Fascism is an art built on propaganda as well as economically reactionary policies. In the 1920s, ’30s, and early ’40s in Europe, in its rise, rootedness, growth, and continuance as a political system, fascism grew as a radical allegiance to ultranationalism, to racism including antisemitism, and to dictatorship. It has since been copied and updated in extreme right-wing movements in Europe and the United States, movements that announce their historical ties to the original fascists either indirectly through dog whistles (Trumpism, specifically with Donald Trump’s praising of such American groups as the Proud Boys) or directly with, say, Nazi emblems (neo-Nazis in Germany, even though these emblems are illegal for public display). The term also applies to genocidal dictators such as Vladimir Putin.
The art of fascist propaganda has fed, and still does feed, adherence to fascist beliefs such as white superiority. Although modes of production and dissemination, most meaningfully...
University of California Press