Retrato do autor
9 Works 150 Membros 8 Críticas

About the Author

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of History at Fairfield University, Connecticut.

Obras por Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1967
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Membros

Críticas

FYI review - This book contains the following essays:
-Introduction. Fascism in America: Past and President by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward
* Debating Trumpism: A Fascist or Conservative Movement
* The Alarmists: Trump Is a Fascist
* Interpretive Blind Spots
* Fascism in America: An Intervention
* Conclusion
PART I STRATEGIC THINKING ABOUT FASCISM
-Liberalism in Crisis: What Is Fascism and Where Does It Come from? by Geoff Eley
-Anarchy and the State of Nature in Donald Trump's America and Adolf Hitler's Germany by Thomas Weber
-"America First" : Nationalism, Nativism, and the Fascism Question, 1880-2020 by Matthew Specter and Varsha Venkatasubramanian
PART II HOMEGROWN NAZIS
-The American Fascists by Linda Gordon
-Hitler at the Ballot Box? Support for Fascism among American Elected Officials by Bradley W. Hart
-Fascism and Antisemitism in 1930s America: The Genocidal Vision of the Silver Shirts by Richard Steigmann-Gall
PART III WHITE ANTIDEMOCRATIC VIOLENCE AND BLACK ANTIFASCIST ACTIVISM
-Vigilantism and Fascism in the Pacific Northwest: An Insurgent Tradition Renewed by Alexander Reid Ross
-"A Heritage of Fascists without Labels" : Black Antifascism and the Production Politics of Analogy by Anna F. Duensing
-"No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA: : African American Activists Fight Fascism, 1960-1980s by Ousmane K. Power-Greene
PART IV COUNTERING FASCISM IN CULTURE AND POLICY
-Fascism in American Culture: How Alternate a History? by Gariel D. Rosenfeld
-Concentration Camps in Trump's America? by Marla Stone
-Formulating Policy Responses to the Right-Wing Threat by Cynthia Miller-Idriss
-Epilogue
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Assinalado
Lemeritus | 2 outras críticas | Feb 29, 2024 |
Fascism has been back in the news for the past few years for political reasons. It’s always good to both go back to the sources and reconsider the presence and role of fascism in America since the 1920s.

Such is the goal of Fascism in America: Past and Present (link in picture; galley received as part of an early review program), a collection of essays on this theme.

The editors first weigh in on whether DJT was/is fascist. They do well at exploring the historical complications with any kind of easy parallelism, recognizing fascism in Europe came at a particular time under particular circumstances, but also shows how DJT manifests authoritarian and fascistic tendencies.

Many essays reassess the role and presence of fascism in America in the historical era. For all sorts of propagandistic reasons it proved convenient to tell a narrative in which America was always antifascist. In truth there were many fascist sympathizing organizations in America, some of which were directly sponsored by the Nazis. The story of a Nazi ghostwriter used by some politicians in the 1930s is told. These essays demonstrate how a sizable minority of Americans found fascism sufficiently alluring.

Two Black contributors assess antifascism in the Civil Rights Movement and whether and how they associated their opponents with fascism. One essay explored the rise of counterfactual narratives in which the Nazis or fascists prove successful and take over power and what their presence and reception today says about the current environment. Fascism in far right movements today is also considered and what can be done about their influence.

This is a timely collection of essays which do well to remind us how some views which we would like to think have no heritage in our nation…do.
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Assinalado
deusvitae | 2 outras críticas | Sep 16, 2023 |
Fascism in America: Past and Present, edited by Gavriel D Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, is a collection of essays that together work toward both finding a working definition (or understanding) of fascism and connecting our current state of instability with examples of fascist thoughts and/or sympathies from the country's past.

These are academic essays, plenty of notes and explication, but each writer does a good job of making their essays accessible to any reader who wants to understand. I'm going to spend less time here trying to paraphrase their arguments, I will just say that the similarities are plenty between what is happening in the US right wing and previous examples of what is widely regarded as moments of fascist, or fascist-leaning, movements. It is well worth your time to read the details to understand both the similarities and differences.

As an example of how the book can generate thought in a reader, I will instead offer a couple of my thoughts. This is less about restating what the book says and more about letting you know that this book doesn't just inform but also gets a reader to thinking. No doubt what crossed my mind will be different from what crosses yours, which is great, offers more ideas for discussion and debate.

I'll say upfront, both from what I have been seeing in the country and from the books I've read on the topic over the past few years, I strongly support the use of a fascist frame for explaining what is happening. But that requires some qualifications, and the idea of a definition of fascism is one of them. I came away, as I have with a couple other books, with thinking of defining fascism in much the same way I think of defining existentialism. A professor once, I think accurately, explained that there isn't really a hard and fast definition of existentialism. Too specific and very few thinkers would be considered such, even self-proclaimed existentialists. Too loose a definition and you run the risk of diluting it to the point that anyone who ever thought about life and death suddenly become existentialists. What it is is a constellation of ideas along with some key relationships between many of them. Every idea isn't necessary, every relationship isn't necessary. Which is why one of the most popular short introductory texts include Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. This leads to what I think is important in any discussion when we start using fascism as a descriptor: define your term. I don't have to agree with your working definition of fascism, but if I can understand how you're using it we can debate ideas rather than definitions. Is the main point whether a movement or a person is fascist? Or is the main point that some destructive ideas are gaining traction and we need to know how to counter them.

I also came away with a fresh appreciation of the need to know our history better so we can understand our present better. Not simply the old adage about history repeating itself but the use of terms to communicate that we may miss but convey a world of meaning to those "in the know." The history of many fascist-leaning groups in this country have largely been reduced to footnotes in most history courses. But for those who still subscribe to those ideas, they know that history, they know what terms were used and they revive those terms as a way to essentially talk around other people while still sending messages of support and agreement to likeminded people. We need to know all of our history, not just what feeds our notions about who we are. Which is why the current trend to suppress history in so many locations is so dangerous. Nicholson was wrong, we can handle the truth, we just need to know the whole truth.

I would highly recommend this to readers who want to know where we have been, how we got to where we are, and where we might end up going. I think any reader who truly wants to know more and not simply advance an agenda can gain a lot here, even if you happen to lean toward some of this thought. This will give you more to consider than just what you hear from those who think strictly as you do.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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Assinalado
pomo58 | 2 outras críticas | Aug 31, 2023 |
Fantastic book. More later. Just what I've been looking for during my last nine years of going to Munich.
 
Assinalado
tmph | Sep 13, 2020 |

Prémios

Estatísticas

Obras
9
Membros
150
Popularidade
#138,700
Avaliação
3.8
Críticas
8
ISBN
24

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