Nordic Fascism: Historical origins, Contemporary Expressions and Gendered Dynamics

Öppen föreläsning med Aristotle Kallis (Professor of Modern History, Kelle University) följt av en paneldiskussion med Nicola Karcher (Østfold university college), Markus Lundström (Mittuniversitetet), Heléne Lööw (UU) and Gustaf Forsell (CEMFOR). 

Fascism as a historical and contemporary ideological phenomenon has caused systematic and, not seldom, lethal violence against imagined “inferior” peoples. Based on revolutionary promises about achieving a new era based on racial/ethnic homogeneity, fascism continues to be a threat against liberal democratic societies. This event will focus on the historical roots, contemporary expressions, and gendered dynamics of fascism, with a specific focus on the Nordic countries. The roundtable will present the recently published anthology Nordic Fascism: Fraghments of an Entangled History (Karcher & Lundström, eds, Routledge, 2022).

Biographies: 

Aristotle Kallis specialises in historical roots and contemporary recontextualization of racism and politics of exclusion, with an emphasis on the study of inter-war German and Italian fascism, as well as on propaganda in Nazi Germany. He is an author and editor of several books on the subject of fascism and totalitarianism, including Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe (2009). His most recent work deals with the relationship between architecture and fascism as well as on the dynamics of ideational diffusion and localisation of interwar fascism.

Nicola Karcher is is historian and Associate Professor in Social Science at the Østfold University College, Norway, where she leads the research group PRIS (Politics, Religion, Ideology and Society in Education).  She has published articles and books in Norwegian, German, and English on the history of fascism, occupation history, antisemitism, and racism, particularly with respect to the Nordic countries. Karcher has coordinating NORFAS since 2020, is a member of the NORFAS steering committee, and co-editor of the NORFAS-anthology Nordic Fascism: Fragments of an Entangled History (Routledge, 2022).

Heléne Lööw is an Associate Professor in History, Uppsala Unvieristy,  with particular focus on extremism, national socialism, fascism and hate crimes. Between 2003 and 2006, Lööw was the Director of Forum for Living History. 

Markus Lundström is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Mittuniversitet and affiliate researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR) at Uppsala University, Sweden. His fascism research focuses on how radical-nationalist ideas travel and transfigure through time. Together with Karcher, Lundström has coordinated NORFAS and co-edited the NORFAS-anthology Nordic Fascism: Fragments of an Entangled History (Routledge, 2022). 

Gustaf Forsell is a PhD Candidate in Church History at Uppsala University. In his PhD project, Forsell analyzes Christian national socialism in Sweden 1925-45, focusing on how and to what degree Christian national socialists used race ideology, anti-Semitism, and Christian theology in the articulation of different forms of Aryan Christianity.