A
revealing exploration of domestic fascism in the United States from the
1930s to the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C.
In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress presented to the United Nations We Charge Genocide,
a more than two-hundred-page petition that held the United States
accountable for genocide against African Americans. This landmark text
represented the dawn of Black Lives Matter and is as relevant today as
it was then, as evidenced by the rise of white supremacist groups across
the nation and the January 6th Capitol riot which disclosed the specter
of a fascist revival in the US Tracing this specter to its roots, We Charge Genocide! provides
an original interpretation of American fascism as a permanent and
longstanding current in US politics dating to the origins of US
settler-colonialism.
Picking up where Angela Davis’s 1971 essay, “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation,” left off, We Charge Genocide! reveals
how the United States legal system has contributed to the growth of
fascist states and fascist movements domestically and internationally.
American Studies scholar Bill V. Mullen contends that the preservation
of a white supremacist world order―and the prevention of revolutionary
threats to that order―structure the discourse and practice of US
fascism. He names this fascist modality the “counterrevolution of law”
in tribute to the radicals on the American Left, such as George Jackson,
Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, and the Black Panther Party, who
perceived the American state’s destruction of revolutionary groups and
ideas as a distinctive form of American fascism. Mullen argues that US
law, particularly US “race law,” has been an enabling mechanism for
modalities of fascist rule that have locked historic blocs of non-white
populations into an iron cage of legal and extralegal violence.
To this end We Charge Genocide! offers
a legal historiography of US fascism rooted in law’s capacity to
legitimate and sustain racial domination. By recovering the legacy of
important organizations, such as the Civil Rights Congress and Black
Panther Party, which have both theorized and resisted American legal
fascism, Mullen demonstrates how their work and critical theorists like
Davis, Marcuse, Jackson, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Fraenkel illuminate
the threat of American legal fascism to its most vulnerable racialized
victims of state violence in our time, including gender and transgender
violence.
REVIEWS:
In We Charge Genocide!
Bill Mullen carefully explicates legal constructions of American
fascism and the persistent cultures of Black anti-fascism from the Civil
Rights Congress to Black Lives Matter. Theoretically rich and
historically engaging, Mullen recasts the twentieth-century Black
radical tradition as an anti-fascist tradition.---Alex Lubin, Professor of African American Studies and History, Penn State University
With
the ever-increasing urgency of responding to racism and fascism today,
Bill Mullen shows convincingly how this dyad has worked in conjunction
throughout US history, what its main strategies and tactics have been,
and how people have risen to resist and rebuff its mechanizations.
Meticulously researched and firmly grounded, We Charge Genocide! Is a sweeping and riveting account of the past and a radical assessment of the present.
---David Palumbo-Liu, author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bill V. Mullen is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue University and the author of several books, including The Black Antifascist Tradition (with Jeanelle Hope), and James Baldwin: Living in Fire.
He is a member of the organizing collective for USACBI (United States
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).
Instant New York Times Bestseller
A
searing, vital investigation of the Republican Party’s dangerous
campaign to rewrite recent history in real time, from the Emmy
Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show producer and bestselling author of The Impostors.
“There is nobody who is writing in an episodic way who has more influence on the way I think about politics than Steve Benen.” —Rachel Maddow
For
as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have
tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial
powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase
opponents, and even dispose of crimes.
As the
Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, the GOP is putting
their own twist on a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is
taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from
generations past.
Unable to put a positive spin on
Trump-era scandals and fiascos, GOP voices and their allies have grown
determined to rewrite the stories of the last few years—from the 2020
election results and the horror of January 6th to
their own legislative record—treating the recent past as an enemy to be
overpowered, crushed, and conquered. The consequences for our future,
in turn, are dramatic.
Extraordinarily timely and
undeniably important, Steve Benen’s new book tells the staggering
chronicle of the Republican party’s unsettling attempts at historical
revisionism. It reveals not only how dependent they have grown on the
tactic, but also how dangerous the consequences are if we allow the
party to continue. The stakes, Benen argues, couldn’t be higher: the
future of democracy hinges on both our accurate understanding of events
and the end of alternative narratives that challenge reality.
We Charge Genocide!: American Fascism and the Rule of Law
Bigger: A Literary Life
by Trudier Harris
Yale University Press, 2024[Publication date: June 18, 2024]
A biography of Native Son’s Bigger Thomas that examines his continued relevance in debates over Black men and the violence of racism
Bigger Thomas, the central figure in Richard Wright’s novel Native Son
(1940), eludes easy categorization. A violent and troubled character
who rejects the rules of society, Bigger is both victim and perpetrator,
damaged by racism and segregation on the South Side of Chicago. He
steals, rapes, and kills without regrets. His story has electrified
readers for more than eight decades, and it continues to galvanize
debates around representation, respectability, social justice, and
racism in American life.
In this book Trudier Harris, the
distinguished scholar of English, examines the literary life of Bigger
Thomas from his birth to the current day. Harris explores the debates
between Black critics and Communist artists in the 1930s and 1940s over
the “political novel,” the censorship of Native Son
by white publishers, and the work’s initial reception—as well as
interpretations from Black feminists and Black Power activists in the
decades that followed, up to the novel’s resonance with the Black Lives
Matter movement today. Harris portrays Bigger as the knotted heart of
American racism, damning and unsettling, and still very much with us.
REVIEWS:
“An exceptional biography of Wright’s fictional character.”—Charlotte C. Teague, Alabama Writers’ Forum
“As one of our most celebrated literary critics, Trudier Harris has done it again. Bigger is the definitive study of one of the most (in)famous characters in American literary history.”—E. Patrick Johnson, author of Sweet Tea
“Bigger
Thomas is unquestionably one of the most memorable figures in American
fiction. Scrupulously charting his literary life, Trudier Harris richly
illuminates the complex meanings of Wright’s masterpiece.”—Arnold
Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes
“Finally,
a sustained scholarly exploration of a character who, for over eight
decades, has haunted our literary and cultural imaginations. Trudier
Harris, one of our leading experts on Black literature, takes us on a
journey into the worlds of Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas.”—Howard
Rambsy II, author of Bad Men
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Trudier Harris
is J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor of English, emerita,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and University Distinguished
Research Professor of English, emerita, University of Alabama. She is
the author of numerous books, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature and The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South. She lives in Tuscaloosa, AL.
