transnational turn will be integral for any attempt to recount the history of fascist international thinking.

As the literature stands, however, the different emphases embodied within each field carry relevant implications. A transnational orientation uses relational interactions as the primary ontological referent, while the history of international thought focuses on the illocutionary force of arguments, the beliefs or ideas of thinkers, and their intellectual antecedents or reception. To illustrate, the former typically utilizes ‘internationalism’ not as a term to denote some world order project contained within the minds or texts of individuals. Rather, it is used to describe ideologically malleable practices of transnational cooperation. Ángel Alcalde captures this point in reviewing Ricky W. Law’s monograph, Transnational Nazism. As the former argues, the concept of ‘Transnational Nazism’ is deployed in a range of different ad hoc contexts, and thus it ‘remains severely undertheorised’. ⁷⁸ Consequently, Law ‘unduly reifies a fluid historical process (the transfer of ideas), converting it into a pre-existing object that historical actors allegedly “adopted” or “articulated” as though it were a distinct ideological system’. ⁷⁹ By focusing on processes of internationalism, as opposed to ideas of internationalism, it may be argued that this literature does not adequately address certain questions, such as matters of intellectual inheritance or the debates in which actors were engaged.

Relevant literature is obviously not the monopoly of this transnational approach, the latter a somewhat recent development in any case. Moreover, a transnational approach does not foreclose the study of ideas. ⁸⁰ Various accounts have detailed the beliefs and biographies of fascist international thinkers. Fascist studies has therefore explored the international thought of the extreme right, albeit without necessarily using this language. However, certain analytical blind spots and historical lacunae remain. The tendency for disciplinary compartmentalization has inhibited the subfield of the history of international thought and academics situated within fascist studies from posing intriguing questions at the nexus of their respective enterprises and building on the comparative advantages and scholarship of each field. The broad subject matter and international orientation of historical IR may allow affiliated scholars to build on a familiar and vast literature that has recovered an expansive array of discourses, thinkers, and traditions. The distinctive qualities of the field offer a fruitful basis to probe questions that have perhaps escaped fascist studies or are yet to be satisfactorily addressed: how did fascist visions for world order diverge from, or build on, other ‘dreamworlds of race’ within the mainstream? ⁸¹ What roles did fascist and far-right thinkers have in the formative history of IR? How were familiar concepts within interwar international thought – anarchy, peaceful change, idealism, or pooled/collective security, among others – deployed by fascist thinkers? How did fascists understand the causes of war? What is the relationship between fascist international thought and realism?

Interdisciplinarity appears a necessary foundation on which to proceed. In fact, Griffin highlights the propitious grounds for interdisciplinary ‘synergies’ contained within the empathic approach. ⁸² This article promotes one such complementarity between cognate fields. After all, the disconnect between historians of international thought and fascist studies is somewhat odd given the affinity between the historicist ethic of contextualism, as typically deployed by the former, and the methodological empathy permeating the latter. Debatably, this empathetic ethos is already implicit in some recent IR literature. Nevertheless, it is valuable to render explicit certain assumptions on which scholarship may advance.

First, it must be appreciated that while fascism lacked a biblical text analogous to Marxism (for which it was not alone), it was not bereft of intellectual foundations, philosophical reflection, or programmatic statements. For instance, in his seminal contribution to the field, the late Zeev Sternhell traced the ideological origins of fascism to fin-de-siècle France in a synthesis between the anti-Marxist revolutionary syndicalism of Georges Sorel and the integral nationalism of Charles Maurras. ⁸³ In this sense, fascist ideology was not irrational but anti-rational, for ‘whilst it rejected the central tenets of Enlightenment optimism, it did so on the basis of new intellectual developments’. ⁸⁴ Moreover, fascist movements attracted notable interwar intellectuals, exemplified not least by the gravitation of Schmitt towards Nazism and the prominent place of the neo-Hegelian Gentile within Italy. In a similar vein, one can identify a litany of ideological tracts, including numerous that impinged on international affairs, from Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium to Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. As the founding leader of the Italian Social Movement, Giorgio Almirante, once described Evola, he is ‘our Marcuse only better’. ⁸⁵ Simply then, the international political thought of such figures should not be prematurely dismissed as incoherent.

Second, an empathic approach would implore one to interpret such persons as ‘innovating ideologists’ in the Skinnerian sense and thus studied, at least methodologically, in a manner not dissimilar to the mainstays of intellectual history. To quote Bell: ‘the task of the “innovating ideologist” is to legitimate, somehow to justify, “untoward social actions” through manipulating the meaning and/or application of concepts in order to modify political behavior’. ⁸⁶ The language of untoward social actions is apt, if somewhat of an understatement in the fascist context. To be clear, I am not positing the necessity of some specifically Skinnerian scripture, but rather stressing the compatibility between the concept of methodological empathy and the broad historicist strictures of a contextualist approach. In this sense, contextualism is interpreted as ‘a matter of restoring a text to the historical context in which it was composed and the question(s) to which it was offered as an answer or the problem(s) to which it was proposed as a solution’. ⁸⁷ Similarly, the above use of Griffin’s ideal-typical definition should not be construed to imply a Griffinite monopoly within fascist studies. As with numerous scholars, I borrow from Griffin’s pioneering efforts, while diverging in other key respects, as exemplified by my contextualist emphasis. As Constantin Iordachi adds, ‘there is an imperious need to continually revisit the comparative foundations of fascism studies, turning it into a flexible framework that can creatively integrate new approaches’. ⁸⁸

None of this is to deny that there are challenges involved in studying fascist international thought. ⁸⁹ Above all, one must contend with Knutsen’s aforementioned observation: fascists often prioritized action over theoretical abstractions. Even the most erudite and programmatic of fascists still tended to assail intellectualism. As Liberal Nationals MP Robert Bernays flippantly remarked regarding Mosley’s fascists: ‘It is obviously more fun to go and beat up the East End than to join a study circle on the fallacies of Socialism.’ ⁹⁰ Accordingly, a cautionary note should be sounded. It is important to remain attentive to the vagaries that accompany the practice of politics – a problem especially acute for the more demagogic of figures – and the fallacy of imparting a degree of coherence or continuity in thought that may not have existed in the worldview of certain individuals.

Notwithstanding such caveats, these challenges need not fundamentally detract from the above point: the ideas professed by international thinkers of a fascist persuasion can be prima facie taken seriously as a body of thought and methodologically treated in a manner not overly dissimilar from other figures, particularly those involved in political practice. After all, the corollary of the ‘Skinnerian revolution’ is such that the researcher may interpret ‘theorists as politicians’ and, conversely, ‘politicians as theorists’. ⁹¹ Scholarship on the history of international thought since the ‘historiographical turn’ undoubtedly, albeit often implicitly, reflects this injunction. Continuing in this vein, the retrieval of extreme right international thought warrants special focus on the ‘non-intellectual contexts’ of arguments. In promoting the complementarity between intellectual and parliamentary history, Max Skjönsberg has recently observed that ‘historians of political thought must become more careful analysts of events, institutions, and quotidian politics, as well as broader historiographical contexts’. ⁹² The history of fascist international thought necessitates comparable attentiveness.

Towards a History of Fascist International Thought

In calling for increased interdisciplinarity, one must question what benefits ensue for historical IR. As argued below, the prospective contributions may be broadly categorized as threefold. First, the extreme right offers novel avenues of investigation for historians of international thought and disciplinary historians alike. Second, such historical research may contain conceptual implications for IR theory. Third, historical excavation serves a normative agenda, providing one method to develop a more sophisticated understanding of right-wing extremism and promote opposition thereto. I discuss each in turn.

Excavating the Homo Fascistus

Scholars have called for expanding the traditional boundaries of where international thought is to be discovered and who can be considered an international thinker. ⁹³ Many have accepted this challenge, shifting from the hitherto focus on canonical thinkers towards a diversity of persons, professions, mediums, and institutional loci. To study fascist speculation is to recognize the actuality that such ideologues seriously contemplated international questions and, by proxy, to expand the subfield’s remit.

Towards this end, further research is required to discern the specificities and varying manifestations of fascist international thought. Indeed, it is difficult to provide synoptic generalizations about its contents due to the vast ‘speciation’ of fascism as an ideological creed. ⁹⁴ The internal diversity of fascist international thought is inevitably more acute than other ideologies by virtue of its numerous permutations, each ‘an exclusive product of different national strands of interwoven history, culture and collective fantasy’. ⁹⁵ Compare, for instance, the expansionist ambitions of German Nazism against Mosley’s vision of a splendidly isolated Greater Britain and what he dubbed the ‘immense majesty of Fascist Peace’. ⁹⁶ This heterogeneity is compounded by post-war developments in the landscape of the extreme right, from the advent of Third Positionism to Universal Nazism. ⁹⁷ Moreover, while some post-war agitators have consciously identified as fascists, others have embraced comparable myths of ultra-nationalist rejuvenation and adapted ideas from the canon of fascist thought, albeit avoiding self-ascription to the irredeemably tarnished and politically inexpedient F-word. However, if the ideal-typical core of fascism is to be found in an ideological matrix privileging ultra-nationalist palingenesis, then fascist – versus, for example, conservative – international thought is simply speculation on world politics expounded by those who hold such myths. Yet this slightly cryptic definition begs the question: how do such myths actually manifest in the realm of international thought and are any common features discernible? Two central attributes are fruitful to highlight.

First, the scope of the communal referent and envisioned unit of political authority (e.g. nation-state, empire, federation) is somewhat agnostic among fascist thinkers. Despite this heterogeneity, the fascist outlook vis-à-vis other polities and peoples is perforce anti-cosmopolitan, exclusionary, and hierarchical. Fascists were historically inspired by an especially visceral belief in social Darwinism and European cultural or racial superiority. ⁹⁸ For some, this validated expansion and colonization within the European heartland. For others, this ideological matrix was unaccompanied by expansionist dreams or otherwise confined to a desire for the maintenance of an existing empire. Territorial aggrandizement should therefore not be considered an essential feature of the fascist ‘quest for an ideal form of Fatherland’, even if the nature of this creed renders it highly amenable to such ambitions. ⁹⁹ Fuelled by notions of racial or national chauvinism, anti-cosmopolitanism is, however, an intrinsic attribute. For its protagonists, the ultra-nation – the quintessential referent of the fascist revolution – may be imagined in relation to some geographically, racially, or ethnically defined nation-state, a transnational white race, a pan-European identity, or another referent altogether. In any case, the ultra-nation need not be parochially conceived. Yet the fascist opposition to egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism, or what interwar fascists often lambasted as ‘internationalism’, ¹⁰⁰ inevitably sets spatial limits to the glorified imagined community. This is not to suggest that fascist ultra-nationalism cannot coexist with other ideological, civilizational, or racial solidarities operating across borders. Such exclusionary and anti-cosmopolitan proclivities may still permit a sort of ecumenical fascism or fascist universalism.

Second, fascist international thought is virulently anti-liberal and anti-Marxist. This disposition manifests not simply in a reactionary objection to materialism, individualism, egalitarianism, and the institutions of liberal democracy, but in the utopian dream of a revolutionary overhaul of society. For the leading Italian fascist internationalist, Asvero Gravelli,

the Fascist Revolution cannot be considered merely a movement of reaction, of counter-reformation, of anti-democracy, or anti-liberalism. . . Precisely because the development of the process of civilization is incessant, the ideas of democracy and liberalism cannot be considered final destinations, as if human civilization had exhausted its capacity and potential for progress. ¹⁰¹

To the extent that the ills of liberal-capitalist modernity are conceived as operating on a higher transnational plane, this stance contains an inherently international component. Whether understood in geopolitical terms as a rivalry between the so-called Anglo-French plutocratic powers and the supposed ‘have-nots’, or framed as a pernicious assault on the nation, race, or civilization by a network of liberal elites, international bureaucrats, and Jewish ‘globalists’, fascists have all too often levelled a vitriolic assault against the perceived constitution of the liberal international order and those actors allegedly upholding it.

While these two characteristics afford some insight into the broad contours of fascist international thinking, they clearly do not capture the diversity nor breadth of contents. Interwar fascists and post-war extremists have speculated about a multiplicity of global issues: appeasement, war, empire, international organizations, demography, geopolitics, federalism, and nuclear weapons, among others. Furthermore, for some interwar fascists, prevailing international institutions could be harnessed to serve the national interest, without necessarily entailing a deeper challenge to the fabric of international society. ¹⁰² Yet other thinkers proffered a litany of more profound imperial and utopian imaginaries envisaging the fundamental transformation of regional and international order. From Vidkun Quisling’s ‘Nordic World Federation’ to the Eurafrican discourse of interwar and post-war fascists, this milieu of thought is a repository of the peculiar and abhorrent. The claim that fascist ideologues expounded no ‘elaborate conceptions of world order’, merely ‘a critical attitude toward the existing international system’, is untenable. ¹⁰³ Notwithstanding historical evidence to the contrary and historiographical openings within fascist studies, this body of thought remains a perplexing one that historical IR has yet to adequately investigate.

Besides the exploration of individual thinkers or broader themes in fascist thought, this agenda also directs attention towards the intellectual landscapes of interwar and post-war thinking, the disciplinary history of IR, and the reception of scholarship beyond academia. Topics along such lines are diverse. In 1925, for example, Mussolini provided a hitherto unprecedented imprimatur to a Foreign Affairs article by the Undersecretary of Colonies, Roberto Cantalupo, wherein the latter dismissed the notion that fascism contained universal pretensions. Fascism was an Italian ‘solution’: ‘It does not profess to be a formula applicable to the needs of all nations.’ ¹⁰⁴ For Mussolini, this endorsement aimed to suppress a divisive debate within the Italian Fascist Party regarding the prospective universality of fascism, while reassuring foreign observers that Italy was not propagating an exportable revolution. ¹⁰⁵ This article alludes to fascinating questions about Foreign Affairs’ institutional history and its role as both a scholarly medium and a contested space within the ‘real world’ of interwar politics. Indeed, the journal carried articles by figures as varied as Gentile and Giuseppe Bottai to the anti-fascist historian Gaetano Salvemini.

Similarly, further research is warranted on the reception of fascism within interwar IR. For Ashworth, ‘[a] common anachronism. . . is to read the whole inter-war period against the backdrop of the rise of fascism’ and the failure of collective security. ¹⁰⁶ One must likewise avoid reading commentary on fascism against the backdrop of the Second World War and the Holocaust. ‘[H]indsight’, Griffin cautions, ‘can be a particularly distorting lens in historiography’. ¹⁰⁷ The interwar period was one wherein fascism was neither entirely clear in its meaning and content, nor subject to connotations of genocidal violence that understandably colour post-war interpretations. In the professionalized discipline of twenty-first-century IR, it would be disconcerting if such prestigious journals as the American Political Science Review or International Affairs reviewed publications by, for example, Richard Spencer or Nick Land. While ideologues of white supremacy and the Dark Enlightenment are valid subjects for scholarly scrutiny, the actual texts published by extremists are justifiably not treated as coequal to the academic publications typically reviewed within contemporary IR journals. During the interwar period, this was not the case. For instance, Foreign Affairs’ ‘capsule review’ section was replete with brief synopses of pro-fascist texts. Reviewed authors ranged from Evola and de Michelis, to the French national syndicalist Georges Valois and Italian propagandist Luigi Villari. Such reviews fluctuated from laudatory to derisive. The political scientist and designated reviewer for Foreign Affairs, William L. Langer, bluntly summarized Mein Kampf as but the ‘[u]nimpressive memoirs of the Bavarian leader’. ¹⁰⁸ Alternatively, others considered select fascist texts with scholarly detachment, while some actively applauded Mussolini and promoted the Italian experiment. A Janus-faced adulation even saturated the 1934 presidential address presented before the annual American Political Science Association conference. Therein the political scientist and Dean of Ohio State University, Walter J. Shepard, declared that if America is ‘to escape fascism. . . it can only be by virtue of. . . a frank appropriation of many of its elements into the theory and practice of a new and vital orientation’. ¹⁰⁹ This ‘possible reorganization of government’ implied a restricted suffrage, excluding ‘the ignorant, the uninformed, and the anti-social elements which hitherto have so frequently controlled elections’. ¹¹⁰ Shepard favoured an Aristotelian-cum-Wellsian ‘aristocracy’ based not on inherited privilege or wealth, but ‘intellect and character’. ¹¹¹

On a contemporary front, the case of Alexander Dugin can be noted, an ostensibly neo-fascist thinker and the foremost ideologue of Eurasianism. As former head of the Department of Sociology at Moscow State University, Dugin has demonstrated a familiarity with such theories as neorealism, liberalism, and the English School. Moreover, Dugin has adapted the scholarship of such theorists as John Hobson and Stephen Hobden for alternative ends, placing particular importance on what he refers to as ‘Hobson’s challenge’. ¹¹² As Dugin conjectured, ‘IR is undoubtedly an imperious authoritarian discourse of Western civilization’. ¹¹³ It is, in effect,

a Western scientific discipline, and as such it has a prescriptive, normative vector. It not only studies the West’s dominance, it also produces, secures, defends, and propagandizes it. ¹¹⁴

While not overly concerned with IR’s theoretical debates, Dugin nevertheless instrumentalizes this discourse to provide one basis, among others, on which to defend his vision for world politics, as encapsulated in his ‘Theory of a Multipolar World’ and the so-called ‘Fourth Political Theory’.

The study of fascist international thought may also divulge insight into the content, evolution, and diffusion of conspiracy theories. The advent of the international affairs think tank offers an intriguing example. While recent literature underscores the role of Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in IR’s formative history, ¹¹⁵ such institutions have also been the subject of peculiar speculation by conspiratorial conservatives and the extreme right who have linked these bodies to the supposed machinations of a nefarious global elite. The pedigree of such conspiracies can be traced through to their circulation by far-right actors during the Cold War and into the interwar period. ¹¹⁶

It should be cautioned that the oft-obscure individuals expounding such notional conspiracies are by no means intellectuals. It is not unreasonable to incorporate figures akin to Oswald Mosley, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, or Alain de Benoist under the label of international thinker and thus within the remit of international intellectual history. ¹¹⁷ By contrast, the average tiki-torch-armed white supremacist subscribing to the absurdities of ‘QAnon’ retain nothing but the most rudimentary political thought and inchoate views. Nonetheless, these conspiracies need not be a scholarly taboo nor viewed with inordinate derision by historians more disposed to the study of canonical texts, a point illustrated by Nicolas Guilhot’s ongoing enquiry into the place of conspiracy theories within European political thought. ¹¹⁸ These extremist views are not inconsequential, representing instead a pervasive discourse necessitating IR’s attention, not least due to their role in undermining the popular legitimacy of international institutions. Moreover, to the extent that conspiracy theorists have framed actors and institutions within IR’s history as among their elusive enemies – including the CFR, Chatham House, or even individual scholars – such interconnections present a curious historical avenue to explore. Finally, one must appreciate that the implicit boundary I construct above, marking the ‘fascist intellectual’ from the average conspiracy theorist, is itself highly porous. Whether it is Mosley’s anti-Semitic diatribes against alleged Jewish warmongering or identitarian notions of a ‘Great Replacement’, recourse to conspiracies and the paranoid style of politics is a mainstay in extreme right international thought.

Lastly, the study of fascism holds immense potential to unmoor the history of international thought from its overwhelming preoccupation with Anglophone thinkers and discourse. ¹¹⁹ To quote Jan Stockmann: ‘Unfortunately, there is scarcely any historiography on the study of IR outside Britain and the US, least of all on the inter-war period.’ ¹²⁰ Shifting focus towards German and Italian think tanks and universities appears a necessary prerequisite to understanding IR’s parallel development under fascist totalitarianism, topics which have only recently garnered a modicum of attention. Furthermore, research into, among others, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian and Japanese strands of fascism has flourished of late. ¹²¹ Historians of international thought may find this literature valuable in understanding non-Anglophone currents of illiberal international thought and, for those with diverse language skills, the excavation of such thought offers an especially fruitful area of study to which they may contribute.

From the reception of Schmitt to the presence of far-right thinkers within the institutional fora of interwar IR, interactions and interconnections are abundant. As Armitage highlights: ‘The intellectual history of the international still teems with possibilities for research’. ¹²² The study of fascist international thought; its roots, vestiges, and interactions; and the implications thereof represent key avenues which offer precisely such possibilities.

‘How Does this Matter for Theory?’ ¹²³

Hedley Bull claimed that the ‘idealist’ tracts of the interwar period were of questionable quality. These texts were of no value aside from the insight they offer into ‘the preoccupations and presuppositions of its place and time’. ¹²⁴ One may arrive at a similar conclusion regarding the thought of the endangered homo fascistus. It is perhaps not readily apparent what interpretive insights are recoverable from a repository of abhorrent and conspiracy-laden thought. While the charge of scholastic antiquarianism seems increasingly distant, it remains a partial truism that research into the history of international thought is predominantly received by an audience ‘from a sub-field of the discipline rather than from International Relations theory as such’. ¹²⁵ While I am sympathetic to claims about the inherent value of historical scholarship within IR, theorists are not unjustified to question how the recovery and often tedious contextualization of international thought complements their enquiries. ¹²⁶ Reflection upon fascist international thought, however, carries clear interpretive implications for IR’s major theoretical paradigms.

In the first instance, disciplinary history constitutes a type of ‘meta-practical analysis’. ¹²⁷ As Bell underlines: ‘Disciplinary mythologies perform various legitimating functions, classifying some positions as the product of intellectual progress, others as consigned forever to the proverbial dustbin of history.’ ¹²⁸ Conversely, disciplinary history contains immanent potential to dislodge fictitious accounts and claims to scholarly authority grounded in historical myth. Recent literature has made forays in this direction as it pertains to realist IR theory, effectively challenging narratives that afford it undue authority. After all, it was Carr and not his antagonists who advocated appeasement. The retrospective labelling of the latter as mere ‘idealists’ is thus an ‘extreme disservice’, ¹²⁹ not least because some prominent ‘classical realists’ betrayed an ambivalence vis-à-vis fascism, a stark contrast to the supposed naivety of ‘idealism’. ¹³⁰ Furthermore, Matthew Specter has identified an important lineage in realist thought that can be traced via a trans-Atlantic interaction involving, among other influences, Schmitt and strands of German Geopolitik. ¹³¹ Similar research, especially in relation to other traditions of thought, has not been exhausted.

Besides encouraging disciplinary introspection, the study of fascist rumination may also inform conceptual revision. To offer but one fruitful example, reflection upon fascist modes of thinking poses probing questions about the concept of the liberal order and its distinctive qualities. Indeed, an integral feature of both liberal international thought and the liberal order is the idea of international institutions. However, as recent literature has abundantly demonstrated, international organizations and even multilateralism have historically featured within fascist international thought, a creed typically conceived as antithetical to its liberal ‘other’. ¹³²

Additionally, the genealogical function of intellectual history offers a method to interrogate the evolving and variegated place of the extreme right within the liberal order and its impact thereupon. Over the longue durée, the influence of fascism upon international society can admittedly be viewed as somewhat marginal relative to other ideologies. Its most enduring impact on the international, aside from the immense human toll, appears mostly indirect and inadvertent. For a creed of action prophesied to supersede the supposed bourgeois spirit of the liberal epoch, there is a modicum of irony in that the most enduring influence of fascism cannot be credited to the intentions of its proponents, but critical reactions thereto. Aimé Césaire and Hannah Arendt have sketched a ‘boomerang effect’, the process whereby Western colonialism was undermined only after its practices and underlying racial framework were turned inwards upon Europeans during the wartime New Order. ¹³³ Alternatively, Bell has discerned the role that fascism and totalitarianism occupied as a pole against which modern conceptions of the liberal tradition were consolidated and the axiomatic affiliation between liberalism and the ‘West’ constituted. ¹³⁴

The relationship between fascism and international order remains open to research on topics as diverse as European unification and decolonization. Intriguingly, Alexander Anievas and Richard Saull have posed awkward questions for ‘prevailing theorizations’ of the US-led liberal order by highlighting the ‘significant far-right ideological and sociopolitical presence’ accompanying American Cold War policy. ¹³⁵ While not concerned with fascist international thought per se, this fascinating account is an exception within IR, one that highlights the vestigial influence of extreme right actors upon the post-war order. Along similar lines, further study should explore not only how opposition and repulsion towards fascism were involved in the constitution or legitimization of norms and ideas salient within the post-war order, but the manner by which thinkers and ideas affiliated with fascism, including both its nineteenth-century antecedents and neo-fascist and post-fascist successors, have been intertwined with different iterations and facets of the ‘liberal’ order.

The derivable implications are inherently dependent on what evidence can be unearthed. The central point is thus more elemental: research into fascist international thought cannot be dismissed as an ‘irrelevant indulgence’ because it is somehow theoretically pointless. ¹³⁶ A return to the archives in search of poorly acknowledged figures and episodes, alongside forgotten facts about otherwise familiar thinkers, can provide a powerful platform for theoretical introspection and construction.

The Menace of the Extreme Right

This thesis is gratefully dedicated to all those who fought fascism during those critical decades. ¹³⁷

— Lucian Ashworth

Bull summarized the zeitgeist of interwar IR as centred around a ‘belief in progress’: it was ‘their responsibility as students of international relations. . . to assist this march of progress’, to confront the ‘ignorance’ and ‘sinister interests’ which hampered such ends. ¹³⁸ Revisionist historiography has challenged this caricatured rendition, emphasizing the imperial, gendered, Eurocentric, and racialized nature of interwar IR, alongside Anglophone international thought generally. Notwithstanding its lamentable inclinations, IR occupied a crucial role in challenging fascism via such figures as Norman Angell, H. N. Brailsford, and Philip Noel-Baker, among others. It was not solely the case that before the Cold War ‘[t]he management of imperial relations and of the “color line” was the main focus of the discipline’. ¹³⁹ My intent is not to construct a post-revisionist meta-narrative of IR and certainly not an anti-revisionist one. While disciplinary sins cannot be absolved, one attribute that should be salvaged is IR’s explicit engagement with, and normative opposition to, the politics of right-wing extremism. Stated differently, scholars ought to more actively recognize the role that the discipline has historically had, and feasibly could have, in confronting extremism.

In this sense, research into fascist international thought may be animated by a form of ‘motivational presentism’, ¹⁴⁰ one amenable to contemporary concerns about an ascendant far right. From the Identitarian movement to the European New Right (NR), the current international order is increasingly challenged by a resurgent far-right assemblage. As Jean-François Drolet and Michael C. Williams highlight: ‘The international theory of the NR is not simply descriptive. . . it is a form of political action, and for those parts of the Right interested in ideology, a systematic and historically resonant set of ideas is available.’ ¹⁴¹

Provided the disjunct between the advance of the far right and IR’s limited albeit gradually expanding scholarship on the subject, it is imperative that the subfield of the history of international thought accept the injunction proffered by Drolet and Williams and similarly engage such issues. Specifically, scholars must systematically analyse the diverse conceptions of the international espoused by far-right forces, expose their antecedents, and actively rebuke their politics. As Joseph MacKay and Christopher David LaRoche opine in a not dissimilar context: ‘A field that does not understand it in theory is ill equipped to understand and confront it in practice.’ ¹⁴² Complementing cognate scholarship, ¹⁴³ some publications within IR have already emerged on the international political sociology, reactionary internationalism, and right-wing Gramscianism of the NR. ¹⁴⁴ In a similar vein, research into the international dimension of fascist and extreme right thought holds not only intrinsic historical value, but contemporary import. To borrow Richard Devetak’s terminology, this pursuit may serve as a type of critical international theory in ‘historical mode’. ¹⁴⁵

Armitage calls upon intellectual historians to admit and thus embrace the motivational presentism which may underlie research. ¹⁴⁶ Within historical IR, ‘perspectival presentism’ ¹⁴⁷ – that is, a prioritization of the present and an engagement with history to address how the present came to be – is already a standard feature. ¹⁴⁸ Accordingly, it need not be out of the ordinary were scholars to express contemporary motivations for studying the extreme right. As David Motadel emphasizes, historians have regularly deployed their expert knowledge in the public sphere to inform discourse, correct historical misconceptions, or challenge popular myths and the political manipulation of history. ¹⁴⁹ Advocating a presentist motivation clearly need not imply a return to the reductionist interwar accounts of left-wing intellectuals. Unsurprisingly, ‘[t]he political instrumentalisation of intellectual history’ was commonplace, its reductio ad absurdum realized, Bell incisively suggests, in Bertrand Russell’s claim that ‘Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke’. ¹⁵⁰ Rather than a redux of Russell’s simplified account or John Strachey’s 1934 Marxist treatment, The Menace of Fascism, what is promoted instead is a more rigorous and nuanced study of extreme right international thought and the menace thereof. As one reviewer within the Fascist Quarterly remarked: ‘Every Fascist should read as much good anti-Fascist literature as possible. You cannot answer the other man’s case if you don’t know it’. ¹⁵¹ While I am hesitant to use the adjective ‘good’, this statement remains applicable in the inverse.

Conclusion

Herbert Butterfield advocated the necessity of a ‘historical imagination’, one which attained its ‘sublimest achievements’ when capturing the beliefs of another individual radically discordant with those of the historian. ¹⁵² As William Bain adds, Butterfield implored historians to accept, although not necessarily endorse, the proposition that the ideas and concerns of prior generations are as legitimate and important as those contemporaneous to the historian. ¹⁵³ Given the repellent character of fascism, it would not be unreasonable to view the acme of this imagination as realized in the deployment of a Mossean empathy. To understand fascism from the ‘inside out’, ¹⁵⁴ and thus empathize on a methodological front with a figure wholly unsympathetic from a personal perspective, appears a necessary precondition for historical IR to systematically and rigorously recover the international thought of such individuals.

The outlined research openings are tentative and by no measure exhaustive. Nevertheless, the implications are manifold: historical, theoretical, normative, and interdisciplinary. In this regard, this essay embodies both a propaedeutic and agenda-setting animus. Whether one is concerned with ‘description, explanation, policy or ethics’, enquiry into the international thought and reception of past thinkers offers a platform for ‘more robust scholarship’. ¹⁵⁵ The history of fascist international thought is no exception.