"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross," goes a saying that is widely attributed to the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sinclair Lewis. In 1935, Lewis wrote a novel called "It Can't Happen Here," positing fascism's rise in the United States. We were taught that fascism was defeated in 1945, with the surrender of Germany and Japan in World War II.
Speaking after the legendary U.S. Navy Blue Angels roared overhead, President Trump ushered in the July 4th weekend Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota with a full-throated condemnation of "far-left fascism" and a defense of "Judeo-Christian principles."
Dictionary publisher had appealed for readers to stop rise of ‘fascism’, as editor says: ‘Surreal is one of the words most searched after tragedy’
Orban now enjoys cult status among some Republicans. And he's all too happy to assist the GOP in wrecking American democracy.
Speaking after the legendary U.S. Navy Blue Angels roared overhead, President Trump ushered in the July 4th weekend Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota with a full-throated condemnation of "far-left fascism" and a defense of "Judeo-Christian principles."
To discuss Trump’s rise and its historical echoes, I called Robert Paxton, a leading authority on the history of fascism.
Moms for Liberty, the extremist group claiming to know what's best for America's kids, is apparently focusing on becoming more media-savvy.
The former secretary of state describes President Trump as "the most anti-democratic leader that I have studied in American history." Albright's new book is Fascism: A Warning.
The writing of recent history tends to be deeply marked by conflict, by personal and collective struggles rooted in horrific traumas and bitter controversies. Frequently, today's historians can find themselves researching the same events that they themselves lived through. This book reflects on the concept and practices of what is called "contemporary history," a history of the present time, and identifies special tensions in the field between knowledge and experience, distance and proximity, and objectivity and subjectivity. Henry Rousso addresses the rise of contemporary history and the relations of present-day societies to their past, especially their legacies of political violence. Focusing on France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, he shows that for contemporary historians, the recent past has become a problem to be solved. No longer unfolding as a series of traditions to be respected or a set of knowledge to be transmitted and built upon, history today is treated as a constant act of mourning or memory, an attempt to atone. Historians must also negotiate with strife within this field, as older scholars who may have lived through events clash with younger historians who also claim to understand the experiences. Ultimately, The Latest Catastrophe shows how historians, at times against their will, have themselves become actors in a history still being made.
It’s time to re-stock your shelves, fire up the old cable (or streaming device of your choice) and settle in for another copacetic year of books on TV. Peak TV’s appetite for established “IP” is borderline insatiable, so there’s a decent chance that by around 2020, FX and Amazon Prime will be battling over the rights […]
Survey shows a small but significant share of Americans believe in use of force to attain political goals – from both left and right
In 1939 20,000 American Nazis gathered for a rally at Madison Square Garden. Who were these New York Nazis, and what led to their rise in the US?
President Donald Trump’s fit over China speaks to the rise of neofascism in American politics, at a time when neither Congress nor the courts are showing
Radio host Jesse Kelly isn't the only one who thinks that America "needs a dictator" or that "Weimar problems lead to Weimar solutions."
Whatever secret reservations Mitch McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.
As the pressure and scrutiny rise, many more health officials have chosen to leave or have been pushed out of their jobs.
Between the Wars Unit Bundle. This Bundle includes Activities, a Simulation, PowerPoints, Video guides, Charts, Graphic Organizers, detailed Cornell Style Lecture Notes, a Study Guide, Unit Test, and more. This bundle highlights all of the resources I use when teaching a Between the Wars / Rise of...
In a wide-ranging interview published on Truthout, the legendary political activist and social critic Noam Chomsky explains the multi-fold factors that propelled Donald Trump to victory in 2016 and what progressives can do to beat the fascistic elements that fuel his popularity.Chomsky refuses to of...
John Cusack briefly compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler during an interview with comedian Marc Maron.
In the US, gun purchases by Latinos have surged in recent years – including among self-described progressives
Tennessee Republicans fail to realize they are the ones making the connection through a continued assault on American democracy.
It was a revealing sign of the times when the Supreme Court last week, in response to a lawsuit from the Republican state attorneys general in Texas and Louisiana, blocked President Joe Biden's administration from changing a key element of federal immigration policy.
Both parties have colossally failed the American people. It was only a matter of time before a strongman stepped in
A new book examines the history of far-right authoritarian US groups – and ways the public has chosen to look away
A revealing exploration of domestic fascism in the United States from the 1930s to the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress presented to the United Nations We Charge Genocide, a more than two-hundred-page petition that held the United States accountable for genocide against African Americans. This landmark text represented the dawn of Black Lives Matter and is as relevant today as it was then, as evidenced by the rise of white supremacist groups across the nation, and the January 6th Capitol riot which disclosed the specter of a fascist revival in the U.S. Tracing this specter to its roots, We Charge Genocide! provides an original interpretation of American fascism as a permanent and longstanding current in U.S. politics dating to the origins of U.S. settler-colonialism. Picking up where Angela Davis's 1971 essay, "Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation," left off, We Charge Genocide! reveals how the United States legal system has contributed to the growth of fascist states and fascist movements domestically and internationally. American Studies scholar Bill V. Mullen contends that the preservation of a white supremacist world order-and the prevention of revolutionary threats to that order-structure the discourse and practice of U.S. fascism. He names this fascist modality the "counterrevolution of law" in tribute to the radicals on the American Left, such as George Jackson, Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, and the Black Panther Party, who perceived the American state's destruction of revolutionary groups and ideas as a distinctive form of American fascism. Mullen argues that U.S. law, particularly U.S. "race law," has been an enabling mechanism for modalities of fascist rule that have locked historic blocs of non-white populations into an iron cage of legal and extralegal violence. To this end We Charge Genocide! offers a legal historiography of U.S. fascism rooted in law's capacity to legitimate and sustain racial domination. By recovering the legacy of important organizations, such as the Civil Rights Congress and Black Panther Party, which have both theorized and resisted American legal fascism, Mullen demonstrates how their work and critical theorists like Davis, Marcuse, Jackson, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Fraenkel illuminate the threat of American legal fascism to its most vulnerable racialized victims of state violence in our time, including gender and transgender violence. 6 b/w illustrations
Our simplistic historic understanding of fascism needs to be challenged. Fascism is not German, it’s not the Nazism of the Second World War ... it starts in the heads of individuals with the idea that what keeps you disadvantaged is that some lesser breed has taken what belongs to you.
The Supreme Court is relentlessly fueling the rise of fascism: Roe v. Wade is only the most visible example
The Biden administration should reject any Russian demand that derogates any European nation’s sovereignty.
The wave of anti-elitism appears likely to be the most powerful driving force in geopolitical and financial events this year and probably beyond.
Chris Hayes speaks with friend and colleague Rachel Maddow about how we got to this political moment, the rise of authoritarianism, actionable steps to preserve American democracy and more.
About The Midnight Kingdom From the author of American Rule and the host of The Muckrake Podcast , an ambitious account of how white supremacist lies, religious mythologies, and poisonous conspiracy theories built the modern world and threaten to plunge us into an authoritarian nightmare. To fully understand these strange and dangerous times, Jared Yates Sexton takes a hard look at our nation’s history: namely, the abuses committed by those in power and the comforting stories that shaped the way the West has viewed itself up to the present. As reactionaries and authoritarians cling to myths about “Western civilization,” The Midnight Kingdom exposes how political power, religious indoctrination, and economic dominance have been repeatedly weaponized to oppress and exploit, sounding an alarm for what lies ahead as the current order frays. Beginning with the Roman Empire and racing through centuries of colonization, war, genocide, and the recurring clashes of progress and regression, Sexton finds our modern world at a crossroads. In an echo of past crises, we have arrived at a time of historic inequality and a fading trust in our institutions. Meanwhile, authoritarianism is gaining momentum and the progress of the twentieth century is being rolled back at dizzying speed. This catastrophic moment holds terrible potential for a return to a totalitarian past or, potentially, a better, realer, more human future. The difference depends on a true reckoning with our history and the larger forces at play or hiding behind this disastrous fantasy of Western superiority. Bracing and compulsively readable, The Midnight Kingdom takes a critical look at the forces that have shaped human civilization for centuries—and invites us to seek a radically different future.
Eco-fascism is fashionable again on the far right, thanks to a rise in global temperatures and anti-immigrant nationalism.
In Florida schools, every book is considered too "dangerous" until the censors have combed it over
Henry A. Wallace, FDR's vice president, foresaw the fascism of Trump.
Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements.
The Truthdig columnist talks about the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media, among other subjects.
The New York Times plays itself—but offers a useful window into how establishment media has enabled all this.
Author of a new book on Trump's rise says we face "something so dark, so real, so evil" with no clear precedent
As a transnational history of science, Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology focuses on the political aspects of highly mobile Japanese explorer-scientists, or cosmopolitan gentlemen of science, circulating between Japanese and British/American spaces in the transwar period from the 1920s to 1950s. Annika A. Culver examines a network of zoologists united by their practice of ornithology and aristocratic status. She goes on to explore issues of masculinity and race related to this amidst the backdrop of imperial Japan's interwar period of peaceful internationalism, the rise of fascism, the Japanese takeover of Manchuria, and war in China and the Pacific. Culver concludes by investigating how these scientists repurposed their aims during Japan's Allied Occupation and the Cold War. Inspired by geographer Doreen Massey, themes covered in the volume include social space and place in these specific locations and how identities transform to garner social capital and scientific credibility in transnational associations and travel for non-white scientists. 16 bw illus
The right knows that facts and reason have a liberal bent. That's why their decades-long strategy is to lie
