Zeev Sternhell

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Zeev Sternhell is the Léon Blum Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Poland in 1935, he emigrated to Israel in 1951. Between 1957 and 1960 he studied History and Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received BA cum laude in 1960. In 1969 he awarded a Ph.D. degree, cum laude at the University of Paris, for a thesis on The Social and Political Ideas of Maurice Barrès. In 1976 he became co-editor of The Jerusalem Quarterly (and he worked for it until 1990). In the year 1981 he became Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1989 he was elected to the Léon Blum Chair of Political Science at the Hebrew University and became Member of the Editorial Board of History and Memory. In 1991 he granted by the French Government, the title of "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" for outstanding contribution to French culture. In 1996 he was Member (Editorial Board) of Journal of Political Ideologies.

1 Work
2 Endnotes
3 Bibliography
4 See also
5 External links

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Work

Zeev Sternhell has traced the roots of Fascism to revolutionary Far-left French movements, adding a branch, called "revolutionary right", to the three traditional right-wing families analyzed by René Rémond (legitimism, orleanism and bonapartism). He traces fascism's main influences to:

boulangisme, a populist far-right movement led by Georges Boulanger who almost led a coup in 1889;
revolutionary syndicalism, pointing out how some Italian anarcho-syndicalism, influenced by George Sorel's thought, embraced fascism in its early stage;
Cercle Proudhon's intellectual influence and the synthesis it would have provoked (the activities of Georges Valois and Edouard Berth).

At the time, his research has sparked many critics, in particular from some French scholars who argumented that the Vichy regime (1940-1944) was more traditionally conservative, although far-right, than counter-revolutionary, a main characteristic of fascism. René Rémond has debated Zeev Sternhell's identification of boulangisme to the revolutionary right-wing movements. However, scholars have pinpointed that if Zeev Sternhell's thesis are crucial in showing out intellectual influences of fascism, fascism in itself can't be reduced to a sole ideology: its sociological composition and popularity should also be taken into account.

Stanley G. Payne, for example, remarks in A History of Fascism that "Zeev Sternhell has conclusively demonstrated that nearly all the ideas found in fascism first appeared in France" Template:Ref. But fascism would rather have developed itself as a political movement in Italy, exercising a prolonged influence on nazism.

Sternhell has been more debated concerning his identification of spiritualism to fascism, claiming for example that Emmanuel Mounier's personalism movement "shared ideas and political reflexes with fascism". He argued that Mounier's "revolt against individualism and materialism" would have led him to share the ideology of fascism Template:Ref.

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Endnotes

Template:Note Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, pg 291.
Template:Note See Zeev Sternhell, "Sur le fascisme et sa variante française", in Le Débat , November 1984, "Emmanuel Mounier et la contestation de la démocratie libérale dans la France des années 30", in Revue française de science politique, December 1984, and also John Hellman's book, on which he takes a lot of his sources, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930-1950 (University of Torento Press, 1981). See also Denis de Rougemont, Mme Mounier et Jean-Marie Domenach dans Le personnalisme d’Emmanuel Mounier hier et demain, Seuil, Paris, 1985.

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Bibliography

"Fascist Ideology", Fascism, A Reader's Guide, Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography, edited by Walter Laqueur, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1976. pp 315-376.
Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, Princeton Univ. Press, California ISBN 0691006296
The Birth of Fascist Ideology, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, published by Princeton University Press, 1989, 1994 (ISBN 0691032890) (ISBN 0691044864)
The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State Princeton Univ. Press, 1999 (ISBN 0691009678; e-book ISBN 1400807700) (abstract)
Maurice Barrès et le nationalisme français ("Maurice Barrès and French nationalism") – Brüssel : Editions Complexe, 1985