How to Be a Fascist

June 1, 2020
Italian novelist and politician Murgia channels the spirit of her ancient Roman compatriot Juvenal in this alternately mordant and glib satire of contemporary far-right movements. The unnamed narrator is an overconfident, self-proclaimed fascist who aims to help others make converts to the cause--or to the "populism" that is "a cradle for fascism"--with the zeal of the senior devil who advises a junior devil in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. Advising sympathizers to learn from the Axis powers, "our historical role models," the author's anti-feminist, gay-bashing, Islamophobic narrator begins by describing the defects of democracy, including that it tends to frown on torture: "It still insists on rejecting violence as a way of doing politics, which makes as much sense as training tarantulas by only feeding them lettuce." The narrator goes on to suggest how to recruit fascists and understand their leaders before ending with facile clickbait: a pop quiz called the "Fascistometer" that measures "your level of fascism." Although burgeoning far-right movements are fair game, Juvenal-ian or other satire requires worthy targets. While some of Murgia's--e.g., Holocaust deniers--deserve her barbs, others (people who think that "gender studies is ruining families") lack a comparable moral weight and take throwaway jabs. A larger problem is that political realities are outrunning satire, and the author too rarely makes the imaginative leaps needed to reinvigorate them. Murgia can land a solid punch, as she does in a neo-Marxist skewering of rich pseudo-populists: "A real populist deals with everyone according to their needs: the poor receive some free fish every year; the middle class receive a fridge to store what's left over; and the upper classes receive the pond where everyone will have to pay to fish." Overall, though, she's fighting below her weight. A political satire that too often looks away from its worthiest targets and toward less important ones.

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June 29, 2020
Italian novelist and political activist Murgia (Accabadora) exposes the insidious nature of authoritarianism in this tongue-in-cheek guide to remaking a democratic society into a fascist one. Probing how commonplace political rhetoric mainstreams fascist thinking, Murgia adopts the persona of a fascist indoctrinator to contrast the “speed of action” attainable by all-powerful heads of state with the bureaucratic inefficiency of elected leaders. She tells readers to lay the foundation for authoritarianism by “insist that all organs of democratic negotiation are useless red-tape dead ends where nothing ever happens,” and discusses the need to blame marginalized groups for social ills. Aspiring fascists can rate their commitment to the cause by selecting “common sense” statements from a long list of political tropes (“there is a reason that Western culture has shaped the world”; “if the state can’t protect me, I’ll have to do it myself”). Only in the concluding “Disclaimer” does Murgia break character to identify the book’s true purpose—revealing how complicit nearly everyone is in “the legitimization of fascism as a method.” The book’s arch tone will turn off many progressives who agree with Murgia, but she succeeds in making the scale of the problem clear. Readers will gain new insight into why illiberalism is on the rise.