BEWARE OF FASCIST'S SOFT POWER

Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016):

     This book tells the story of how Nazi Germany, in close cooperation with fascist Italy and with the collaboration of intellectuals and official from across the continent, created a cultural new order in Europe. Beginning already in 1934, Germans and Italians reshaped the forums and institutions through which continental cultural elites interacted, recast the legal and economic structures that controlled the transnational market in cultural goods and redefined ideological attitudes about what 'European culture' was or should be. This project--what might be called the soft power of Nazi and fascist imperialism--formed an important element of both regimes' efforts to achieve hegemony in Europe. It succeeded in mobilizing supporters across the continent. It lasted nearly as long as Hitler's regime, collapsing only when the Allies' military victories made it impossible to proceed. Reworking institutions and ideas in the fields of film, classical music, and literature, the Nazi-fascist cultural New Order marked a crucial episode in the history of the idea, and the reality, of European culture.

Id. at 1-2. Note: In twenty-first-century America, pause to reconsider the agendas of some of those extreme right-wing think tanks, university centers, and other cultural venues.