Roger Griffin British political scientist, Ph.D., professor Date of Birth: 31.01.1948 Country: Great Britain

1. Biography of Roger Griffin
2. Early Life and Education
3. Professional Career
4. Research and Contributions

Biography of Roger Griffin

Roger Griffin is a British political scientist, philosopher, and professor at the Department of History at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oxford Brooks. He is best known for his research on fascism. Griffin has authored over fifty chapters and articles on fascism, right-wing radicalism, the "new right," terrorism, and religious extremism. He has also translated works by Italian political scientists Norberto Bobbio and Ferruccio Rossi-Landi into English.

Early Life and Education

Roger Griffin was born on January 31, 1948. He initially studied French and German literature at the University of Oxford and later pursued the study of the history of ideas at Oxford Polytechnic. His interest in far-right movements and regimes led him to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1990 for his dissertation, in which he developed his theory of fascist studies. Since 1990, he has been a member of the editorial board of the journal Patterns of Prejudice.

Professional Career

Since 2003, Griffin has been a member of the Royal Historical Society. From 2005 to 2008, he served as co-editor of the journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. In the years 2008 to 2011, he was the editor of the Religion and Politics section of the journal Religion Compass. Since 2011, he has been the consulting editor of the journal Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies.

Research and Contributions

According to Griffin's theory, as outlined in his seminal work "The Nature of Fascism" (1991), fascism is a "form of political ideology whose mythic core is a palin-genetic form of ultranationalism in different manifestations." In other words, fascism is an ideology aimed at the revolutionary revitalization, or "rebirth" (palin-genesis), of a nation or race, which is perceived by fascist ideologues as a distinct supra-individual subject of history capable of experiencing periods of decline caused by the disruption of the nation's organic integrity, as well as periods of restoration or, in the terms of this approach, periods of renewed birth. In his latest work, "Modernism and Fascism" (2007), Griffin presents a more elaborate definition of fascism as a variety of political modernism.

Being a form of political ideology, fascism can take different forms depending on the specific national context. The ideologies of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party, Corneliu Codreanu's Romanian Iron Guard, and some others are examples of various forms of ethnic fascism. Griffin's approach is based on Max Weber's theory of "ideal types," Michael Freeden's theory of political ideologies, and the works of researchers such as George Mosse, Stanley Payne, and Emilio Gentile. Despite criticism from both liberal and (neo-)Marxist schools of fascism studies, Griffin's books and articles have had a significant influence on the study of various extreme right-wing ideologies.

Griffin's works were referenced in the judicial case "Russian National Unity vs. G. Tuz and Stavropol Pravda" and are present in the "Conclusion of Political Expertise" prepared by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences upon the request of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Court in case number 2-2077/98.