In an influential essay on what he called “post-fascism,” the late Romanian-Hungarian philosopher G. M. Tamás took aim at a new phenomenon overtaking capitalist democracies. “Everywhere there is a post-totalitarian fascism that survives sans Führer, sans one-party rule, sans SA or SS,” he wrote. “From Lithuania to California, immigrant and even autochthonous minorities have become the enemy.”
That was 24 years ago, but it could just as well have been written today. This week’s reading list contextualizes the recent intensification of virulent anti-immigration politics in the United States and beyond. Read work by Harsha Walia, Arundhati Roy, Maytha Alhassen, Joseph Carens, and others on freedom of movement for capital but not for people, the bipartisan failings and global sources of anti-immigrant sentiment, the brute immorality of today’s enforcement and deportation regimes, the long history of U.S. mistreatment of Haitian migrants, and more.
