Dark Palingenesis: Mass Violence and the Myth of Rebirth in the Fascist Ideology and Practice (Lecture)

This lecture proposes a novel perspective on the palingenetic core of fascism, as the foundation for a new understanding of fascism as an ideology of regeneration through ordeal and destruction.

It explores the multiple genealogies of the fascist ideology of national salvation through violent cleansing, focusing on the link among eighteenth-century social palingenesis, Romantic messianic nationalism, and fascism. Scrutinizing a variety of case studies, most notably Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Romania, Hungary and the Independent State of Croatia, it shows that fascist movements drew on a broad spectrum of Christian, alchemical, Romantic, and occultist regenerative myths, shaping individual and collective identities in national, continental and global settings.

The lecture argues that fascists imbued palingenesis with unprecedented radicalism by implementing new forms of dark palingenesis, culminating in the Holocaust as a transnational fascist project. Scrutinizing the architecture of concentration camps and practices of securitization and extermination employed by fascist movements and regimes, the lecture demonstrates that violence was a core, constitutive element of fascism and not an accidental or conjunctural attribute.

It also highlights neofascist discourses and practices of violent redemption emerging worldwide.