My guest this week is a world-renowned expert on fascism, populism, and dictatorship. Federico Finchelstein’s newest book is The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy. He makes important distinctions even while educating, contextualizing, and warning, once again, of fascism’s rise globally and explaining its antecedents. Finchelstein carefully considers what false or “wannabe fascism” is in the context of populism, Trump, dictatorship, all revisited, defined, and redefined toward apprehending the difference between movements, strategies and singular leaders. The book is a history, a thesaurus, a field guide, an encyclopedic review and, yes, delivers a not entirely unexpected if important argument. Federico Finchelstein teaches history at the New School for Social Reseearch and Eugene Lang College in New York City. His previous books include From Fascism to Populism in History and A Brief History of Fascist Lies. The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

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