Skip to main content
Morning Star Conference
What is fascism, kids?
JOHN GREEN debates the potential of a book that explores fascism in US history and its contemporary impact to reach the audience it deserves
Illustrations Sue Coe

The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism
by Sue Coe and Stephen Eisenman
OR Books, £17.99

 

IT may seem somewhat contradictory to admire a book and be critical at the same time.

This book is undoubtedly praiseworthy, simply on the basis of its aim in exposing creeping fascism in the US and for the powerful series of linocuts and drawings by Sue Coe that visualise the danger.

In his introduction Profesor Stephan Eisenman provides an excellent and succinct history of fascism and also provides a running commentary on Sue Coe’s art and the role of a political artist today. It is an ideal handbook for teachers and students seeking to discuss fascism.

I wonder, though, whether those who would really profit from such a book will actually encounter it? This is a key problem that faces left-wing cultural workers: how can we effectively promote our ideas in the face of the mainstream, hegemonic steamroller of ruling-class culture and ideology?

Artist Sue Coe is an animal rights activist and anti-fascist. She has depicted the struggles of women, children, queers, animals, refugees, and political dissidents. Her art has also exposed the horrors of factory farms, zoos, prisons, and refugee camps.

Her prints, drawings and paintings are found in many major art museums, and her illustrations have been published in The New York Times, The Nation and elsewhere. The New York Times itself is quoted in praise of this “Prescient... searing social-political art.”

Her co-author Stephen F Eisenman is professor emeritus of art history, as well as an art critic and columnist for Counterpunch and co-founder of the environmental justice organisation, Anthropocene Alliance.

Their book is certainly a powerful and impactful interweaving of punchy art and precise words that together lay bare the authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny that characterises much of the political landscape of the US today. And its message applies everywhere, not just to the US.

Designed especially to inform and activate younger readers, the book pays particular attention to the threats facing the most basic tenets of US democracy, exemplified by the attempted stealing of elections, violence on the streets, and the evasion of legal consequences by the most powerful in the land.

Beyond the crimes of Trump and his cohort, The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide explores the threads of fascism in US history and reveals their insidious influence on today’s foreign policy, especially in terms of support for genocide in Gaza, and the brutal treatment of asylum-seekers along the US-Mexican border.

Sue Coe’s powerful black and white images are reminiscent of Frans Masereel’s poltical woodcuts for his series of “wordless novels,” and draw inspiration from artists like Kathe Kollwitz and John Heartfield.

I feel, though, that sardined together as in this book, their individual significance and impact gets lost.

Eisenman, in his clarifying and lucid texts, also addresses the issue of how artists of the left can achieve political relevance. “Effective political art is hard to make,” he writes. “It requires... historical insight as well as a finely honed craft. And even with these, there are significant pitfalls: Firstly, bathos – the inadequacy of an artwork in the face of momentous events.

Second — an issue faced by all political artists — the use of melodrama, the exaggerated emotional effect that results on focusing on grief, pain and suffering. A similar risk is sentimentality, the overemphasis of feeling at the expense of understanding.

“And, third, ‘preaching to the choir’ — a central problem, in my view. How can we avoid preaching only to the converted? And fourthly, the hazard of expiration. Political artists are by their very nature dealing with contemporary and topical issues, which by their very nature become rapidly outdated.”

All vital problems faced by political artists.

Nevertheless, this is a useful aid in explaining fascism to a younger generation.

 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
fall
Book Review / 30 May 2025
30 May 2025

JOHN GREEN wades through a pessimistic prophesy that does not consider the need for radical change in political and social structures

CONTESTED HISTORY: The Neue Wache (“the New Watchhouse”) was rebuilt by the GDR in 1957 and reopened in 1960 as a Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism — then, in 1993, it was rededicated to the ‘victims of war and tyranny’
Features / 26 May 2025
26 May 2025

JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia

221
Film of the week / 1 May 2025
1 May 2025

JOHN GREEN recommends a German comedy that celebrates the old GDR values of solidarity, community and a society not dominated by consumerism

Mural depicting the symbol of the revolution - a soldier with a carnation in the barrel of his gun; People celebrating on top of a tank in Lisbon during the Carnation Revolution of April 25 1974 / Pics: IsmailKupeli/CC; Public domain
Books / 24 April 2025
24 April 2025

JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal

Similar stories
Anselm Kiefer, Wer jetzt kein Haus hat (Whoever has no House
Exhibition Review / 14 February 2025
14 February 2025
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE: Regina Jose Galindo, “¿Quien puede bo
Book Review / 10 December 2024
10 December 2024
GAVIN O’TOOLE explores the resistance expressed by central American artists to their own erasure by US imperialist policies 
DISTINGUISHED: Portrait of Hans Hess c1962 (photographer unk
Features / 23 November 2024
23 November 2024
PAUL MACGEE highlights a new series of books that brings together a treasure trove of writings by a Jewish Marxist art historian who offers readers a refreshingly grounded theory of art
TEACHING MATERIALS: pages from Michal Rosen and Jeff Perks's
Exhibition preview / 28 June 2024
28 June 2024
JOHN GREEN applauds the clarity with which an upcoming exhibition and book make plain Britain's role in the slave trade