... in the 1930s, wealthy Germans who saw the Nazi party as a “battering ram” against trade unions and socialists were persuaded to overlook Hitler’s antisemitism because it allowed the market system to flourish."
... a lot of German elites said to themselves: we’re quite happy funding Hitler because his street fighters will help crush the trade unions, so that we can make more profits.”
“Mussolini’s propaganda was full of references to Latin and ancient Roman imagery. In 1936, after the end of the Italo-Ethiopian colonial war, the Duce boastfully announced from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia “the reappearance of the empire on the fatal hills of Rome.” A racial legislation carefully regulated the interactions between Italians and Ethiopians.”
“Arolsen Archives remembers the Nazi persecution, the Holocaust and the consequences of the crimes. The basis of this work are millions of documents about the victims of National Socialism.”
Artist compiles 1,984 copies of Orwell’s 1984 on the small island where he wrote it, commemorating 75 years of publication.
That this story is timeless tells us something about our world.
Via @guardian @bookstodon#bookstodon#books#reading#fascism
"The Guardia Civil investigates the theft of the remains of a victim of Franco's regime in the ravine where Lorca was killed" by Álvaro López (in Spanish) #ElDiarioEs
"The events took place this weekend and have already been reported to the Civil Guard. As explained by the team of scientists and historians who have been working since 2021 in this location, where Franco murdered hundreds of people in the first months of the Guardia Civil, “when they arrived at the grave they found that the different measures to protect the remains (geotextile, boards and bags) had been altered”. Upon discovery, they were also able to verify that the remains of one of the victims being exhumed were missing".
A Brief History of Fascist Lies by Federico Finchelstein, 2020
"There is no better book on fascism's complex and vexed relationship with truth."––Jason Stanley, author of *How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
"The author argues that a cadre of Southern theologians rejected the liberal heritage of the United States and redefined the relationship between the individual and state. Southern clerical fascists reconceived of an alternative modernity that reflected God’s precepts. Slaves, laborers, and slave masters all had a mandate to guide secular and spiritual progress."
Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism by Paul Corner
Fascism, Nazism, and Communism dominated the history of much of the twentieth century, yet comparatively little attention has focused on popular reactions to the regimes that sprang from these ideologies.
Today in Labor History February 18, 1943: The Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement. The activist group called for opposition to the Nazi regime through an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign. The Nazis put on a show trial in which none of the defendants were allowed to speak. They executed Hans and Sophie Schol, and Christoph Probst on February 22, 1943. White Rose leaflets openly denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. They might have taken their name from the poem "Cultivo una rosa blanca," by Cuban revolutionary and poet, Jose Marti. Alternatively, they may have gotten it from the B. Traven novel, “Die Weiße Rose” (The White Rose).” Traven served on the Central Council of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. He escaped the terror that followed the crushing of the Republic and fled to Mexico, where he wrote numerous novels, including “Death Ship” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
POST-DIGITAL CULTURES OF THE FAR RIGHT. Ed. by: Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston (2019) #OpenAccess#Book#DeGruyter
"How does the far right operate today? This volume presents a unique critical survey of the online and offline tactics, symbols and platforms that are strategically remixed to stake national and transnational cultural claims by contemporary far-right groups in Europe and North America. Featuring short, accessible analyses by an international range of expert scholars, policy advisors and activists, the book offers a plurality of answers to practical and theoretical questions about how and why the Internet has been crucial to emboldening extreme nationalisms in these regions and what counter-cultural approaches civil societies should develop in response".
Reading "Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination" by Alexandra Minna Stern (2019).
Very well written: fascinating, disturbing and revealing.
"This book seeks to expose the underlying logic and implications of white nationalism and its master plan of a racially exclusive patriarchal world. Each chapter of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate explores a core dimension of the alt-right and white nationalism, highlighting what makes the alt-right new and old. I demonstrate how it adheres to quintessentially fascist ideas of patriarchy, hierarchy, victimhood, anti-egalitarianism, and racial and gender essentialism, manifesting them in the context of twenty-first-century America."
Today in Labor History February 13, 1945: 25,000 civilians died when the Allies firebombed Dresden. In a three-day period, they dropped 3,900 tons of explosives and incendiaries, reducing six square miles of the city to rubble. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the bombing. He wrote about it in his novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
Today in Labor History February 10, 1898: Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht was born. Brecht was a doctor, poet and playwright. He fled the Nazis only to be persecuted in the U.S. by HUAC during the Cold War. He is most well-known for his play, “The Three Penny Opera.” He also wrote “Mother Courage and Her Children” and “The Days of the Commune,” about the Paris Commune. Additionally, he wrote poetry and composed the lyrics to many of the songs performed in his plays, like “Mack the Knife” and “Alabama Song” (AKA Whiskey Bar).
Gaetano Salvemini smuggled a copy of the court transcripts of Matteotti's trial out of Italy:
"Per conto mio, già nell'agosto del 1925, avevo trafugato fuori d'Italia una copia della requisitoria del Pubblico Ministero Santoro nella inchiesta senatoriale sulle accuse mosse da Giuseppe Do- nati contro il direttore generale della pubblica sicurezza, generale De Bono. Dopo averli utilizzati affidai quei docu- menti alla biblioteca della School of Economics di Londra, nel dicembre 1926"
The day after there was an unsuccessful attempt to steal the transcripts, but they were kept in the Library's safe.
Very excited that we are now going to be digitising these transcripts and putting them freely available online, 100 years after Matteotti's murder. Hopefully they will be available by end of June this year. Attached is a photograph of them in situ.
“What's Fascism?" Momma let it go with too much caution. Stacey told them it is when you don't have any rights anymore. They all looked at Stacey in disbelief.
"You mean our boys went to kill people they never met for that? Hell, we got that here. No one kills for that here!" Kate pronounced the sentiments of everyone in the room. Stacey hadn't thought about this when studying World War I and World War II, but it was true. The essence of Fascism applied to them all right, except the forced labour part, but the exclusion of Indians from working in the outside world started to look to Stacey like the flip side of the same coin."
— Lee Maracle (Ravensong)
"The very attempt to narrativize and moralize fascism translates what is perceived as the object of this moral narrative, the event of fascism as a "lived experience," into representation, which consequently implicates such moral and political representations of fascism in the restaging, stylizing, or aestheticizing of such an event."
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment Thanks for all your responses to the question about fascism. As I expected most people could not give concrete examples of what fascism would look like for them. I prompted over 20 times to push people to focus on their own community. Few could. A handful of people finally stated what would happen to others in their community but because of their white privilege that would not bear the brunt of of it . 1/6
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment The people who did make it local were black/brown folks and either immigrants or people who are perhaps trans or at least LGBTQ+. They used the word “I” and the anxiety in their replies was palpable, because all the things most of you stated would happen ARE already happening and have been for quite some time, just not where the most of you live. The Europeans get it a little better. 2/6
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter#ThoughtExperiment@blackmastodon I started to provide links to stories where all the things you said would happen have already happened. But when I reached the third page of links I quit. Yeah...three PAGES of links to stories that show the crap started hitting the fan a long time ago. Most of them I bookmarked from Mastodon! But I don’t think many of you really know what oppression looks like or what it feels like. 3/6
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment Oppression is still very theoretical for you. Really at the heart of it, I don’t think most can envision yourselves being oppressed. And lets be real...many people lived under fascism in Italy, Spain and Germany and did just fine. The folks who lived in towns surrounding the concentration camps claimed they didn’t know anything about what happened there, even though you could smell the ovens….4/6
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment
Why does it matter that you couldn’t make it concrete? Because with the elections just around the corner, if you are running around 24/7 talking about fascism is coming, it won’t mean anything to most Americans who are like you. Listen to the people in your towns. What is worrying them? Talk about that...at the end you can give them the definition of fascism if you have to...but don’t start there. 5/6
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment You aren't wrong to talk about the dangers of fascism. You aren't wrong to be worried. Vent here and talk among yourselves, but just remember, most people from marginalized communities when listening to you are thinking....you're late and have already missed the boat...plane...bus...uber.... whatever it is you use to get around. 6/6