Applications for this course are now closed. But please consider applying for the following DSA Academy course: "Making Sense of U.S. Empire" taught by Nikhil Pal Singh and Steven Hahn.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Sept. 6, 2024, 11.59pm

Course title: Fascism in Its Time
Instructors: Victoria de Grazia, Mary Nolan
Dates: Mondays, 7–9pm • Sept. 23, Oct. 7, Oct. 21, Nov. 4, 2024
Location: Sixth Street Community Center, 638 E. 6th St., NYC 10009
(Course is in-person only)

Course description:

This course explores the history of fascism in its time, by which we mean the thirty-year crisis of the early twentieth century global capitalist order.

The four classes are organized with an eye to understanding the context in which fascism arose, originally as a European phenomenon, and to consider how, by the mid-1930s, in the wake of the Great Depression, it exploited the failings of the post–World War I Versailles system to establish a counter-system with global extensions called “The New European Order.” At the same time as we pose new questions about the fascist past from the perspective of our times, we want to reflect on whether the historical term “fascism” offers a useful category of analysis for the present day.

In lectures, readings, and discussion, we will thus explore topics that link together the past and the present. For example, we want to reflect broadly on the susceptibility of mass democracies to authoritarian appeals in the face of rising nationalism, real and perceived inequalities, and social and cultural panics playing off longstanding ideological bugaboos, including racism, anti-Judaism, gender “disorders,” and socialism. We want to explore how total war, political revolution, and communication revolutions unhinge public opinion and traditional political party alignments, and how they may engender new styles of leadership, party formations, and opportunistic political agendas to grab political initiative from constitutional parties. We want to consider the more radically terroristic dynamic they inject into foreign policy, empire building, and colonial undertakings, and how, more broadly, these movements undercut the rule of law nationally and internationally. Not least, we want to consider the difficulties of organizing resistance to fascism.

Each class will be broken down into three or so units, each consisting of a 20- to 25-minute presentation, followed by a comment from one or another of the instructors, to open class discussion.

The course will consist of four sessions:

1. Origins
2. The First Fascist Seizure of Power: Why Italy?
3. The Nazi Seizure of Power: Why Germany?
4. Anti-Fascism: From the Defeat of the Popular Fronts (1938-1939) to the Victory at Stalingrad (1943), the Allied War Against Nazi-Fascism, the Resistance, Anti-Colonial Movements, and the Breakdown of the Allied Coalition (1944-1946)

Professor Bios:

Victoria de Grazia is professor emerita of History at Columbia University and the author of various books exploring relations between the coercive and the persuasive dimensions of power under liberal and authoritarian systems of rule. Her books on fascist rule, mass consumer societies, and American empire include The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality (2020) Soft Power Internationalism, 1990-2020, with B. Baykurt (2021), Irresistible Empire, America’s Advance through 20th Century Europe (2005), Dizionario del fascismo (2002-2003), with S. Luzzatto), How Fascism Ruled Women, 1920-1945 (1992). She has lectured widely in Europe and Asia, taught at the European University Institute in Florence, and was a founding member of the Radical History Review collective.

Mary (Molly) Nolan is Professor of History emerita at New York University, who specializes in 20th century German, transatlantic, and gender history. She is the author of The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890-2010; Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany; and Social Democracy and Society: Working-class Radicalism in Düsseldorf, 1890-1920. She co-edited Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century; The University against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace, and The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties. She is on the steering committee of Historians for Peace and Democracy and works with Brooklyn For Peace.

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About the NYC DSA Academy for Socialist Education:

Education, broadly defined, is and always has been a vital function of revolutionary socialist movements. The NYC DSA Academy aims to enhance the ongoing political education efforts of the New York chapter of DSA. Designed to connect the history and theory of socialist struggles with the work of today’s activists, the Academy aims to offer a rigorous but accessible curriculum for working adults to develop their understanding and strategy.