Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis
by Alberto Toscano
Verso, 2024
[Publication date: October 24, 2023]
How do we understand the return of fascism today?
In
a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces
of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How
should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs?
Late Fascism
turns to theories of fascism produced in the past century, testing
their capacity to illuminate our moment and challenging many of the
commonplaces that debate on this extremely charged term devolves into.
It can be tempting for any contemporary assessment of fascism to reach
for historical analogy. Fascism is defined by returns and repetitions,
but it is not best approached in terms of steps and checklists dictated
by a selective reading of Italian Fascism or National Socialism.
Rather
than treating fascism as an unrepeatable phenomenon or identifying it
with a settled configuration of European parties, regimes, and
ideologies, Toscano approaches fascism as a problem and a process, one
that is intimately linked to capitalism's demands for domination.
Drawing especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of racial
fascism, Late Fascism makes clear the limits of identifying fascism
simply with the political violence of bygone European regimes.
Developing anti-fascist theory is a vital and urgent task. From the
"Great Replacement" to campaigns against critical race theory and
"gender ideology", today's global far-right is launching lethal panics
about the threats to traditional political, sexual and racial regimes. Late Fascism
allows us to rediscover some truly inspiring anti-fascist thinkers,
rooted in their turn in largely anonymous collective practices of
worldmaking against domination, traditions of the oppressed that remain a
resource for those set on dismantling the hierarchies and segregations
that the partisans of Order and Tradition seek to revive and reimpose.
REVIEWS
"There
are no unearned claims here. Rather, one feels that Toscano has thought
through the political stakes of every single sentence in this crucial
book. Late Fascism is
painstaking in accounting for, differentiating, and connecting the many
historical contexts and iterations of fascism - from the onset of
colonial modernity, through the mid-twentieth century, to the present
day."
--Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox
"Alberto Toscano's Late Fascism
brilliantly elucidates what Adorno once called 'the meaning of working
through the past' to grasp fascism's capacious aptitude for untimely
reappearances to resolve crises, real or not, to save capitalism from
itself and restore the necessary political order such rescue operations
require. Rather than drawing upon fascism's past in his approach,
Toscano 's account persuasively lays to rest an interpretative scheme
that explains such unscheduled repetitions by appealing to analogical
comparisons of past and present as if they were the same. His own
strategy positions history and memory against the present to disturb one
another, unveiling uneven historical differences and incommensurables
removed from an everyday dominated by exchange. Toscano's lasting
achievement is the program of watchfulness he so carefully constructs to
uncover the contemporaneity of late fascism in our midst, but never too
late to recognize its ever-present morbidities."
—Harry Harootunian, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Chicago
"In
this bold book, Alberto Toscano argues that the old checklist for
identifying and understanding contemporary fascism won't work. To
apprehend its present-day manifestations, we must consult writers from
the Black radical tradition and critical ethnic studies. With his
characteristic erudition, Toscano combines innovative readings of
Western Marxism with insightful interpretations of the genealogies of
anti-racism. This is an indispensable book for a distressing time."
—Roderick A. Ferguson, Yale University
"Alberto
Toscano is one of the most significant and original political theorists
of our contemporary moment. In this work on the nature and aetiology of
late fascism, he moves us beyond the European interwar examples as
fascism's "ideal-type," and deconstructs the alleged opposition of
fascism and liberal democracy. He instead emphasizes multiple origins,
locations, and temporalities of fascisms; the imbrication of fascisms
within colonialism, slavery, capitalism and counter-revolution; and is
precise about fascisms' libidinal claims and the weaponizing of
atavistic social energies turned against racial, religious, sexual and
gendered others. Toscano engages an illuminating range of anti-fascist
thought: from Ernst Bloch, Georges Bataille, and Leo Löwenthal, to
Angela Davis and George Jackson; from Stuart Hall and Ruth Wilson
Gilmore to Jairus Banaji and Furio Jesi - with dazzling results."
—Lisa Lowe, author of The Intimacies of Four Continents
"Can
we speak of fascism before fascism? Alberto Toscano believes we can. In
his learned excavation of debates across the twentieth century, he
revives still unanswered questions about the location of the prison, the
market, and the bedroom in theories of fascism. He also reminds us to
ask what late fascism is afraid of. What is it trying to prevent? In
this way, a study of fascism becomes a roundabout recovery of repressed
and forgotten utopias-a flashlight in the dead of night."
—Quinn Slobodian, author of The Globalists
"Late Fascism
is brilliant, incisive, and right on time. We are living through a
moment when the "F" word is no longer taboo and the threat of fascism
lurks everywhere. And yet, so mired in debates over definitions,
typologies, and analogies that our understanding of fascism remains
elusive. Alberto Toscano avoids this trap by turning to anti-fascist
thinkers, whose groundings in anticolonial, antiracist, and
anticapitalist struggles remind us that liberalism is no enemy of
fascism, and fascists flower in the hot house of capitalism."
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"Toscano's
wide-ranging, erudite study is both theoretically satisfying and
politically inspiring - an essential reference for rethinking fascism
and antifascist politics today."
—Michael Hardt, author of The Subversive Seventies
"In
this book, Toscano provides us with the language and analysis necessary
to theorize our current moment, one in which the danger of fascism is
as real as ever."
—Jake Romm, Protean
"Toscano's
high-octane new book on heterodox theories of fascism ... traces the
myriad ways it has been deployed over the past 100 years, mining each of
them for parallels with the present."
—Oliver Eagleton, The New Statesman
"Concise and intellectually ambitious."
—Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
"Late Fascism is such an important book."
—Jason Read, e-Flux
"Toscano's
penetrating, theoretically grounded analysis is an essential resource
for understanding and confronting the resurgence of reactionary
ideologies."
—Dimitri Vouros, LSE Review of Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Alberto Toscano
is Professor of Critical Theory in the Department of Sociology and
Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Theory at
Goldsmiths, University of London, and Term Research Associate Professor
at the School of Communications at Simon Fraser University. He is the
author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Verso, 2010; 2017, 2nd ed.), Cartographies of the Absolute (with Jeff Kinkle, Zero Books, 2015), Una visión compleja. Hacía una estética de la economía (Meier Ramirez, 2021), La abstracción real. Filosofia, estética y capital (Palinodia, 2021), and the co-editor of the 3-volume The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (with Sara Farris, Bev Skeggs and Svenja Bromberg, SAGE, 2022), and Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography: Essays in Liberation (with Brenna Bhandar, Verso, 2022). He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory
and is series editor of The Italian List for Seagull Books. He is also
the translator of numerous books and essays by Antonio Negri, Alain
Badiou, Franco Fortini, Furio Jesi and others.
This interview took place on 30 January 2024. Toscano discusses his recent book, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism & the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023), as well as the Black Radical Tradition in America and internationally, abolition, as well as the relationship between fascism and liberalism historically as today. Toscano also offers an insightful commentary on disturbing parallels between far right culture and certain trends in "anti-woke," left-wing white nationalism in North America.
Logo Design: Alya Ansari
Intro Music: Dyad
Outro Music: Jason Moran
Alberto's book is available from Verso:
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2.
Alberto
Toscano discusses his major new book Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and
the Politics of Crisis. This free event delved into Toscano’s latest
book, highlighting the continued and necessary development of ongoing
anti-fascist thought and organization.
Toscano was in dialogue with Gastón Gordillo, Lisa Lowe, and Jordy
Rosenberg and the Q&A moderation by Am Johal. Presented by the SFU
Vancity Office of Community Engagement and the SFU School of
Communication.
In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the
forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How
should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs?
The rich archive of twentieth-century debates on fascism can steer a
path through an increasingly authoritarian present. Developing
anti-fascist theory is an urgent and vital task. From the ‘Great
Replacement’ to campaigns against critical race theory and ‘gender
ideology’, today’s global far right is launching lethal panics about the
threats to traditional political, sexual and racial hierarchies.
Drawing especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of
fascism, Toscano makes clear the limits of associating fascism primarily
with the kind of political violence experienced by past European
regimes. Rather than looking for analogies from history, we should see
fascism as a mutable process, one anchored in racial and colonial
capitalism, which both predates and survives its crystallization in
Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. It is a threat that continues to
evolve in the present day.
