Romania: Bloody, Mystical Fascism From the East
The third episode of our Slate Academy asks if the experience of Romania changes our understanding of fascism’s origins.

Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Following our discussions of fascism in Italy and Spain, Fascism: A Slate Academy arrives at an Eastern example: Romania, where the movements of the 1920s and 1930s were particularly bloody, mystical, and anti-Semitic. We turn to Radu Ioanid, historian and archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and author of The Sword of the Archangel: Fascist Ideology in Romania, to try to understand the difference
Join Slate Plus to Hear Fascism: A Slate Academy
This series is for Slate Plus members only. To hear a preview of the first episode, and to sign up, visit Slate.com/fascism.
Subscribe to Fascism: A Slate Academy
Copy this link and add it to your podcast app:
For full instructions see the Slate Plus podcasts FAQ.
Supplementary reading for this episode
- C.Z. Codreanu, “The Nest Leader’s Manual,” via Archive.org.
- Teju Cole, “A Time for Refusal,” the New York Times, Nov. 11, 2016.
- Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel: Fascist Ideology in Romania.
- Eugène Ionescu, Rhinocéros.
- Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945: Chapter 8: “Four Major Variants of Fascism,” the sections on Hungary and Romania.
- Marta Petreu, An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania.