Falling for Fascism

Abstract

Katy Hull’s excellent book about American sympathy for Italian fascism arrives with an uncanny sense of timing. The people of the United States today are locked in a bitter dispute about whether democracy as a form of government should endure, with a significant percentage of voters preferring the rule of a constitution-defying strongman instead of a chief executive chosen by the people at the ballot box. The Republican Party of the twenty-first century, in pursuit of White supremacy, corporate control of the economy, and Christian dominion of the homeland, has relentlessly assaulted democratic institutions and has done so without any sense of shame. Rather, the GOP argues that democracy has led the nation to the brink of destruction by allowing uncontrolled immigration, unpatriotic school curricula, socialization of medicine, and perhaps most frightening, the advancement of people of color through such trickery as affirmative action. Some Americans have concluded that the...