Considering the current apprehension regarding the rise of “new nationalism” (The economist, 2016) and “new authoritarianism” (Die Zeit, 2016), questions on the relationship between authoritarian, nationalist ideals about society, politics, and education become pertinent. Education, as Biesta (2012) observes, is a “teleological practice”; it is always directed towards a particular “outcome”. Educational reforms are explicitly formulated or enacted to bring about or to hinder particular visions of society (Greiffenhagen, 1978). This leads us to question whether educational ideas, practices, and reforms have a specific appearance if the outcome to be reached is not a liberal, pluralistic, democratic state and society, but an authoritarian single-party regime and an ideologically, genetically, and culturally pure and homogenous people. If, according to Honneth (2012), education should be conceived as the “twin-sister of democratic theory” (p. 430), what does authoritarianism’s ‘twin-sister’ look like? Does it have a specific look at all?

These are the questions this symposium intends to examine in order to advance the theoretical and methodological discussion in two fields: firstly, the relationship between societal and political ideals and educational reforms, and secondly, the existence and/or shape of a fascist authoritarian education. One way to shed light into these fields is to comparatively analyse the fascist or national socialist movements that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century within (and beyond) Europe. Whether in Germany, Latvia, or Italy, these movements radically questioned their contemporary societies and politics. In their eyes, the current social and political order was weak, diverse, unjust, unstable and should thus be replaced by a homogenous, authoritarian Volksgemeinschaft,and a single-party regime. This radicalism makes these movements particularly valuable for looking into how political and societal visions configure education and vice-versa.

Traditionally, historical research on education and fascism has produced single case studies focusing on a limited selection of prominent countries, namely Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Francoist Spain. This literature denies the existence of a set consistent fascist or authoritarian educational ideas, practices, and reforms (e.g. Tenorth, 2003) and concludes that, rather than ideology, it is administrative power struggles and institutional resilience that explain fascist educational policies (Horn et al., 2010). However, given these studies focus on countries where fascist or national socialist movements won internal political struggles and acquired the power to put their educational agenda into political practice, they fail to separate ideology and programmes from their implementation.

By helping to develop new tools for historical studies in this field, this symposium tests another approach. Firstly, instead countries or political regimes, our cases are fascist movements. Belgium, Norway, and Switzerland may not be the first states that come to mind when talking about fascism, but between the 1920s and the 1940s they were all confronted with fascist movements acting within their borders. Despite meeting different political, institutional, and cultural frameworks, based on their ideology the Flemish National Union (Belgium), the Nasjonal Samling (Norway), and the Nationale Front (Switzerland) are strikingly similar. Crucially, they all requested a radical restructuration of society along a series of common denominators and defined how education was to be reformed in order to reach their vision.

Secondly, instead of a historiographical reconstruction of one case, we propose to confront three cases with the two research questions presented earlier. From a methodological and theoretical point of view, this proceeding allows for comparing different approaches to create a common ground for further research, for it seems a great variance of theoretical traditions underlies the research on fascist education. It can also help generate some early hypotheses about the circumstances and mechanisms explaining differences and commonalities in authoritarian and fascist education.

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