Benito Mussolini’s bust and crypt in San Cassiano cemetery are a sensitive topic in Predappio, Italy.
Saiko/Wikimedia
Politicians hope that a “museum of fascism” in Benito Mussolini’s hometown can help the country face its demons. Historians aren’t so sure.
What is this man thinking?
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
What sort of beliefs made a mass movement succeed?
‘Damenkneipe,’ or ‘Ladies’ Saloon,’ painted by Rudolf Schlichter in 1923. In 1937, many of his paintings were destroyed by the Nazis as ‘degenerate art.’
The 1920s and early ‘30’s looked like the beginning of the end for centuries of gay intolerance. Then came fascism and the Nazis.
Guillaume Horcajuelo / Frederic Scheiber / EPA
Both attack the status-quo, but for entirely different reasons.
Look away.
EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo
Donald Trump embodies the corrosive culture of narcissism at its worst. It’s a trap.
aga7ta
All over the world, people are trying to boil down their experiences of 2016 into a single word. The results speak for themselves.
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany.
National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675 - 1958
In the 1920s and early 1930s, American journalists tended to put the ascendant fascists on a normal footing.
Donald Trump eats dinner with Mitt Romney (right) and Reince Priebus.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Two Italian scholars who fled fascism in the 1920s urgently warned that American democracy was vulnerable to the same gradual erosion as in Italy. Their message still rings true today.
EPA/Roman Pilipey
Hateful movements were able to grow in the early 20th century because the centre right let it happen.
If our politicians are really concerned about the future, they’ve got a funny way of talking about it.
Trump’s use of a Puccini aria has caused some raised eyebrows.
Michael Reynolds/EPA // Wikimedia Commons
Donald Trump has been accused of using a ‘fascist’ Puccini aria at rallies. But labelling this music as fascist is deeply problematic.
Orwell (tallest, centre) in Huesca, Spain in 1937.
Hoover Institution Archives/Harry Milton Papers
Comparisons of foreign volunteers in Syria to the International Brigades of Spain are apt, but not for the reasons you think.
Preaching unity in 1948 on the Freedom Train.
US National Archives and Records Administration
Previous efforts to cement national cohesion offer a model but also, says a historian, a warning.
Posters advertise the dramatization of Sinclair Lewis’ ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’
Wikimedia Commons
Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel ‘It Can’t Happen Here,’ which described the rise of an American dictator, was turned into a play seen by over 500,000 people.
Reuters/Michael Dalder
Printers have been overwhelmed with orders for the first edition of the text to be published in Germany since 1945.
Friend or fascist?
Laibach
The Slovenian band Laibach are best known for their use of fascist iconography – but they’re far more subversive than this might indicate.
Captain America was one of several nationalistic superheroes created during the Second World War era.
© Marvel
Speaking with Jason Dittmer on superheroes and fascism
America's flirtations with fascism in the 1930s and the influence of the Second World War gave rise to nationalistic, quasi-fascist superheroes who are still relevant and popular today.
On the fringes of resistance.
Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e Storia Contemporanea
Everyone learns about the French resistance but what about the freedom fighters across the Alps?
A 1948 meeting of Oswald Mosley’s supporters, during his pan-European phase.
PA
The fear of a federal Europe has eurosceptics riled once again. David Cameron is increasingly dialling up his rhetoric in response to Jean-Claude Juncker’s candidacy for head of the European Commission…
Going down together?
EPA/Ian Langsdon
In late February 2014, it was discovered that Nicolas Sarkozy’s close aide during his presidency, Patrick Buisson, had secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with the then-president and others…