Specters of Fascism: The Rhetoric of Historical Analogy in 1968

2016 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analogy

scholarly journals The Danger of Analogical Myths: Explaining the Power and Consequences of the Sykes-Picot Delusion

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 132-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Dodge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Postcolonial States

Even before its hundredth year anniversary on 16 May 2016, the Sykes-Picot agreement had become a widely cited historical analogy both in the region itself and in Europe and the United States. In the Middle East, it is frequently deployed as an infamous example of European imperial betrayal and Western attempts more generally to keep the region divided, in conflict, and easy to dominate. In Europe and the United States, however, its role as a historical analogy is more complex—a shorthand for understanding the Middle East as irrevocably divided into mutually hostile sects and clans, destined to be mired in conflict until another external intervention imposes a new, more authentic, set of political units on the region to replace the postcolonial states left in the wake of WWI. What is notable about both these uses of the Sykes-Picot agreement is that they fundamentally misread, and thus overstate, its historical significance. The agreement reached by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, in May 1916, quickly became irrelevant as the realities on the ground in the Middle East, U.S. intervention into the war, a resurgent Turkey and the comparative weakness of the French and British states transformed international relations at the end of the First World War. Against this historical background, explaining the contemporary power of the narrative surrounding the use of the Sykes-Picot agreement becomes more intellectually interesting than its minor role in the history of European imperial interventions in the Middle East.

IR Theory, Historical Analogy, and Major Power War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hall Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Ir Theory ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Historical Analogy

scholarly journals Precedents, parliaments, and foreign policy: historical analogy in the House of Commons vote on Syria

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Kaarbo ◽  
Daniel Kenealy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Historical Analogy

scholarly journals Historical Analogy: Japan’s Road Toward War and Japan’s Postwar Road

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Xiaoran ◽  
C. X. George Wei
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analogy

scholarly journals ‘Reconstruction’ before the Marshall Plan

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW J WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Full Length ◽  
American Enterprise Institute ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
White House ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
President Bush

As is often the case when a concept gets a new lease of life in the newspapers there has been a resurrection of interest in recent times in the concept of ‘reconstruction’. The current American administration has now undertaken not one but two major wars that have resulted in the need for reconstruction since 2001 when George W. Bush took up office in the White House. In the previous few years there were major reconstruction efforts undertaken in Bosnia (after the 1995 Dayton Accords) and in Kosovo (after the war of 1999), to name but the most obvious. Historians have to some extent taken up this cue and have been producing edited books and even full length monographs on the ‘lessons’ that we might learn from historical reconstruction efforts. There has also been a great use of conscious historical analogy by President George W. Bush. One classic example of the recent past by President Bush in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute elicited an indignant response from a number of historians in the Financial Times on the dangers of historical analogy.

Who Was “Hitler” Before Hitler? Historical Analogies and the Struggle to Understand Nazism, 1930–1945

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-281
Author(s):  
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
Nazi Era

AbstractSince the turn of the millennium, major political figures around the world have been routinely compared to Adolf Hitler. These comparisons have increasingly been investigated by scholars, who have sought to explain their origins and assess their legitimacy. This article sheds light on this ongoing debate by examining an earlier, but strikingly similar, discussion that transpired during the Nazi era itself. Whereas commentators today argue about whether Hitler should be used as a historical analogy, observers in the 1930s and 1940s debated which historical analogies should be used to explain Hitler. During this period, Anglophone and German writers identified a diverse group of historical villains who, they believed, explained the Nazi threat. The figures spanned a wide range of tyrants, revolutionaries, and conquerors. But, by the end of World War II, the revelation of the Nazis' unprecedented crimes exposed these analogies as insufficient and led many commentators to flee from secular history to religious mythology. In the process, they identified Hitler as Western civilization's new archetype of evil and turned him into a hegemonic analogy for the postwar period. By explaining how earlier analogies struggled to make sense of Hitler, we can better understand whether Hitler analogies today are helping or hindering our effort to understand contemporary political challenges.

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