Antifascist education: An introduction

Once again, fascism is back in the news. After a long period in which the notion of fascism seemed historically irrelevant to contemporary political, social, economic, and educational problems, pro- and anti-fascist discourses have returned with a vengeance. Throughout social media, it is now common to hear political rivals on the right and the left call each other “fascists” in order to delegitimize or humiliate various political agendas. Fascist rhetoric is openly used by political figures like Trump to rouse passions for patriotic nationalism while denigrating immigrants by calling them “vermin.” Mainstream, political commentators are now issuing warnings against a rising tide of fascism that is threatening to eclipse democracy (Albright & Woodward, 2018; Maddow, 2023). And in the academy, a host of critical theory and sociology books have been publishing within the last ten years on the topic of fascism (Connolly, 2017; Stanley, 2020; Toscano, 2023, Hope & Mullen, 2024), including reissues of key Frankfurt School texts addressing the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 2019; Löwenthal & Guterman, 2021). While there have been a few attempts to address the issue of fascism in educational philosophy and theory (Giroux, 2018; Giroux & DiMaggio, 2024; Lewis, 2020; Smith, 2020; Vavrus, 2022), there has not been a sustained discussion in education across conceptual, historical, and sociological contexts concerning the meaning, function, and potential responses to fascism. This special issue attempts to jumpstart this broader dialogue.

Antifascist education has a both long and thin history (Blessing, 2006; Castoldi, 2024). Beyond some historical treatments and a few publications that address antifascist education directly, antifascist education has yet to garner the wide-spread attention in education that other discourses such as critical multiculturalism, social justice pedagogy, antiracist education, BIPOC and DEI initiatives, and decolonial education have received. This special issue attempts to: 1) understand the current state of antifascism in education, 2) consider the distinctiveness of antifascism in education and 3) offer trajectories for antifascist theorization and practice in education. Thus, the aim of this special issue is to provide educators with multiple theoretical frameworks, historical and contemporary examples, and diverse political contexts in order to map the complex ways in which fascism and antifascism intersect with educational concerns.

As will become increasingly obvious as one reads the various essays contained in this special issue, defining fascism is a perennially vexing question. Fascism, both as a historical political form and as a concept with which a theorist might work, is at best a coagulation of various markers that eschews attempts at essentializing its nature. Correspondence-type articulations of the “truth” of fascism seem to endlessly falter in the midst of the plethora of distinct historical fascisms that sometimes do not satisfy necessary and sufficient conditions. Therefore, the reader will find the authors in this issue and elsewhere reaching for coherent accounts of the political phenomena, and/or pragmatic approaches of definition that focus in on what fascism does, what traits it exhibits, and what strategically might be said in response. A consequence of these approaches is that there is not a single, unified definition of fascism that the articles all share, yet as the discussion of fascist challenges, appearances, and problems unfold throughout the special issue, there is nevertheless a building together of a political disposition and arrangement that is articulatable beyond mere initial impressions. By focusing on the ambiguous terrain of “fascism” rather than simply ignoring it (as historically irrelevant) or trying to resolve it (through a simple definition) quickly and easily, antifascist education can perhaps intervene in the present. That being said, the articles predominantly address contexts where a definition of fascism is required as those involved are usually unwilling to self-identify with fascist politics, with the notable exception of Lewis’s article, which more clearly engages with radicalization and groups of people who do identify themselves as fascist, or neo-Nazi, or the likes.

Not only is fascism challenging to define, the responses to it also take a variety of forms. As the discourse around antifascist education and antifascist praxis necessarily lacks a single authoritative source, there are a variety of ways in which antifascism is taken up. Here we name three approaches that correspond to three terms one might see in the literature: anti-fascism, antifascism, and nonfascism. Within antifascist educational literature these three terms tend (though there are numerous exceptions to this typology) to be put to use in somewhat distinct ways. First, anti-fascist thought is most commonly used to denote an approach that works against fascism. Fascism in these approaches is more directly challenged, confronted, or understood to be opposed. Characteristic of anti-fascist educational theories is a sense that there is a foreboding fascism which demands a negation through education. Second, antifascism (without the hyphen) tends to be used by those less interested in articulating direct affronts to fascist politics and practice, and instead attempts to theorize beyond fascism not wanting to merely oppose and thereby become necessarily entangled in and defined by fascism. Antifascist educational theorizing can be generalized as entailing some constructive aspect such that the realities of fascism will be left behind and not merely opposed in perpetuity. Third, and less prevalent, is the Foucauldian nonfascist option. Nonfascist alternatives in their politics and educational deployment attempt to enact an otherwise wherein the practice or theory is not useful for, deployable by, or incorporateable into a fascist politics. As one might well imagine these three types of responses are not necessarily easily distinguishable, or even always beneficial to separate, yet as a reading aid they may be of use to the reader for considering the articles that follow in this special issue, especially if one wants to identify the sentiment of which type of response is being proposed (even where the terminology might be used in slightly different ways).

An aspect of the following articles that may be of use is the somewhat ironic cohesion that is enabled by considering such a divisive political phenomenon. When fascism becomes present as an educational concern (regardless of the specific definition), conceptual connections between what are often analyzed as disparate political movements and phenomena becomes possible. Connecting nationalist movements, incel acts of aggression, affective malaise, school shootings, meme culture, economic logics, misogyny, and histories of colonialism may seem farfetched, yet sustained examination of fascism enables these phenomena to be considered as being related. Beyond mere academic interests, such connections open possibilities for solidarity and coalition building across activist and educational movements. Indeed, antifascism—precisely because of its diffuse nature—might very well be a powerful counter-hegemonic nodal point for articulating a host of otherwise individual political projects.

Similar to the breath of the phenomenon considered, the articles that follow draw inspiration from a wide array of theorists, discourses, and locations. The authors included in this special issue draw on a wide array of theorists, including but not limited to members of the Frankfurt School, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Aldo Capitini and Guido Calogero, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Zizek, Theodore Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Elizabeth Anker among others. Moreover, the analyses and arguments engage in religious thought, affect theory, political theory, policy analysis, comparative histories, economic analysis, and cultural considerations. Finally, the articles address situations in a variety of global locales, including Mexico, Israel, the United States, and Italy. The broad of scope of the special issue is an attempt to offers insight into what is a global predicament, while also capturing a snapshot of the abundance of resources for responding to fascism(s).

Before outlining the various contributions to this special issue, we would like to pause and offer some initial questions to help guide the reading process. First, do fascism and antifascism entail epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical assumptions or claims? If so, what are they, and how do they differ? More specifically: How does a vision of the good life, or a lack thereof, play into both the problem of fascism and the antifascist response? How does a consideration of fascism challenge mainstream political discourse and concepts such as freedom, equality, rights? Regarding the person: How is affect connected to fascism and antifascism? Does affect theory aid in theorizing the distinction between fascism and antifascism?

A second set of questions pertains to education as it relates to fascism and antifascism. What distinguishes antifascist education from democratic education more broadly? Which liberal assumptions require retention for antifascist education, which assumptions are non-essential? To answer these, one might ask: Where is fascism at play in education, and where ought antifascist educational energy be directed? This line of questioning also entails the pragmatic question: How might a discourse of antifascist educational theory and pedagogy be developed wherein contemporary uses of “fascist” as a political demonization and polarization tactic do not come to dominate the discursive arena?

Third there are questions that relate fascist/antifascist analysis and educational engagement to specific times, places, and contemporary dynamics. In this historical moment wherein everyone is called a fascist, one might begin by asking: What contemporary political trends and events provide insight into the current moment of burgeoning fascism globally? How do these contemporary events shape the antifascist educational response? A following question might be to then enlarge the historical scope to ask: What is fascism’s relation to modernity, late-modernity, and post-modernity? Does considering fascism in relation to these meta-categories change antifascist education? And depending on how one answers these questions, differing tactics may be taken in response to a broad organizational question: Can antifascism be a big-tent category within which DEI, antiracism, anti-imperialism, anticapitalism, LGBTQ+, indigenous, decolonialism, disability studies, and democratic education work upon common ground and aims? The articles in this issue touch on, wrestle with, and offer partial responses and answers to these questions, but the questions themselves are by no means concluded or answered through the authors’ engagement with them.

The first three articles in this special issue touch on the historical, contextual, and global particularities of antifascist education. Stefano Oliverio opens his contribution by focusing on the Italian context—a context where fascism as a named politics originated with Benito Mussolini. From this position, and aware of the historical import, Oliverio departs from a historically shackled conception of fascism by way of Umberto Eco’s concept of Ur-fascism to ponder the question of whether antifascism may be considered to be a genuinely educational concept. Expanding the available repository of antifascist theoretical resources in the English language by commenting on two Italian thinkers (Aldo Capitini and Guido Calogero), Oliverio develops a distinction between antifascist education and education for antifascism. Working with this distinction, Oliverio develops a claim that antifascism is not a “basic concept of education” as some sort of sufficient condition, and yet “no truly educational education may be fascist” and thus antifascism is, for Oliverio, a “necessary point of re-orientation of our thought.” Within this neither-fundamental, nor-dissociable conceptual space in which antifascism lingers, Oliverio offers three main ideas that enable antifascist education: “openness,” “the ulteriority of Thou,” and a “non-imperial understanding of truth.” These three entangled main ideas yield an unending direction for antifascist educational practice.

Rather than origins and trajectories, Kevin Klein-Cardeña’s article draws our attention particularities of practice, specifically Zapatista education as being a case of antifascist education in Mexico. Klein-Cardeña explores how Zapatista practice is a response to forms of domination that is ever-weary of itself becoming a dominating force. To draw out this dilemma of domination, Klein-Cardeña utilizes Deleuze and Guattari’s description of fascism to highlight two fascist tendencies: “the patterning of desire through power binaries (microfascism) and the totalizing drive to eliminate alterity (homogenization).” Identifying these foci enables a self-reflexive turning of concern, wherein revolutionary actors and more generally those on the left are made aware that they are not inherently immune to the tendencies. The Zapatista movement exhibits four ways, Klein-Cardeña argues, of countering these fascist tendencies: inversion of command relationships, plural self-definition, subversion of representation, and a pedagogical safeguarding of alterity. These counter strategies are shown to be not only of importance for Zapatista politics, but key aspects of the Zapatista struggle for educational autonomy.

Addressing a sort of global fascistic malaise in which we find ourselves, Oded Zipory, writing from the Israeli context, also considers the future through an analysis of “stuckedness” versus hope in antifascist education. Drawing upon an array of sources from international contexts—including Israel, Russia, Lebanon, Germany, South Africa, and the Crow nation in the United States—Zipory teases out a distinction between fascist and antifascist temporalities and their corresponding forms of hope (fascist hope and radical hope, respectively) so as to “infuse education with an emancipatory horizon.” Zipory’s radical hope “that is immanently transcendent” is in part an encouragement for antifascists to not flee from utopic desires but to see them “as part of this world yet one that points beyond it,” such that emotion and the powers of myths do not become tools usable solely by fascists. With that said, Zipory offers three concluding antifascist principles, 1) resist suggesting concrete goals and reformist fixes, 2) teach observance and the art of extracting meaning from the past that historicizes the present and emphasizes its contingency, and 3) practice a deep sense of listening. Together these first three articles offer up resources for conceptually considering the educational status of antifascist education, the relation of specific cases of politics and circumstance that give rise to educational praxis of antifascism, and some notable guidance for antifascist educators.

The following two articles offer two takes on affect and its relation to fascism and antifascism, both of which are put forward as continuations of the authors’ previous work on antifascist education. Michalinos Zembylas’s article “Bataille’s anti-fascism through the lens of affect theory: Reflections on antifascist education” puts George Bataille’s work in dialogue with later developments in affect theory. Zembylas considers the ethically and politically risky opportunity of an antifascist affective education and considers the dilemma of where and how one might “stoke a passion” without becoming dogmatic or manipulative as is the case in fascist uses of affect. Considering Bataille’s understanding that fascism’s homogeneity is constructed through affect as distinct from rationality, ideology, or derived from an economic base, Zembylas highlights that a democracy that stirs the passions is the analogous antifascist response, and this is a positive politics, not merely a negation of fascism (i.e. antifascist, not merely anti-fascist). Given the varied possible trajectories that affect may take, Zembylas cautions that affect should not be ignored, nor celebrated. Instead, it can help make sense of how politics at the macro-social level are connected to the micro-scale of bodies. Zembylas’s suggested educational corrective then is aimed at pedagogically unmaking microfascist subjectivities, which in turn yields its own complicated terrain wherein antifascism can become “a moralistic endeavour that will easily backfire.” Opposed to dogmatic and moralistic teachings of democracy, Zembylas concludes by suggesting reparative antifascist education must be offered “as a form of living that creates affirmative relations to difference and minimizes the possibilities of engaging in fascist behavior.” In sum, antifascist education must view “the superficial affects connected to liberalism (e.g. tolerance, diversity, multiculturalism) as inadequate, or too conveniently packaged, to confront the legacies of fascism in all of its forms.”

Lewis’s article “The American agitator goes digital” takes up a timely analysis of online fascists radicalization and recruitment of youth through the affective role of agitational aesthetics. Lewis turns to the Frankfurt School and Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman’s work on agitation (as that which reflects, stirs up, and catalyzes the audience’s predispositions, moods, and atmosphere) and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s notion of fascist fanciful projection and resultant paranoia to help articulate a dynamic agitational aesthetics, which he identifies as being ubiquitous in online spaces that continually reproduce and intensify the agitation. This dynamic, which Lewis calls “agitational aesthetics,” results in unceasing agitation that invokes a response of “hypnotic alertness” that catalyzes an affective economy perfect for radicalization. The agitational frame enables Lewis to argue that fascist radicalization is less about the content of words and speeches (like that of propaganda and ideology), rather the agitated delivery itself produces the affective resonance with the audience that creates the bond of affinity. Similar to Zembylas, Lewis also probes the potential of responding to fascist affect with affect. Lewis is wary that agitation can respond constructively to agitation, and instead he notably turns to Walter Benjamin’s notion of “innervation” which is a creative and receptive affective state that can be cultivated in collaborative and collective experiments of becoming. Together these two articles cautiously mark out some constructive guidelines for an affective future in antifascist education.

Papers by Kevin Siefert and Itamar Manoff return the discussion again to an ongoing dilemma in antifascism: the extent to which antifascism is or is not necessarily predicated on historical right-wing forms of nationalist fascism, and thus an explicit lineage with twentieth-century forms of fascism in the European context. While there is increasing awareness of the link between fascism and colonialism (a theme picked up below in the interview with Alberto Toscano), and while re-reading of interwar fascism from non-Western centers has become an urgent task (Ortiz, 2023), these two paper exemplify a continuing tension of the contemporary moment between Western, historical antecedents and newer variants.

Departing from more-or-less traditional accounts that link fascism to the nation-state, Kevin Siefert’s article “Relational antifascist education: Resisting neoliberal fascist productions” considers neoliberal fascist productions, and the role education plays in making these productions sensible (drawing on Jacques Rancière) and thus open to critique. Siefert suggests that through a Deleuzian understanding of partial struggles, educators can enact resistance to neoliberal fascist productions by inviting complex relationships in educational practices that disrupt totalizing distributions of sense, thereby resisting individualization in pedagogy. Siefert argues that such sensibilization and resistance are necessary since fascism “constantly changes” pivoting away from its previous iterations toward new forms, though it exhibits tendencies that make the fascist relations sensible. In the ubiquity of capitalist logics in neoliberalism, Siefert argues that fascist tendencies are scattered throughout persons and society. It arises in microfascist tendencies such as “clarity” and “disgust” in the individual rather than through abstract, macrofascist constructs of the nation or the people. Alternatively, Siefert proposes that antifascist education ought to be a relational education that presents “individuals as a ‘plurality of selves’ (Lugones, 2003, p. 93) inhabiting and embodying a plurality of worlds.” Plurality is thus needed to resist microfascist educational totalizations such as clarity and disgust.

Manoff’s article, “Arendt’s conception of love and anti-fascist education,” returns the reader to the importance of nationalism for making sense of fascism in its concrete historical manifestations. He does so through a close reading of a correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Manoff considers and then departs from microfascisms to focus on the role of nationalism and nationalist rhetoric in fascist discourse as a “core element” of fascism. Manoff remains concerned that microfascist approaches risk “diluting the actual conception of fascism to the extent that it is no longer distinguishable from relations of power writ large” which also risks “a type of essentialist and quasi-metaphysical view of the nature of power and desire.” Manoff therefore argues for nationalism’s “central role” in historical fascisms. Turning to Arendt’s analysis of the relation of the nation to the state, Manoff articulates the problems as beginning “when the nation, that is the idea of a political community of a shared origin and a common culture and language, ‘usurps’ the political apparatus of the state” and thus develops totalitarianism (fascism). Manoff then turns to Arendt’s articulation of love which is apolitical (or even antipolitical), and can only be conceived of love of one’s friends rather than one’s country or nation. Manoff reads such love as an “educational gesture” that breaks assumptions of “naturalistic bonds” of group belonging. Manoff concludes by acknowledging that Arendt’s position is not unproblematic and the wedge driven between the nation and politics—with its affective absence—does remove part of the human experience from the political sphere. Yet Manoff holds out for Arendt’s refusal to allow affect and emotion into the political sphere as a possible tool for antifascist educators to open up critical conversations as to the power of rhetorical force in fascist movements.

The final two articles attempt to bring an analysis of fascism to bear on the contemporary moment and the amorphous face of fascism, however they do so in divergent ways. In “Hijacking freedom: Ron DeSantis and the scourge of fascist politics,” Henry Giroux offers a critique of the twisted inversion of freedom within the context of United States politics, while the interview titled “Late fascism and education,” conducted with Alberto Toscano about his recent work Late Fascism, searches for educational antifascist ways of conceiving of fascism in a contemporary context. Giroux’s article, written before Ron DeSantis conceded the race to be the 2024 Republican nominee for president of the United States, dives into the ways DeSantis’s rhetoric and policies have distorted the concept of freedom. Giroux focuses on DeSantis not only because he finds DeSantis’s policies concerning, but because DeSantis couches these legislative policies—many of which have to do with education—in the rhetoric of freedom to garner popular appeal. Giroux’s analysis then extends beyond the rhetoric, borrowing Elizabeth Anker’s concept “ugly freedoms” to demonstrate how these policies condemn life to market logics and authoritarian cultures. Giroux argues through numerous historical analogies that these ugly freedoms function as part of a fascist politics. Attempting to provide a path forward, throughout the essay Giroux claims that freedoms to dominate, repress, and enact violence are at odds with justice. Giroux concludes that educators must make clear that democracy and capitalism are not synonymous, and this must be asserted to maintain a distinction between a free market and personal freedom, a distinction that, if lost, causes a cascade of political ills.

“Late Fascism and Education” is an interview with Alberto Toscano conducted by Silas Krabbe and Tyson E. Lewis about Toscano’s recent book Late Fascism. Of particular interest in Toscano’s work—which ruptures the well-trodden chronological from Italian fascism to the present–is his engagement with the Black Radical intellectual tradition in the United State which enables an identification of fascist traits in imperial and colonial histories. The interviewers probe Toscano’s contributions in search of the latent educational offerings present in Toscano’s re-articulation of fascism as it presents itself in a context of political contradictions and crises. An aspect of Toscano’s work that is interrogated in the interview is the extent to which historical analogies and heuristics are necessary for education about fascism as well as for antifascist engagement. Toscano’s work attempts to free fascism from merely being understood through direct historical analogy (a sentiment also found in Siefert’s article). A discussion then ensues about the im/possibility of teachers and instructors conjuring up antifascist education without using direct analogies or heuristics while attending to the affect and psycho-libidinal dimensions of fascism. The conversation then turns to a discussion of freedom—a key theme of Toscano’s Late Fascism. The discussion converges with Giroux’s concern about “ugly freedoms” that are used to dominate and oppress, but then extends it to consider critical pedagogical insights from Paulo Freire and Erich Fromm about the fear of being free. He also links desire to an analysis of freedom and fascism. The educational dimensions of this line of thought are pursued, leading to the consideration of the formation of subjects and the marketization of the self that are occurring in fascistic ways both through formal and informal institutions. The interview concludes by discussing the mode of Toscano’s text, the way it uses practices of salvaging and engaging in disparate places, as potentially having an antifascist pedagogical element.

Concluding the special issue is a transcript of a panel discussion with four of the authors—Tyson E. Lewis, Kevin Klein-Cardeña, Itamar Manoff, and Kevin Siefert—about their contributions to this special issue. After the authors give brief renditions of their arguments and explicate some of the motivations and reasoning driving their articles, the discussion focuses on two ongoing questions that persist in thinking through antifascist educational theories and practice. The first question highlights the changing socio-political landscape toward globalized forms of organization and away from nation-state forms. The panelists are asked to reflect on how this change shapes both fascism and antifascism/anti-fascism/nonfascism in education. The second question turns the conversation more specifically to education and asks how educators might both teach about fascism and teach in anti-fascist ways (highlighting a form-content distinction), and also what distinguishes these approaches from more mainstream liberal-democratic pedagogies. After these two questions, audience members ask a number of questions, all of which broaden the conversation to think antifascist education as it relates to algorithmic capture, decoloniality, patriarchy, and humiliation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Silas C. Krabbe

Silas C. Krabbe is a PhD Candidate and Sessional Lecturer at the University of British Columbia where he works on dynamics of violence in education. His research involves phenomenology, theology, decoloniality, and philosophy of education. He has a Master of Arts in Theological Studies and a Master of Education.

Tyson E. Lewis

Tyson E. Lewis is a professor of art education at the University of North Texas where he teaches courses in aesthetic philosophy, critical phenomenology, posthuman and postanimal phenomenologies, and critical theory. Most recently he is author of the book Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education: From Riddles to Radio (SUNY Press) and co-author of Studious Drift: Movements and Protocols for a Postdigital Education (University of Minnesota Press).