scholarly journals The ‘Right’ Side of the Law. State of Siege and the Rise of Fascism in Interwar Romania

Fascism ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-233
Author(s):  
Cosmin Sebastian Cercel

The aim of this article is to problematize one of the most audacious tenets of the new consensus, namely the revolutionary character of fascism, by linking together the experience of the state of siege and the emergence of the fascist movement in interwar Romania. It tries to do so by drawing on the philosophical underpinnings of the paradigm of the state of exception developed by Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin’s critique of law and violence. In a first part my aim is to present the main arguments espoused in defending the view according to which fascist movements were professing an authentic revolutionary radical politics. Secondly, I will turn towards legal critique and to the work of Giorgio Agamben in order to build a topography of the relation between law and the force of state. In a third part I will focus on the uses and the historical meaning of the state of siege in post-First World War Romania. This article argues that the emergence of the fascist movement in Romania is an event strongly embedded in the political, legal and symbolic dynamics entailed by the state of exception rather than the expression of a revolutionary thrust.

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Rogari

The book delineates the emergence of a unitary state from the bedrock of a nation formed over centuries. It retraces the major advances in the integration between the state and civil society achieved in the first fifty years after unification, and the disastrous consequences wrought by the First World War and by Fascism. It underscores the way in which the post-war democratic revival rewound the virtuous process of construction of a state capable of expressing the Italian "plural nation". Despite this, it also stresses the way in which the ethical deterioration and the corruption of the political and administrative class that came to a head during the last twenty years of the twentieth century have again brought to the fore the problem of the construction of shared institutions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 115-168
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen

This chapter describes the ways in which right-wing Jews, whether they described themselves as “royalist,” “nationally minded” (nationalgesinnt), or “conservative,” attempted to make sense of the political and social changes around them following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and amid revolution at home. None of them were mere bystanders but active participants in their environment. The extent to which they could remain integrated into the Right in the years between 1918/1919 and 1924, on what terms, and in which parts of it, reflects the wider development of social and political circles they moved in, and thus the development of the wider Right, in the first five years of the Weimar Republic. It traces the rise of new concepts of belonging, namely the community of the trenches and the people’s community.


1965 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wm. Roger Louis

As the Allied troops overran the German colonies the First World War British publicists began to debate whether these territories should be returned to Germany, placed under some sort of international control, or sliced up and annexed by the conquering powers. There was little support for the proposal to hand diem back to Germany. In part this was because of the widely held belief that the Germans were guilty of “atrocities” in Africa no less appalling than those committed in King Leopold's Congo Free State before it was annexed by Belgium in 1908. The real question was whether the German colonies should be annexed or “internationalized.” On the left of the political spectrum the Independent Labor Party urged international administration as a means of uprooting imperialism as a cause of war. On the right the conservative press advocated annexation pure and simple as a means of preventing war by strengthening the British Empire. The mandates system itself was a compromise between these opposing ideas. It was viewed by those on the left as a limited triumph in the cause of internationalization; and by those on the right as annexation in all but name.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Promitzer

AbstractThe article treats the historical appearance of eugenic thinking in Bulgaria within debates on the notion of degeneration and on Darwinism since the early 1890s. Due to the marginal role of industry and urbanity in a widely rural country, such eugenic ideas initially only attracted a minority among Bulgarian intellectuals who followed similar debates in Russia. In the wake of Bulgaria's defeat in the First World War the focus of eugenic thinking shifted from the left to the right wing of the political specter with German racial hygiene as a new landmark. The article ends with the Bulgarian health legislation of 1929 which introduced voluntary prenuptial health certification.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Downing

This article considers the making of the BBC2 series, The Great War, and examines issues around the treatment and presentation of the First World War on television, the reception of the series in 1964 and its impact on the making of television history over the last fifty years. The Great War combined archive film with interviews from front-line soldiers, nurses and war workers, giving a totally new feel to the depiction of history on television. Many aspects of The Great War were controversial and raised intense debate at the time and have continued to do so ever since.


Author(s):  
James Muldoon

The German council movements arose through mass strikes and soldier mutinies towards the end of the First World War. They brought down the German monarchy, founded several short-lived council republics, and dramatically transformed European politics. This book reconstructs how participants in the German council movements struggled for a democratic socialist society. It examines their attempts to democratize politics, the economy, and society through building powerful worker-led organizations and cultivating workers’ political agency. Drawing from the practices of the council movements and the writings of theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, and Karl Kautsky, this book returns to their radical vision of a self-determining society and their political programme of democratization and socialization. It presents a powerful argument for renewed attention to the political theories of this historical period and for their ongoing relevance today.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA REINISCH

In 2005Contemporary European Historypublished a special issue on transnationalism, edited by Patricia Clavin and Jens-Wilhelm Wessels. The articles presented six examples of ‘transnational’ connections between Europeans from different countries, focusing primarily on contacts in the political and economic realms, and documenting a multitude of ties and links between Europeans at all levels from the end of the First World War to the early 1960s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (08) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Джамиля Яшар гызы Рустамова ◽  

The article is dedicated to the matter of Turkish prisoners on the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea during the First World War. According to approximate computations, there were about 50-60 thousand people of Turkish captives in Russia. Some of them were sent to Baku because of the close location to the Caucasus Front and from there they were sent to the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea. As time showed it was not the right choise. The Island had no decent conditions for living and turned the life of prisoners into the hell camp. Hastily built barracks contravene meet elementary standards, were poorly heated and by the end of the war they were not heated at all, water supply was unsatisfactory, sometimes water was not brought to the prisoner's several days. Bread was given in 100 grams per person per day, and then this rate redused by half. Knowing the plight of the prisoners, many citizens of Baku as well as the Baku Muslim Charitable Society and other charitable societies provided moral and material support to prisoners, they often went to the camp, brought food, clothes, medicines Key words: World War I, prisoners of war, Nargin Island, refugees, incarceration conditions, starvation, charity


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 309-314
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Solovyov

In the center of the article author’s attention is the book “Twilight of Europe” by G. A. Landau, which is sometimes regarded as direct predecessor of O. Spengler’s works. The article is devoted to G. A. Landau’s views on the nature of political, social, and legal processes in Europe after the First World War. The special attention is paid to the circumstances that Landau believed to be the signs of European civilization ill-being: the collapse of empires, nationalism, and the inclusion of the masses in the political life. Accordingly, the emphasis is placed on Landau’s evaluation of such concepts as “militarism”, “empire”, “nation”, etc.


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