Zeev Sternhell

Sternhell has devoted his research to the intellectual history of fascism as a pan-European phenomenon. His contribution lies in identifying the origins of fascist ideology as a major element in the revolt against the Enlightenment emerging as a coherent intellectual revolution at the end of the nineteenth century from a merger between an extreme anti-democratic left and militant right-wing nationalism. Sternhell has shown conclusively that fundamentals of fascist ideology were first formulated in France before spreading to Italy and that the fascist impregnation of French cultural and political life eventually produced the ideology of the Vichy "national revolution". His work has had a major influence on the debate about the history of political ideas in the early twentieth century.