American Fascism and the Battle over Culture : Social Theory, Moral Life, and the Renewal of Democratic Imagination(Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

This book examines the intensification of fascist politics in contemporary America via an analysis of the fundamental shift in relationships between political fringes and institutions of power, situating the rise of contemporary fascist politics within a broader culture of pedagogy. Employing an interpretive and theoretically synthetic approach, it brings together phenomenology, critical theory, moral philosophy, social theory, cultural analysis, and educational theory to interrogate the cultural politics of moral insensitivity. Informed by Elias Canetti's seminal work Crowds and Power, the authors explore how crowds, death, and menace have become central to American political culture, offering an essayist approach to understanding fascist crowd politics through four key analytical frameworks: Education as a battleground for defining American identity, crowd manipulation and social menace, the manufacturing of social and political death, and the weaponization of "anti-woke" rhetoric. Engaging with theorists including Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, and Zygmunt Bauman, each chapter provides a standalone analysis while contributing to a comprehensive and sophisticated critique of American-style fascism's threat to pluralistic democracy. An original, theoretically rigorous, and urgently needed contribution to understanding how fascism functions as a cultural and pedagogical project, it will hold strong appeal for scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political theory, and educational studies, with interest in morality, culture, right-wing extremism, and fascism.