Zeev Sternhell - Research

Research

Zeev Sternhell traces the roots of Fascism to revolutionary far-left French movements, adding a branch, called the 'revolutionary right', to the three traditional right-wing families cited by René Rémond – (legitimism, orleanism and bonapartism). The main influences, according to Sternhell were:

• Boulangisme, a populist far-right movement led by Georges Boulanger who almost succeeded in his attempt at a coup d'état in 1889;
• Revolutionary syndicalism, pointing out how some Italian anarcho-syndicalists, influenced by George Sorel's thought, embraced fascism in its early stages;
• Cercle Proudhon's intellectual influence and the synthesis it would have provoked (the activities of Georges Valois and Edouard Berth).

His research has sparked criticism, in particular from French scholars who argue that the Vichy regime (1940–1944) was of a more traditional conservative persuasion, although belonging to the far-right, than it was counter-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary ideas being a main characteristic of fascism. René Rémond has questioned Sternhell's attribution of 'boulangisme' to the revolutionary right-wing movements. Some scholars say that Sternhell's thesis may shed important light on intellectual influences of fascism, but fascism in itself was not born of a sole ideology and its sociological make-up and popularity among the working classes must 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". But Fascism itself developed as a political movement in Italy, from where it exercised a prolonged influence on Nazism.

Sternhell's identification of Spiritualism with Fascism has also given rise to debate, in particular his claim that Emmanuel Mounier's personalism movement "shared ideas and political reflexes with Fascism". Sternhell has argued that Mounier's "revolt against individualism and materialism" would have led him to share the ideology of Fascism.