Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

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.… (más)

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.… (más)

The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present is an incredibly detailed history of the concept of the Fourth Reich. The fear of the Nazi return to Germany was real after World War II. The war did not end suddenly, and resistance continued even after the German surrender. The partition of German was also a result of the fear that any German government would lead to a return of the Nazis and war.

The Fourth Reich became boogeyman in post-war history, and its meanings were varied. A German Jew, Georg Bernhard, helped draft the constitution for the Fourth Reich. His Germany was committed to peace and equality. Reich in its most basic sense means realm, and it had no adverse connotation before WWII. When West Germany was allowed self-government in 1949, it chose "Federal Republic of Germany" instead of Reich. Naming itself a republic, however, did not stop the elements on the right from wanting to reestablish a Nazi-like regime.

The idea of a new German Reich rose and fell in public view. By the 1970s, West Germany was seen safe enough that American entertainment took hold of the Nazi return. The Boys from Brazil and The Odessa File became hit books. Who could forget the German dentist in Marathon Man? There were real and fictionalized stories of Nazi hunters. There was also a rise in Neo-Nazism in the US during the 1970s making national news with the Stokie Supreme Court case. Today, the threat seems more serious as right-wing parties are gaining strength in Europe. In the US, the far right wing and the far left clashed in the streets of Charlotte and other cities. Internet publications like The Daily Stormer and Breitbart spread the word to a worldwide audience.

Author, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is Professor of History and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Judaic Studies at Fairfield University. He received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 1996. The Fourth Reich is a detailed history of a movement that has not materialized. Over one-third of the book is reserved for documentation and source material. An extremely well-done and well research history.… (más)