Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe Fascists @georgelmosseprogram
Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe Fascists  @georgelmosseprogram
Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 35 minutes ago
60 Years: Fascism Seminar Revisited

mosseprogram.wisc.edu/rome

12 January 2025

Session XII: Fascist Afterlives

Federico Finchelstein, "The Wannabe Fascists"
Moderated by Donatello Aramini
Responses by António Costa Pinto, Diana Garvin

Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
American Academy in Rome
Sapienza Università di Roma
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism
Leo Baeck Institute

Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. He has taught at the History Department of Brown University and he received his Ph.D. at Cornell University. Finchelstein is Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at NSSR. Professor Finchelstein is the author of seven books on fascism, populism, Dirty Wars, the Holocaust and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe. His books have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Hungarian, Korean and Turkish. His forthcoming book is The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy (2024).

António Costa Pinto is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Georgetown University, a senior associate member at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, and a senior visiting fellow at Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley and New York University. His research interests include fascism and authoritarianism, political elites, and democratization. He is the author of The Blue Shirts: Portuguese Fascism in Inter-war Europe (2000); The Nature of Fascism Revisited (2012), Latin America Dictatorships in the Era of Fascism (2020) and he co-edited recently (with Federico Finchelstein) Authoritarian and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America: Crossing Borders (2019).

Diana Garvin is Assistant Professor of Italian with a focus on Mediterranean Studies at the University of Oregon. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, and her A.B. from Harvard University. Her book, Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work (2021) explores how women fed their families through agricultural and industrial labor with a new body of evidence drawn from food and foodways. Garvin also writes articles on daily life under the dictatorship for journals like Critical Inquiry, Journal of Modern European History, Journal of Modern Italian History, Modern Italy, The Italianist, Annali d’italianistica, Design Issues, Food and Foodways, gender/sexuality/italy and Signs. Her research has been supported by the Rome Prize, Fulbright, Getty Library, Oxford University, Wolfsonian-FIU, Julia Child Foundation, CLIR Mellon, NEH, FLAS, AAUW, NWSA, AFS, APS, and other fellowships and awards. dianagarvin.com Twitter: @DianaEGarvin.

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In 1963, historian George L. Mosse led a landmark seminar at Stanford University, bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and countries to analyze the history of Nazism and Italian Fascism, just eighteen years after World War II. Their discussions defined the early parameters of European fascism amidst the post-war era’s intellectual landscape.

Sixty years later, the George L. Mosse Program in History organized a multi-day conference from January 9 to January 12, 2025, to reassess fascism in the context of contemporary European movements. More than thirty scholars from the US, Europe, the UK, and Israel gathered to critically examine and redefine “fascism” in light of present-day populist, anti-democratic, illiberal, and authoritarian ideologies.
Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe FascistsIlija Trojanow, The Utopian PrerogativeJennifer Evans, Continuities of FascismRoger Strauch,  “The Mosse Art Restitution Project: A Personal Perspective”Raffaele Bedarida, Mary Louise Roberts, Ofer Ashkenazi, Discussion: Images of Fascism2020.08.10 - Social Justice Remade? The Decline of the European Welfare State, 1973-2009Amy King, How Italys Far Right Connects to its Roots in the Antifascist RepublicCamille Robcis, “The War on Gender: The History of a Dangerous Idea”Mary Louise Roberts, “Race and Sexual Violence in the European Theater of War, 1944-1945”Confronting History: Monica Black, A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, Ghosts...2020.08.13 - Social Justice Remade? The Decline of the European Welfare State, 1973-2009Ruth Harris, Mosse Lecture 01: Scheurer-Kestners Feast
George L. Mosse Program in History |

Federico Finchelstein, "The Wannabe Fascists"

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