Robert O. Paxton's 9 qualities of fascist movements (summarized by Dan Tamir):

Authoritarian Aesthetics and Youth Appeals – AHA

Dr. @amycking.bsky.social and I wrote a teaching module on "Authoritarian Aesthetics and Youth Appeals" in Fascist Italy for the American Historical Review's "Authoritarianism 101" project. See below! And please share widely.

Collected on this day in 2019, this poster highlights the way in which Georgia Meloni’s far-right political party, the Brothers of Italy, transformed its public image from a “post-fascist” to a “center-right” party via political branding.

URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/20

Check out my latest Book Talk with Dr. Masha Fedorova-Warden! 👇

March 23, 2026 marks the 106th anniversary of Benito Mussolini's founding of the Italian Fighting Squads movement. This poster, which I collected in Rome's EUR district, was put up around Italy by CasaPound Italy's youth group, Student Bloc, to celebrate the centennial of Fascism's founding.

Cultural Memory and Reimagining Irish Identity Isabella Terrizzano Just before Saint Patrick’s Day 2025, twenty-seven years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, two Irish artists from opposing sides of Belfast performed on stag…

One of my former UCLA mentees, Isabella Terrizzano, published this fantastic OpEd in Georgetown University's History Department student journal, The Footnote!

Is the Trump administration using ChatGPT for our foreign policy? 🙃🫠

Review: Jürgen Zimmerer, Germany’s History Wars - The New Fascism Syllabus Zimmerer, Jürgen. Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025. On November 12, 2025, the German parliament accepted a new [...]

BOOK REVIEW:

Rita Maricocchi and Brian Quinn on Jürgen Zimmerer, Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025).

I know, me too!

Comrade Farmer:

"An example of the former—the eccentric—was the ingenuous farmer who named his pig after the duce in order to have the pleasure of going into the field every morning and shouting (with impunity, he thought) ‘Mussolini Pig’ at the top of his voice (he got five years of confino)."

If you're interested in learning about the history of American-Soviet agricultural exchange during the interwar decades, join Dr. Fedorova and I on March 24th from 11am to 12:30pm via Zoom. RSVP here: fresnostate.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

New book chapter on its way! This one's on the (quasi-abandoned) field of Generic Fascism. I hope to make somewhat of a splash with a Digital History integration. More soon!

I recently hosted Dr. Simone Cinotto at the @fresnostatelibrary.bsky.social for a book talk on his latest research monograph, Gastrofascism and Empire: Food in Italian East Africa, 1935-1941 (Bloomsbury, 2024). The following is a video recording of Dr. Cinotto's presentation.

Interessante! Lo guardero'.

... (i.e. the "Matteotti Crisis"), which influenced Mussolini's infamous declaration of dictatorship in the Chamber of Deputies in January 1925.

... of cheating in the previous year's elections, and called for the results to be cancelled. The following month, Matteotti's body was discovered in a wooded area outside of Rome, which launched Italy into a six-month crisis ...

... thereby implying that there would be violent consequences for local communities if the election results didn't sway in the favor of the National Fascist Party. In May 1924, Matteotti publicly accused Mussolini and his political terrorism movement ...

In May 1924, Giacomo Matteotti -- the influential socialist MP under Benito Mussolini's pre-dictatorship government -- accused the Blackshirts of intimidating voters at the polls. In some cases, Matteotti contended, the Duce's fascists flashed daggers or pistols, ...

UN risks 'imminent financial collapse', secretary general warns António Guterres says the international body could run out of money by July due to members' unpaid fees.

Welcome to Hell.

To my Fresno State colleagues and friends, please consider attending!

An Open Letter in Defense of Academic Freedom and the Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe - The New Fascism Syllabus We, the undersigned, protest against the state-sponsored defamatory attacks on the German-Polish Holocaust historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe and the ongoing campaign of intimidation against scholar...

See the open letter co-signed by over 300 scholars on the state-sponsored attacks against historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. We stand against intimidation and for academic freedom.

#AcademicFreedom #History #Holocaust #Poland

S1 E6: Early Modern Monsters and Early Ideas of Race

Congratulations to Dr. Maritere Lopez on the launch of her podcast, "The Early Modern Monster Manual."

ABOUT THE PODCAST:

What made a monster in the early modern world? In The Early Modern Monster Manual, students at Fresno State explore how monsters were imagined ...

The panopticon perfected.

For anyone interested in further exploring the visual culture of Italy's neofascist groups, see @wmab-2018-2019.bsky.social.

The leader calls the names of the dead, and the crowd cries "Presente!" (Present!). This practice dates back to Mussolini’s regime, symbolizing the "eternality" of fallen Blackshirts. It remains a controversial symbol of far-right identity in modern Italy.

#AccaLarenzia #CasaPound #Italy #History

Every year, neo-fascists (informally led by CasaPound Italia) gather to commemorate the deaths. The ceremony features a military-style procession through the streets, culminating at the former MSI center where participants organize in tight rows for a specific ritual of remembrance.

Later that day, a demonstration outside the headquarters turned violent. Following a confrontation with police, shots were fired into the crowd. A third young man, Stefano Recchioni, was struck by a police bullet and died two days later. The three became known as the Acca Larenzia "martyrs."

On Jan 7, 1978, five members of the MSI’s youth group were ambushed by militants in Rome’s Tuscolano neighborhood. Franco Bigonzetti was killed at the scene; Francesco Ciavatta died shortly after. This event, at the Via Acca Larenzia social center, remains a flashpoint in Italian history. 🧵

Thanks for the review, Alexander!