Anti-Fascism and Ethnic Minorities explores how, and to what extent, fascist ultranationalism elicited an anti-fascist response among ethnic minority communities in Eastern and Central Europe. The edited volume analyses how identities related to class, ethnicity, gender and political ideologies were negotiated within and between minorities through confrontations with domestic and international fascism. By developing and expanding the study of Jewish anti-fascism and resistance to other minority responses, the book opens the field of anti-fascism studies for a broader comparative approach. The volume is thematically located in Central and Eastern Europe, cutting right across the continent from Finland in the North to Albania in the Southeast. The case studies in the fourteen research chapters are divided into five thematic sections, dealing with the issues of 1) minorities in borderlands and cross-border antifascism, 2) minorities navigating the ideological squeeze between communism and fascism, 3) the role of intellectuals in the defence of minority rights, 4) the anti-fascist resistance against fascist and Nazi occupation during World War II, as well as 5) the conflictual role ascribed to ethnicity in post-war memory politics and commemorations. The editors describe their intersectional approach to the analysis of ethnicity as a crucial category of analysis with regard to anti-fascist histories and memories. The book offers scholars and students valuable historical and comparative perspectives on minority studies, Jewish studies, borderland studies, and memory studies. It will appeal to those with an interest in the history of race and racism, fascism and anti-fascism, and Central and Eastern Europe.

The increasing radicalization of political life in most countries in Europe lends special relevance to studies of the antifascist legacies on the continent. This insightful collection of essays is an in-depth review of antifascism in Slovenia, setting it in the context of related movements elsewhere in Europe. The period treated by the 19 essays comprises the interwar period, World War Two, and the post-war decades. The comparative and transnational perspectives advanced by the volume change our understanding of antifascism. The essays deal with the right-wing but also left-wing instrumentalization of antifascism, with a particular focus on the communist and post-communist periods. The authors point out that antifascism comes in various strains, whether inspired by liberalism, social democracy, communism, monarchism, anarchism, or even Christian conservatism. The contributors bring to light several overlooked antifascist actors, campaigns, and organisations, mostly in Slovenia and the Adriatic area.

Although the Nordic countries have a reputation for tolerance and social democracy, they were not immune to fascism which spread across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This book offers the first comprehensive history of anti-fascism in the Nordic Countries. Through a number of case studies on anti-fascism in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of contentious politics in the Nordic Countries and to our broader knowledge of European fascism and anti-fascism. The case studies concentrate on the different manifestations of resistance to fascism and Nazism in the interwar era as well as some of the postwar variants. The book will be of considerable interest to scholars of anti-fascism as well as researchers of Nordic and Scandinavian history and politics.

Anti-fascism has long been one of the most active and dynamic areas of radical protest and direct action. Yet it is an area of struggle and popular resistance that remains largely unexplored by historians, sociologists and political scientists. Fully revised and updated from its earlier edition, this book continues to provide the definitive account of anti-fascism in Britain from its roots in the 1930s opposition to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, to the street demonstrations and online campaigns of the twenty-first century. The author draws on an impressive range of sources including official government, police and security services records, the writings and recollections of activists themselves, and the publications and propaganda of anti-fascist groups and their opponents. The book traces the ideological, tactical and organisational evolution of anti-fascist groups and explores their often complicated relationships with the mainstream and radical left, as well as assessing their effectiveness in combating the extreme right.

Fascism is not a thing of the past. In this era of crisis and austerity, it is growing even stronger. The question is: How do we stop it? According to M. Testa, the fight against it must be aggressive and unrelenting. Using a mixture of orthodox history, eyewitness accounts, and unflinching analysis, he makes the case for a resolutely militant anti-fascism, one that gives no quarter and tolerates no excuses. Unlike other partisan accounts of contemporary battles against fascism and ultra-nationalism, Militant Anti-Fascism takes us from proto-fascists in nineteenth-century Austria to modern-day street-fights in London, providing a broad context for its arguments and looking at numerous countries over a longer period of time. The result is both a serious historical study and a story of victory and struggle, past and present, designed to inspire and energize militants. Lay aside, as M. Testa does, your faith in liberal, legislative, and state-approved approaches to today’s fascist threat. Start by reading this provocative and unapologetic overview of militant anti-fascism and the strategies that have successfully confronted the far right when it has reappeared in its many guises.

In comparison to British fascism, anti-fascism is uncharted territory. This book seeks to redress the balance of existing literature which tends towards a narrow focus on the protagonists of fascism rather than opponents. Anti-fascism in Britain defines anti-fascism in broad terms and offers both a comprehensive and absorbing historical overview that begins with opposition to the precursors of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1920s and ends with anti-fascism in the present day.

Since the election of President Trump and the rise in racist and white supremacist activity, the militant antifascist movement known as antifa has become increasingly active and high profile in the United States. This book analyzes the tactics, culture, and practices of the movement through a combination of social movement studies and critical criminological perspectives. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with activists, this book is the first scholarly sociological analysis of contemporary antifascist activism in the United States. Drawing on social movement studies, subculture studies and critical criminology, it explains antifa's membership, their ideology, strategy, tactics and use of culture as a weapon against the far right. It provides the most detailed account of this movement and also cuts through much of the mythology and common misunderstandings about it. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in sociology, political science, anthropology, criminology, and history; however, a general audience would also be interested in the explanation of what drives antifa tactics and strategy in light of the high-profile conflicts between fascists and antifascists.

British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945–79 explores the extent to which the Holocaust has shaped British antifascism. The author tests assertions of an uncomplicated relationship between Holocaust memory and the imperative to resist postwar fascist revivals. For those with a scholarly interest in how antifascists confront their opponents, it is essential to understand whether the Holocaust has always been seen as an insurmountable barrier against fascism: is the idea of the genocide’s constant antifascist ‘use’ actually a dangerous assumption and, if so, what are the implications of this for ‘Antifa’ as its battle with the contemporary far right unfolds? This book provides a political and structural history of the Holocaust’s relationship to antifascist organisations and questions whether networks of solidarity formed around Holocaust memory, including analysing the impact of the genocide in Jewish antifascists’ motivations and rhetoric. It also assesses the Holocaust’s political capital in wider antifascism and connected anti-racism, including in defence of the Black and Asian communities increasingly victimised by fascists over the postwar period. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in antifascism, fascism, racism, and Jewish and left-wing history in Britain, and how these intersect with Holocaust consciousness.

This book is the first archive-based account of the charged debates around race in the women's movement in England during the 'second wave' period. Examining both the white and the Black women's movement through a source base that includes original oral histories and extensive research using feminist periodicals, this book seeks to unpack the historical roots of long-running tensions between Black and white feminists. It gives a broad overview of the activism that both Black and white women were involved in, and examines the Black feminist critique of white feminists as racist, how white feminists reacted to this critique, and asks why the women's movement was so unable to engage with the concerns of Black women. Through doing so, the book speaks to many present day concerns within the women's movement about the politics of race, and indeed the place of identity politics within the left more broadly.