{"id":493768,"date":"2026-02-27T14:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493768\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T14:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:27:09","slug":"it-really-can-happen-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493768\/","title":{"rendered":"It Really Can Happen Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

What the transnational links among fascist movements in the 1930s can tell us about the Far Right today.Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?<\/a><\/p>\n

LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!<\/p>\n

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THE US NATIONAL SECURITY Strategy, released late last year by the White House, might have been, at heart, a proclamation of \u201cAmerica First\u201d patriotism\u2014in the words of Donald Trump\u2019s introductory note, \u201ca roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history\u201d\u2014but it was also strangely international too. After sections on strategy at home, the document<\/a> turns to \u201cThe Regions\u201d across the world it considers particularly important for involvement. One is Europe. Yet, as the strategy states, Europe should no longer be considered only through \u201cinsufficient military spending and economic stagnation.\u201d Now the focus is on a continental MAGA,<\/a> with a goal of \u201cpromoting European greatness\u201d through reversing perceived \u201ccivilizational erasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this imagined historic crime, the document blames transnational bodies, migration, censorship of free speech, suppression of political opposition, limited birth rates, and loss of national identities, and it sees, as part of the answer, another kind of transnationalism: the need for the United States \u201cto stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations\u2019 individual character and history.\u201d Specifically, it promotes \u201cpatriotic European parties\u201d and their growing influence.<\/p>\n

This is not the first example of transnational links between Trump\u2019s MAGA movement and European far-right parties. Most recently, the Financial Times reported<\/a> that the US State Department is planning to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities in Europe, including Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK party. Farage has long been a staunch Trump ally, posting a photo<\/a> of himself with the president in the Oval Office last September. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, meanwhile, has been labeled \u201cEurope\u2019s Trump Whisperer\u201d for her close connections to the president,<\/a> including being the only European leader invited<\/a> to his inauguration and visiting Mar-a-Lago. Her Brothers of Italy party is national-conservative and\u2014like the UK\u2019s Reform\u2014aligned with Trump\u2019s conservative \u201cpopulism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, in Munich, J. D. Vance met with the leader<\/a> of the anti-immigrant, far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD), the largest opposition party in the German parliament. (Trump\u2019s ally Elon Musk had previously given a video address at an AfD party summit earlier in the year.) Trump has also recently endorsed<\/a> far-right Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n in the upcoming April elections, has previously supported<\/a> the Spanish far-right party Vox, and has spoken<\/a> in defense of the leader of the French far-right National Rally (RN) party, Marine Le Pen, who was found guilty of embezzlement last year and barred from running for president in 2027. Many of these leaders assembled last year in Madrid<\/a> at the first summit of the far-right Patriots for Europe group, created in the European Parliament. Their slogan: \u201cMake Europe Great Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a4<\/p>\n

These transnational connections among far-right groups go back further than recent history. In the late 1930s, German postcards began to appear in the United States, bearing a surreal image: they showed the Northeastern United States sliced<\/a> into fresh territories, with New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts ceded as a \u201ccorridor\u201d to Canada, and Boston a free port city caught in the middle. This image might easily come from a work of speculative fiction, from one of those dystopias of a Nazified United States from the last century\u2014The Man in the High Castle (1962), for example. Yet this was very real propaganda, disseminated by Nazi Germany to the West during the Great Depression, appealing for international support for its own revanchism and irredentism. Nazi Germany wanted to regain territory given to Poland after the First World War\u2014called \u201cthe Polish corridor\u201d<\/a> to denote its position severing Germany from East Prussia\u2014and it wanted the West to help. Similar postcards were also produced in Britain, depicting an imaginary corridor from Liverpool to the North Sea.<\/p>\n

For all their authoritarianism, nationalism, and racism, the Nazis made considerable efforts to appeal to other countries for support, and kindle fascist thinking, during the interwar era. And there were times when it looked as if this strategy would work. Nazi Germany capitalized on existing dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Versailles, which was almost universally seen as unfair before the ink had even dried. The party promoted an anti-liberal and antidemocratic politics that in fact proved rather popular across national borders. They also flattered international supporters and foisted their ideas on the world at every opportunity. In the US alone, there were numerous fascist hubs. An organization called the Friends of New Germany was established in the 1930s by a German immigrant to the United States; it later became the German American Bund and received support from Hitler\u2019s deputy Rudolf Hess. The American architect Philip Johnson<\/a> reviewed Mein Kampf (1925) positively and reported from Germany on the \u201cstirring spectacle\u201d of the Nazi invasion of Poland.<\/p>\n

Similar links existed in the case of Italian fascism. The Order Sons of Italy in America supported the first United States fascist convention in Philadelphia in 1925. The American modernist maverick and fascist collaborator Ezra Pound had moved to Italy the year before, from which perch he criticized his home country and spread antisemitic views on the radio. In some cases, the influence flowed in the other direction, with European fascists deriving inspiration and justification for their racist policies from US eugenics doctrines and Jim Crow laws. James Q. Whitman\u2019s 2017 book Hitler\u2019s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law explores how the notorious Nuremberg Laws\u2014which established an antisemitic regime in Germany, revoking Jewish citizenship and preventing Jews from marrying Germans\u2014were inspired by American racial policies. Much of Nazi ideology\u2014the emphasis on athletic competition and territorial expansion, for example\u2014was deeply influenced by a kind of fascistic Americana. Fascism had gone global.<\/p>\n

Even Poland, the country that would be brutalized by the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1939, saw a homegrown fascism proliferate during the interwar period. A new edited collection, Transnational and Transatlantic Fascism, 1918\u20132018: The Far Right in East Central and Southeastern Europe (2025), explores the often overlooked yet significant development of far-right ideas in East-Central and Southeast Europe, as well as their legacies today. The editors, Grzegorz Rossoli\u0144ski-Liebe and Per Anders Rudling, argue that the heterogeneous character of the areas led to different movements, inspired by while also opposing one another. Some, like the Croatian Usta\u0161e, which rebelled against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and supported efforts to create a Greater Croatia that stretched to Belgrade, were ultranationalist and antisemitic (and were inspired by Nazism, although they were ultimately spurned by the Nazis); others, like Hlinka\u2019s Slovak People\u2019s Party, which was created under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and promoted anti-liberalism and Slovak independence, and the Camp of Great Poland (OWP), created in 1926 in the newly independent state and led by Polish right-wing figurehead Roman Dmowski, were conservative, authoritarian, and Catholic.<\/p>\n

Fascism was also an inspiration indirectly. Although many nations in the region were not ruled by fascists, their authoritarian leaders were influenced by fascism in their politics. This was partly in self-defense, since interwar politicians in the region needed to avoid the mobilization of fascist movements in their own countries. But they also shared values, such as anticommunism and hostility to liberalism. Fascist ideas were an international phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Fascism was also multidirectional. Both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany learned from the region\u2019s movements. The Italian fascist Alessandro Pavolini praised Latvian dictator K\u0101rlis Ulmanis, while the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was supported not only by Ukrainian \u00e9migr\u00e9s but also by Hitler and Mussolini, although they later clashed with the Nazis, who did not back an independent Ukraine. These links point to tensions between national and international aspects of far-right thought, which fomented a dangerous volatility in interwar politics. But there were regional collaborations too, which sparked further dangers.<\/p>\n

As fascism in Europe became an adaptable concept\u2014at once rooted in ethnic nationalism yet also multicultural and influenced by a range of right-wing ideas\u2014it became tied up with international events. Romanian fascists fought in Spain alongside Francisco Franco\u2019s forces, with commemorations for the fallen uniting right-wing groups across the continent, as historian Francesco Zavatti has noted. Zavatti traces other examples of transnational fascist martyrdom<\/a> in the interwar period, such as the funeral of Nicola Bonservizi, an Italian fascist leader assassinated in Paris in 1924. Both Mussolini and Hitler supported the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, militarily and financially, although there were differences between their various movements (the Italian fascists, for example, viewed themselves as more socially progressive than the clerical Francoists).<\/p>\n

This fascist transnationalism continued after the war, becoming in many ways more considerable than ever. With East-Central European populations now strewn across the globe due to border changes, deportations, migration, and asylum claims, many former fascists set up movements in their new nations, paradoxically creating stronger international ties. The Usta\u0161e had ruled a German-occupied Yugoslavia as the Independent State of Croatia, and had committed genocide against Jews, Serbs, and Romani during the war, but many prominent members of the organization were allowed to resettle in Australia, the United States, and Canada\u2014where they created new movements, campaigning against the Tito regime in communist Yugoslavia. In the United States, the clandestine Operation Paperclip recruited Nazi scientists for government employment after the war, with over 1,000 finding new homes in the country. It was not until the 1970s that an Office of Special Investigations was established by the Department of Justice to track down and deport Nazi collaborators.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the United States saw the rise of a native neofascism, including the American Nazi Party, founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, and the National Alliance, founded in 1974 by William Luther Pierce. Far-right political ideas became popular in Europe too, emerging in opposition to global communism. The New European Order was established in 1951 to champion nationalism across Europe. Similarly, Operation Condor\u2014a collaboration among right-wing dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay\u2014championed political repression of left-wing sympathizers in South America and was funded by the United States. Fascist ideas were hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n

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For all its global tendrils, fascism has only in recent years been researched as a transnational movement by historians. Some comparative analyses emerged in the 1950s and \u201960s, including Hannah Arendt\u2019s monumental The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)\u2014though its titular focus emphasized dictatorial tactics such as propaganda and mass repression, as opposed to fascist ideology per se. Scholarship during this period also focused on definitions of fascism, exploring similarities and differences within various contexts. The rise of research into ideologies and sociopolitical structures in the 1970s and \u201980s led to more nuanced treatments of the global dimensions of fascist movements. Transnational approaches took off in the 1980s and \u201990s, with studies of the complexity of fascist groups and parties in previously underexplored areas, such as East-Central Europe.<\/p>\n

These approaches have led to several new understandings of the transnational nature of fascism. In a 2021 essay,<\/a> Aristotle Kallis notes the development of fascism within the context of \u201cregime transition and democratic breakdown\u201d after World War I, arguing that interwar fascism was not generated at \u201ca geographic and political centre\u201d and exported to \u201cobliging audiences in the peripheries\u201d; rather, these ideas emerged from \u201ca much broader, dynamic, unpredictable, and decentred field of ideational mobility and diffusion.\u201d Similarly, a recent special issue<\/a> of the Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies explores fascism \u201cin the plural rather than as a notion describing one (or two) particular set(s) of practices, institutions, and intellectual outlooks\u201d; the pieces in the issue focus on five categories\u2014\u201cactors, women, organizations, geography, and hybridity\u201d\u2014as sites where transnational fascism coalesced.<\/p>\n

\u00a4<\/p>\n

As fascism grew more historically complex and intellectually diffuse, it also became arguably more difficult to identify and combat. Tomislav Duli\u0107 proposes a new approach<\/a> that considers the different ways transnational movements act. Some may \u201chave access to governments and polities\u201d within specific nations while others focus on \u201cinteraction with international organisations\u201d and \u201ccoordinate and provide legitimacy for national movements\u201d around the globe.<\/p>\n

These distinctions matter because contemporary fascist ideas operate far more democratically than in the past, existing within political systems in a way that makes collaboration with fascism more ubiquitous and insidious. Today, far-right politicians have become skillful at disavowing interwar models in favor of more palatable populist approaches, or at least of performing plausible deniability. Trump\u2019s comment during a 2020 presidential debate that the neofascist Proud Boys group should \u201cstand back and stand by\u201d was met with outrage, yet he later condemned white supremacist groups,<\/a> including the Proud Boys, claiming he did not \u201cknow much about\u201d them. Similarly, in Europe, radical far-right groups have been both a bolster and a threat to right-wing parties, which have supported and legitimized their politics while reluctantly cracking down on their extremism. As Nikolina \u017didek notes in Transnational and Transatlantic Fascism, 1918\u20132018, right-wing parties \u201ctoned down\u201d their rhetoric before certain countries (such as Croatia) joined the European Union, \u201conly to relapse\u201d following their accession.<\/p>\n

While neofascist parties have focused on immigration, the creation of nationalist bulwarks to counter perceived invasions, this has also taken place on a transnational level. In Europe, right-wing movements in different countries have collaborated<\/a> to protect what they perceive to be the sovereignty of their traditional worldviews against the cosmopolitanism of the European Union. Yet tensions are still evident. While the European Far Right has welcomed Trump almost fanatically, some right-wing groups have condemned<\/a> his designs on Greenland and disparagement of NATO. Even as fascism is becoming more transatlantic, the importance of national and regional ideals remains.<\/p>\n

That Nazi propaganda postcard from the 1930s questions whether \u201cthe United States [would] be willing to agree to such frontiers\u201d of Canadian conquest. The transnational fascism at work in this message involves not merely the specific Nazi connections to American ideals but also the more general implication that fascism is able to take root and grow anywhere, as Sinclair Lewis\u2019s 1935 dystopian novel It Can\u2019t Happen Here acknowledged. Fascism\u2019s blood-and-soil ideology is paradoxically capable of appealing across national borders, manipulated to evoke universal aspirations and local traditions. Reposition the map in that postcard slightly further north and we perceive Trump\u2019s greed for Greenland. Fascism doesn\u2019t just cross borders\u2014it\u2019s been everywhere all along. It can happen here.<\/p>\n

\u00a4<\/p>\n

Featured image: Carl Langhorst, Tag von Potsdam,<\/a> 1933, is in the public domain. Image has been cropped.<\/p>\n

LARB Contributor<\/p>\n

Juliette Bretan is a researcher and writer, currently finishing her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She works on depictions of Poland in English literature and has written about Polish and East-Central European culture and politics for TLS, The Public Domain Review, and other media, as well as writing and presenting a program on Polish tango for BBC Radio 3.<\/p>\n

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Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?<\/a><\/p>\n

LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!<\/p>\n

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