Before delving into the readings, my understanding of Internationalism is that it encompasses the idea that states/nations should have greater political and/or economic cooperation amongst each other. With that in mind, how do the readings explore how the far-right has a connection to internationalism? The Hanebrink reading points out that “Across Europe, neofascists similar in age and outlook to white nationalists in America rally to defend their “own” culture against the forces of globalism, which they associate with Jews.” (Hanebrink, p. 2) Working with this, it would be reasonable to say that rallying transnationally across state and national boundaries under a common viewpoint could be considered internationalist, by nature of seeking greater political cooperation. However by that same logic, if neoliberals sought some form of political cooperation cross state/national boundaries, which certainly does happen, then couldn’t they be connected to internationalism too? That said, Motadel makes a compelling argument on the matter, by stating that, “As nationalist movements across the imperial world gained momentum in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, governments increasingly made efforts to support them in order to undermine the sovereignty of their adversaries’ empires.” (Motadel, p. 844) This is the strongest correlation I was able to find from the readings. It makes sense that imperialist governments would seek to undermine their competitors by supporting cross border nationalist movements which are typically associated with the far-right. This approach can certainly be viewed as falling under what I established earlier as a baseline definition for internationalism.
Reading’s Cited:
Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard University Press, 2018), pp. 1-10, 11-45.
David Motadel, “The Global Authoritarian Moment: The Revolt Against Empire” American Historical Review Vol. 124, Issue 3 (July 2019): 843-877.
Thank you for this post Max! In terms of finding correlations between the readings I believe the point you are making here is quite interesting. As when we talk about the rise of the far right under the guise of nationalism we always point towards the last two centuries, as when the world truly felt the resulting actions. I feel that in most education we tend to leave out the continuing presence of nationalism after World War ll almost forgetting how present the far right was and still is across different nations. I think alot of the media and world has only starting to note of the rising far right in the past seven years or so. What do you think?