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A classic book that analyzes and defines media appeals specific to American pro-fascist and anti-Semite agitators of the 1940s, such as the application of psychosocial manipulation for political ends. The book details psychological deceits that idealogues or authoritarians commonly used. The techniques are grouped under the headings "Discontent", "The Opponent", "The Movement" and "The Leader". The authors demonstrate repetitive patterns commonly utilized, such as turning unfocused social discontent towards a targeted enemy. The agitator positions himself as a unifying presence: he is the ideal, the only leader capable of freeing his audience from the perceived enemy. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, he is a shallow person who creates social or racial disharmony, thereby reinforcing that his leadership is needed. The authors believed fascist tendencies in America were at an early stage in the 1940s, but warned a time might come when Americans could and would be "susceptible to ... [the] psychological manipulation" of a rabble rouser. A book once again relevant in the Trump era, as made clear by Corey Robin's new introduction.
About the author
Norbert Guterman (1900-1984) was a scholar, and translator of scholarly and literary works from French, Polish and Latin into English. Born in Warsaw, Guterman attended the University of Warsaw, where he studied psychology. He moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, where he continued his studies in psychology, receiving degrees in 1922 and 1923. In the 1930s, Guterman worked closely with French Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre in popularizing the Marxist notions of alienation and mystification. He published translations of Marx's early works, which were often the first publications of these works in any language. Guterman, who was Jewish, moved to the United States in 1933, where he took on translation work for the Monthly Review, eventually becoming an editor. In 1936 he became an associate member of the Institute for Social Research on the recommendation of Max Horkheimer who held a great deal of respect for him.Alberto Toscano teaches at the School of Communications, 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), La abstracción real. Filosofia, estética y capital (Palinodia, 2021), and Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an Interregnum (Seagull, 2023). He is the co-editor of the 3-volume The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (with Sara Farris, Bev Skeggs and Svenja Bromberg, SAGE, 2022), Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography: Essays in Liberation (with Brenna Bhandar, Verso, 2022), and Georges Bataille's Critical Essays (with Benjamin Noys, Seagull, 2023). He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory and series editor of Seagull Essays and The Italian List for Seagull Books. He has also translated the work of Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou, Franco Fortini, and Furio Jesi.Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) was a philosopher and sociologist and director of the Institute for Social Research from 1930 to 1959.Herbert Marcuse, 1898-1979, was a member of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He was forced to leave Germany in 1933, eventually settling in the USA. His classic studies of capitalist society, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, were important influences on the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s and his libertarian socialism remains an important intellectual resource.
Summary
How authoritarian and racist discourse functions
Report
Beyond all doubt the most illuminating study of the techniques and the propaganda of the native American Fascist which has yet appeared. Cary McWilliams New York Times
