The Young Person’s…o American Fascism + DNC Vibes

Refuse Fascism Episode 214

Stephen Eisenman  00:00

It isn’t possible for a single artwork to defeat fascism. What it can do is raise questions, help organize an audience, create solidarity, so that a movement can then be born that will challenge authoritarianism, fascism, violence, racism and all those components of fascism. There is no single shape or form of fascism. If fascism arises in the United States, it won’t be wearing a swastika, the men won’t have Jack boots, you won’t see the Hitler salute, you won’t hear “Sieg Heil!” It’ll be in the form of Americanism, of pledge of allegiance, of the American flag, of MAGA and all that. You have to, as an artist, to use your instruments in a way that will get people to look. They may be shocked, may be disturbed, but rather close the book, they’ll want to flip the page. 

Sam Goldman  00:45

Welcome to episode 214, of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview with Stephen Eisenman, co author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism.’ But first, a big thank you to the patrons and sustainers that make this show possible with their donation of $2 or more a month. Thanks as well to those who are supporting Refuse Fascism by getting a t shirt or tank top. If you want yours, see the show notes. Patrons have a discount code, and if you want to become a patron, you can do so at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

Or for zero monies, you can tell a friend about the show, share it on social media, rate the show on your listening platform of choice, or be bold and write a review — they boost the show so much, and I mean, don’t you think refusing fascism needs some boost in right now? and they just mean a lot to us. So please, please consider, after listening, of course, rating and reviewing the show. Before the interview, before we talk about the Democratic National Convention, listen to the doctors who went to the DNC to testify on this war on children in Gaza.

Dr. Tammy Aboughnaim  02:47

Rage. I’m fueled by a lot of rage.

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf  02:50

I was in Gaza working in the ICU in Al-Aqsa Shuhada hospital for about three weeks.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad  02:55

I have been to Gaza twice since the assault began in October.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad  03:01

I went to Gaza in January, and was turned away in May after the border was stormed.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan  03:06

I was in Gaza earlier this year and multiple times over the past decade.

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf  03:09

As a physician and as a witness on the ground, as one of the few international eyes allowed in Gaza by design, what I saw was indescribable with any other word other than genocide,

Dr. Tammy Aboughnaim  03:10

I as a doctor, cannot do my job if my elected leaders and my politicians are making it literally impossible for me to treat patients. I can’t save lives if you keep sending weapons.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad  03:35

And it’s really tough to reconcile with the fact that you’re in the hospitals, you’re watching people suffer and die, and to know that overhead, there are fighter jets that came from America.

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf  03:45

They’re making Gaza unlivable. They’ve destroyed the water infrastructure, and so we were seeing kids die of diarrheal illness. They prevented all medical supplies in, and I can tell that by first hand witness, not by hearsay: They refused me the medical supplies that I was able to gather over months from wonderful people in Arkansas, things like endotracheal tubes and Foley catheters, things like antibiotics and sedative medications that were denied at the border. Firsthand experience: They do not allow medical supplies in to treat children that are dying.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan  03:45

You heard my colleagues speak just now at the press conference, the fact that these children haunt us in our dreams, the fact that their parents come to us in our dreams asking us why we didn’t save their children.

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf  04:30

There’s definitely a cognitive dissonance that’s required to go from a place where you see children die every day from bombs dropped with a Made in USA sign on them, then to come, to come here to the DNC and see almost a party like atmosphere, ignoring the fact that every day I was in Gaza, I heard children crying for their parents that were gone.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad  04:49

I saw the reality on the ground. I saw the product of our policies. I saw the product of the Biden administration’s policies here. For anybody to suggest that this is just a one issue, or we don’t want to make this a one issue vote, I’m offended by that. And I think most people who recognize the tragedy of what’s taking place in Gaza, they’re offended by that.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan  05:11

And I think all of us are here, not because we want to be. We’re here because we feel like it’s our responsibility, and we feel like we’re accountable. We’re accountable to all the civilians who were killed, who were injured, who are killed today, who will be killed tomorrow, unless the U.S. stops funding this. We are enabling a genocide, and that should be front and center stage at a convention of one of the main two parties of a country’s political system.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan  05:11

That’s… yeah, I don’t, I don’t have any capacity to give anybody excuses anymore. I literally can’t, like, there’s no excuse…

Sam Goldman 05:37

The Democratic National Convention, where do we even begin? Let’s start with the big picture refresher: We are facing the slow motion cataclysm of global warming. Tens of millions of people around the world have been uprooted from their homelands and flung across the globe without any safety net. Wars between powerful imperialist rivals are raging, with threats of escalation only getting louder. Economies across the globe are increasingly untethered to any stabilizing factors. The outer boundaries of mass exploitation, mass delusion, state violence are being stretched to breaking.

There is no going back to any idealized vision of normalcy. The world is never going back to Trump’s idea of the 1950s or the 1850s or to the Democrats’ idea of the 1990s. Throughout the convention, the Democratic party went to great pains this week to frame Trump and MAGA as anomalies — Trump as unserious, weird, narcissistic. Both Harris and Obama spoke about Trump as an agent of chaos, aberrations from some utopia of peace and justice — deranged individuals forcing themselves upon the “Greatest democracy in the history of the world.” If that was true, then, yeah, all we would have to do is vote for not them. But there are a few problems with that.

First, this strategy of depoliticization is nothing new. It is the Democrats’ bread and butter, and it prevents people from challenging the fascist transformation of America. Secondly, the fascists violently rejected the last election loss, and have spent four years strengthening their capacity to overturn an election loss this November. Trump and the Republic fascists have long thrown out the rule book, proving that they no longer abide by the peaceful transfer of power, and are readying to subvert the election — either through legal maneuvers inviting the intervention of their fascist-stacked Supreme Court, or through direct incitement of political violence.

The people who failed to hold the January 6th coup plotters to account, including and especially Trump — who did the coup, and now gets a redo — were on that DNC main stage, and somehow, they seemingly failed to mention the plans for this coming coup, let alone what the Democrats will do in that event — must be a coincidence. But on an even deeper level, as we’ve shown extensively over more than 200 episodes of this show, Trump, the 2024 MAGA-fied GOP, and their massive, well armed fascist movement are not an aberration. They are as American as apple pie, with roots running back centuries, branching through every sphere of society and government and blooming in this time of crises.

This is not an anomaly that came out of nowhere and can be swept away by electoral enthusiasm. That enthusiasm, that joy even, is the tool in the DNC’s kit that was on display. Good vibes and patriotism provided the pillars of the convention, and talking about genocide is nothing if not a vibe killer, but this genocide in Gaza is real and is made possible by the person they were there to celebrate. Dan Engelhart, an uncommitted delegate from Minnesota, put it well: 

Dan Engelhardt  06:28

Our governor’s about about to say folksy things as the vice presidential candidate calling people weird. And they are, they’re weird for what they’re what they believe in, these horrible Republican things, that’s weird, but you know what: It’s weird to say ceasefire and keep sending the [shouts remaining part] fire. That’s weird, Walz!

Sam Goldman  09:52

Dan went on to pose: “When we talk about saving democracy, what the hell democracy do we have when it’s funding genocide and arming genocide, and everybody wants to feel good and have a damn party, when we’re killing people?”  When confronted with their culpability in this crime of all crimes, the response from the stage, from the delegates, from liberals across the country, was that to stop Trump, we must endorse this genocide, or at least mash our fingers into our ears to drown out the names of the children our candidates’ bombs have blown to bits.

According to the electoral calculus, one person cannot simultaneously oppose fascism and oppose genocide. It’s merely impossible, right? Who would even attempt such a thing? We want to shout out those who protested inside and outside. While certainly it was not nearly enough, shouting out those holding banners in the stands, those chanting “Ceasefire Now!” as they walked through the convention center. [Audio of singing plays.] Those who protested in the streets, who stood outside reading the names and ages of children killed by the champions of democracy, those Breaking the Silence, sometimes at the cost of brutality from the police and delegates, to those who were arrested, those who were mocked and forcefully removed — their screams for justice drowned out by crowds chanting, “USA, USA, USA.” Even after diminishing their demands, the uncommitted delegates attempts to simply get a Palestinian voice onto the main stage were ignored and dismissed.

Adam Johnson put it well, “Uncommitted is exceedingly polite and insider, and they were still sidelined and thrown scraps. Protests outside the DNC are mocked and given snarky write ups. There is simply no right way to oppose genocide. You’re either ignored, treated like a terrorist, or called a joke.” The DNC’s official program, and Harris’s speech were as bloodthirsty and heartless as every American president, not only rejecting notions of an arms embargo, but declaring that they will continue to arm Israel no matter what. What does it tell you that they are willing to risk giving power to Trump in the name of empire? What the fuck do they think they are doing to stop fascism if it involves arming Trump loving fascists like Bibi, who is literally starving and torturing captive children in the thousands?

In the end, as Bob Avakian has said, “If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.” On the day when at least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israel bombings in Khan Yunis, including over a dozen children, Harris in accepting her party’s nomination, said this:

Kamala Harris  13:04

…and let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself [crowd cheers], and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7 [cheers], including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival. At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating [mixed response]. So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again, the scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, [rising cheers] freedom and self determination.

Sam Goldman  14:29

When speaking of October 7, Harris named the perpetrator and described the crime, but when talking about Palestinians, she would have you believe that tens of thousands just died without cause or explanation, once again treated as some tragic natural disaster, not immiseration the U.S. is directly responsible for. In her acceptance speech, she railed against immigrants and refugees, even saying that her opponent has gotten in the way of thoroughly militarizing the border.

To adoring cheers, she committed to ensuring that the United States will always have the “strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Jennifer Rubin, in her Washington Post op ed, pointed out something that I think is worth noting: “In many ways, it was a speech a Republican of years gone by, could have delivered; heavy on crime, fighting, securing the border, promising an Opportunity Society, keeping America’s military the “Most lethal in the world,” and standing up to dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

Kamala Harris  15:37

We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world [mild cheers], and on behalf of our children and our grandchildren and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth, the privilege and pride of being an American [cheers].

Sam Goldman  16:46

In the waning days of Trump’s first term, he introduced his 1776 Curriculum, a strategy of nationwide indoctrination into the MAGA mythology of America. What Kamala is selling here is not truth to counter lies, but the Democratic Party’s own version of that mythology, aiming to rein in an unprecedented awakening to America’s real history and role in the world, which has taken off, especially since 2020. Rose tinted glasses, you see, are one thing, but these red, white and blue tinted glasses find a way to justify infants lying glassy eyed with their brains on the floor amidst their dead and dying families, with thousands more buried under the rubble.

The thesis of this multi-million dollar pageant was not just to revive the Democratic Party, but to redeem America, to redeem America, and to redeem American history — which is being recognized by wider and wider swaths of people in this country to be an ongoing saga of slavery, genocide, Empire, war and exploitation — to redeem the American government as a force for good when we see them funding a genocide in real time on our phones, to redeem the idea of America as a vision of equality and justice when increasing multitudes recognize that American mythology is the peak of imperialist propaganda and mass delusion — that by freedom, America means domination, by Justice, America means power — to redeem the governing consensus of America, that the two legitimate parties represent the wills and aspirations of the people living here, and that sharing power between them is the ideal form of government.

In reality, both parties have always represented the ruling class, and both aim to maintain this Empire through cascading crisis. One, through the threat of brutal violence, and the other through its unrestrained exercise. This redemption is what we saw on the stage in Chicago, and it was compelling. Even if you were sold rumors of Beyonce and ended up getting a Reagan worshiping speech from Leon Panetta, it didn’t dampen the vibe. They honestly did not have to work that hard. People are so used to the Democratic Party smacking themselves in the face with the pool noodle that they brought to the gunfight that candidates merely using their mouths to make words was hailed as a miracle.

As I close out and get to the main substance of today’s show, this interview with Stephen, I wanted to quote again Adam Johnson, writing for the Nation with a stark reminder: “And so the bombs continue and the party goes on. Gaza is removed from our minds and the field of vision of those attending the big celebration, and everyone, or at least those not on the wrong end of American weapons, gets to feel, ‘joy’ again.” So where does this leave us? In some ways this is complicated, but in some ways, it’s quite simple: Any social force that is serious about and capable of stopping fascism must be able to oppose genocide. For more on this, I recommend listening to episode 212 my interview with Graie, with Bend the Arc, episode 210, The War on Women and the Genocide in Gaza. Episode 202, Perspectives on Stopping Fascism, and episode 200 American Fascism, A Retrospective. With that, here is my interview with Stephen.

Sam Goldman  20:24

Today I am so glad to welcome on Stephen Eisenman. Stephen is a Professor Emeritus of Art History at Northwestern University. He is also the author of numerous articles and nine books, including ‘The Abu Ghraib Effect’ and ‘The Ecology of Impressionism.’ Stephen is also a curator, a critic, and activist, and co founder of the environmental nonprofit Anthropocene Alliance. He’s a regular contributor to the online publication Counterpunch, and he has a forthcoming book set to be released this fall, this October, to be precise, with artist collaborator Sue Coe, titled ‘The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism.’ Welcome Stephen. Thanks for joining me.

Stephen Eisenman  21:07

Thanks very much. I’m happy to be here, Sam.

Sam Goldman 21:08

Let’s start out! Students are gonna go back to college, back to high school, in just few weeks, if they haven’t already, and I’m hoping you could tell us a little bit about this new book that you’ve created with Sue and what it means to you that it’s a young person’s guide.

Stephen Eisenman  21:25

I guess I’m hoping that students coming back to school, to the classrooms, will realize, without being too scared, that living in a time of emergency — that is that the political, environmental, social, cultural circumstances of their lives are risky, if not dangerous, and that they need to prepare themselves and to understand challenges that they face — and the biggest of those challenges is environmental crisis and a political crisis that I call a crisis of fascism.

Sam Goldman 21:57

Can you tell us a little bit about some of the themes or elements of the book. Some topics that I’ve seen in coverage of the book have been the coup attempt, the right to abortion, the border and family separation policy under Trump, the repression of the movement against police murder and for Black lives, the pandemic anti-science policies and a lot more. I wanted to just get your read on what you decided to focus on and why you thought they were so pivotal to, in particular, young people’s understanding of this American fascism.

Stephen Eisenman  22:33

The key thing about the book to remember is that it’s an illustrated guide, and the artist is an artist named Sue Coe, who is the world’s greatest, I would say, political artist. She’s simultaneously a caricaturist, a satirist, a cartoonist, an illustrator, and a fine artist. The artworks that she produced for the book run the gamut of studies of refugees struggling across the border in the Rio Grande River in Texas, to violence in the streets, to Trump and Rupert Murdoch using their extraordinary megaphones that they have. Some of them are bitter, some of them are angry, some of them are hilariously funny.

That’s, I would say, the main component of the book, that’s the lure of the book, I’m number two, I would say. It’s a significant text that I produced, and it’s aimed at trying to get students, young people, to think about, as I said before, the challenges that they face. It starts off in an unusual way, asking students to think about the prospects for democracy in their own lives. To understand the nature of fascism, which is the obverse of democracy, the opposite of democracy, they need to understand something about the democracy that they have or don’t have. So I ask them to consider the times in which they’re free to speak, free to act, the ways in which their capacity to form life choices is controlled or impinged upon larger forces.

Then, after they’ve done that, to then think about what would mean, not just to have those things limited as they are, but also to have even the possibility of change be limited. Because that’s the unique challenge that we face with a Trump advanced presidency, not simply the authoritarian character of their rule, but the fact that the possibility of challenging both them and the underlying un-freedoms that we experience even now, that those would be diminished, and without the possibility of change or protest, then no progress is possible at all.

Sam Goldman 24:32

Listeners can’t see I am nodding emphatically at that — a lot of agreement in the layers of danger posed. I was wondering, you worked with Sue before on this topic, what made you decide that you needed to return to it, and that when you returned to it, you needed to focus on “young people.”

Stephen Eisenman  24:56

There’s a great tradition of political art that Sue belongs to — it goes all the way back to the late Middle Ages, Early Modern period — works by Peter Bruegel the Elder, the Flemish artist 17th century, who did images showing proverbs of various kinds, the blind leading the blind, for example. It goes up through the period of the 18th century with the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who did a series on The Disasters Of War, showing the horrors of war. He did so in a way that was so challenging that the Spanish officials had to censor it. It couldn’t be seen for 50 years after his death.

Then into the 19th century, the French caricaturist Henri Daumier represented the French Revolutions of 1848 and 1871 and he represented, as well, the so called caricature of manners — that is the styles and the corruption and the foolishness of everyday life. Then you get into the 20th century, there are many political caricaturists, cartoonists, who people used to see regularly in their daily newspapers. There aren’t so many newspapers today, so the art of caricature has fallen on hard times. But Sue is somebody who’s continued that tradition, and she illustrates for the New York Times, for The Nation, for Counterpunch, for many other magazines and journals. And whenever people see the art, they react to it immediately, because there’s something about the one two punch of word and image, of image and caption that really grabs you.

Woody Guthrie had written on his guitar, This Machine Kills Fascists. His songs were a challenge to American fascism, to global fascism, to Nazism, to fascism in Italy. I would say about our good caricature, this caricature, this art, kills fascism, and that’s what we try to do. Now, of course, it isn’t possible for a single artwork or a single set of words or texts to defeat fascism. It can hardly even challenge it. What it can do is raise questions, help organize an audience, create solidarity so that a movement can then be born that will challenge authoritarianism, fascism, violence, racism, and all those components of fascism.

Sam Goldman 26:53

You mentioned raising questions. What do you think in this moment is the top question that needs to be raised?

Stephen Eisenman  26:59

I guess the top question is the one that we’ve confronted the United States for a long while as the question of democracy itself. United States, as you know and your listeners will know, was highly limited as democracy right from the beginning. We had a system of chattel slavery, we had a system of usurpation — that is where the Native American populations lands were seized from them — we had an electoral college right from the beginning, we had a U.S. Senate that wasn’t directly elected by the people, we had the possibility of presidents being elected even though they hadn’t received majority votes, we had Jim Crow segregation, we had McCarthyism — virulent anti communism — we had lavender scares — repression of queers.

All that has severely repressed — and of course, women’s rights were highly limited until the vote was granted them, and then an equal rights amendment was never passed for women — so we’ve had all sorts of limitations on democracy. But we have had also moments of liberation, of transformation: voting rights act in 1964, gay marriage a decade or so ago, and other examples of the expansion of democracy. The possibility that democracy would contract was something that few people had really imagined even ten years ago, but with the election of Trump and the overturning of the Dobbs decision for abortion, and the recent determination that presidents have near authoritarian power to do whatever they want as long as It’s an official act — so the message of the book and the message to young people today is democracy, your democracy, future democracy is under threat.

And if that’s under threat, then our very existence is under threat, because we also have hovering over all of this, the danger of global warming, within a generation or two, the planet could be almost unlivable, and Trump is somebody who has denied climate change. His mantra is, drill, drill, drill for more oil and if all that comes to pass, it won’t just be democracy that’s on the line, but our very lives. 

Sam Goldman  28:50

I was wondering if I could ask you, because you’ve worked with Sue for some time, whether I could ask you a question about her work. The artwork by Sue Coe is… the words that come to mind first, are… striking. It’s incredibly striking and dramatic. It has a powerful style that is at once her own, it’s Sue’s, but it’s also evocative of the many great anti-fascist artists of the 20th century, including cartoonist Art Spiegelman, that our listeners are perhaps more familiar with. I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what you know about her inspiration for the work that she does.

Stephen Eisenman  29:29

Well, Sue has had many artistic inspirations. She’s one of the most informed artists you’ll ever meet. Some artists really are art historians as well as artists, and others are not. She’s an art historian as well. So if you ask her about her own influences, she’ll tell you, better than any art historian can. It would include people like the German expressionist Kathe Kolowitz, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, John Hartfield. These are artists who worked during the interwar years in Germany, particularly — years of hyperinflation, fights between left and right, at a time when images were very powerful, when there were dozens of newspapers, dozens of magazines, maybe hundreds of magazines, and these all had their own particular audiences, and there were battles, if you will, between the readers of one magazine or another — virtual battles, sometimes street battles, but not so much about magazines.

She took all that on board. I would say the majority a theme of her art has been about animal rights, and she and I have collaborated on works about animals and animal rights and animal liberation. She sees the struggle of animals as akin to the struggle of humans. We speak about fascism impacting humans, then fascism against animals in concentrated feeding operations, factory farms, is the case as well. These factory farms were places where animals, beginning with the Chicago slaughterhouses of an 1890s and so on, were places where meatpacking went on, where animals would be brought together, fed, brought through an assembly line, killed, often cruelly. Their bodies cut up in pieces, marketed and sold. That assembly line model was used by the Nazis when they wanted to kill Jews and Gypsies or Roma and others.

That is, that people would be sent in cattle cars brought to Auschwitz or Treblinka or Sobibor or any other death camps. They’d be disembarked from there. They’d be sorted they’d be sent up a ramp into a death chamber, gassed, killed, and their bodies then subsequently burned. That’s what happens to animals. There’s no reason for it. We don’t need animals to live, to survive. The planet, in fact, requires the ending of animal agriculture if we’re ever to get a handle on climate change. So she’s been motivated by the cruelty toward animals her whole life, and I have been as well, inspired by her to make that a cause of my own. So this book does have some discussion of animals and some illustrations about the treatment of animals, and it helps to make the parallel case between the destruction, the violence, against humans.

Violence is central to fascism. It implies the a leadership cult. It implies the beauty of violence, the necessity of violence, the wonders of war. The celebration of violence is something that is manifested in the animal industry and slaughterhouses meat industry as well. So it’s a complete fight for liberation — humans as well as animals. Her art is unflinching in that regard. That’s the hard thing to do, because if you show animal cruelty as when you show cruelty and violence toward humans, there’s a danger that your audience will flinch, and they’ll do so, so much, they’ll simply close the book. You have to, as an artist, be clever enough, to be cunning enough to use your instruments in a way that will get people to look — they may be shocked, may be disturbed, but rather than close the book, they’ll want to flip the page. I think that’s what this book does, and that’s what Sue Coe does in her art.

Sam Goldman  32:38

The last part of what you were saying, in particular, really resonated with me. This challenge of embracing people in a way, to confront reality in its completeness in a way that doesn’t make them then go back and put their head in the sand and not look at anything ever again. I think about moments in art that have done that. I am always awestruck by the capacity to do that, thinking of things like how even people with great concern about the right to abortion, for example, there were certain things that were deemed: We won’t look at that; We won’t go there; Don’t show images that portray the outcomes of when abortion, for example, is illegal — the reality of women bleeding out of girls dead, that full reality — that people couldn’t see that and be moved, or see that and see themselves, or see just other human beings and be like: I don’t want that to happen.

One recent example I remember in such vivid detail — please correct me, I believe it was Richard Serra — a Painting of Abu Ghraib. [SE: It wouldn’t have been Richard Serra.] I know he doesn’t do sculptures, but it was a painting. It was one of those, like, stark paintings of Abu Ghraib, it was a lithograph, it was in the Whitney Museum of Art, it was this picture that was incredibly simple, incredibly simple. I remember seeing that and that having a huge effect on me at that time in a way that I didn’t want to look at that actual images. 

Stephen Eisenman  34:15

Well, I think you’ve recognized something that is a principle for Sue’s art and other artists who work on political subjects or themes that are difficult to look at. That is you have to overlay them, often, with a layer of metaphor. So while you will show something, a woman who used a coat hanger to induce an abortion, and is bleeding out — and Sue actually has a painting early in her career that represents that, but the figures are elongated, somewhat exaggerated — there’s a layer of myth, of metaphor overlays, so that we can gain a degree of distance from it.

We can look at it, we can be shocked, we can be disturbed, but we won’t be so disturbed that we can’t look. It’s a very difficult line to draw between one thing and the other. You don’t want to prettify something that’s horrible — you want to tell the truth — on the other hand, you have to have people take a look at it. That’s an art, and that’s where a great artist with decades and decades of work behind her, like Sue Coe, is able to do that. That’s what I try to describe.

The book includes a historical account of American fascism from its origins all the way up to the present. Then there’s a section at the end where I analyze Sue’s art and the constituent elements that make a political artist. That’s one of the things I talk about, is how you manage to walk that fine line between shock, horror, disturbance, and something which you can look at, which you can bear to see and which you can even enjoy. There’s a few things that she does: One of them is, is humor. There’ll be some images that are really rough to follow, then other images that are really funny. And then there’ll be some where, even though it’s tough, there’ll be little anecdotal details — the expression of a figure, say it’s a refugee on the border of Texas, and you’ll see there’ll be a child and holding in her hand of a teddy bear or something. It sounds a little bit hokey — I’m not sure if there is image by her of that exactly, but it’ll give you the idea. It may seem a little bit hokey — but it’s something that grabs you and distracts you from the disturbance of the whole image.

That gives you a place, a little refuge for your eye and for your mind as you’re looking at the rest of the picture. That’s necessary for a picture to work and be effective. Otherwise you’d be just too disturbing and too bleak, and you wouldn’t be able to learn from it, or gain from it, or even take pleasure from it. This is a very challenging issue. People like Theodore Adorno, the philosopher, and Susan Sontag, the American critic, have talked about this; that is: What happens when you gain pleasure from an image of pain. Is that a contradiction? Have you failed as an artist or writer when you produce pleasure? Or is that a necessary part of conveying an image or an idea, having a conversation with your readers or your spectators? So that’s one of the things that Sue’s art also engages.

Sam Goldman  36:42

Really important questions. What you were saying about humor relates to my next question. It’s a little bit about just giving you a chance to talk about how you see this book fitting into the larger anti-fascist art milieu. I’ve seen Sue’s work compared to John Hartfield, for example, the German artist who devoted himself to exposing the Nazis and their rise to power there, however, while his message was clearly opposed to the Nazis and often ruthless in how he ridiculed them, with hindsight, we may be able to point out some shortcomings in the moral clarity of his work, knowing what we know now about the danger of dehumanizing whole groups of people in the lead up to genocide. Sue Coe’s work seems to build on this by continuing to ruthlessly depict these fascists, while centering the suffering of the vulnerable people hurt most by these fascists.

Stephen Eisenman  37:35

Well, she moves back and forth between showing figures with power — Supreme Court Justices, U.S. Senators, newspaper publishers, online journalists, ex-presidents, etc. — between that and the people who are the subjects — both the victims of fascism and those who will be resisting. She will sometimes bring them in the same image, and sometimes it’ll be a completely other  image. I’m thinking about, for example, a linocut in which he shows a kind of Davos scene of all the high and mighty economic and political rulers brought together at a great table, and they seem to be divvying up the spoils of the world, while in the background, outside, you see the clamoring populations — of the Southern Hemisphere, particularly — wondering what’s in it for them.

It’s, in a way, hilarious. I mean, you have all these people showing their greed and their bloodthirstiness and their vulgarity. But it’s also heartbreaking seeing the other people who are challenging it. Then also it suggests that there’s a real danger for those high and mighty folks; that the people out there who are right now under the boot may, in their great masses, come together, and their numbers are much greater than those of the people with power and money, they may overwhelm this happy meeting room in Davos. Again, a mixed message, you know, of victimization, victims becoming powerful; those who were victimizers subject to the rule, maybe, potentially, of those who are now under their boot.

So it’s a hard story to tell in a single image, but that’s what great artists, the great caricatures, the great cartoonists, are able to do. Makes me envious. I’m just a art historian and critic. I wish I could draw. Sue always says things like: It’s great to be an artist. I’ll say to her… I give her ideas about artworks… I’ll say: Well, what about, you know, the idea of Trump standing with the Supreme Court Justices, and he’s putting money in their pockets, or something like that. She’ll say: That’s an idea — and, like, couple hours later, she’ll have this brilliant sketch that she’s made. I’m like: O0h, geez, if I could only do that, you know, if I can just do something like that. It’s just magic.

Sam Goldman  39:39

It really is. It really is I agree. I can only draw in a way that impresses a four year old or five year old.

Stephen Eisenman  39:47

Well, that’s pretty good, if you can do that. Picasso said it takes a genius to be able to draw like a child. [SG: laughs]

Sam Goldman  39:55

I want to move into some current events and what’s on people’s minds right now, as it relates to the book. We’re recording this around the eve of the DNC, and I wanted to just ask if you could talk a little bit about what you think people need to understand at this moment about the basis for fascism in this country — where it arises from, and what it means to resist and stop fascism, even as the electoral candidate running against the fascists is also part of the current administration that is enabling a horrific genocide right now in Gaza.

Stephen Eisenman  40:31

Your listeners will probably know more about the shape and history and look of fascism than I will, but I will say only that there is no single shape or form of fascism. As people have said in the past: When/if fascism arises in the United States, it won’t be wearing a swastika, the men won’t have Jack boots, you won’t see the Hitler salute, you won’t hear “Seig Heil.” It’ll be in the form of Americanism, of pledge of allegiance, of the American flag, of MAGA and all that. And that means it’ll be obedience to the idea of a ruler, of a Fuhrer, if you will — and we certainly have that with Trump, whose legions follow him, regardless of the felonies that he commits.

It will be in the form of racism — of the suggestion that certain individuals or classes or ethnicities are superior to others. That’s certainly the case with Trump’s racism and rejection of immigration. It’ll take the form as well of a idea that there were glories of the past and that the only thing we need to do is to revive the glorious past into the present and future. Since the past can never be restored, and since the past wasn’t glorious anyway, it always means that you’re telling people that progress is impossible and that the best you have now is the best that will ever be. Because that’s part of the message of fascism, is that it won’t change — we need to cement in place what we have now. So all those things were displayed — the cult of the leader, the regressiveness, the turning backwards to a fantasized idea of the past, the ethnocentrism, the sexism, all that was part of the Republican National Convention.

Sam Goldman 42:10

I wanted to just ask if there was anything that I didn’t ask you about the book or your work that you wanted to speak to?  Just that I think the book has a fairly light touch in terms of the writing. It tells the history of American people, fascism, the regressive elements of American history. It’s leavened with hope, and that the images are fantastic. They’re a delight, troubling, haunting, nightmarish, hilarious. And I hope people will take a look the book and enjoy it, and must of all learned something and be challenged and be inspired. 

Stephen Eisenman  42:44

Yes, the Counterpunch author page has a link to my hundred and some odd stories in Counterpunch over the last four years. There’s another piece coming out on Friday about the about the month anniversary of the attempted assassination of Trump by Thomas Crooks. When you link to that, you’ll see my other stories, and you’ll have my email address, even, if you want to send me comments. So I look forward to hearing from your listeners.

Sam Goldman  42:44

In the show notes, there is a link to pre-order the book, there is a link to Sue’s website, there’s a link to her Instagram as well, so you can see some of the work that Steven’s described. And Steven, if people want to follow more of your work and read more from you, should people be directed to your Counterpunch author page? Would that be the best?

Sam Goldman  43:29

Thanks so much for talking with us, and thanks so much for the book.

Stephen Eisenman  43:33

You bet, Sam. Thank you. So long.

Sam Goldman  43:36

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