An Uneasy Triangle: Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Greek Colonels and the Greek Communists (1967-1974)

This article examines the rapprochement between Ceaușescu’s Romania and the dictatorship of the Greek Colonels (1967-1974). Specifically, the paradoxically positive attitude of Ceaușescu towards the Greek Junta is approached not only on a bilateral level but also through the lens of an emerging Balkan cooperation spirit and most importantly in relation to its reception by the Greek Communists. By focusing on this triangle this study demonstrates how ideological differences were at times at odds with Cold War realities. Based on Romanian archival material, the contextualization of this unseemly Balkan cross-bloc cooperation offers new insights and a better understanding of the uses of ideology and political expediency in the pursuit of authoritarian legitimacy in the South-Eastern European theatre of the Cold War

The Politics of Locating Violence: On the Japanese Nationalist Critique of American Racism after World War I

This article addresses the process of locating global violence as a project of politicisation through the example of early Japanese-sponsored critiques of American racism. Forged in the First World War, anti-racist critiques carved out a new space for global political debate, consciously defying and counteracting conventional geographies of liberal international influence from the West to ‘the rest’. Offering an alternative to Atlantic critiques of Japanese social defects, critics mobilised by the Japanese Kokuryūkai took aim at racism as an essential defect of American society and worldviews. The article probes to what degree the exposure of violence triggered coalitions of critique between Japanese diagnosticians and African-American victims while simultaneously spurring the radical perception of Asian social life as ethically and spiritually superior to liberalism. As such, the publicity of anti-racism invites fresh avenues of transnational, less US-centric history to identify long-term repercussions of racism at the intersection of local social abuse and global politicisation

From letters to bombs. Transnational ties of West German right-wing extremists, 1972–1978

Extremists cooperate internationally to ‘influence and succeed’ or ‘survive and thrive’ [Moghadam, A. (2017). Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding cooperation among terrorist actors. Columbia University Press (p. 21)]. Yet, the question of how such cooperation materializes and develops has been understudied, especially for right-wing extremism in the post-war era. Therefore, this paper studies a phase of heightened transnational activity of West German right-wing extremists between 1972 and 1978. It zooms in on the Nationalsozialistische Kampfgruppe Großdeutschland and the Gruppe Otte, which were spatially and temporally connected by the American neo-Nazi Gary Lauck, who led the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei–Auslandsorganisation. To study and qualify the impact of transnational engagement on the West German extreme right, the paper introduces a new analytical framework that integrates the historical transnational approach with insights from terrorism studies. Pairing known case studies to previously unused primary source material, the paper argues that the transnational connections between the three groups transformed from indirect to direct cooperation, while evolving across ideological, logistical, and operational domains, and resulted in political violence. It concludes that the extremist cooperation marked the professionalization and multi-lateralization of the West German extreme right in the 1970s

Urban Uprisings: The Troubled Relationship Between Citizens and Police in France, the UK and the USA

Violent outbursts in Paris (2005), London (2011), and Ferguson (2014) illustrate the problematic and disturbing relationship between citizens and police in the ‘West’. While these episodes are often portrayed as ‘apolitical’ and ‘criminal’ in media and political debates, they are in the academic literature predominantly seen as (unarticulated) forms of political protests against structural inequalities. Building on this political perspective, I will first argue that the interplay between structural, police, and ‘private’ violence is at the core of these urban uprisings. Subsequently, I will identify four common factors that contributed to the onset and legitimization of collective violence in Paris, London, and Ferguson: an emotive and symbolically significant incident, often with a young inhabitant of a marginalized neighbourhood as protagonist; police involvement; unclarity and pre-violence rumours; and pre-existing us-them divides. In the conclusion, I will emphasize the importance and need of a systemic approach towards police reform

A Priceless Grace? The Congress of Vienna of 1815, the Ottoman Empire and Historicising the Eastern Question

The budding scholarship on the Congress of Vienna has devoted limited attention to the ‘Eastern Question’ in the 1810s. Even though the issue of the (non-) involvement of the Ottoman Empire in the new European state system has previously received mention, the rational and emotional factors that informed decisions taken by the Ottoman cabinet at the time have never been analysed in detail. Using previously unexplored Ottoman, Russian, British and French archival sources, this article historicises the ‘Eastern Question’ of the 1810s, when a new transimperial order was formed. It documents the attempts to ensure the security of Ottoman territories by European public law, and demonstrates that, although involving the Russo-Ottoman disputes in the Vienna negotiations was initially an Ottoman proposal, it was again the Sublime Porte that ultimately rejected it. The article discusses why this became the case, tracing the answer to diverse relational dynamics such as the conflicts in the Ottoman cabinet, the rivalries among the Great Powers, and the European endeavours to secure commercial interests in return for warranting regional stability