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A review by eitaneverett
Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It by Shane Burley
4.0
This is a really worthwhile read and a fantastic overview of a lot of the different fascist movements and strains of thought active today. Burley goes most in depth into the white nationalist, religious, and militant groupings within what could broadly be described as the fascist movement, and in that he excels. He also goes into what historical tactics have been used against similar movements, and offers some amount of perspective on how those tactics can be employed today, though that is not a focus. I think some of his final points about how the left needs to learn to effectively counter the claims of the right with better tailored education, more insight into the far right's entryism into leftist circles, and filling the same needs and desires that drive people to the right are highly valuable.
I also really appreciated the short section that goes through what has happened since Trump's election and even Charlottesville. It's one of the more hopeful looks at where we stand today that also includes careful, realistic analysis of where the left has fallen short and what dangers lurk ahead that I've read.
I have a few caveats, though they do not detract from the fact that this is certainly a worthwhile read. His focus on the explicitly non-capitalist movements within the far right is certainly welcome, as I know many on the left forget that they do not hold a monopoly on criticizing the failures of capitalism, and this leads to a certain amount of windmill tilting and strange, often unexpected ideological bedfellows. However, in my perception of many far right subcultures, the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist strains of thought are potent drivers of people into more explicit fascism, as the myth of meritocracy allows proto-fascists and fascists themselves to justify and "prove" the existence of a perceived natural order and hierarchy. Leaving this perspective out is a fairly large blind spot. Similarly, Burley only barely scratches the surface of the Dark Enlightenment crowd, which has a fairly large presence in Silicon Valley and the tech world, and so wields an outsized amount of power.
Somewhat less importantly, despite having a fantastic chapter on the types and function of religious thought in fascist movements, he seems to totally leave out any of the Mormon brands of it. This leads to a moment of whiplash as the very next chapter starts out by examining the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife preserve, the perpetrators of which proclaimed a radical, somewhat fundamentalist interpretation of Mormonism to justify some of their complaints against the federal government (one member of the group only referring to himself as "Captain Moroni", even) - but Burley never even so much as mentions that. Several (very good!) pages on Odinism and none on fundamentalist Mormonism seems like an odd balance.
However, I don't really think these are particularly important issues, as no one survey of any political field can ever be fully comprehensive, and for the most part Burley does do a great job with as much as he does cover.
Aside from that, there are a few text issues that I think would have been sorted out with another or more thorough round of editing - as an example, he at some point refers to the subreddit "r/The_Donald_Trump" where I'm 99.9% certain he meant "r/The_Donald" and the organization "Run for Something" gets misnamed as "Run for Nothing". Simple errors probably from mistyping rather than ignorance, but something that should have been caught before going to print.
In the end, one of the best reads I've had in awhile, highly recommended.
I also really appreciated the short section that goes through what has happened since Trump's election and even Charlottesville. It's one of the more hopeful looks at where we stand today that also includes careful, realistic analysis of where the left has fallen short and what dangers lurk ahead that I've read.
I have a few caveats, though they do not detract from the fact that this is certainly a worthwhile read. His focus on the explicitly non-capitalist movements within the far right is certainly welcome, as I know many on the left forget that they do not hold a monopoly on criticizing the failures of capitalism, and this leads to a certain amount of windmill tilting and strange, often unexpected ideological bedfellows. However, in my perception of many far right subcultures, the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist strains of thought are potent drivers of people into more explicit fascism, as the myth of meritocracy allows proto-fascists and fascists themselves to justify and "prove" the existence of a perceived natural order and hierarchy. Leaving this perspective out is a fairly large blind spot. Similarly, Burley only barely scratches the surface of the Dark Enlightenment crowd, which has a fairly large presence in Silicon Valley and the tech world, and so wields an outsized amount of power.
Somewhat less importantly, despite having a fantastic chapter on the types and function of religious thought in fascist movements, he seems to totally leave out any of the Mormon brands of it. This leads to a moment of whiplash as the very next chapter starts out by examining the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife preserve, the perpetrators of which proclaimed a radical, somewhat fundamentalist interpretation of Mormonism to justify some of their complaints against the federal government (one member of the group only referring to himself as "Captain Moroni", even) - but Burley never even so much as mentions that. Several (very good!) pages on Odinism and none on fundamentalist Mormonism seems like an odd balance.
However, I don't really think these are particularly important issues, as no one survey of any political field can ever be fully comprehensive, and for the most part Burley does do a great job with as much as he does cover.
Aside from that, there are a few text issues that I think would have been sorted out with another or more thorough round of editing - as an example, he at some point refers to the subreddit "r/The_Donald_Trump" where I'm 99.9% certain he meant "r/The_Donald" and the organization "Run for Something" gets misnamed as "Run for Nothing". Simple errors probably from mistyping rather than ignorance, but something that should have been caught before going to print.
In the end, one of the best reads I've had in awhile, highly recommended.