Fascism, Antifascism, Gaza, and Political Strategy

Where does the rising wave of authoritarianism and “late fascism” fit in the global relations of force at work today?   And what paths of resistance work in response? 

The war in Gaza has brought to a head the left’s strategic dilemmas facing new, overt forms of fascism. Questions include the historical relationship of settler colonialism and national forms of fascism; the horrific escalation of the long war on Palestine; the opportunities and dangers for the left in national elections in the US and other countries.  

We will explore these questions through three points of departure that touch on race, gender, settler colonialism, fossil fascism, and the carceral state.  

• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, a moving, unnerving essential reading today to understand the background to the present war. 
• Alberto Toscano’s Late fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. Drawing especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of fascism, Toscano gives us powerful tools and perspectives to understand fascism as a changing, evolving process. 
• Andreas Malm and the Zeitkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. The authors lay bare fossil fuel’s roots in racism and European white supremacy toward colonial peoples. 

We will structure this as a focused, six to eight-week study emphasizing selections from these three books that most relate to the present moment, with other parts optional readings.  And we will supplement these books with important analyses of the present moment. 

Convened by Steve Backman and Rebecca Minnich

Photo: An uncredited photo obtained by The Times shows an inverted US flag, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” phenomenon, at Supreme Court Justice Alito’s residence on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before the Biden inauguration.