100 books like Aspirational Fascism

Folks familiar with the term “neoliberalism” usually describe it as the economic system that tries to unleash the market by getting the government out of the way. I like Globalists because it shows how unleashing the market demands that government gets in the way—of workers’ rights, movements for equality, and, most ominously, democracy itself. Since it’s impossible to understand fascism without tackling capitalism, a book explaining how we got to today’s market principles is vital.

I see this book as a history of the neoliberal economists who encouraged political leaders to use state violence and repression to unleash free trade and shape the global economy. Globalists tell the story of how modern capitalism developed into today’s vast landscape of inequality that makes a fertile ground for fascism and violent extremism to develop.

These days, the word fascist is pretty quickly pulled out as a handy insult. Orwell warned even back in the 1940s that the term was used so much that it was becoming meaningless. But when I listen to some of the race-obsessed autocratic leaders lurking in today's politics, I’m convinced “fascist” is a tailor-made description rather than an easy epithet.

I love this book because it helped me get past the hesitation with using that word and is, to my mind, the ultimate philosophical dissection of today’s fascism. For philosopher Alberto Toscano and the thinkers he discusses, fascism is a process at the heart of capitalism itself, "a dynamic that [even] precedes its naming."

His book describes the many aspects of fascism from well beyond Europe in the early twentieth century. If we look around, we can see the percolations of this process producing and reproducing "the racial fantasy of… show more.

I love this book because it’s an inspiring collection of oral histories about community building, protesting, standing up for the oppressed, and sometimes, beating the shit out of racist skinheads. The stories are told by those who had been anti-racist skinheads and punks in Portland back in the 1980s-‘90s.

Portland has long been a very white city—initially because Black people weren’t even allowed in Oregon and later because the Klan had firm control over state and local politics. Over time, more people of color moved in, but the state's white supremacist roots ran deep. In the 1980s, these sprouted racist violence, leading to the brutal beating death of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw.

This book collects the oral histories of the resistance movement galvanized by his death, most of whom were young members of Portland’s punk music scene who, without the support of officials or police, fought back—usually in nonviolent ways. 

Fascism always holds out a promise of belonging to the tribe, the race, and, most importantly, the nation. Lepore’s very short and beautifully readable history of the US explicitly rejects the right-wing and fascist assumption that the nation and nationalism are theirs.

This America retells US history from the perspective that the country has not lived up to its promises of equality, but the first step to making that happen is acknowledging its painful history. The book contextualizes the invocations of some of its greatest critics, such as DuBois, Douglass, and Baldwin, in their clear-eyed pronouncements of the United States’ failures of justice and democracy.

Lepore’s hope rests on the belief that a pluralistic, truly democratic United States is possible if Americans own the nation’s failures to live up to its stated standards and commit to the painful work of holding ourselves and the structures of civic life accountable to… show more.

I hope readers internalize this book's message: grappling with past threats to our democracy is vital in facing down future threats carrying a greater likelihood of success. 

Maddow’s impressively researched book recounts the period of U.S. history corresponding to the rise of Nazism in Germany and the spread of European fascism. Her laudable goal is ensuring more citizens know the story of leading American figures—captains of industry, Congressmen, and Governors—sympathetic to Nazism and willing to undermine vital democratic norms, embrace anti-Semitism, and engage in coordinated violence to bring fascism to the U.S., and of those unsung heroes who refused to let them succeed.

Maddow rightly views education as vital to ensuring that past isn’t prologue.

What leads people to join a movement? What causes a group to sacrifice freedom for power, victory, and equality? How does oppression begin?

When Ben is unable to answer a student’s question, “Why did the German people not stop the Nazis?” he devises an experiment. Would American students surrender their individuality and follow his leadership blindly? What follows quickly spirals out of control. The students and their teacher are forced to confront how a movement transforms those who become caught in its current. And some students are forced to learn the cost of daring to speak against the majority.

The ever-contentious debate about Heidegger’s filiations with Nazism was re-enlivened with the appearance of the so-called “Black Notebooks” in 2014.

However, unless one closely heeds the existential verbiage of Heidegger’s commitment to Nazism, one risks tilting at windmills; hence, succumbing to a plethora of misconceptions and misunderstandings.

This invaluable collection of original texts – which, in addition to Heidegger political speeches of 1933-34, contains the indispensable Der Spiegel interview, “Only a God Can Save Us!” – has taken on an entirely new meaning and importance in light of the “Black Notebooks’” publication. 

The raised-arm salute is the most distinctive gesture of 20th-century Fascism and Nazism; in the 21st century, it still thoroughly shocks when spotted. Its origin? Though the so-called “Roman salute” has been widely supposed to date back to classical antiquity, Winkler in a meticulous study demonstrates that it is a modern creation, an anachronism that first consistently cropped up in theatrical contexts (stage and early motion pictures) in the 1890s. Though nonsensical from a historical point of view, “it does make political and ideological sense”, argues Winkler, “to all those who see in the Romans a model for power and might and for glorious conquest of others.” More generally, the book is essential reading on the origins and evolution of Mussolini’s theatricality.

Born in 1934 in Berchtesgaden, in the shadow of Hitler’s Eagles Nest, Irmgard Hunt witnessed the growth of fascist ideology among the people she loved during an otherwise idyllic childhood. As the shadow of World War II fell over the mountain, however, Hunt began to question and then disavow the Nazi doctrines she had accepted as a young child. As time went on and the regime crumbled literally before her eyes, she was vocal in confronting her country’s criminal past and in championing the democratic principles her elders had so easily dismissed.

It is important for Americans to understand why millions of Germans who were not violent antisemites and racists voted for the Nazis. Looking at the case of a typical German town, Allen shows that economics, culture wars, and fear for the future motivated middle-class Germans to vote for an extremist party – not because of its racism, but despite its racism.