Visualizing Fascism

Visualizing Fascism might seem an easy endeavour. Uniformed men on the march, children performing in sports arenas, the dictator in his uniformed splendor, likely figure in this repertoire. Yet when we rely on this image bank that oscillates between the unique One and the undifferentiated Many, we are replicating Fascism’s own point of view. This talk disrupts these habits by going into the crowd to examine faces taken from everyday life. It asks us to consider other ways of visualizing Fascism, and other ways of utilizing the archives we now have to bring forth other faces of Fascism and the Fascist era that still find relatively scant representation.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. The recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other fellowships, she’s an expert on fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. She writes frequently for the media on those topics and on Donald Trump. Her next book is Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall (Norton).