Literature

Caroline Campbell  Today’s blog post comes from Caroline Campbell, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Dakota. As Campbell notes, supporters of xenophobic nationalist movements typically “deny that they hold bigoted views. Instead, they use coded language to advance exclusionary conceptions of national belonging.” A case in point is postwar disability rights activist Suzanne Fouché, who during the interwar years offered a redemptive, spiritual framework for the radical right’s “French First” philosophy. By focusing on languages of violence in Far Right movements, Campbell suggests, we overlook the power of such feminized appeals – and as a result we are surprised again and again when large numbers of white women support exclusionary movements. A common char...

Jennifer Sessions  Photograph: Blandine Le Cain. Licensed by Creative Commons. After the unexpected victories of Brexit and Donald Trump in 2016, there is a certain nervousness that Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front party might emerge triumphant from the upcoming presidential elections in France – even if her current lead in polls regarding first-round voting on April 23 evaporates when voters are asked their intentions in the decisive second round on May 7. In today’s blog post, historian Jennifer Sessions analyzes how the origins and history of Le Pen’s National Front are inextricably linked to France’s experience and memory of its colonial past. As Sessions puts it, “French fascism of the postcolonial era has a distinctly colonial face.” She also reminds us that key e...