Confronting Fascism

Socialist Knowledge and the Far Right in Interwar Europe

Abstract

How did socialists in interwar Europe interpret fascism as it was evolving in the period? Taking a broad sociology of knowledge approach, this article examines the significant variety and complexity of socialist interpretations of fascism, but also the ways in which organisational interests, competitive intersocialist relations, and situational forces shaped and constrained these analyses. Furthermore, it explores the ways in which socialist defeats and the detachment of intellectuals from socialist organisations produced creative ruptures in socialist knowledge about fascism. The vigour, diversity, and richness of the knowledge on fascism produced by socialists in the interwar period can be of significant contemporary value to the Left as it faces an expanding, enigmatic far-right.