Timothy Snyder: Hitler and Stalin Today: Class 3: What is fascism? (Guest Lecturer Marci Shore)

Guest Lecturer: Marci Shore For about twenty years fascism seemed like the future for millions of people. It was a way of appealing to the past that was mystical and inspiring; it was a way of seizing the future by taking technology and pushing it towards dreams of rapid military conquest. Fascism reacted to and in some ways admired Bolshevism: it borrowed the idea of the one-party state and of a revolution based not so much on interests and history as on will and conjuncture. Fascism was a way of seeing the world that denied reason—preferring conspiratorial thinking and the arbitrary choice of enemies—and so is hard to define precisely; but what cannot be denied is that this way of seeing the world is gaining followers now. Readings: • Zeev Sternhell in Iordachi, ed., Comparative Fascist Studies, 2010, 53-59. • Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, New York; Penguin, 2018, 57-92. • Corneliu Codreanu, "A Few Remarks on Democracy," 1937. --- Timothy Snyder holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is also a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the head of the academic advisory council of Ukrainian History Global Initiative. To see other videos in this course, please click on this playlist link: https://bit.ly/3SLpx4d Follow Professor Snyder: snyder.substack.com @timothydsnyder (Twitter/X; BlueSky & TikTok) @thetimothysnyder (Instagram) Learn more about the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/