Get Rid of All the Pesky Humans: An AI Fantasy
Echoing Hannah Arendt’s postwar warnings about the authoritarian impulse, Jill Lepore shows that an anti-humanist strain was threaded into the acceleration of technological advancements.
fascism
Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Mother Night’ Would Like to Speak to You
Fascism seeks to eradicate difference, that mind-messing hobgoblin. It wants to erase knowledge and create unity in ignorance. Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night distills these themes in our era’s discourse.
Chile Under Pinochet: A Film Chronology of Dictatorship and Memory
From the 1973 coup to its afterlives in national memory, these films trace violence, silence, resistance, and the ways Chile continues to confront Pinochet’s violent legacy.
Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’ Diagnoses Everyday Fascism
If everyday fascism’s essence is the anti-humanist view of living beings as disposable instruments, then Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is its field manual and warning.
Paul Verhoeven Made the Blueprint for Neo-Totalitarianism
Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi films are like how-to manuals for neo-totalitarianism, which doesn’t rely on coups, martial law, violent suppression of the opposition press, or paramilitary factions roaming the streets to instill our obedience.
‘The Celebration’ Rocks the Cradle of Authoritarianism
Thomas Vinterberg’s acclaimed dark comedy The Celebration strongly evidences the root causes of humanity’s unrestrained aggression, bigotry, and fascist proclivities.
Fascism Bares Its German Shepherd Teeth in Two Post-Franco Films
The Creature and A Dog Called Vengeance use German shepherds in allegories of fascist politics, revolution, violence and love.
Death without Dignity: Jewish Loss in ‘The Lady of the Mine’
Sergei Lebedev’s The Lady of the Mine builds towards a series of translucent revelations on the epigenetic trauma of Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR.
The Living Dead’s Problems in Spanish Horror Movies
These Spanish horror movies tapped into the anxieties of the final years of General Franco’s dictatorship while pretending to be merely tales set in foreign countries.
Rachel Maddow on the Bit Players’ Big Effects on Promoting American Fascism
Rachel Maddow’s latest book on political history, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, weaves varying players past into a singular danger present.
The Kids Are Alt-Right: How Punk Got Co-opted by Fascism
Like political populism, punk’s traits and tenets are sufficiently vague, contradictory, and unmoored to be vulnerable to co-option by all political opportunists—including the fascist alt-right.
The Death Labyrinth in ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio gives lessons in mortality from death creatures possibly more unsettling than those in Hellboy II and Pan’s Labyrinth.