Give this book to all your friends and hope that every teacher in America assigns it to their students." His interweaving of critique and hope collapses the false binary of either despair or denial occupying much of the debate about fascist politics. The book is an absolute necessary treasure for anyone concerned about the threats now facing the ideal and promise of American democracy. Street is a straight shooter and displays a courageousness and brilliance in the book that should be a model for every public intellectual in America, and a resource for every member of the public when it comes to holding truth to power. His analysis of fascism in its post-Trump form and the Trump base is the best I have read. His writing is clear and lyrical throughout the book. Street puts to rest the endless arguments claiming Trump is not a fascist and does so by drawing upon the resources of history, political theory, sociology, and the best type of investigative analysis. His newest book, This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America is a fresh, critical, insightful and much needed analysis of the legacy of the Trump presidency and how Trumpism has morphed into an updated form of fascism. "Paul Street is one of the best social critics in the United States. This argument is developed across seven chapters that recount Trump’s assault on the 2020 election, specifically define the meaning of fascism as it is used in this book, demonstrate the neofascist nature of the Trump presidency, engage intellectual class Trumpism-fascism-denial, analyze the Trump base, root Trumpism in a longstanding and indeed founding American white nationalism, examine why Trump rose to power when he did, and suggest paths for fascism-proofing the USA. Defeating the menace will require political and societal restructuring far beyond what is imagined by Democrats. While Trump’s election defeat is a respite, the nation is far from out of the neofascist woods. Fascism here connotes not generically "bad" politics or a consolidated political-economic regime (Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany) but a set of political, movement, and ideological traits understood within the context of the neoliberal-capitalist era. This book examines the Trump phenomenon and presidency as fascist.
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