Fascism: Modern Threat or Facade? Featuring Alberto Toscano

Fascism: Modern threat or facade?

On the fourth episode of Beyond Voting, we dive deep with Alberto Toscano, critical theorist, professor in the School of Communications at Simon Fraser University, and also co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

We spoke with Alberto about what modern fascist movements look like, where we see real examples of anti-fascist resistance, and what we can learn - particularly from Black radical traditions- about how to fight back against the spread of new fascisms in the United States and beyond.

So tell us, have you fully confronted or accepted fascism as a reality? How do you plan to turn your ideas and principles into action? Tell us on IG @arcus.center or drop it in your 5 star review of the show.  And please visit us at arcuscenter.kzoo.edu

Check out Alberto Toscano’s latest book, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism, and the Politics of Crisis

Check out these authors and topics Alberto mentioned in the conversation:
- The Politics of The Multi-Racial Right - Daniel Martinez Hosang & Joseph Lowndes
- When W.E.B DuBois Made a Laughing Stock of a White Supremacist - The New Yorker
- Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right - Lisa McGirr
- Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition - Cedric Robinson
- W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct      Democracy,1860-1880
- Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1 - Angela Davis
- Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

Host/Writer: Emily Williams 
Executive Producer: Keisha “TK” Dutes 
Lead Producer/Writer: Kristen Bennett 
Sound Designer & Engineer: Manny Faces
Marketing: Faybeo'n Mickens
Special thanks to The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership team: Quinton, Winter, Crimson, Tamara, Kerria
Additional music provided by Motion Array.

Beyond Voting is a production of Philo’s Future Media. 

Episode Transcript

Emily Williams (01:00):
Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us.
I was so grateful to get tospeak with 2008 vice
presidential candidate for theGreen Party, Rosa Clemente, on
our last episode, And she laidout what it's like to break free
from the constraints of typicalDemocratic or Republican
politics and cultivate a politicof your own. Her early political

(01:23):
activism grew out of anexperience at a rally where she
felt the candidate couldn'tfully understand or represent
her perspective as a blackPuerto Rican woman. From there,
she worked within the GreenParty and the National Hip Hop
Political Convention to buildplatforms that better address
her needs and concerns as wellas those of forgotten

(01:45):
communities that don't get a lotof visibility and mainstream
candidates' stump speeches.
Poor and working class people,incarcerated people, racial and
ethnic minorities, folks whosereligion or immigration status
or sexuality or gender identitymake them targets for
discrimination, marginalization,and abuse. Rosa isn't our 1st

(02:09):
guest to share their frustrationwith Democratic politics. Each
of them expressed disappointmentwith the party failing to live
up to its rhetoric, and that'simportant because the Democrats
are purporting to be the onlything standing between the
survival of American democracyand full fledged fascism. We
keep hearing about thisexistential threat to democracy

(02:31):
in the form of rising fascism,But where is it coming from? How
serious is it?
What can we do to stop it? Is italready here? And should we be
concerned that if the selfdescribed defenders of liberal
democracy aren't living up totheir ideals, that they'll be
just as susceptible to fascistinfluence as those they're

(02:55):
accusing of propagating it? I'mEmily Williams, executive
director of the Arcus Center ForSocial Justice Leadership at

(03:16):
Kalamazoo College. This isBeyond Voting.
We started this show for peoplelike you and me, people who care
about making a difference in theworld, people who want to share
in redesigning the democracy wedeserve outside of the typical
political binary. This podcastis rooted in our conviction that

(03:37):
democracy requires moreparticipation than just voting.
It's up to all of us to takeaction if we wanna see real
change. We'll featureconversations with leaders,
activists, and educatorsdiscussing the state of our
country's institutions, ongoingsystems of oppression, and most
importantly, how we, the people,can take critical actions in

(04:00):
pursuit of true equity andjustice. What do you think of
when you hear the word fascism?
I'll bet you picture images ofmilitary processions, raging
authoritarian leaders givingstirring speeches from their
balconies to massive crowdsbelow, and throngs of innocent

(04:22):
people being forced from theirhomes through violent state
mandated pogroms. That all seemslike such a far off conception.
It's the kind of stuff we shouldonly have to witness in history
books, museums, and movies.While we may know that it's
possible intellectually, itseems far from probable in these

(04:43):
more enlightened times. For mostAmericans, it definitely doesn't
seem like something we believecould happen here.
Yet seeing that growing fascistthreat when we turn on the news
and hearing about neo fascistaligned political groups gaining
prominence makes that distantpossibility seem a bit closer to

(05:03):
an imminent reality. Neo fascistgroups are spreading, and
they're not just the domain ofsmall militias and fringe
political movements. They'regaining significant political
footholds in governments acrossthe globe, including here in the
US where we've seen theeffective dismantling of public
health departments in Michigan,the banning of books and

(05:24):
diversity studies in schools anduniversities in Florida, and
threatening to jail doctors,teachers, and librarians for
simply doing their jobs. Myguest today is no stranger to
addressing questions of globalfascism and what it looks like
in our modern world. AlbertoToscano is a critical theorist

(05:46):
and professor in the School ofCommunications at Simon Fraser
University.
He's also codirector of theCentre For Philosophy in
Critical Theory at Goldsmiths,University of London. In his
book, late fascism, race,capitalism, and the politics of
crisis, Alberto says thatdespite our tendency to use

(06:06):
familiar European examples toidentify modern fascist threats,
for example, Mussolini in Italyor Hitler in Nazi Germany, anti
colonialist activists and blackAmerican thinkers from W. E. B.
Du Bois to Angela Davis haveoffered examples much more
relevant to this moment.
He points to their work to helpbetter frame our understanding

(06:29):
of the rise of modern fascismand the immediate threat it
poses to liberal democracieslike our own. I got to speak
with Alberto earlier this summerabout what modern fascist
movements look like where we seereal examples of anti fascist
resistance and what we can learnparticularly from black radical

(06:50):
traditions about how to fightback against the spread of new
fascisms. Alberto, thank you somuch for joining us. Welcome.

Alberto Toscano (07:02):
Thank you so much for having me, Emily.

Emily Williams (07:04):
So I read that you are reluctant to define
fascism, but can you talk aboutways that are useful for the
average person to identifyfascism when they see it? For
example, how does the averagevoter who needs to be able to
understand it, particularly inthis election, How can they use

(07:25):
an understanding of fascism tohelp determine their vote?

Alberto Toscano (07:29):
It's interesting that we're having a
conversation about fascism inelectoral terms. In many ways,
of course, we often think offascism as the diametrical
opposite of liberal democracy.If we think of the ways in which
the discourse around fascism hasentered into mainstream

(07:50):
conversation, especially in theUnited States, think of the way
people talk about fascism onMSNBC or in liberal mainstream
media, it's often viewed asthat. Right? The possibility of
a complete collapse and acomplete overturning of the
principles of liberal democracy.

(08:11):
Now that's an interesting way ofapproaching the question of
fascism because it centers adimension that of elections, but
also maybe sidelines otherissues that we might want to
attend to, like the presence offascist tendencies or fascist
potentials in the ways in whichour society is already,

(08:33):
organized. So on the one hand, Icould, you know, think of a
whole set of symptoms, red flagsthat a voter or a concerned
member of the public mightattend to.

Emily Williams (08:49):
I think that would be really helpful because
it's like, what are some of thefascist tendencies that we're
already living under, but weactually don't realize it?

Alberto Toscano (08:59):
Let's take one really distinctive element of
the present platform andcampaign of the Republican
party. Right?

Emily Williams (09:06):
Mhmm.

Alberto Toscano (09:07):
Mass deportations now. You're
basically advancing a sloganthat is trying to elicit mass
support, and that mass dimensionis definitely critical to
fascism. Right? It's not justsimply authoritarian politics.
Right?
It's an authoritarian politicsthat desires mass buy in. Right?
It's a politics of reaction anddomination, but it's also, in

(09:30):
its own most generic way,democratic as in it is demanding
a certain demos, a certainpeople to back it. And in fact,
as as one saw very readily inmany of the speeches at the
Republican National Convention,that demand for the

(09:50):
stigmatization, repression,incarceration, and deportation
of undocumented people workingin the United States was
presented really as a as ademocratic demand. Right?
It was presented as well, youknow, this is what the people,
obviously, of specificsubsection thereof want, the
left behind, the forgotten,etcetera, etcetera. All of

(10:14):
those, you know, dog whistlekind of terms. You know what, I
guess, in the first Trumpinauguration, he called American
carnage. Right? This idea thatthe country's falling apart,
that it's being contaminated.
All of that discourse, ofcourse, has a long legacy in
movements of the far right andand and fascist movements, as

(10:34):
does this idea that only apolicy of stigmatization and
repression of certain otheredgroups from migrants to trans
women to pro Palestineprotesters, etcetera, will allow
a kind of renaissance to takeplace. Right? That all of these

(10:57):
groups and all of these peopleand all of their rights are a,
hindrance to the coming togetherand the well-being of an organic
national community defined,either explicitly or implicitly,
in restrictive and gendered andracialized terms. And I think

(11:17):
that is surely a symptom, youknow, if not of maybe fascism in
a textbook, political sciencedefinition of the term,
nevertheless, of what AngelaDavis would have called fascism
as a process. Right?

Emily Williams (11:29):
That's so interesting, Alberto, because,
you know, when you arementioning this great
renaissance, you know, we heardthat with, like, Make America
Great Again. And I think in2016, it was much more around
white nationalism and maybe evenuntil just recently where we've
seen Trump trying to courtparticularly the Black community

(11:50):
and doing so in very visibleways, right, having
spokespersons who are members ofthe Black community now
presenting at prominentconferences of black
professionals. So, one, how doyou see that factoring into
this, like, notion ofrenaissance, and what's the
relationship between fascism andracism, but also sexism and

(12:14):
capitalism? I think

Alberto Toscano (12:16):
that's an absolutely crucial question, and
I know there are a lot ofscholars and researchers and
anti racist activists working onthis in the United States and
beyond. I know there's veryimportant work that, for
instance, Joe Lowndes and DanielHosang Martinez are doing on the
multiracial right, I believe, ina book that is coming out in the

(12:39):
autumn. And they have made alsoanother text kind of a
compelling argument for at leastsuspending what is perhaps a
comforting common sense on theanti racist left that takes the
nexus between fascism or the farright and white supremacy as

(13:01):
both kind of linear andhomogeneous. Right? So that you
don't really have to think aboutit very much.
And, of course, it is not tominimize the continued
structuring presence of whitesupremacy to the US far right to
also need to recognize both justas a demographic fact, but also

(13:22):
as a strategic reality that thishas been a very significant move
for them. I remember readingthis there was very good
material around the time of, I Ithink, both the 2016 and 2020
election by Mike Davis. Iremember on the Latinx vote for
Trump in California and Texas,and, you know, and he was

(13:45):
pointing in many ways also tothe political economy of this
vote. Right? So people wereastounded that border counties
with Latinx majorities in inTexas, for instance, would vote
for Trump.
And he pointed out, yes. But,you know, the majority of people
there are dependent on workingfor border services in one sense
or another. Right? So there'sall sorts of material ways in

(14:07):
which people are incorporatedinto a state apparatus that
depends also on the repressionof migrants. Right?
But I also think it's importantto note, at least this was one
of the statistics that I sawrecently, that it's fairly vital
for the Republican Party toengage in those strategies
because it seems that theirproportion of, let's say, like,

(14:29):
the white male vote hasn'treally changed very much. Right?
And so they're really working onthe margins that, of course,
they still get a small portion,at least in in statistics, of
the male African American votein the US. But getting 9% or
getting 25% makes a difference.Right?
Or it can make all thedifference given that we're
talking about these kind ofswing states. And I think the

(14:52):
xenophobic politics of centeringthe migrant as the existential
threat, but also as a threat tothe livelihoods of racialized
people. Right? And this was donein the crassest way possible in
that first presidential debateby Trump. Right?

(15:15):
They're invading across theborder and taking black jobs,
whatever that means. Right?Like, you know, that was
clearly, like, a key talkingpoint that he was had decided to
go on. So I think there's a wayof cloaking or blurring the
structuring racism of the wholeproject by massively displacing

(15:37):
its most explicit aspect ontomigrants themselves. Before
coming to North America, I wasliving in the United Kingdom.
I was there during the wholeBrexit process, right, and all
the forms of nationalism and andracism that that involved. And
there, too, albeit in a totallydifferent racial formation with

(15:58):
a totally different historyhaving to do with empire and
Commonwealth and all that,nevertheless, that move of
trying to enlist some racializedor minority populations into a
nationalist project predicatedon a kind of xenophobic
stigmatization of migrants wasalso significant. Right? And,

(16:19):
again, in most cases, it wasn'tlike the majority of black and
brown folks in the UK voted forthe right or voted for Brexit,
but it was enough. Right?
It was enough to make adifference.

Emily Williams (16:30):
I think it's so interesting because if I think
back to and I know that this iswhat you're telling us not to
do. But if I think back to myoriginal education about the
holocaust in Germany and howfascism works, what I understand
to be central to it or what I'veunderstood from that education
is that, 1, you have to have a apopulation to scapegoat. And

(16:52):
then, 2, that there's a reallyextreme violence in an attempt
to get rid of that population,which then galvanizes this
nationalistic populous that youmentioned previously. I think
about that and how now we're inkind of this moment where the
far right actually does have tocourt populations that are

(17:13):
probably previously wouldscapegoat, such as black
Americans, such as Latinos, andothers who are crossing the
border to live in the US. Sogiven those similarities, what
is the danger of talking aboutfascism in terms of analogies to
the past, particularly theEurocentric ones?

(17:34):
And then can you say more abouthow this moment is actually
different from those examples?

Alberto Toscano (17:40):
Yeah. I think that's an excellent question
because so much of thecontemporary discourse around
the menace of fascism centers onanalogies to a rather
streamlined, at times evencartoonish version of the 19
twenties thirties. Also, on thisnotion that fascism is the

(18:05):
diabetical opposite, thecomplete nemesis of liberalism.
Right? And so fascism is thiskind of exception, aberration,
pathology, and so on.
Now if we want to think of wherethe important disanalogies are,
I think in hindsight, we tend toalmost only think about Italian

(18:26):
and German fascism, and then wealso tend to think of Italian
fascism almost through the lensof of German fascism. Right? And
so, for instance, taking certainforms of racial violence as
defining a fascism, which mightbe different if we looked at
other forms. Right? And, ofcourse, there's a lot of
scholarship now that is rightlyexpanding that prism and making

(18:50):
us think about how the Japaneseregime in the 19 thirties was in
many ways an explicitly fascistand imperialist regime and all
sorts of other formations.
But I think there's a number ofissues that one needs to take
into consideration. One is thatthose fascisms that I refer to
as interwar or post World War 1were in many ways defined by the

(19:15):
mass experience of warfare.Right? So most people who
participated in fascistmovements, most people who
engaged in the militia like andstreet violence that gave rise
to them, most of its leaderswere war veterans, were people
who had killed, were people whohad been in trenches, and so on.
Mhmm.
This is a very different, justsociologically speaking

Emily Williams (19:38):
Mhmm.

Alberto Toscano (19:39):
Situation than the one that we're in now.
Fascism was and this issomething that I think Du Bois
pointed out very sharply in anumber of texts also in the 19
thirties, you know, was abyproduct of an age of
imperialism, right, in manyways. The explicit program of
both Italian fascism as was madeevident in its brutal invasion

(20:05):
of Ethiopia as was the case withNazi Germany's plans to
basically reproduce US settlercolonialism except on its
eastern Slavic frontier. Thesewere, in their own minds, right,
imperial and settler colonialprojects that had arrived late,

(20:27):
that were trying to do in theindustrialized first half of the
twenty century what the Britishand the French and others had
done in the 19th. Right?
And, again, that's a verydifferent context than the one
that we find ourselves in today.Right?

Emily Williams (20:45):
Right. And let's just sum that up just a little
bit, because if we, like, thinkabout, like, that colonialist
project, it was also aboutbuilding wealth and then
spreading power throughout theworld. So if that's what we have
and they're trying to reproducewhat the colonial powers were
doing, you know, France, evenBelgium

Alberto Toscano (21:03):
Mhmm. Mhmm.

Emily Williams (21:04):
Britain, a bit of the US. Right? They were
trying to reproduce that. Okay.So that's what we have
previously and historically.
So what is it now?

Alberto Toscano (21:14):
The difference between, you know, these two
vastly separate moments I thinkwe could almost summarize in
terms of the ideologicaldifference between a border and
a frontier. Right? So the thefascism that was an effort to
reproduce or accelerate thiskind of settler colonial and and

(21:34):
imperial project, very explicit,again, both for Italian fascism
and German Nazism, saw everyexisting border of the nation
state which they were in aslimiting or illegitimate. Right?
Whether it was, you know, theItalian state already making

(21:56):
claims in certain parts of whatwere then later Yugoslavia,
etcetera, or much farther afieldclaiming that they've been
passed over.
Right? Whether it's in theBerlin Conference of the 18
eighties or they've been passedover in the scramble for Africa
and were entitled. And so a lotof the claims were claims to

(22:18):
entitlement to land andresources, and therefore, it was
an expansive

Emily Williams (22:24):
And people.

Alberto Toscano (22:25):
And people. And it and therefore, it was a it
was an expansive vision,expansionist vision. And I think
instead, if you think of thementality, the slogans, and the
appeal of contemporary far rightand fascistic movements, they
are towards closure, I mean, inthe Republican and and Trump

(22:49):
sense in the most caricature waypossible. Right? I'll be
dictator for a day.
Was that that famous, infamousspeech? I'll be dictator for a
day. Close the border and drill,drill, drill. Right? Like a very
weird, you know, which isactually a strange inversion of
a sort of, imperialist fascistimaginary.

(23:10):
So I think one of the thingsthat defines the contemporary
far right in the global north.Right? Because we haven't had
any conversation here yet aboutall sorts of other far right
movements in Latin America,Modi's India, and elsewhere.
Mhmm. What defines it, I think,in the global north is the sense
of a declining privilege orentitlement that is at risk, a

(23:35):
risk in a kind of pincermovement between, you know,
migrant masses coming throughthe border and then, of course,
the threat of China, let's say,which is a kind of other
obsession, certainly, of Trump.
But the sense is not one ofexpansion or of increasing
resources, but in terms of aform of kind of closure and and

(23:57):
protection, where the border isthen imagined as the solution,
the almost kind of fetish objectof this far right politics
because it stops the intrusion,the the infiltration of
everything that is both amaterial threat, but also,
right, like a psychic andpersonal threat as well, which

(24:20):
is why you then see, which is,again, very typical and has been
going on for decades, this vileexaggeration of criminality,
right, regardless of anystatistic or, you know, the
invention of these categorieslike migrant crime. Right? Like,
as if that's a thing. So I thinkit does change the character of

(24:44):
the far right's own ideology andpolitics. However, just a a
small parenthesis, that does notmean that we don't have a lot of
rhetorical and ideologicalcontinuities.
Right? Take something like thegreat replacement. Mussolini was
talking about the greatreplacement in the 19 And

Emily Williams (25:04):
just break that down for people. Just break down
the great replacement forpeople.

Alberto Toscano (25:07):
Yeah. So the idea that, I mean, takes various
forms, all of them, you know,profoundly racist. But the idea
that there's either a process orusually a plot, a conspiracy or
a project to replace the whitepopulations of either the United

(25:28):
States or, very popular, ofcourse, in the context of the
European far right with migrantpopulations from the South.
Right?

Emily Williams (25:37):
Yeah. And we also just might say, like, I
think this is what you weregetting at at earlier in this
conversation where it's likethis notion that white men are
gonna be replaced by Latino menwho are crossing the border or
black men who are coming intoeconomic privilege and power.
Right? That they will bereplaced. Yeah.

Alberto Toscano (25:54):
It's a notion that ultimately emerges in the
context of the very powerfulmovements for decolonization at
the beginning of 20th century.Right? And, again, in the wake
of World War 1, a lot of theseideologues, many of them
American, like, I think it'sLothrop Stoddard, who writes

(26:14):
this book called The Rising Tideof Color. There's this whole
panic amongst certainintellectual caters in the west
that white civilization, right,is being threatened by the
emergence, by what it again, therising tide of color. Right?
In fact, Stoddart has a verypublic, I think, radio debate,
where, apparently, Du Bois wipesthe floor with him over a

(26:37):
thistle question. But it's superyou know, this stuff is selling
tens of thousands of copies, itreally but in that context, the
debate it's not presented interms of migration per se. It's
presented in terms of theincreasing demographic presence,
but also political power of thedarker nations. Right? It's a

(26:59):
threat that somebody like DuBois says, yes, of course.
The darker nations should havemore power, and this, you know,
racial world order should beoverturned. Right? That threat
is presented as global, and thenthis whole issue of natality,
which, let's not forget, is acomplete obsession of the
contemporary far right. Right?

Emily Williams (27:18):
And you mean natality as being native to
one's No.

Alberto Toscano (27:21):
No. Natality in the sense of in the sense of
birth rates. Right? Like whitebirth rates. Again, a debate
present in the twenties.
Mussolini writes about as wellin the twenties and thirties. So
it's already like that iscontinuous. Right?

Emily Williams (27:35):
Mhmm.

Alberto Toscano (27:36):
But once the theme is continuous, the context
is very different. So thecontext now is not the idea of
an anti colonial worldrevolution or not the idea of
the rising power of the socalled third world. Rather, it's
presented as a political anddemographic issue within the

(27:57):
boundaries of the nation statethat could be resolved with the
border. Right? Whilst instead inthe 19 twenties thirties, the
fascist imagining was, yes,well, this can be resolved by,
like, a racial project of worlddomination and imperialism,
right, such as the Italian orthe German one.
So in many sense, you could saythat there was an expansionary

(28:17):
and offensive dimension Yep. Tothat fascist imaginary. Yeah.
Whilst now, the imaginary is adefensive one. It's, like, pull
up the drawbridge, create thefortress, and hold on to the
limited resources.
Right? And the fantasy of whatto return to is also a very
different fantasy. The fantasyof the contemporary, even kind

(28:42):
of fascistic far right, isn'tsome kind of utopian. It's
basically some weird version ofa kind of militarized leave it
to beaver America, right, whereit's like white people and white
ticket fences and middle classjobs, etcetera. It's not the
idea of a future that's totallydifferent than the present.

Emily Williams (29:02):
Thank you for breaking it down like that. And
I just I wanna say a couple ofthings. Number 1, for our Gen Z
listeners, Leave It TO Beaverwas a TV show that came on in
black and white, that was reallyabout this white American
nuclear family where the motherstayed home, had traditional
housewife duties, and the fatherwent to work every day with his

(29:23):
briefcase. And there was Beaver,the son doing traditional boy
things like playing in the dirt,for example. So you all can look
that up on YouTube if, if you'reinterested.
And then also I wanna point out,Alberto, that you're using this
term called political imaginary.Right? And I think that that's
so critical for listeners tounderstand because, you know,
these things that these newfascists are relying upon, these

(29:47):
ideas are actually not true. So,like, this notion that somehow
immigrants are coming to takeall of the jobs and are gonna
threaten the white establishmentin this country, that's not
true. But they're talking aboutit as though it's imminent and
it's going to happen.
And so I think that that'sreally important that we think
about what is a politicalimaginary, both so that we can

(30:07):
understand the way that fascistsare operating today, but also so
that those of us who care aboutsocial justice and who want to
accomplish social justice goalswith our activism, we can use
our political imaginary to thinkabout other possibilities of
actually an inclusive democracy.And thank you so much for
breaking down, like, thehistorical examples of fascism

(30:29):
because I think that's it it isan important reference. And now
we see that neo fascists areusing the mythology of
traditional gender roles. Right?Have you heard of trad wives?

Alberto Toscano (30:40):
Mhmm.

Emily Williams (30:40):
And they're using particularly trad wives to
appeal to younger generations.So tell us this, Alberto. Who is
voting for fascists, and whatrole do white women have in
propping them up?

Alberto Toscano (30:57):
Wow. There's a lot of people who've worked on
and written for a long time onthe role of women in new right
movements in in the UnitedStates, a famous book called
Suburban Warriors. And thenthere's all sorts of famous,
figures that have gottenattention in that history of the
US right. It's not something Ido, like, empirical research on,

(31:19):
so I wouldn't want to, make anykinda grand statements in that
direction. But I think I thinkthe question of gender and
reproduction obviously has beenat the core of fascist and far
right movements for a long time.
And as I said, these questionsabout natality and birth,
threats to the family, coded inboth gendered and racial terms,

(31:44):
were very much at the core ofthe ideology and the appeal of
fascism in the twentiesthirties. Right? And at that
level, it's it's kind ofstaggering how much continuity
there is. And, you know, thisobsession, like, it came up, you
know, in these grotesque waysrecently via JD Vance. Right?

(32:06):
But this obsession, like, withchildlessness, right, with the
socially disruptive, aspects ofof childlessness. And, of
course, the formative functionthat transphobia and homophobia
have, right, for far rightpolitics. And, again, that's
that's nothing new. One of thethings that I think is

(32:26):
significant about this is theway in which questions of gender
and the disturbances to theorder of gender and order of the
family allow for the far right avery effective and for some very
compelling link between the mostintimate dimension of people's

(32:47):
existence and livelihood and soon and these grand, like,
historical or planetary issues.Right?
So it's as if the sense ofcrisis, loss, impending
catastrophe, and so on isprojected onto the bodily level.

(33:09):
Right? And that's a very, Ithink, compelling case or very
effective. Right? Because itplays on the centrality of
privatized and kind of personalsecurity and as a word
sovereignty to what is already akind of common sense ideology.
Right? You know, your home isyour castle, etcetera, etcetera.

(33:32):
What's interesting about it, ofcourse, is that the supposed
defense of the rights of thefamily and the parent and the
household against this intrusivestate turns out, unsurprisingly,
right, to be something thatmakes it possible for states to

(33:53):
directly monitor the biologicaland reproductive abilities and
behaviors of individuals. Right?They go back to JD Vance, it was
a recent piece about the factthat he was amongst the very few
congressmen that voted and Iforget the legislation but voted
against this legislation whichwould have prohibited states

(34:14):
from having access to thegynecological records of women.
And the whole issue behind thatis is basically what, you know,
to use what is a truly dystopianterm, what people have called
menstrual policing. Right? Like,the fact that in the states that
are trying to pass lawsforbidding women from going for
out of state abortions, thatsomehow the police or the

(34:38):
sheriffs or whatever would beable to access medical records
and prohibit people from movingout of state. Right? So you have
this extremely dystopiansituation in which on the one
hand, the question of gender andgender norms, etcetera, is being
presented as the effort of, youknow, conserving the traditional

(35:00):
classic heterosexual familyagainst the incursion of this,
you know, evil woke state and soon and so forth.
But the reality of it iscreating the infrastructure for
a level of invasiveness intopeople's, sexual and
reproductive lives is just kindof unparalleled. In fact, I
really can't think of any otherpolicy in the world, including

(35:21):
very repressive ones, that haspresented this as a kind of
possibility. Right? So I thinkthat's really striking now. Why
does that, why and how does thatenlist the support of large
numbers of women in certainstates or among certain groups
is very difficult for me toreally say.

Emily Williams (35:44):
Well and I think I can't listen to you talk about
this without thinking aboutpatriarchy. Right? Like,
everything that you're sayinggets me back to this notion of
that bell hooks put forward,which is white supremacist,
heteropatriarchy. Mhmm. Right?
This notion that property getspassed down through the male
lineage. A woman takes a male'slast name, has children. Her

(36:04):
children are heirs to the whitemale patriarch. So I think it
also is about going back to thisnotion of what you said earlier
about this nation state, whichis propped up by white men.
Mhmm.
And they have this privilege,this unparalleled privilege,
this unchallenged privilege thatmore recently they're trying to
say has been threatened, beenthreatened by people who are

(36:27):
stepping outside of the genderbinary, people who are no longer
engaging in the institution ofmarriage, people who are
defining spirituality forthemselves, no longer
traditional religion or more soleaning towards their own forms
of spirituality. And so I thinkthat that's an important frame
for us to think about too, youknow, how white supremacy and

(36:48):
patriarchy and heterosexism allconverge. And particularly, I
think in this movement of theTradwise Movement, where women
are staying at home, they'recooking everything from scratch,
and their purpose and vocationin the world is to serve their
husbands and their children. Youknow, some of the more popular
trad wives on social media haverecently been uncovered for

(37:11):
having, you know, lots of helpwithin their home, having been
married to bill husbands whocome from billionaire families,
for example. So it's sointeresting.
And perhaps I think this alsogoes back to what you were
saying about the ability of theright to really play the long
game because the trad wives inparticular, especially the way
that they show up on socialmedia, if you're just scrolling,

(37:31):
one would think this has nothingto do with politics. Let me
figure out how to bake ablueberry pie from scratch.
Right? I mean, that's what onewould think if you just watch
these videos. But when we getdeeper into these conversations
about what fascist movementsrely upon, sort of that
political imaginary and theroles that women need to play in
order to uphold this whitesupremacist patriarchy, then it

(37:53):
starts to make more sense.

Alberto Toscano (37:55):
Yeah. And I think it also reminds us how
much these, traditions oridentities that fascisms depend
on are absurdly artificial inthe first place. Right? Our
inventions of tradition. And inthis case, it's even more
telling that, you know, this isthe broadcasting and the

(38:18):
monetizing of a supposedlytraditional domestic activity,
which, of course, were ittraditional or domestic, would
not be an object of spectacleand communication on a highly
monetized big tech platform.
Right? So the whole idea is isjust kinda laughable in the
first place. But yeah.

Emily Williams (38:39):
Mhmm. And now the Heritage Foundation, which
is a very conservativeorganization, the Heritage
Foundation and otherorganizations like them have
been pushing this notion ofproject 2025 and other
initiatives like it, veryconservative approaches to
policies that would affect ourday to day life in America. So

(39:01):
tell us, Alberto, how does lifechange for us if the Heritage
Foundation and all of theplayers necessary to accomplish
project 2025 are successful?

Alberto Toscano (39:13):
So with the proviso that, I have not waited
through the

Emily Williams (39:19):
It's like 700 it's like 700 pages. Yeah.

Alberto Toscano (39:21):
Or more. So I have, for the time being, only
read long investigative articlesabout it, but now perused it for
my own sake. One thing that Ithink is useful to frame this
question is to really thinkabout what the strategy of the
far right that has structureditself and has been empowered

(39:45):
especially through thesefoundations, right, which I
think play a role in the UnitedStates that is not really
comparable to other contextnecessarily, right, in terms of
foundations that are writinglegislation for congresspeople
at both the state and federallevel and that are advancing all
these forms of lawfare and so onand so forth. I think the sheer

(40:09):
amount of money and resourcesand strategic coordination that
is now made visible by somethinglike project 2025 is pretty
staggering. Right?
And I think as was made evidentin the repeal of Roe, I think
the ability of the far right inthe United States to play a very

(40:33):
long game and to play it verysuccessfully is one of its more
frightening dimensions. Right?That's the sense in which I
think also we should alwaysqualify the obsessive focus on
the grotesque figure of Trumpand now his the grotesque Robin

(40:54):
to his Batman, JD Vance, orwhatever. Is that in in some
sense, that is what's leading orcrowning this kind of project,
but it's also a kind ofdiversionary tactic. Because as
we watch the comedy shows abouthis ridiculous obsession with
the windmills or whatever, like,there's a lot of extremely

(41:14):
rational and extremelysystematic and well funded and
legally precise efforts tooverturn social rights at every
single level in every singlejurisdiction in the US.
The amount of states that havepassed extremely draconian
legislation, legislation that isextremely repressive of social

(41:38):
rights, of social justice, andof social freedoms, whether it
be on school curricula, whetherit be on reproductive rights,
whether it be on the rights toprotest. I'm thinking of the
things that, at least, they tryto pass in Florida, which is
basically, you know, making itlegal to run over protesters or
whatever. In many ways, what isbeing planned or what is being

(41:59):
presented as the transition tosome US form of electoral
despotism or electoralauthoritarianism or whatever you
wanna call it is already atwork. And I think, to my mind,
the critical discourse has beeninsufficient attention to what
is already happening at all ofthese county and state levels so

(42:22):
that there's there's so much inthe reality of so many places in
the United States that isalready extremely dystopian.
Right?
And things that have been goingon for for a long while. Right?
So that's not to say that thescale change isn't a massive
issue. Like, of course, it'svery different if there's
somewhere else to go to, right,even within the boundaries of

(42:44):
the United States than if whatis now already the case in
places like Missouri where, forinstance, I believe they passed
legislation making it basicallyimpossible to divorce whilst
pregnant. You know, all sorts ofthings like that are already on
the books.
Right?

Emily Williams (42:58):
Well, and I think that's a really good
point. You know, it's like nowthe 10 commandments have to be
displayed in every classroom inLouisiana. You know, it's
against the law to protest inNorth Carolina, Mississippi, and
I believe Arkansas. It's eitherArkansas or Alabama. And we
we've already seen what'shappened with the rollback of
Roe v Wade, where physicians canbe locked up if they provide an

(43:21):
abortion to a person who needsit.
So I think you're right in thatwe can expect to see much more
of those kinds of policiespassed much more widely and then
even more than that.

Alberto Toscano (43:35):
To touch on that, one of the things that I
remember being really struckreading Du Bois' Reflections on
Fascism and Black Reconstructionwas precisely the insight that
in the United States, especiallyafter this counterrevolution
against, like, the democraticmoment of the 18 sixties to 18
eighties. Right? That there's anability that the United States

(43:59):
has had to basically have aregional or local enclaves of,
like, full on fascisticpolitics. You know, that's a
whole history of Jim Crow in anyway. I mean, like, the US the US
has had fascism.
Right? Like, in fact, the lifeof black people under Jim Crow
in the South was, like, farworse in terms of curtailing of

(44:22):
liberties and rights thananything that the majority of
the Italian population sufferedunder fascism. Right?

Emily Williams (44:27):
Mhmm.

Alberto Toscano (44:28):
And so I think the fact that that comp you
know, the the the kind of thecompromise, right, of the 18
seventies and 8 that allowedracial domination to continue in
the South in order to allowcapital accumulation to continue
untrammeled in the wholecountry, I think that is such a
deep structure that the abilitythat the United States has to

(44:51):
create these pockets, butsometimes these pockets are very
large states, and these statesare growing in number, of
extreme unfreedom while stillappearing to the outside world,
right, as this, you know, beaconof cultural and other, and other
liberties is pretty staggering.Right? And I think because that
was never broken, you know, thatkind of states' rights history

(45:14):
of of racism and domination wasnever broken. It's always
remained. You can see it.
Like, it's always remained akind of legal and constitutional
possibility. And in many ways,so much of what has been
advanced by the far right,including by Heritage Foundation
and other similar outfits, hasreally just been exploiting

(45:36):
those legal potentials. Right?We're not talking about, like,
illegitimately taking overpower, tanks in the streets, or
a coup d'etat. Right?
You know, it's law fair. It's bythe book. Right? And and those
possibilities are available inthe United States in a way that
they wouldn't be, let's say, incountries that have very
different constitutionalarrangements, even like France

(45:58):
or Italy, etcetera. Right?
Mhmm. And I think that is reallysignificant to keep in mind. And
that's where, you know, the roleof the judiciary, the supreme
court, the state legislatures,etcetera, in really advancing
and already making real so muchof project 25 in the everyday
life of people in the UnitedStates. I think that's very

(46:21):
frightening and to only thinkof, like, even if Trump loses in
November and whatever happens,vis a vis that, it's not like
any of that's gone away. Right?

Emily Williams (46:42):
I'm Emily Williams. Welcome back to Beyond
Voting. Our guest today iscritical theorist and author of
late fascism, race, capitalism,and the politics of crisis,
Alberto Toscano. Before thebreak, Alberto was explaining
how lawfare essentially wagingpolitical war against an
ideological opponent usinglegislation and law enforcement

(47:06):
has historically been aneffective tool in the spread of
fascism. I wanted to hear moreabout how our political parties
use law fair today and how antifascist activists are fighting
back.

(47:51):
You know, the creep of fascismisn't just in the domain of
right or Republicans. Right? Imean, we can see the way that
pro Palestinian responses wereresponded to by Biden and
Democratic mayors.

Alberto Toscano (48:06):
Oh, yeah. Eric Adams, governor Hochul in in New
York.

Emily Williams (48:10):
Exactly. Exactly.

Alberto Toscano (48:12):
Mass mandates.

Emily Williams (48:13):
Exactly. Exactly. And even responses to
cop city in Atlanta. So what doyou say to people who look at
democratic leaders' responses topro Palestinian campus protests,
or they hear our democraticpresident describe himself as a
Zionist, and then they come awaywith this belief that there

(48:34):
actually is no differencebetween our political parties.

Alberto Toscano (48:38):
Well, that many ways, that's true, you know, or
at least for large chunks of theDemocratic Party establishment.
Half the representatives didn'tturn up for that bizarre North
Korea style adulation ofBenjamin Netanyahu in congress
with the 58 standing ovation,etcetera. But half did. Right?

(48:59):
And that half, I think, is, youknow, largely indistinguishable
on those issues, perhaps not onothers.
Right? I think that the way inwhich the protest and in which
the whole question of theresistance to the genocide in
Palestine has been dealt withhas objectively served as this

(49:19):
point of convergence, right,between these supposedly
polarized groups. We spent yearsnow where the idea is that
America is this, you know, fullypolarized political system where
Democrats will have nothing todo with the Republicans or
Republicans will have nothing todo with the Democrats. But, you
know, when it comes to the kindof APAC territory of, you know,

(49:40):
people who are being, you know,funded by on both camps, there's
a massive amount of convergence.Right?
And in many ways, not just awillingness, but a kind of
relish, right, in employingextreme and, like, just
shockingly disproportionateforms of repression against free
speech and assembly. Right? Andthe realization that it can't be

(50:02):
treated as a kind of secondaryissue has, I think, in many
ways, redrawn for many, atleast, the political map. I
mean, Biden tried to pass aobscenely draconian border bill,
which was, like, far moredraconian than what some
previous Republican presidentsort of passed. And the only

(50:23):
reason he didn't is because theRepublicans are trying to play
for a greater advantage anddidn't want to give him
something to campaign about.
Right? So when centrist Democratpoliticians tell you, you know,
this country is at risk offascism and yet are happy to
give more powers to ICE, givemore missiles to Netanyahu, put

(50:44):
more poor black and brown peoplein jail, then you start
wondering exactly howrestrictive is their conception.
You know, like, what exactlydoes it mean for them to say
democracy is under threat? And Idid I really did think the
Netanyahu speech in Congress wasreally it was a momentous and
shocking, not surprising, butkind of shocking performance.

(51:07):
Right?
Because it's not only, a, thathe's been welcomed incidentally
invited by Democrats as well asRepublicans. Right? Because that
invitation was signed by bothHakeem Jeffries and Chuck
Schumer as well as Mike Johnson,I believe. But that he was in
the middle of what all seriousinternational bodies have
decreed to be a genocide inprogress. He's been welcomed and

(51:31):
affected in a really hyperbolicway.
Right? I mean, standing withAsia is like you might have seen
it like a 19 fifties Sovietparty congress, but not in many
other places. And where hehimself, of course, got one of
his biggest applauses fordefaming student and other
protesters. Right? Incidentally,while 2 thirds of Americans are

(51:52):
fairly, you know, firmlyobjecting to the continued US,
support of genocide in Gaza.
Right? And I think in thatcontext, again, it forces us to
qualify this idea of a kind ofexceptional or or bearant or
pathological, fascism againstwhich we would then defend

(52:13):
liberal democracy. Right? So Ithink things are, to me at
least, appear much messier thanthat.

Emily Williams (52:19):
So if it's true that, at least on the issue of
Israel and Palestine, that theRepublicans and Democrats are
effectively the same. What do weas voters and activists do about
that electorally? I mean, whatdoes that mean for our options?

Alberto Toscano (52:36):
Yeah. Again, as a non US citizen, I don't know
to what extent I should bemaking, directly electoral
comments. I think, you know,these things are very contextual
and tactical and also involve arealistic calculus of, you know,
where does one put one'spressure and to what end. I

(52:57):
think what's most importantprobably is generating the most
pressure at scale possible.Right?
So whether it's through unionsor through mass demonstrations.
I I think making it very clearthat there isn't some sort of
lesser evil progressive votethat can just be taken for

(53:18):
granted. You know, the way inwhich the US political system is
organized, it always sort ofsubalternizes any progressive
left into this position ofeither sitting out from
electoral contests or holdingits nose and voting for the
center even though it doesn'treally have much say in what

(53:39):
follows. Right? That's also theparticularly grim situation now,
is that you're not faced on theother side by just some kind of
generic you know, like, if notthat one should be nostalgic
about any of this, but, youknow, if they were running,
let's say, against Jeb Bush.
Right? Then I think vast amountsof people would just sit it out.

(54:00):
And I think, you know, thatthat's the issue. It's a
different situation, but it'snot underestimating the
importance, right, of of federalpolitics and presidential
politics and appointments to thesupreme court. The threat always
seems to be the election of thisgrotesque wannabe despot, but
not everything else that'shappening already.
That has already moved, shiftedthe ground under you into a

(54:21):
position where you're muchweaker. Right? So I think, in
many ways, the real antifascistactivism hasn't been, you know,
people trying to get more peopleto vote against Trump or
whatever. It has been peopleengaging in resistance against
anti migrant politics, has beenabolitionists working on
questions of prison andincarceration, has been real

(54:43):
progressive labor and unionorganizing. It's that that
creates an actual resistance.
And then if on the basis ofthat, you can also try to make
sure that the most toxic figuresaround don't get elected to
enact these reactionary and alsoreactionary and ruling class
projects, then that's great. ButI think disjoining the 2 and

(55:05):
that's what the sort of fauxanti fascism that comes with a
certain liberal mentality does.Right? That everything is
ultimately fine. We just need tomake sure every 4 years not to
elect a fascist.
Right? And I think that such anultimately damaging perspective
because it doesn't try toreflect on or counter why those

(55:26):
politics might be attractive tocertain people.

Emily Williams (55:30):
Right. Including the liberal democrats.

Alberto Toscano (55:32):
Including the liberal democrats. Right?

Emily Williams (55:35):
I wanna highlight some things that you
said. If a Democrat was runningagainst Jeb Bush, maybe people
could just sit out, and itwouldn't be as dire of a
situation as we could be facingin this election. And then you
also said that people need tothink about, like, what are the
conditions then that we would beliving under but also organizing

(55:56):
under. Right? And that we can'tjust, every 4 years, find
ourselves upon and think, okay.
Well, with my one vote, I'mgonna make the difference here.

Alberto Toscano (56:07):
Yeah.

Emily Williams (56:07):
We have to organize always. Right? We
actually cannot stop organizing.

Alberto Toscano (56:12):
Yeah. Also because of this weird situation
in the United States wherepeople are already told before
the election happens that in,like, 41 states, it basically
doesn't matter where you votebecause it's kind of roughly
already going in one direction.

Emily Williams (56:24):
Right. With the electoral college. Right.
Exactly. Exactly.
But we have to be organizing atthe local level, and we have to
be organizing at the state levelbecause that's so often where
some of these more draconianpolicies get their momentum.
We're gonna move into, like,what can we do today? And then
hopefully another time, I canask you about Trump's

(56:45):
relationship with Putin and KimJong Un and, like, what that
means for us because I wannatalk about that. But for the
sake of this episode, tell us,what does being anti fascist
look like, and what are theactual ways to resist fascism
today?

Alberto Toscano (57:01):
It's a very, it's a very tall order to answer
that question. I think one wayof approaching is to think that
maybe you're not necessarilygoing to find antifascist
politics by looking at politicsthat calls itself antifascist.
My conviction, at least as faras, United States goes, is that

(57:25):
abolitionist politics broadlyconstrued, focusing on the
prison industrial complex,focusing on policing, focusing
on the extremely repressiveracialized class and gendered
aspects of that juridical andrepressive apparatus and also

(57:46):
forms of abolitionist politicsthat are oriented to countering
the persecution of migrants inthe United States and all of
those activities, both at a verylocal, often largely invisible
level or at kind of higherscales, have to be thought of as

(58:07):
a kind of the grassroots or theor or the fundamental
components, right, of anantifascist politics. And and
why is that? I think because aswe see very clearly, right, in
the discourse that was comingout, for instance, of the
Republican National Convention,much of what contemporary
fascistic politics involves isan effort to intensify, to

(58:32):
celebrate, and really topoliticize the forms of social
and legal repression thatalready exist.
Right? So to give more powers,more impunity, and to generate
more violence by the stateagainst vulnerable or
stigmatized or marginalizedpeople, to intervene in and

(58:56):
interfere with the reproductivelives of, women and others.
Everything that's beingpresented actually by the
contemporary far right canprincipally be seen, right, as
this kind of intensification andpoliticization of the repressive
state apparatus, right, towardsthis project of nationalist

(59:18):
rebirth. And that's why I thinkto center in our own critiques,
but also in our own activism,what they themselves have
centered in their own program.Right?
But I do think that that's whereone has to look at those
infrastructures of activism andalso of intellectual and
political mobilization as astarting point. Right? Instead

(59:40):
of doing it the other wayaround, which is, like, here's
Trump and his, you know, gang ofreactionaries. Like, how do we
stop them? And then workbackwards from there.

Emily Williams (59:52):
Can you say more about that? Like, what does
building and creating thatpolitic in those institutions,
what does that do for us by notsimply reacting to the policies
of the far right, but reallybeing proactive in preventing
them from implementing fascisticpolicies? What does that do for

(01:00:14):
us?

Alberto Toscano (01:00:15):
There was this nice phrase by the German
philosopher, Walter Benjamin,where he talked about making
something useless for fascism.Right? That that is also, like,
an antifascist politics. I thinkthe idea of a purely responsive
or reactive antifascism that isabout stopping something without
building anything else is deeplylimiting and also forces

(01:00:38):
progressive and social justiceand and left groups into simply
being a kind of, you know, watercarrier for liberalism. Because
the liberal perspective infascism is ultimately like,
well, you know, our rule of lawis fine.
Our capitalist system can justbe tweaked here and there. And
ultimately, we just need to makesure these people don't get the

(01:01:01):
levers of power. Right? But thelevers are fine, you know, and
the power is okay. And then ifthat's how things are framed,
then it's just about mobilizingpeople to the ballot box every 2
or 4 years in the crisis.
Right? So I thought oneinteresting thing also to learn
from is the most recent Frenchelection, right, where Marine Le

(01:01:22):
Pen's, Ursula Le Mans Nationale,the the far right nationalist
party, was seen as as likely towin a parliamentary majority and
therefore to be able to demandto form a government or to have
the prime ministership. Multipleparties on the left from very,
very moderate left to, you know,like a serious, principled left

(01:01:43):
formed this kind of popularfront. But they did so on a
program that was, like, agenuinely socially progressive
program. Right?
That wasn't just about vote forus so you don't have this kind
of nationalist and racist partyin power. It was a very, solid
position around Palestine. Itwas lowering the pension age. It

(01:02:05):
was increasing social rights,etcetera. Right?
So there was a substance. Therewas a vision of a different way
of collectively organizingsocial life that would then
empower people to reject therule of the far right rather
than simply, you know, kind ofcrying wolf and then saying, oh,
you know, we all have to justmake sure we go to the polls,

(01:02:26):
and then, you know, the nextday, we can just let whoever
governs, governs. Right? Andtherefore, exacerbating the
conditions for far rightpolitics next time around.

Emily Williams (01:02:34):
And I think that this is such an important point,
especially for social justiceactivists, because having that
vision of a socially just worldbecomes incredibly important
because that's actually thething that we can all rally
around. It's so important to dothe work to become an anti
racist society, to root outtransphobia, to address sexism.

(01:02:56):
Right? Because if we don'taddress those things, then they
can just be exacerbated by afascist movement. Right?
Because a large part of why somany on the far right are
attacking DEI, are attackingwomen's rights, are attacking
the right for gender affirmingcare because we've become
empowered in these ways. Right?We've had really strong

(01:03:17):
movements to get us to advanceour rights in these areas, But
we need that expansive visionfor social justice in our
society to move in thatdirection and to get the
collective power to supportthose visions. So now you
sometimes hear leftists onlineengaging in, like, a type of
doomerism.

Alberto Toscano (01:03:38):
Mhmm.

Emily Williams (01:03:38):
K? This notion that the empire is crumbling.
Just let it crumble. Right? Andwe'll start over from there.
Or you'll see people onlinesaying that if Trump wins, he'll
just leave the country and gosomewhere else. What do you make
of those arguments? And can youtalk about the idea that it's
possible to flee the reach of anempire?

Alberto Toscano (01:03:59):
Yeah. I think the catastrophism, which is
weirdly optimistic about itspessimism, has, infamously not a
very happy history on the left.I think part of the issue, in a
way, also why that imaginary isis problematic, is because I
think we have almost a kind oftidy and maybe cinematic way of

(01:04:19):
of thinking about socialcatastrophe. We're, I think, not
ready to accept that things canget a lot worse without
necessarily there being sometidy, clean break that puts us
in a different situation. Right?
Like, that that there will be,like, the day in which American

(01:04:41):
fascism has begun. Right? Ofcourse, the country already had
4 years of Trump, notinsignificant to recall. And
even if, obviously, there seemsto be something much more
concerted about project 2025,etcetera, there are still all
sorts of inbuilt inertias andcomplexities to the place, which
means that things could getterrible, but also terrible

(01:05:02):
within the bounds of what peoplecertain people find ways to cope
with. Other people will sufferterrible violence, which other
people will ignore, and so onand so forth.
And that's why affixing, again,the question of fascism just to
Trump and to the presidency is areal problem. Right? Because you
can also have a situation inwhich, again, Trump loses, but

(01:05:23):
those mechanisms that havealready been happening at the
state level, etcetera, get worseand worse and worse. And so,
yeah, you have Kamala Harris aspresident, but, ultimately,
states that are repressive,racial, patriarchal realities
that make life impossible forpeople. You can have a situation
where Trump could becomepresident.

(01:05:43):
Instead of deporting 20,000,000people, he might deport 10. And,
unfortunately, people are ableto live with really staggering
levels of social injustice andhorror. So I think it that one
of the big dangers is to thinkagain in this binary kind of
norm. That's why I still thinkthat there's something very

(01:06:05):
important about the optic thatAngela Davis proposed in the 19
seventies when, you know, shewas talking about what she
called incipient fascism, andshe was also making it very
clear as many black radical andmigrant and people of color
activists have put forward that,you know, fascism is something
that is differentiallyexperienced, that people in

(01:06:27):
different gendered and class andracialized and and kind of
situations of documentationexperience both the violence of
the state, but also the violenceof parastate actors, militias,
gangs, etcetera, in in reallydissimilar ways. Right?
And so we already live acrossthe world, right, in societies
where areas of seeming affluenceand liberty and ease sit side by

(01:06:53):
side of overlapping with areasof remarkable domination and
social violence and so on.Again, that's why I I think
there's something so powerfulabout the abolitionist lens and
thinking through anti fascism.You know, what does it mean to
think, oh, you know, our societyis living under this fascist
threat if we think about, asDavis had already put in the

(01:07:14):
seventies, the fact that largesways of citizens or inhabitants
of this space already live underforms of racial terror and
domination. Right? And thatdomination is not homogeneous,
is not generalized.
In fact, it reproduces itselfbecause it's partial and
differential and so on, but it'sthere. Right? And we have to
start from there to think abouthow we resist and fight against

(01:07:37):
a further worsening of thatsituation rather than to present
the situation we're in as one ofkind of Pacific liberal
democracy, right, that is beingthreatened from outside, right,
from some from some exceptionalspace by these aberrant forces.
No. The forces are alreadythere.
They're already running. Right?Like, prisons are already, like,

(01:07:59):
in the police. You know? Andthat's why it's possible.
Right? It's possible becauseit's already here. And there are
thresholds that matter. Right?And the presidency is one of
them.
And then all sorts of otherthresholds that are laws that
are passed or not passed. Youknow, all of those are different
points of a struggle andconflict for social justice
campaigns and so on. But I thinkwe really need to get away from

(01:08:23):
that sense of the exceptionaltransformation. Right?

Emily Williams (01:08:27):
Yeah. And thank you for that. Because one of the
things that I've also seen goingaround social media that I've
heard from people who live incountries where there is extreme
social violence and there is afascist or an authoritarian or a
dictator in power is that youthink that you know when it will
be time to leave or time to goand when you realize that it is

(01:08:48):
always too late. Right? That'sone thing that I have heard
repeatedly, people who have leftLithuania, who have left
Zimbabwe, who have leftEthiopia.
And then I think also to yourpoint, the level of social
violence, I think, is somethingthat most Americans are not
prepared for, and they're alsonot prepared to see the kind of

(01:09:08):
perhaps willful ignorance or, asyou said, just the ability for
people to live with extremesocial injustice.

Alberto Toscano (01:09:16):
Mhmm.

Emily Williams (01:09:16):
And I think that we've seen that play out over
the last 5 to 10 years. We'vebeen living with an extreme
level of social injustice. Imean, that's one thing that's, I
think, part of the fabric ofsociety in this country.

Alberto Toscano (01:09:28):
I think how we lived through, to put it
problematic ways, the pandemic.Right? Yeah. In terms of what
can be tolerated, right, oraccepted.

Emily Williams (01:09:38):
Exactly. Exactly. So now you've mentioned
Angela Davis multiple times,like W. E. B.
Du Bois, which I so appreciateand I know our listeners love.
What can past movements,particularly black radical
traditions, teach us about howto confront today's threat? If
black movements havehistorically had something to

(01:09:59):
teach us, how do we supportblack movements today?

Alberto Toscano (01:10:03):
So you mentioned my, deep indebtedness
to critiques of fascism emergingfrom black radical and
liberation thinkers like Du Boisand Angela Davis, George
Jackson, and and others. And oneof the things that is
distinctive about theirperspectives, at least to my
mind, was that in many ways,they didn't treat that electoral

(01:10:27):
dimension as primary. It's notthat they disregarded it.
Indeed, Angela Davis ran fornational office for the
Communist Party of the UnitedStates. But they wanted to take
a step back and reallyunderstand why the societal and
material preconditions, thiskind of long gestation, right,

(01:10:49):
of fascism within societyitself.
One of the dimensions of blackradicalism that I think is
really underscored in CedricRobinson's work, for instance,
is what does it mean to think ofthe resistance to fascism not
simply as a negation, right, notsimply as the anti, not simply

(01:11:12):
as the we're not x. Right? Andone of the dimensions of
Robinson's idea of a blackradical tradition as such in in
black Marxism and other textswas precisely to focus on the
notion of there being apolitical culture, perspective,
forms of life that builtthemselves autonomously and, in

(01:11:34):
a sense, created an alternativeto or a point from which to
struggle against these systemsof racial and capitalist
domination. Right? So I thinkone of the things that
perspective suggests, or joinsus to kind of think about and
learn is, you know, what does itmean to make movements that are

(01:11:55):
not just the inverted mirrorimage or not just simply built
to fight this awful conjuries offorces.
Right? But that also have theirown desires and their own worlds
and lives that they want to makeand foster and shelter and
reproduce and so on and soforth. I mean, I think both
Angela Davis and even GeorgeJackson say this at some point

(01:12:16):
or other. But, you know, if youthink in the early seventies of
the Black Panther so calledsurvival programs, right, the
survival pending revolution, asa word, the breakfast programs,
sickle cell anemia screening,and so on and so forth. That was
as much as or more so a kind ofpolitics of resisting the
fascism, the racial fascism theyrecognize within the US policy

(01:12:40):
as following the police onpatrol, as knowing the law books
so that you could counter themon that footing.
And so in some sense, anantifascist politics is also
very much about centering verydifferent forms of collectivity
and social production. And Ithink that the attention of a
black radical tradition in theUnited States for very specific

(01:13:03):
historical reasons having to dowith a history of slavery and
reconstruction and Jim Crow andso on is also there's been a
long tradition also of variousforms of of autonomy, right, of
of trying to in this hostileenvironment in response to these
forms of racial terror also tothink of, you know, what are

(01:13:23):
forms of community and autonomyand self, you know, social
reproduction that that don'trequire necessarily the state.
And I think that's a that's areally important set of
resources and histories andhabits to turn to when often
antifascism is presented to ussimply as a punctual political

(01:13:46):
polemical response to what theright is doing, right, without
necessarily focusing on whatkind of world are we trying to
make. Those social justiceinitiatives that are grounded on
conceptions of collectiveautonomy and control over all
sorts of aspects of socialreproduction and really direct

(01:14:07):
forms of grassroots democracy,etcetera, that I think need to
be very much fostered now.

Emily Williams (01:14:14):
Yeah. What is the world that we're building,
and how are we caring for eachother and making this society
more livable for more people aspart of the resistance? Sure.
The DEI is working, but moreimportantly, our movements for
justice have been working,right, for racial justice, for
gender justice. These things arewhat we need to do more of if we

(01:14:38):
actually are going to build asociety that is resistant to
fascism.
I know so many of the youngactivists in our community at
the Arcis Center For SocialJustice Leadership, they look to
Angela Davis, they look to theBlack Panther Party, and what I
hear you saying is do more ofthat and build it for today.
Right?

Alberto Toscano (01:14:58):
It's a good note to end off. Do more of
that.

Emily Williams (01:15:01):
Alberto Toscano, thank you so much. This has been
a wonderful conversation and amuch needed conversation.

Alberto Toscano (01:15:08):
It's been a pleasure, Emily.

Emily Williams (01:15:09):
Thank you. I have to say, talking with
Alberto was jarring. Going intoour interview, I expected to
hear him talk about the threatof growing fascism. And I knew
that draconian laws limiting therights to public assembly,

(01:15:29):
bodily autonomy, and free speechwere being weaponized by
politicians across the country,but I still went in expecting to
hear mostly about what greaterthreats could potentially come
if fascism were to manifest inthis country like it has in
others. But like many others outthere, I hadn't fully confronted

(01:15:51):
or accepted as reality that manyof the signs of fascism are
already here, and they have beenfor a very long time.
As Alberto said, black radicalthinkers from Angela Davis to Du
Bois have pointed at the racialfascism that has dominated the
majority of American history.The clearest example being the

(01:16:12):
post reconstruction black codesand their eventual evolution
into Jim Crow. That is Americanfascism. And whether or not an
obvious fascist is elected intooffice, that doesn't stop
repressive political projectsfrom being implemented.
Furthermore, we have torecognize that there are

(01:16:34):
political infrastructures inplace at every level, including
state and local, that make usdeeply vulnerable to bad actors
across the political spectrum,which ultimately leaves one
feeling that American democracyis a lot more fragile than we
think.
We think that we'll know whenit's time to fully resist

(01:16:54):
fascism, but the truth of thematter is that we won't. It
sneaks up on you. And while wewait, the quiet injustices
continue to grow. 1st, it'sscapegoating the migrants. Then
it's vilifying protesters.
Then taking away reproductiverights. The existing fissures in
our systems continue to beexploited, and people feel more

(01:17:18):
isolated and resigned to thestatus quo. So maybe you're
saying to yourself, well, Emily,if things are already as dark
and grim as you say, and fascismis already here, then what does
it even matter if I vote? Thatkind of nihilistic thinking
doesn't serve us. Acknowledgingour reality shouldn't defeat us.

(01:17:38):
It should activate us. Voting isa starting point, and it's
important to weigh the issues,the candidates, and the courts
when making the decision whetherto vote or not. We'll talk more
about the vital role the courtsplay in defending democracy next
episode. But it's also our dutyto redouble our efforts to root

(01:17:58):
out fascism in our society inbetween elections. American
civil rights activists created amovement that inspired social
justice action from Cape Town toBelfast.
And while equal access to thevoting booth was a huge aspect
of that movement, it was neveronly about securing the right to

(01:18:19):
vote and then stopping therethinking that the work was done.
And that's why cultivating thepolitical imaginary that Alberto
talked about is so crucial. Thecivil rights movement wasn't
just about fighting back againstthe racial terror and injustice
people were living under. Itimagined a new way of life for
Black Americans that was muchmore expansive, joyful and truly

(01:18:42):
empowered than it had ever beenbefore. But they didn't just
stop at imagining it.
They marched. They organized.They ran for office. They built
voter education and survivalprograms to care for their
communities. That improved thelives of not just Black
Americans, but all Americans.

(01:19:03):
And that's a big part of what'smissing from our politics today.
Now our politics feel selfsegregated whether by identity
or by issue and self righteouslyso. But we need to treat all
marginalized people's fights asour own with a unifying movement
centered around collective carefor our fellow human beings

(01:19:23):
regardless of identity or issue.And we need a candidate fully
invested in fighting for thatvision. That can be our reality.
There is no perfect moment inthe future where the pieces have
all fallen into place and thepath is suddenly visible. We
have to make the road bywalking. Now is the time to

(01:19:44):
activate that vision, mobilizeand work together to create the
world we all deserve. So tellus, what ideas and principles
make up your politicalimaginary? Do you see any
opportunities for resistance inyour day to day life?
Tell us on IG at arcuscenter ordrop it in your 5 star review of

(01:20:06):
the show. Many thanks again toAlberto Toscano for leading us
through such an important andtimely conversation. If you
liked today's show, let us know.Share the episode with your
friends and family, and pleasevisit us at arcuscenter.kzoo.edu

(01:20:27):
Thanks again for joining us onBeyond Voting.
See you next time. Beyond Votingis hosted by me, Emily Williams.
Keisha TK Dutas is our executiveproducer. Kristen Bennett is our
producer. And this episode waswritten by Kristen Bennett and

(01:20:49):
me.
Our sound designer and engineeris Manny Faces. Marketing is
courtesy of Faybeon Mickens, andour music is provided by Motion
Array. Special thanks to my teamat the Arcus Center For Social
Justice Leadership, Quentin,Crimson, Tamara, Winter, and
Kierra. Beyond voting is aproduction of Philo's Future

(01:21:12):
Media.