Introducing Fascism: A Graphic Guide

Introducing Graphic Guides

by Litza Jansz, Litza Jansz (Illustrator)

A fascinating graphic guide to the political movements and philosophical roots of fascism, tracing the origins of its ideas to nineteenth-century traditions.

Stuart Hood is a WWII POW escapee and subsequent expert and BBC film maker.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Comics, Philosophy, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jay Scout · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a crude and sophomoric failure to meet the conditions of it's title. Fascism was the main subject dishonestly vilified by two ignoramuses who hardly mentioned Nazism. Fascism was not introduced in this sorry substitute for literature and it is obvious that the two bigots who cut and pasted it together were unthinking and biased hate mongers. Those so called "authors" obviously cannot define fascism and they just as obviously do not understand much at all, except how to express hatred of that which is not understood. The cut and pasters resort to mindless repetitions of swastikas and unreferenced fragments of bigotry alleged to have been spoken by those always hated by the communists, including Ford the car manufacturer, failed to inspire the "reader" (is a reader of smut on a bathroom wall, a reader?) with any feelings of understanding what fascism is. The "book" was impure neo-communist propaganda filled with crude and fragmentary repeats of all the tired, worn out, propaganda lies of those who hate fascism. The bigoted mutters of such slovenly and half-assed book producers should have inspired reader anger and the desire to bring them to justice for daring the pretense of literary competence. I was especially galled by some of the obviously leftist "readers" pretending they were horrified by a book about fascism and crude drawings of swastikas. So bigoted readers symbolically colluded with the big lie, and praised "the genius" bigoted cut and paste derelicts in a cunning conspiracy which screamed "WE HATE! HATE LIKE US!
What is even more disgusting is the fact that leftist bigots, always stick together in a fiendish dervish dance of criminal deceit, as they knee jerk effusive praise for hate diatribes crudely disguised as a book. Thus the ratty psychopaths of the left have spewed out another load of hate puke and thus shown solidarity. I want my money back you cretins!

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive for its size and a good summary of the development and implementation of fascism in Europe. Also provided a look into Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism and how they try to hide their true political and ideological nature behind a veneer of respectability and normalcy (like in America currently). I liked that the author is calling these right-wing groups out for what they actually are. Kind of poignant how he ends with an explanation of current right-wing movements and actions (from a few years ago) and warns that fascism is on the rise again. And now look where we are.

There was only one part that made me 'um' and 'ah' about giving this 5 stars. I know that this is a graphic guide and other pictures had been caricatured but I felt that a particular page talking about Japan had pictures that bordered on being or were actually racist. It was just two figures and only on that page but they were drawn in a way that resembled old-fashioned, racist anti-Japanese propaganda posters and made me uncomfortable to see them drawn that way.

[sologdin · Rating 1 out of 5]

not a bad text, just that the subject matter may not be comic book material, insofar as the concepts are worthy of some rigorous attention (as opposed to something like The Complete Maus, which presents a narrative).

[Sylvester · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most expensive toilet paper I've ever bought. Turns out Introducing series is nothing but a socialist propoganda. It offered inaccurate historical account, dodgy facts and misleading the readers.

The drawings were also really ugly, this is one of the worst books I've ever read.

[Iryna Bochko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for who is interested in the basics of fascism: how it was "born" and developed. It is short and easy to understand. I appreciated it a lot because here the facts I knew about the fascism are gathered in the system, and it definitely helps to comprehend the connections among them.

[Castles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although reading a lot about this subject, I still learned new things, especially about how Europe didn’t really shake off fascism after ww2. Good short introduction, even though it’s only a small taste of the subject.

[john mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read

A warning to us all that the threat of fascism never went away and is still out there today .

[Lucía ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second of this graphic guides that I have read (the first was on postmodernism) and I have to admit that I am enjoying them very much! The ratio between comic and text is great, the books cover a lot of information and they provide great explanations for each topic.

It is actually kind of scary to realise how history tends to repeat itself and so sad to see the present reflected in the past.

[Biggus Dickkus · Rating 4 out of 5]

လွတ်မြောက်နယ်မြေကို ရောက်ရှိသွားတဲ့ အမျိုးသမီး နိုင်ငံရေး တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူ တစ်ယောက်ကို ဖက်ဆစ်စနစ်ဆိုတာ ဘာလဲ ဆိုပြီးမေးတော့ သူမက "ဖက်ဆစ်စနစ် ဆိုတာ အာဏာသုံးပြီး လက်နက်အားကိုးနဲ့ မတရား ဖိနှိပ်တာကွယ့်"ဆိုပြီးပြောတဲ့ ဗွီဒီယိုဖိုင် တစ်ခု လူမှုကွန်ယက်စာမျက်နှာ မှာတက်လာတာ မြင်ရတော့ ရယ်ချင်စိတ်ကို မနည်းထိန်းထားလိုက်ရတယ်။ ဆိုတော့ အာဏာရှင်တိုင်းက ဖက်ဆစ်တွေလား? မြောက်ကိုးရီးယားက ဖက်ဆစ်နိုင်ငံလား? အစ္စလာမ်မစ် အစွန်းရောက်တွေကရော ဖက်ဆစ် ဘောင်ထဲ ဝင်လား? ဒါတွေက အခြေခံ နိုင်ငံရေး သီဝရီ တွေကို အစာမကြေမှုကနေ ဖြစ်လာတာဘဲ။ လွှတ်တော်ထဲမှာ ကျော်ဝင်းရေးတဲ့ စာအုပ်တွေ ထိုင်ဖတ်နေရုံနဲ့တော့ နိုင်ငံရေး ရေချိန်မြင့်တက်လာမှာမဟုတ်ဘူး။ အခုဆိုရင် အီတလီမှာ မူဆိုလီနီ နောက်ပိုင်း ဖက်ဆစ်ဝါဒီ အမျိုးသမီးက ဝန်ကြီးချုပ်ဖြစ်လာသလို ဆွီဒင်နိုင်ငံရေးမှာလည်း လက်ယာစွန်းတွေ ထောင်တက်လာတာကို တွေ့နိုင်တယ်။ ဖက်ဆစ်စနစ်ဆိုတာ ဘာလဲ ဆိုတာကို ဂဃနဏ သိရှိဖို့ လိုတယ်။ ဂွာတာရီရဲ့ စကား အတိုင်းပြောရရင် "Everybody wants to be a fascist" ဆိုဘဲ။

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was greeeeat! It only took me so long to read as I usually read on the Tube but felt awkward reading a book with big pictures of swastikas on a lot of the pages in public.

It focuses on the twentieth century, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan. The writing is clear and accessible and the illustration are excellent. It did simplify some things slightly past where I would have liked, but I think that's down to its being an 'Introducing...' book. It definitely takes the view that fascism is bad. (Looking at some other reviews here, not everyone agrees with this.) I also take the view that fascism is bad and this was a great discussion on why, how, and what might be done to stop it.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating is somewhere between 2.5 and 3. The idea is interesting but I'm afraid the execution is a bit messy and chaotic which made me lose interest almost every time I opened the book. You are swinging between historical events and countries on almost every page. The last few pages seemed well-structured though. The graphics were quite pleasant also.

[oldmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

makes very clear that the threat of fascism did not end with WW2

[JackLG]

Nice simple introduction

[Nick Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just keeping my eye on the local trends

[Julia]

a book this tame is described as socialist propaganda in Goodreads reviews. much to think about.

[Dunya Al-bouzidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

تمهيد ميسر ومنسق جدا حول تاريخ الفاشية.. ولا يخلو من آراء شخصية للمؤلف بصدد نشأة الفاشية الجديدة.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book which asks a lot of hard questions and makes you consider the role of national myth in glossing over elements of extremism (only to act surprised when they read their head from time to time, like Brexit or Trump).

The update at the end of the book, written in the early 2000s, would be interesting to update nowadays, particularly how the book signs off:

“We are not necessarily on the edge of a Fascist resurgence, but we have every reason to be on the alert against it.”

Also worth pointing out are the underlying persistent conditions that could support Facism in the long term (and thinking how many of these have been present in the U.K. and US in recent times):

1. Industrially advances economies hard hit by the recessionary slump.
2. A discredited Left alternative.
3. Dissatisfaction with an inefficient or corrupt parliamentary system.
4. An end of consensus politics.
5. Racism provoked by “job stealing” immigrants, refugees and political asylum-seekers.
6. A respectable Right.
7. Nostalgia for a strong state.

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Fascist” is a term that is historical and is still present today, usually in a derogatory manner against someone who doesn't agree with you.

This book goes into great detail on just what Fascist is, its origins, its various forms and its history. Some of the topics include where it started, the ultra-conservative nature of Fascism, its relationship to the anti-Jewish movement, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford being anti-Jewish, Russian groups view of Jews, the effect of inflation and unemployment on politics, Mussolini, old power groups, the spread to Germany, storm troopers, the SS, racism and eugenics, Fascism in America, Spain and Japan, skinheads, people who are anti-immigration, the 'other' as a scapegoat, the Zionist conspiracy, propaganda newspapers and films, symbolic rituals, Holocaust deniers and how to recognize a Fascist group. It also covers how many of the people involved in the Holocaust and related Fascist atrocities were never punished.

There are also suggestions for further reading and an index.

[Hina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a riveting read from cover to cover! It covers the various forms of Fascism that emerged in the 20th century, and goes into detail behind why fascist regimes emerged in Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan. For anyone who thinks that fascism is a thing of the past, this book will prove otherwise. Fascism is very much alive today, and it has evolved from what we think we know about it. Why fascists regimes arise, how they gain power, and why they are so destructive to society and humanity at large; all these topics, and more, are covered in this gripping read. The visuals are awesome, the writing is superb, and I'm definitely going to be buying more books from the 'Introducing Books' series!

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the events of January 6th, 2021 are sufficient to label Donald Trump a fascist, and should disqualify him from running again for the U.S. Presidency. We should do our best to remember Hitler's revealing words which gave a recommendation for the disenfranchisement of the Nazi party's insane ideology, that it was possible to stop it at the onset only if it were utterly crushed and annihilated to its core at the very beginning of its development. A wise and informative book. Three stars.

[Nickolette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great little book that clarified lots of issues for me and made me even more aware of the current ulta-right tendencies. The attitude of some Bulgarians towards Syrian refugees as well as the attitude of some Brits towards the "Bulgarian invasion" are just as alarming and troublesome as history suggests. Especially in a time of economic crises. Once again, remembering history may save us from repeating it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that made me go nuts on the Introducing series. Literally spent all my book vouchers on them. It's informative, fun and really really cool I can't stop reading even when my neck hurts bad. The topic is heavy but I really love how both author and illustrator made it engaging without too much humour to dilute the meaning. I learn so many things from this book.

[Mariska de Graaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive book on Fascism, past and present. I noticed some minor outdated details (political parties in the last section that so not exist anymore). Also: could not only use a textual updatebut also some extra graphical ones with upcoming fascism in todays world.

This books reads as a warning and is fairly easy to read, therefore should be read by everyone that cares.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A succinct but outstanding guide to a most pernicious and dangerous "philosophy", which is unfortunately is gaining resurgence in our world. Identifies its traits and more importantly gives us a fair idea of who are among its proponents and supporters

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very high level introduction of fascism, possibly too high level but i guess it gives you an overview of the history up to the present day. I'm not too sure how well the illustrations work though, they seemed a bit random to me.

[Sai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, fun and plenty informative. Good introduction to a topic I considered myself really hazy about.

[Dana Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

More accessible than the A Very Short Introduction and a great book for anyone who thinks that fascism arises from the political left.

[Sean Mann · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book upsets you as some of the reviews indicate, you might want to take a second look at your beliefs.

As a short book with a lot of space reserved for images, it is obviously limited in scope. However, as a brief introduction it gives a good broad overview and hits an essential topic that seems to be missed in many conversations: What happened to fascism after the defeat of the Axis powers in WWII?

A lot of people want to stay comfortable and believe that military defeat also defeated the ideology. As the book points out, Franco was still in power in Spain for a much longer time, and the punishing of fascist war criminals, while admirable, was limited in scope. I read this just after visiting Dachau recently, and there was a whole exhibit about the Dachau trials which came before the more widely known Nuremburg trials. The exhibit highlighted the same issue pointed out in this book. That with increasing Cold War tensions, the US and other Western powers decided that continuing to prosecute all of the fascist war crimes should take a backseat to fighting communism.

Is this book supportive of communism? No. Does it point out the modern neo-fascist movements and the common threads among fascist parties? Yes. For the length, I believe it does exactly what the title claims and introduces fascism. Anyone wanting a deeper or more nuanced understanding should read another book. Anyone wanting to criticize communism should read an intro to communism and have at it.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

even the cover is strongly politically biased - notice the signs hold by the protestors.

section 1 is not "what is fascism", but the author assumes everybody knows what he means so he jumps to "is Fascism over?" Otherwise, it's the same low quality of the whole series.

"The Dreyfus Affair", but what was the context? Who cares! Still, the author seems to have no idea. Fascism is in this text strongly correlated with the anti-semitism, a much older European problem. And the author is conveniently hiding the close resemblance of the socialists and "left wing thought" to fascism. Hence, the World War I becomes the magic result of nationalism, full stop. Nothing about the revancharde stance of France. Nothing about the inferiority complex of the Prussian Government compared with the Austrians. At a certain point the text dives into the absurd. "A Totalitarian or Corporative State" that is a sign of fascism. Yet the socialist state monopoly for health, insurance, pension, social aid, supported by the many state corporations outside the socialist scope like the phone corporation, the postal corporation, the electricity corporation, the gas corporation, the sanitation corporation, the gas/oil corporation, the train corporation, the multitude of local transport corporations, etc. this is simply ignored.

The drawings are ugly too.

[A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can we be sure that in the 21st century, Fascism will really be a thing of the past? Most of it is a history lesson—focused on the 30s and 40s—which is a shame, because I found this graphic guide to be at its most compelling when it extrapolates to general principles of Fascism, such as fear-based hatred of the Other, weakening of trade unions, illusory nostalgia, and rallying around a charismatic leader. The part on Japanese fascism is especially illuminating. What comes across most profoundly is the degree to which the power structures which gave rise to Fascism—particularly giant business and corporate interests’ complicity in it—was never fully dismantled, and the equal degree to which Fascism never really went away in the countries in which it first flourished. Small wonder that it’s on the rise. I will close by adding that this volume is marvelously and creatively illustrated, and I was very amused to see both of the authors describing themselves as “unrepentant socialists“. I could’ve guessed.