Fascist Politics Research Articles

Blood in their Mouths: Lies, Violence, and Fascist Politics

Blood in their Mouths: Lies, Violence, and Fascist Politics

Hijacking freedom: Ron DeSantis and the scourge of fascist politics

This article examines how the concept of freedom has been appropriated by the far right to impose a number of authoritarian policies designed to dismantle the critical functions of public and higher education. It explores, in particular, the ways in which Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has used an appeal to freedom to punish critics, wage a war on trans people, misrepresent the history of slavery, and impose a new version of McCarthyism on higher education. It challenges what it terms neoliberal and fascist notions of freedom by making clear that democracy and capitalism are incompatible, and that any viable notion of freedom must address not only personal and political rights but also economic rights. Freedom from domination must be matched by a freedom to live in a world marked by the principles of justice, equality, and dignity. There is no freedom in the midst of massive inequalities in wealth, power, and education.

White Supremacy and the January 6 Insurrection

Abstract In this paper, we argue that white supremacist values have been mainstreamed in the United States, and that the values driving the male supremacist and white supremacist movements are significant in fueling mass sympathy for January 6th (J6). To examine the white and male supremacy questions in relation to J6, we draw on a national survey from IPSOS. We also commissioned a poll with Harris Insights. The IPSOS poll was conducted from July 30 to August 16, 2021, and includes a nationally representative sample of 5,299 Americans. The Harris poll was conducted from October 20–25, 2022, and contacted a nationally representative sample of 2,029 Americans. We argue that J6 should be understood at the nexus point between white supremacist, populist, and fascist politics, not only in terms of the values driving the insurrectionists, but those in the mass public who are sympathetic to them. Right-wing populism, we believe, privileges white supremacy and white nationalism, male supremacy and political leadership that relies on an appeal to the cult of patriarchal personality, trust in the wisdom of “the people,” and distrust of political leaders – particularly Democratic leaders – who are framed as “corrupt,” “out of touch” “elites” working against the public good and democracy.

Ettore Romagnoli, rievocatore of ancient Greek drama

Abstract The Italian classicist Ettore Romagnoli (1871–938) is mostly remembered as a popularizer of ancient drama through his work as a translator for and artistic director of classical performances at the Greek theatre of Syracuse (1914–27). His theatrical productions were inspired by a programmatic aesthetic approach to the study of classical culture called ‘artistic Hellenism’, which aimed at making the Graeco-Roman classics accessible to a broader audience, as well as renewing Italian prose theatre by referring to the example of the ancient chorodidaskalos. This article aims to describe Romagnoli’s attempt to promote his aesthetics in the staging of Greek drama within the cultural framework of Fascism. Even after his dismissal from the artistic direction of the National Institute of Ancient Drama, which he helped to establish in 1925, Romagnoli strove to find the financial support for his project of a ‘Fascist Institute of Classical Drama’. This Institute never became a reality and was probably intended to compete with the classical productions staged at Syracuse, which in the thirties were undergoing a shift in terms of aesthetics and production management according to the new Fascist politics about theatre matters.

Cultural politics and public intellectuals in the age of emerging fascism*

ABSTRACT .Giroux argues that an upgraded form of fascism with its rabid nativism and hatred of racial mixing is at the center of United States politics. Traditional liberal values of equality, social justice, dissent, and freedom are now considered a threat to a Republican Party supportive of staggering levels of inequality, white Christian nationalism, and racial purity. Giroux examines America’s slide into a fascist politics and argues for academics to develop a revitalized understanding of the historical moment in which we find ourselves, along with a systemic critical analysis of the new political formations that mark this period.

The American agitator goes digital: Understanding the affective role of agitational aesthetics in the online fascist recruitment of youth

Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman’s theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply a critical concept of “agitational aesthetics” to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth.

More‐than‐human supremacy: Himalayan lessons on cosmopolitics

AbstractHow might our analysis of fascism be enriched if we turn our attention to how contemporary supremacist movements self‐fashion themselves as more‐than‐human formations? How is fascist politics naturalized through claims that it is fueled by the agency and vitality of not just humans but also other‐than‐humans? How do right‐wing supremacists’ assertions that theirs is an indigenous more‐than‐human politics that suffered but endured the violence of colonialism support the framing of fascism as a decolonizing project? In this article, we ground these questions in an ethnographic analysis of what we call the more‐than‐human turn in contemporary Hindu‐supremacist politics in the northwestern Himalayan region, focusing specifically on two political projects: the Hindu right‐wing's rediscovery of “ancient” Hindu rivers and communities in Ladakh and cow protection in Uttarakhand. In contrast to ontological anthropologists who suggest that cosmopolitics is plural and liberatory, we demonstrate how the inclusion of nonhuman entities in political life can serve to naturalize a fascist politics that seeks the extermination of those who are not part of the natural order of life. We urge anthropologists to make room for skepticism and critique in their analysis of cosmopolitical formations instead of prematurely celebrating “ecopolitics” as anti‐Western and anticolonial.

Fascist uses of conspiracy theories: alienation, anxiety, and false concreteness in the critical political theory of Franz Neumann

ABSTRACT Recent decades have seen are surgence in the use of conspiracy theories by populist and autocratic political figures. This has sat alongside a renewed interest in using insights from Frankfurt School thinkers to open critical perspectives on fascist uses of conspiracy theories. This paper builds on resurgent interest in the work of Franz Neumann, and directs attention to the political manipulation of alienation and anxiety. Building on Neumann’s insistence that a falsely concrete theory of history is in operation wherever conspiracy theories resonate politically, this paper argues for the neglected centrality of conspiracy thinking in nearly all instances of fascist politics. Conspiracy theories are a structural feature of fascism – a hypothesis that invites empirical testing to see if it might better fit the overall pattern. Neumann’s political critical theory also returns our attention to the possibility of an antifascist critical theory with the political at the centre of its concerns, opening lines of inquiry that complement Adorno’s insights into domination of the administered world and the culture industry.

Fascist politics and the dread of white supremacy in the age of disconnections

With the rise of authoritarian politics across the globe, echoes of a fascist past are with us once again signaling a looming and dangerous threat to education and democracy. This essay argues that is it crucial to engage fascism both as a language of white supremacy and a politics of disconnection. If fascism is to be addressed both politically and educationally, it is crucial to address its underlying political, educational, and economic elements comprehensively as part of a broad politics. Any viable mode of resistance to fascism in its upgraded forms must not only make education central to politics but also analyze the problems it produces and its root causes in their interconnections and as part of a wider totality of power and exclusion. Fascism is normalized in a capitalist order when its diverse economic, political and social problems appear fragmented, disconnected, and are treated in isolation. This essay argues against this form of normalization and critiques the relationship between fascism and capitalism and its politics of diversion by examining how a number of crucial issues are often wrongly dealt with in isolation. It concludes by demonstrating how a politics that is comprehensive and interrelated provides a language to rethink how fascism can be made visible and resisted.

Lisette Model: Another Frankfurt School Photographer in New York

Abstract This essay examines the portrait work of the Austrian-American photographer Lisette Model, with a special focus on her representation of the American lumpenproletariat in the Reflections series, Model's first after coming to New York in 1938 as an Austrian-French Jewish émigré, and in her Bowery portrait series. Within the history of American postwar photography, Model stands as a salient figure, a pioneer who located and defined the issues, options, and contradictions of photography as an artistic practice in the “New York School of photography.” Model's rendering of her subjects as eccentric, fantastic, and spectacular in their expressions and emotions propelled the émigré photographer with meager experience into a central position in the making of mid-century American photography, both social-documentary and commercial. Moving beyond the localized context of postwar American photography in which Model's work has been largely investigated, this essay argues for an understanding of Model's New York portraits as being shaped and informed by the photographer's consideration of the crisis of history and the violence enacted by fascism in Europe, as well as the historical condition of exile. One of the essay's claims is that Model revitalized a kind of pleasurable violence, one that enacts a sense of excessive bodily dynamism, often to the point of self-destruction, on the bodies of the American lumpenproletariat at leisure, in order both to come to terms with the role of the lumpenproletariat as the central subject of fascist politics and aesthetics in the Old World and to put pressure on the conditions of the mass subject and mass politics in the New World.

The January 6th, 2025, Project: Fascist Politics and the Rising Threats to American Democracy

The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, can easily be viewed as a culmination of serious threats to democracy that have been building in our nation for years. I introduce this volume first by showing that the core challenges to our democracy are not new: public opinion survey data show that, for decades, 25 to 30 percent of Americans promote racial and religious hierarchies, believe conspiracies and misinformation, distrust democratic institutions, and support antidemocratic behavior. I argue, though, that the severity of threats facing American democracy right now are unusually high. This introduction summarizes those threats and some of the findings of the articles within this volume. This volume shows how we came to be at an inflection point in American history, some strategies for creating a safer and more inclusive democratic future, and some reasons for optimism about American democracy.

Rumänistik in Berlin: die Geschichte einer philologischen Kleindisziplin

"This study is a short history of the Academic teaching of Romanian language and literature in Berlin since the foundation of the Romance Languages Studies. Romanian appears for the first time as an academic curricula at the beginning of the 20th century at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University which after WW II was called Humboldt-University and remained in the eastern sphere after the division of the city of Berlin in east and west. In 1949 the Freie University of Berlin will be established in the western part of the city with support of the US-Government. From this moment on, we have two academic institutes for Romance languages in Berlin offering Romanian Studies, one in the Eastern and one in the Western part of the city. This paper highlights the personalities and their activities in the development of the curricula of these studies in the historical context from the social and political standpoint. We give an outline of how the Romanian teaching developed after the Fall of Berlin Wall and at what point we are now today. Hariton Tiktin was the first scholar to found the department of Romanian language at the Berlin University. Despite his valuable contribution through his comprehensive dictionary, his academic personality has gone forgotten. Tiktin was followed in the 1930s by Ernst Gamillscheg, an Austrian with strong sympathies for the upcoming national-socialist and fascist politics. Retrospectively his academic role in the two decades has been subject to controversy. The second half of this period is also marked by the Romanian linguist Sextil Pușcariu, that was active in Berlin as an academic scholar, being a guest lecturer at the University and as a founder of the Romanian Cultural Institute. The Ending of the War was characterized by a denazification of the academic world, and shows that the measures have never been consistent. The case Bucur is just a tragic academic anecdote. The Afterwar finds the Cold War represented by two competing Universities, and each of them had a Romanian department. On one hand in the western Free University Romanian was focused on Eastern European Studies and in the context of the Romance Philology as well, on the other hand in the Humboldt University the emphasis was on Language Studies and Translation. With the Fall of the Berlin Wall there is a slow change in the curricula reducing Romanian Studies in both Universities to the point that Romanian has been given up in the Free University. The Romanian Studies are still vivid at the Humboldt University but not as independent subject. It is part of different Bachelor and Master-Studies and is open to a wide variety of study subjects and also to all German students from other Universities of the region. At the End of the Essay there is a short analysis of the students interested in the subject, which leads to some conclusions about the future development of the Studies."

Fascism, Reality, Shit, and the German Stage

The controversial performances of Jonathan Meese and the duo Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller uncouple the presumed alliance between fascist politics and aesthetics. Provocatively repurposing fascist iconography and thought, Meese and Vinge/Müller defend art’s autonomy against the contamination of reality and reimagine how contemporary artists grapple with Germany’s past.

Ethnoracial Utopianism and Speculative Aesthetics after the End of History

Abstract Using a reading of Hari Kunzru’s novel Red Pill to frame our contemporary political moment, this article asks what techniques of cultural critique are available to the Left today when the strategies of imaginary worldbuilding have become so central to the ethnonationalist politics of the Right. It argues that the end of the Cold War prompted a reconfiguration of political identities and public discourse in both the West and the former Soviet territories—through distinct but interrelated logics—that highlighted the failures of liberalism in ways that set the stage for the mainstream return of fascist politics of white supremacy. In this context of alternative histories taken as fact, of conspiracy rhetoric seemingly impervious to reason, this article asks how we can respond in intellectually robust ways that will help us to ground an inclusive culture and build a better future, practices the author situates in the broad field of Marxist-informed utopian studies.

Transnational Fascism: Portugal and the Brazilian Integralism of Plínio Salgado

ABSTRACT The Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB), the most successful fascist movement in Latin America, was created on 7 October 1932. Under the leadership of Plínio Salgado, its purpose was to create an original doctrine. Fascist politics were not restricted to Europe – it crossed borders and directly influenced Latin American politics. In view of this, this research adopts the principle that fascism is a transnational and transatlantic phenomenon. Latin American fascism was wide-reaching and strongly affected by Iberian countries. Amidst this context, the present analysis investigates the Brazilian fascist movement, integralism, an organization that has been culturally influenced by the Brazilian intellectual circularity, especially regarding its appropriation of Portuguese elements. The AIB gained unprecedented visibility in Brazil and was a major social institution in the 1930s but came to an end in 1937. This did not end Brazilian fascism – its activities continued under leader Plínio Salgado, who lived in exile in Portugal, when he reorganized his thoughts, actions, and political strategies. Integralism gained a new definition after World War II: António de Oliveira Salazar became the face of the corporatist politics of the movement and remained in this role until the end of integralism, marked by the death of Plínio Salgado in 1975.

Introduction: Alternetworks and contrapublics in digital activism

In recent years Media and Communication disciplinary conferences have begun to highlight the issue of #communicationsowhite (Chakravartty et al., 2018). The International Communication Association has also continued to intensify its efforts at internationalization even as members continue to debate what this “internationalization” would look like in terms of inclusion of historically marginalized populations worldwide. Yet in a larger disciplinary context of knowledge building, our theoretical and methodological constructs are still based in academic hierarchies that privilege the very same Global North ontologies and epistemologies that are universalized under implicit and unspoken assumptions that such constructs are universal and innately democratic. Thus, when attempts are made to include, engage or privilege “Global South” scholars in these venues, the token inclusion that occurs potentially creates further erasures by flattening and invisibilizing historically oppressed groups from the geo-locations identified as located in “the Global South.” Some of this has to do with how we use the north/south binary even as academics, which leads to tokenizing. Our terminologies and self-identifications themselves sometimes create erasures where the very people we want to include get disappeared. For instance, the terminology around the word “activism” is problematized in this special issue by Shakuntala Banaji in her commentary and criticism essay. She cautions us to be vigilant to “the dangers of allowing a warm fuzzy conception of activism to divert attention from the fascist politics being enacted online across vast swathes of the Global South.” Warm fuzzy ideas of what it means to write from and about the Global South are equally problematic.

James Joyce's Liebestod : Fascism as Civil War

Abstract: The ending of James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake rewrites the Liebestod , or love-death aria, at the end of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde . Joyce's parody of the Liebestod replaces the fascist myth of national redemption with endless cycles of love and suffering in history. The novel's circularity thereby forms a riposte to the redemption narrative in fascist politics. Joyce's composition and revision of Finnegans Wake from 1922, during the Irish Civil War, to 1939, when he left Paris ahead of the Nazi occupation, illustrate how he understood racial, sexual, and bourgeois desires in nationalism through an artistic trope like the Liebestod , and how he used it to narratively resist the seemingly teleological ascent of fascism in Europe. Further, civil war provides a model for parodying the ideology of racial supremacy by casting it as an attack on one's countrymen and kin.

“Confronting time out of joint. . . – On economic rationality and imagination”

It is often suggested that today we are living in the “end times.” Confronted by a perpetual incursion of major global crises, we increasingly find ourselves incapable of meaningfully relating to the present, let alone to the future. The forever deferred “end” throws the very idea of time out of joint. Unable to advance, our imagination retreats, with retrograde tendencies taking over both culture and politics. From incessant movie prequels and sequels, through the re-emergence of populist fascist politics, all the way to the return of Cold War rhetoric, we witness our reality becoming increasingly substituted by a string of peculiar rehashings and reunions. History, as we knew it, is no longer “made”; we strain to cling to the past, equating the future with dystopia. Crucially, this problematique of the fading of temporality is not new. In fact, it has got a history of its own. This paper explores our current (a)temporal whereabouts by reflecting upon them from the perspective of their historical trajectory. It does this by revisiting the work of André Gorz—a thinker whose contributions equip us with the insights needed to confront time out of joint effectively and embrace the idea of future. The article argues that the roots of today’s temporal malaise can be found in the process of “economicization,” which subordinated the notion of utopia to its principles, thereby nullifying it. Examining the effects of the unbridled reign of economic rationality over our imagination, it calls for a temporal intervention by means of ecological rationality.

Toward a Critique of Fascist Temporality

ABSTRACT This article pursues a Deleuzian critique of fascist temporality, or how fascism conceives of its relationship to time and history. This is done through a reading of Gilles Deleuze’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s history of being and his active membership in the National Socialist party. Deleuze and Félix Guattari argue that Heidegger’s history of being forms a teleological conception of history that philosophically justified his endorsement of National Socialism. Rejecting this model of thinking, Deleuze constructs a philosophy of becoming, which refers to the possibility of revolutionary events that could not be accounted for by historical time. In this article, I argue that Heideggerian temporality accords with the historical time that Deleuze’s events explicitly undermine. While Heidegger’s history of being led him to affirm fascist politics, Deleuze’s view of events leads him to affirm the revolutionary struggles of marginalized groups. This article concludes with a Deleuzian elaboration of the temporality of fascism. Fascism is defined by a circular return and repetition of a historical past, which forecloses the very possibility of revolution.

Class Politics and the Authoritarian Personality

ABSTRACT The resurgence of authoritarianism worldwide has led to renewed interest in the Frankfurt School theory of the authoritarian personality. In this article, I clarify the role of that idea in a class-theoretical critique of fascism by showing how it supplements the Marxist analysis. I first outline the Marxist theory of fascism with reference particularly to the puzzles of fascist politics and ideology, before arguing that the authoritarian personality construct helps solve some of these. Then, I clarify the fit between the theory of the authoritarian personality and Marxist theory by explicating its origins in the research programme of the Frankfurt School. Finally, I propose that the authoritarian personality construct explains the nature of the elements in the fascist ideological “medley,” with reference to its key characteristics of rigid conventionalism, unquestioning obedience and authoritarian aggression.