SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good, spot-on and well thought through if light on action items

SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good
OMER AZIZ
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$32.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: What is driving the rise of fascism—and how can we stop it?

In this singular investigation into the sinister realms of fascism and its many guises, Omer Aziz, author of the acclaimed Brown Boy and contributing writer for the Boston Globe, sets out to answer the Why are so many young people like him drifting to the ultranationalist right? Shadows of the Republic offers a haunting portrait of American fascism, how it began, and why it is now focused on immigration, technology, and the purification of society.

Fascism is not coming to America; it has been here for a long time. With astringent clarity, Aziz traces the flaring up of fascist ideas in both American history and our current moment.

From the dominance of the KKK, to the Nazi rally in New York in 1939, to the alliances between U.S. elites and European fascists, Aziz examines the long shadows of fascism. Traveling across the United States and Europe, he illuminates connections between street fascists and the ones in suits, between Hitler and the country across the ocean he so admired. Aziz examines culture in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where propaganda ministers made people believe both everything and nothing, and he examines the apppeal of the far right among the very group it targets. Using interviews with experts and his own experience, he also offers an anti-fascist playbook to reinvigorate democracy and our civic life.

Fascism is a precise term, cheapened by overuse. Yet when a word describes reality, we can't afford to ignore it. From the pulsing power of an ideology of the past to its comeback among even those with the most to lose, Shadows of the Republic offers the definitive story of American fascism—and what we can do to salvage democracy for years to come.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: From the publisher's blurbs:

"A comprehensive work on fascism and America's democracy."—BOB WOODWARD
"An alarm bell announcing that the American house is on fire."—STEPHEN KING
"A provocative and passionate reminder that democracies don't collapse overnight."—CALEB GAYLE

Not bad, as a group of famous names lending a book their luster. It helps that Brown Boy already proved Author Omer's literary cred to all and sundry. (If you've never read it, your library has a decent chance of having a copy on their shelves.) A man with multiple degrees from good schools who happens to be from a Pakistani-Canadian immigrant family knows exclusion and profiling intimately. It's why he speaks with the passion for his antifascist beliefs that clearly powers his writing of this book.

What will likely open the reader's eyes is the depth and age of fascism's roots in the US. It's really easy to say "it's this regime's doing" but it ain't the whole truth, or even close to it. In doing the reporting for this book, Author Omer delved into the different identities in modern fascism, from street-level grievance-led prejudice to boardroom media-trained corporatism. Each branch of the shrub has its own genesis, its own (perverse) virtue-signaling, and its own class systems to go with its origins.

A serious problem we're watching play out in real time is the anti-intellectual fervor of fascists. Ultimately, Author Omer decries the harms being done to all of us now, but points out we can use this same reality against the fascists. It's heartening to read a book that doesn't just ring the tocsin for the republic for which we stand, but shows us who's resisting (or resisted before) and how.

I'm sad there was not *more* of that in the read, but understand the reasoning of focusing on presenting the system so we can stop making the fumblimg foolery that's led us to this dark passage in our country's existence. It's widely applicable to many places, of course, but wow are the people of the US led carefully away from thinking critically about what's happening around us. Author Omer explains how effectively and helpfully but maybe a bit too often.

Author Omer is a fine, approachable guide to the perpetrators and the resisters. It's clear whose side he's on but he doesn't fall into the trap where I live my life, ie vilifying The Others and treating them as unworthy shitty beings. I admire this character trait. I have never in my rising-seventy years on Earth been able to emulate it. Would that I could, but at least Author Omer provides example and encouragement to try, try again.

As a read, this is a fine experience; as a guide to resistance, this is an inspiring collection of ideas; as a way to support people who are doing good work in the world, buying a copy of this book is a good investment.

JANUARY 6TH: 24 HOURS AT THE CAPITOL: An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection; THE CONSPIRACISTS: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging

24 HOURS AT THE CAPITOL: An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection
NORA NEUS
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The 24 Hours in Charlottesville author offers a minute-by-minute account of the January 6 riots through the never-before-heard stories of those who were there Neus’s progressive lens goes beyond mainstream reporting to reveal important truths about racial justice and the US white nationalist movement

Drawing on the collaboration and support of Tim Heaphy, chief investigator of the U.S. Congress’s January 6 Select Committee; on exclusive access to the United States Capitol Historical Society’s oral history project on the insurrection; and on her personal contacts on the Hill, Nora Neus reconstructs what it was actually like in and around the Capitol during those 24 hours. Her narrators include high-profile politicians and maintenance workers, Capitol Hill residents and White House photographers, police officers who defended the building and insurrectionists who have since disavowed their actions.

Police officers recall the insurrectionists screaming at them and calling them traitors. Staffers remember “walking over pools of blood” as they ran for their lives. A young Asian-American staffer recalls locking herself in a room just feet from the rioters, mentally preparing to be raped. A mostly Black janitorial staff began cleaning the blood of insurrectionists off the marble floor on the Capitol before the building was even officially secured.

January 6 was a well-planned attack coordinated largely right out in the open, the threat of which lawmakers and government officials underestimated in part because it was coming from white people. Neus will examine the underlying racial implications of not only the attack itself, but also in the planning and coordination of the response.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A deeply, deeply disturbing book about a searing and fateful moment in US history. No one wants to think about it this way but I'll say it openly: J6 was the Fort Sumter of the white supremacist rebellion. It's approaching a new inflection point with midterms threatening to expose the lies that undergirded felonious yam's 2024 election. We can expect more violence, and with a better prepared kakistocracy in place.

You're a citizen. If you're not, you still have a stake in what happens in the country that holds the planet's future habitability in it silos and missiles. Inform youself so you will know what to pressure your government officials to oppose, prevent if possible, and agitate for serious effort to neutralize.

It was, and is, possible for angry white men to plan and execute a coup attempt and get away with it because unexamined privilege, unacknowledged dominance, is finally being challenged. At this moment, the allies at the top are fumbling issues important to the aptly-named "base" so there is a window of opportunity we can not afford to bungle our handling of.

I encourage you, since you were not there on the grounds of the United States Capitol building on the sixth of January in 2021, to read these first-hand accounts from those who were. Calling this event a riot is inaccurate, diminishing both the intent of the perpetrators and the severity of the impact of their actions. Read about the planning...took place in the open, remember...the execution of this failed Putsch, the actions of the traitors. The awful things done, the horrifying behavior.

Now realize the sitting president, in his last Constitutionally sanctioned term, has issued many pardons for these men.

Do not assume the midterm elections will proceed as usual. Sound the alarm in your community for poll-watchers to be defended...and defended against. Do not sit it out because you're tired, because you don't think "They" would dare to do that.

Did you imagine "They" would dare stage a coup attempt? Because "They" did.

Openly. Without consequences.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE CONSPIRACISTS: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging
NOELLE COOK
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.99 hardcover, preorder now for delivery 6 January 2026

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: How do ordinary women become extremists?

Leafing through photos from the January 6 insurrection, extremist researcher Noelle Cook was struck by how many women looked like her: middle-aged white women in puffy coats. Women were not on the fringes of the extreme right, she realized. They were radicalizing each other, and the pandemic was changing them. So who were the women of J6? And why did some of them believe in shape-shifting reptilians and the health benefits of colloidal silver?

This is the world scholars call conspirituality, in which New Age religion, online wellness culture, and extremism blend and become laced with antisemitic and racist theories. With acute attention to the emotional lives of women and research on conspiracism, Cook introduces us to Tammy, who believed storming the Capitol would help take down a global cabal of pedophiles. We also meet Yvonne, convinced she is a starseed destined to lead others into the fifth dimension. We visit a trade show where vendors hawk everything from quantum healing devices to government cover-ups, and trace the movement's roots to a nineteenth-century mystical philosophy.

With arresting detail, The Conspiracists draws us into the lives of conspiratorial women to explore how and why women are becoming radicalized. Women are crafting entire worlds, Cook argues, and we ignore these worlds at our own peril. As misinformation spreads and extremism intensifies, The Conspiracists does not seek to excuse women's conspiracism but rather to understand it. Otherwise, we have no hope of countering its force.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am quite openly an atheist. In a world where how you pray and to whom can get you murdered, that is not the safe option.

One of the most powerful repulsive forces in my eyes against all religions, everywhere and of every stripe, is that this book's subjects are not unique to any one tradition...apart from the socially acceptable psychotic break that is labeled religion.

That statement will offend many. I've had a psychotic break recently, a reaction known to occur to people who take Levaquin (albeit very, very few of them, lucky me) as I did for pneumonia, so I speak from my own experience: If inanimate/invisible things are speaking to you, are counseling you about Reality, are imbued with consciousness or intelligence or both, you are experiencing a psychotic break...not a divine visitation or revelatory vision.

I'd treat the women profiled in these pages with the care and concern I received during my own psychotic break, gently attempting to lead them back to consensus reality. It's not always effective but it's worth trying. In profiling these women, Author Cook is not demeaning them, not saying (as I have) they are experiencing a mental-health crisis, not presenting value judgments outright...again, like I have done. She traces the women's sense of being abandoned, unconsidered, as they travel further and further into what most of us see as conspiracy-theory aberrations. It is a truth we as a society do not want to face head-on that huge swaths of our population are in the grips of this factually supported idea of themselves as abandoned, hard done by. In the face of that existential crisis what else is there to do but reach for some explanation, some reason? They already know there is no justification or excuse for their situation. There must be a "why," because there always is.

It's facing up to the vile, selfish cause of the nightmarish cruelty enacted on them that makes conspiracy theories so appealing and so successful. As these ordinary women's descent (as I see it) into aberrant thinking and acceptance of "alternative facts" demonstrates, the need to have a "why" is the most powerful inducement of conspiracies and delusions...of all sorts, in all times.

The absence of trust in what I see as trustworthy authority structures, eg science, has been carefully cultivated for more than a generation. (You can look up the research on your own.) It's led many people into a more general mistrust of what was once mainstream information economies that we relied on to build our consensus about the polity we live in. That vacuum, as the women profiled demonstrate in their adherence to beliefs not demonstrably truthful, is filled by the Othered communities they've chosen to fill the void. In those Othered communities there is stability, there is fellowship, there is belonging and validation the unempathetic outsiders do not offer.

I certainly don't offer empathy and understanding to people who believe they're messiahs, or that there are lizard people secretly controlling the world. Scorn and contumely by the dumpsterload, yes; understanding and empathy, not a smidgin. Hence my need to engage with this book: being Right is being part of the problem that's led to these fractures developing during the time of immense societal stress we're experiencing. In a quest not to unknowingly respond to others' delusional thinking, as I see it, with behaviors that will only worsen the problem I've identified, I seek my usual trusted source of advice: Experts who share my vision of the world more than they don't.

January 6th looms. It is a midterm election year, and there is widespread opposition to the current regime. A foreign war has been launched.

The omens do not portend a smooth course ahead. Conspiracists, you aunties, cousins, and grandmas, are likely going to support a radical alteration of the country's governance...despite the signs pointing to that course leading to repression and violence and immiseration. Beliefs that "They" are the ones who will suffer and be punished for "Their" misdeeds, that this horror will lead into a glorious Golden Age of Truth and Rewards for those who believed, are going to be dashed...are being dashed by the entire Epstein files debacle. Marjorie Taylor Greene, with whom I share nothing except the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to trial by a jury of my peers, has admitted she was wrong to hold her conspiracist beliefs.

It's a process we cannot hasten and widen in scope without understanding its roots. That was the point of Author Cook writing this book. Stand ready to escort the conspiracists back into consensus reality by learning how and why they left it.

BAD INDIANS BOOK CLUB: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds, taking back control of the narrative never went down easier

BAD INDIANS BOOK CLUB: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds
PATTY KRAWEC (foreword by Omar El Akkad)
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Bad Indians Book Club continues the conversation Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec started in Becoming Kin, inviting readers to question the stories of settler colonialism and discover the rich worlds created by Indigenous voices.

"A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives."—Booklist, starred review

In this powerful reframing of the stories that make us, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, and fiction to ask: What worlds do books written by marginalized people describe and invite us to inhabit?

When a friend asked what books could help them understand Indigenous lives, Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin, gave them a list. This list became a book club and then a podcast about a year of Indigenous reading, and then this book. The writers in Bad Indians Book Club refuse to let dominant stories displace their own and resist the way wemitigoozhiwag—European settlers—craft the prevailing narrative and decide who they are.

In Bad Indians Book Club, we examine works about history, science, and gender as well as fiction, all written from the perspective of "Bad Indians"—marginalized writers whose refusal to comply with dominant narratives opens up new worlds. Interlacing chapters with short stories about Deer Woman, who is on her own journey to decide who she is, Krawec leads us into a place of wisdom and medicine where the stories of marginalized writers help us imagine other ways of seeing the world. As Krawec did for her friend, she recommends a list of books to fill in the gaps on our own bookshelves and in our understanding.

Becoming Kin, which novelist Omar El Akkad called a "searing spear of light," led readers to talk back to the histories they had received. Now, in Bad Indians Book Club comes a potent challenge to all the stories settler colonialism tells—stories that erase and appropriate, deny and deflect. Following Deer Woman, who is shaped by the profuse artistry of Krawec, we enter the multiple worlds Indigenous and other subaltern stories create. Together we venture to the edges of worlds waiting to be born.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The structure of the book makes me think these were written as essays, turned into chapters, and not very thoroughly combed through to make sure reduplicative information was minimized or eliminated.

That said, every chapter is cram-jam full of information new to me, or so distant from my ROM that I needed to dig for it in RAM. I came away very much better informed, educated, and energized. Fortunately, there are footnotes galore to keep me supplied in rabbit-hole bait. Yay. *note to self check data usage*

The character Kwe/Deer Woman as our guide and cicerone is a polarizing addition to the non-fiction nature of the book. Quite sensible in my opinion, as being taught something I'm totally unfamiliar with is always easier for me to contextualize and absorb if there is a person teaching me. I think I might have been okay with just Author Krawec...but this way I felt I was listening in and learning more through it.

In a time that feels to me like it is celebrating smallness, valorizing exclusion, and weaponizing authority structures, reading Bad Indians Book Club gave me the feeling of learning while resisting these things I emphatically do not support. I will warn my fellow biblioholics that this is going to be a TBR-fattening read. Big time.

But worth it to discover new storytelling. I think you will agree.