Trump, the Historians, and Fascism

From the moment of his entry into the US presidential elections, Donald Trump evoked comparisons to the history of fascism and Nazism. Historians of twentieth-century Europe found themselves called forth to pontificate on whether Trump was or was not a fascist, and to probe the value of historical comparisons and parallels. This paper seeks to analyse how historians responded to the problem of the portrayal of Trump as a fascist, the challenges of the uses of history in the public sphere, and the social history of the term ‘fascism’ in political debate in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How useful has been the trend to evoke twentieth-century history as a repository of lessons, warnings and parallels for contemporary politics?

Date & time

Wed 19 Aug 2020, 4.15–5pm

Location

Zoom

Speakers

Dr Ben Mercer

School/Centre

School of History

Contacts

Josh Black

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