“This engaging study of progressive youth organizations charts their origins, their quest to fashion an America true to its ideals, and their demise.” —Phillip Deery, Victoria University, Melbourne During the Great Depression, young radicals in New York developed a vision of and for America, molded by their understanding of the Great War and global economic collapse as well as other events unfolding both at home and abroad. They worked to make their vision of a free, equal, democratic society based on peaceful coexistence a reality. Their attempts were ultimately unsuccessful—but their voices were heard on a number of issues, including free speech, racial justice, and peace. A major contribution to the historiography of the era, Fighting Authoritarianism provides an important new examination of US youth activism of the 1930s, including the limits of the New Deal and how youth activists pushed FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, and other New Dealers to do more to address economic distress and social inequality, and promote more inclusionary politics. Britt Haas questions the interventionist-versus-isolationist paradigm, and also explores the era not as a precursor to WWII, but as a moment of hope about institutionalizing progress in freedom, equality, and democracy. Fighting Authoritarianism corrects misconceptions about these activists’ vision, heavily influenced by the American Dream they’d been brought up to revere. For them, that meant embracing radical ideologies, especially the socialism and communism widely discussed, debated, and promoted on the city’s college campuses. They didn’t believe they were turning their backs on American values—instead, they thought such ideologies were the only way to make America live up to its promises. This study also outlines the careers of Molly Yard, Joseph Lash, and James Wechsler, how they retracted—and for Yard and Lash, reclaimed—their radical past, and how New York continued to hold a prominent platform in their careers. (Lash and Wechsler worked for the New York Post, the latter as editor until 1980.) Examining the decade from this perspective highlights the promise of America as young people understood it: a historic moment when anything seemed possible.

Due to factors such as income inequality and multiculturalism, liberal democracies have weakened considerably in the last quarter century. Democratic ideals have retreated in Venezuela, the Philippines, Hungary, Russia, and Poland. Many worry that they're on the decline in such bastions of democracy as western Europe and the United States, where fear and distrust of the status quo has opened the door to authoritarian leaders. Is there any hope of getting back to the prosperity and freedom of the mid-twentieth century? The viewpoints in this enlightening resource tackle this complex topic from a broad range of perspectives.

Authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent theme in popular and academic discussions of politics since the 2016 US presidential election and the coinciding expansion of authoritarian rhetoric and ideals across Europe, Asia, and beyond. Until recently, however, academic geographers have not focused squarely on the concept of authoritarianism. Its longstanding absence from the field is noteworthy as geographers have made extensive contributions to theorizing structural inequalities, injustice, and other expressions of oppressive or illiberal power relations and their diverse spatialities. Identifying this void, Spatializing Authoritarianism builds upon recent research to show that even when conceptualized as a set of practices rather than as a simple territorial label, authoritarianism has a spatiality: both drawing from and producing political space and scale in many often surprising ways. This volume advances the argument that authoritarianism must be investigated by accounting for the many scales at which it is produced, enacted, and imagined. Including a diverse array of theoretical perspectives and empirical cases drawn from the Global South and North, this collection illustrates the analytical power of attending to authoritarianism’s diverse scalar and spatial expressions, and how intimately connected it is with identity narratives, built landscapes, borders, legal systems, markets, and other territorial and extraterritorial expressions of power.

The left and right in America are now divided by politically irreconcilable worldviews, and the root of that divide is authoritarianism.

This book discusses the ongoing revolution of dignity in human history as the work of ‘humanist outliers’: small groups and individuals dedicated to compassionate social emancipation. It argues that anti-authoritarian revolutions like 1989’s ‘Autumn of the Nations’ succeeded in large part due to cultural and political innovations springing from such small groups. The author explores the often ingenious ways in which these maladapted and liminal ‘outliers’ forged a cooperative and dialogic mindset among previously resentful and divided communities. Their strategies warrant closer scrutiny in the context of the ongoing 21st century revolution of dignity and efforts to (re)unite an ever more troubled and divided world.

Democracy, Authoritarianism and Education reviews the most recently published empirical research findings on these subjects as well as results from a survey of the attitudes of 10,000 college and university students in 44 counteries towards authority, democracy, nationalism, militarism, internationalism and educational policy choices. One interesting finding is that (cross-nationally) higher authoritarianism levels translate into lower scores on democratic attitudes and internationalism, higher nationalism and militarism scores, and support for more conservative and provincial (and monocultural) educational policy options.

Authoritarianism operates on a visceral level rather than relying on arguments. How can we counter authoritarian affects? This publication brings together more than 50 first-hand accounts of anti-authoritarian movements, activists, artists, and scholars from around the world, focusing on the sensuous and emotional dimension of their strategies. From the collective art and aesthetics of feminist movements in India, Iran, Mexico, and Poland, to sewing collectives, subversive internet art in Hong Kong, and even anti-authoritarian board games, the contributions open new perspectives on moments of resistance, subversion, and creation. Indeed, the handbook itself is a work of anti-authoritarian art. The editors behind the »International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies« and »kollektiv orangotango« are: Aurel Eschmann, Börries Nehe, Nico Baumgarten, Paul Schweizer, Severin Halder, Ailynn Torres Santana, Inés Duràn Matute, and Julieta Mira.

The New Deal and American Society, 1933–1941 explores what some have labeled the third American revolution, in one concise and accessible volume. This book examines the emergence of modern America, beginning with the 100 Days legislation in 1933 through to the second New Deal era that began in 1935. This revolutionary period introduced sweeping social and economic legislation designed to provide the American people with a sense of hope while at the same time creating regulations designed to safeguard against future depressions. It was not without critics or failures, but even these proved significant in the ongoing discussions concerning the idea of federal power, social inclusion, and civil rights. Uncertainties concerning aggressive, nationalistic states like Italy, Germany, and Japan shifted the focus of FDR's administration, but the events of World War II solidified the ideas and policies begun during the 1930s, especially as they related to the welfare state. The legacy of the New Deal would resonate well into the current century through programs like Social Security, unemployment compensation, workers' rights, and the belief that the federal government is responsible for the economic well-being of its citizenry. The volume includes many primary documents to help situate students and bring this era to life. The text will be of interest to students of American history, economic and social history, and, more broadly, courses that engage social change and economic upheaval.

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by “Frogs” and “Toads,” humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America’s small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father’s adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist’s small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art’s reputation for “outsider” or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler’s thorough analysis of his father’s adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

This volume continues the series that scrutinizes, from a risk perspective, the current phenomenon of authoritarianism, as displayed by the new radical right (also known as alternative right), and whether it represents ‘real’ democracy or an unacceptable hegemony potentially resulting in elected dictatorships and abuses as well as dysfunctional government and harm to many parties. The book identifies and analyzes risk issues arising from the radical-right phenomenon in many forms, including the personal safety and security of individual citizens, ethno-religious minorities, and other minorities and vulnerable groups, as well as threats to organizations, public order and national security, to democratic governance, and to international security. As chapters reveal, the cross-flow of ideological, organizational, and ‘dark money’ support emanating primarily from US corporate foundations, lubricates the fusion of corporate and radical-right interests nationally, transnationally, and globally. This volume gathers contributions from eight leading academic authors and provides a detailed examination of the fusion of mutual interests between, on the one hand, powerful corporate leaders, executives, and wealthy oligarchs and, on the other, radical-right political leaders, parties and intermediary organizations promoting radical-right causes. The two worlds feed off, enable, and strengthen each other. Of particular relevance to the third decade of the 21st century is an examination of the corporate/radical-right stance on the COVID-19 pandemic and the phenomenon of wild allegations and grand conspiracy theories disseminated by the radical-right against their enemies.