NSSR’s Finchelstein Warns of New Eurofascism in the New York Times
There is a specter haunting Europe, one that took hold of the continent in the middle of the last century and drove the world into war: fascism is on the rise again, according to an op-ed in today’s New York Times by Federico Finchelstein, assistant professor of history at The New School for Social Research, and Fabián Bosoer, opinion editor of Clarin (Argentina).
“Authoritarian populism, long associated with Latin American regimes, is generally considered a thing of the past in Europe,” Finchelstein and Bosoer write. “But this view is misleading.” The piece charts the rise and fall of autocratic regimes in Latin America in the second half of the 20th Century – and casts a wary eye toward the growth of xenophobic European political parties like Greece’s Golden Dawn and France’s National Front.
The authors note that the increasing popularity of rightist parties on the recession-bruised continent could have consequences that extend beyond national borders: “Many fear that the European Parliament may be at risk of a right-wing populist takeover following elections in May 2014.”
Federico Finchelstein is the author of four books on fascism, the Holocaust, and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe, and of the forthcoming The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War. His op-eds on Latin American and international politics appear regularly in publications including The Guardian, Folha de Sao Paolo, and Clarin.