The true story of the Tour de France winner who cycled all over Mussolini's Italy in a secret quest to rescue hundreds of Jewish lives.Cyclist Gino Bartali won the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) three times and the Tour de France twice. But these weren't his only achievements.Deeply religious, Bartali quietly agreed during the dark years of fascist rule to work with the Resistance and pass messages and papers from one end of the country to the other. Despite t...

The idea of fanaticism as a deviant or extreme variant of an already irrational set of religious beliefs is today invoked by the West in order to demonize and psychologize any non-liberal politics.Alberto Toscano's compelling and erudite counter-history explodes this accepted interpretation in exploring the critical role fanaticism played in forming modern politics and the liberal state. Tracing its development from the traumatic Peasants' War of early sixteenth-century Germany to ...

Powerful insight into some of the deeper determinants of Western political rationality and its stigmatizing, inferiorizing, and racializing dynamics.The Blood Libel, written in 1973 by the Italian scholar of myth and radical critic Furio Jesi, explores the archival traces of the 1840 Damascus affair, an anti-Semitic accusation of ritual murder. We follow in detail how the death of a Catholic missionary monk in Ottoman Syria is transformed into a racist myt...

An analysis of fascism’s libidinous energy and its animus against bodies perceived as imperfect—both past and present.The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone—the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. As such, racism is particularly intense when it is erotically charged, with migration presented as a sexual threat to white women being one of many examples. Germany’s strikingly successful right-wing polit...

A patient, genealogical investigation of the dichotomies that are foundational to the Western philosophical tradition.We are so used to distinguishing between the possible and the real, between essence and existence that we do not realize that these distinctions, which seem so obvious to us, are the result of a long and laborious process that has led to the splitting of being—the “matter” of thought—into two fragments that are both conflicting and intimately intert...

The rich archive of twentieth-century debates on fascism can steer a path through an increasingly authoritarian present. Developing anti-fascist theory is an urgent and vital task. From the 'Great Replacement' to campaigns against critical race theory and 'gender ideology', today's global far right is launching lethal panics about the threats to traditional political, sexual and racial hierarchies.Drawing especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of fascism, Toscano ma...

The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in Marxism both within and without the academy. Marxian frameworks, concepts and categories continue to be narratively relevant to the features and events of contemporary capitalism. Most crucially, an attention to shifting cultural conditions has lead contemporary researchers to re-confront some classical and essential Marxist concepts, as well as elaborating new critical frameworks for the analysis of capitalism today.

A classic book that analyzes and defines media appeals specific to American pro-fascist and anti-Semite agitators of the 1940s, such as the application of psychosocial manipulation for political ends. The book details psychological deceits that idealogues or authoritarians commonly used. The techniques are grouped under the headings "Discontent", "The Opponent", "The Movement" and "The Leader". The authors demonstrate repetitive patterns commonly utilized, such as turning unfocused social ...

Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You've had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it-time to get serious once again!-Slavoj ZizekResponding to Alain Badiou's 'communist hypothesis', the leading political philosophers of the Left convened in London in 2009 to take part in a landmark conference to discuss the perpetual, persistent notion that, in a truly emancipated society, all things should be owned in common. This volume brings together their discussions o...

Families left grieving; small businesses shuttered; communities in lockdown; precarious workers set adrift; health care workers stressed beyond endurance. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core. But the cracks already ran deep.Featuring essays on poverty, health care, incarceration, basic income, policing, Indigenous communities, and more, this anthology delivers a stinging rebuke of the pre-pandemic status quo and a stark exposé of the buried weaknesses in our soci...

Badiou and Hegel: Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity offers critical appraisals of two of the dominant figures of the Continental tradition of philosophy, Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel. Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno bring together established and emerging authors in Continental philosophy to discuss the relationship between the thinkers, creating a multifarious collection of essays by Hegelians, Badiouans, and those sympathetic to both. The text privileges neither thinker, nor any partic...

Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalizes philosophy's perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth.Theoretical Writings presents, in Badiou's own words, 'the theoretical core of [his] Philosophy'. Beginning with the controversial assertion that ontology is mathematics, the chapters step the reader through his key concepts of being, subjec...