The Highest Stage of Nationalism

Abstract The study of fascism has long been dominated by a Eurocentric perspective that dismisses the presence of fascist ideologies and movements outside the interwar European context. But existing scholarship has been trapped in a circular logic that inevitably disqualifies non-European cases for not fitting the criteria for fascism determined by specifically European historical experiences. The existence of nationalist discourses in postcolonial Korea—which vehemently emphasized the supremacy of the ethnic nation while calling for a third way beyond capitalism and communism—that strongly resembled European fascism, however, demonstrates the possibility that fascism can exist not just outside Europe but also even in anticolonial nationalisms. Through the study of fascistic nationalism in postcolonial Korea, this article argues for the need to rethink existing approaches to the concept of fascism and broaden its geographic and temporal applicability.