Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s
Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski
Abstract
This book offers a new reading of the political and intellectual culture of Egypt during the interwar era. Though scholarship has commonly emphasized Arab political and military support of Axis powers, this work reveals that the shapers of Egyptian public opinion were largely unreceptive to fascism, openly rejecting totalitarian ideas and practices, Nazi racism, and Italy's and Germany's expansionist and imperialist agendas. The majority (although not all) of Egyptian voices supported liberal democracy against the fascist challenge, and most Egyptians sought to improve and reform, rather than ... More
This book offers a new reading of the political and intellectual culture of Egypt during the interwar era. Though scholarship has commonly emphasized Arab political and military support of Axis powers, this work reveals that the shapers of Egyptian public opinion were largely unreceptive to fascism, openly rejecting totalitarian ideas and practices, Nazi racism, and Italy's and Germany's expansionist and imperialist agendas. The majority (although not all) of Egyptian voices supported liberal democracy against the fascist challenge, and most Egyptians sought to improve and reform, rather than to replace and destroy, the existing constitutional and parliamentary system. The book places Egyptian public discourse in the broader context of the complex public sphere within which debate unfolded—in Egypt's large and vibrant network of daily newspapers, as well as the weekly or monthly opinion journals—emphasizing the open, diverse, and pluralistic nature of the interwar political and cultural arena. In examining Muslim views of fascism at the moment when classical fascism was at its peak, this book seriously challenges the recent assumption of an inherent Muslim predisposition toward authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and “Islamo–Fascism”.
Keywords:
fascism,
Muslim,
Egypt,
liberal democracy,
authoritarianism,
totalitarianism,
dictatorship,
interwar era,
public discourse
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780804763431 |
| Published to Stanford Scholarship Online: June 2013 |
DOI:10.11126/stanford/9780804763431.001.0001 |
