The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War

Argentina is famous for its ties with fascism as well as its welcoming of Nazi war criminals after World War II. At mid-century, it was the home of Peronism. It was also the birthplace of the Dirty War and one of Latin America's most criminal dictatorships in the 1970s and early 1980s. How and why did all of these regimes emerge in a country that was born liberal? Why did these authoritarian traits first emerge in Argentina under the shadow of fascism?

In this book, Federico Finchelstein tells the history of modern Argentina as seen from the perspective of political violence and ideology. He focuses on the theory and practice of the fascist idea in Argentine political culture throughout the twentieth century, analyzing the connections between fascist theory and the Holocaust, antisemitism, and the military junta's practices of torture and state violence, with its networks of concentration camps and extermination. The book demonstrates how the state's war against its citizens was rooted in fascist ideology, explaining the Argentine variant of fascism, formed by nacionalistas, and its links with European fascism and Catholicism. It particularly emphasizes the genocidal dimensions of the persecution of Argentine Jewish victims. The destruction of the rule of law and military state terror during the Dirty War, Finchelstein shows, was the product of many political and ideological reformulations and personifications of fascism.

The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War provides a genealogy of state-sanctioned terror, revealing fascism as central to Argentina's political culture and its violent twentieth century.


In this masterwork written with a limpid style and an admirable conceptual clarity, Federico Finchelstein proves that, far from being merely 'imported, ' fascism had deep roots in Argentina, where it appeared in the early 1930s as a peculiar symbiosis of radical nationalism and reactionary Catholicism. His book is a fundamental contribution to the historiography of transnational fascism and the origins of the 'Dirty War.'--Enzo Traverso, author of The Origins of Nazi Violence

Federico Finchelstein's new book is a persuasive account of fascism's extra-European reach. He shows the peculiarities and persistences of Argentina's strain of fascism and its enduring appeal. From a marginal intellectual movement, the cult of violence, sexualized myths, and the sacralization of political authority elevated Argentine fascists to the center of power. Along the way, Finchelstein reminds us of the monumental important of ideology, and the importance of its extremes, in modern politics.--Jeremy Adelman, author of Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

Once again, Professor Finchelstein has given us an outstanding piece of work: tremendously erudite and well written, it penetrates to the core of fascist ideology and practice. For scholars of European history its extraordinary importance lies in shedding a new and revealing light on the process of transition from liberalism to fascism in a country that did not suffer from the catastrophe of the Great War.--Zeev Sternhell, author of The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition