Religious Politics And Politics Of Religion In 1930s Romania: The "Redemptive" Hyper-Nationalism Of The Legion Of "Archangel Michael"
Religious Politics And Politics Of Religion In 1930s Romania: The "Redemptive" Hyper-Nationalism Of The Legion Of "Archangel Michael"

Summary/Abstract: Over the last six decades, a significant number of Western scholars approached the Legion of “Archangel Michael” as one of the most popular and yet inconsistent variants of European fascism, and portrayed it as too mystical, religious, fanatic, violent, irrational, rabid anti-Semitic and obsessed with an atavistic cult of death and the idea of sacrifice1. Consequently, the grasp of terrifying marks attached to the Romanian case turned it into a “conundrum” of European fascism, an exceptional case that gives bite to comparison, and proves its usefulness only as to elicit differences2. Recently, several historians succeeded in framing and interpreting some of the most striking, aberrant, and “specific” features of Romanian fascism3. Others attempted to do the same in order to explain the above-mentioned particularities. Yet, they ended up in overstressing the exceptionality of the Legionary phenomenon, which is [...]

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