This talk will consider recent debates about the possibility of a fascist horizon in U.S. politics. How likely is it that a distinctively American fascism achieves political traction and institutional power in our own time? Fascist and fascist-curious politics in the U.S. may at this point appear only nascent. At the same time, historic taboos and barriers against fascist-style politics have clearly lifted. Meanwhile, social and economic crises similar to those to which earlier forms of fascism responded have only intensified. Can what appears to be a growing public sense of the intractability of contemporary crises make fascist forms of governance come to appear not only sensible, but politically practicable? If so, what can we do about it?
Nikhil Pal Singh is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. His first book, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2004) was recognized as the best book in US civil rights history by the Organization of American Historians. Subsequently, Singh worked with legendary black freedom movement activist Jack O’Dell, gathering, editing and introducing O’Dell’s collected essays and movement writings in Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder (University of California Press, 2010). In 2014, Singh founded NYUs Prison Education Program, serving as its faculty director until 2023. His book, Race and America’s Long War (UC Press, 2017), is an examination of the relationship between race, war, and policing in U.S. domestic life and overseas conflict. Singh’s work has appeared in The Nation, The Intercept, Dissent, The New Republic, Salvage, The New Statesman, and Boston Review. He currently serves as a series editor for the American Crossroads book series at the University of California Press, and is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, based in Washington DC.