"This is the Way the World Ends": What is Fascism? 

“This is the Way the World Ends”: What is Fascism?
Opening panel of Fighting Fascism: A Symposium on Jewish Responses From the Interwar Period to the Present Day, co-hosted by the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History. Generously sponsored by Leonard L. Milberg with additional support from The Achelis & Bodman Foundation.
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As immortalized in the concluding line of T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, “The Hollow Men,” the idea that “the world ends not with a bang but a whimper” has long evoked the fractured world that produced fascism. But what is fascism? Our opening session tackles this vexing question as a springboard for the rest of the day’s events. Panelists will discuss the differences between fascism and other rightwing movements, such as Nazism and conservative authoritarianism, by exploring their ideological and historical origins from the interwar period up to the present. Panelists will further discuss the important role of antisemitism in classical and contemporary forms of fascism.
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Panelists:
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University
Federico Finchelstein, The New School for Social Research
Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University
Moderator: Gavriel Rosenfeld, Center for Jewish History and Fairfield University