On Zeev Sternhall

A note on the late Polish historian and some current reading.

A. Zeev Sternhell with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Revolution to Political Revolution. Trans. David Maisel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Sternhell (an eminent Polish historian who passed away in 2020) & his two colleagues (students) document using French and Italian primary sources the ideological genesis of Fascism (as distinct from Germany's National Socialism, which they note was driven primarily by biological determinism) in Georges Sorel's syndicalism, the Action Francaise in France, and Benito Mussolini in Italy. Sternhell critiques Ernst Nolte's comparative interpretation (influential in the United States) for minimising Germany, and links early Fascist ideological theorists in France to Friedrich Nietzsche's vitalism, and which can be integrated with Peter Viereck's longitudinal metapolitics, Roger Griffin's palingenetic ultranationalism, George Mosse, A.J. Gregor, and others. This book argues that Fascism was a cultural phenomena before it became a political movement. It focuses also on how disaffected Left intellectuals were indoctrinated into Fascist ideology in France and Italy.

A recent academic profile and eulogy on Sternhell’s significant contributions.

B. Professor John Mearsheimer on Realism and Great Power politics in Athens on 2nd June 2026. Professor Mearsheimer gives very clear explanations of normative versus explanatory theories; how realists think; how realism compares to other rival International Relations approaches like liberalism and democratic peace theory; and its theory-testing use in geopolitics, great power rivalry, and military intelligence analysis.

The end of Mearsheimer’s talk and a lengthy Q&A section.

C. The latest Australian Foreign Affairs exchange on the Shangri La diplomacy and security conference and the AUKUS security compact.