Collective memory and fascist legacies in Western Europe

This chapter assigns to each country a type of collective memory and possibly one or more secondary narratives. This is done by analyzing the relevant secondary literature on each country’s collective memory of the fascist past. Potential secondary narratives and disagreement among sources are taken into consideration, and eventually the levels of stigmatization of the fascist past are assigned to each country. Moreover, it is important to observe variations in the presence of different memories over time, explaining which turning points determined a change in the collective re-elaboration of the past. The countries are listed according to their levels of stigma: first are presented the countries with extremely low levels of stigma of the fascist past, and progressively the presentation moves towards those countries that present extremely high levels of stigma.

Collective memory · Political science · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law