For the first time since the defeat of Nazism, the AfD, the far right, could govern a state in federal Germany. In other words, the taboo of Nazism is collapsing overwhelmingly: with 44% of the vote and 39 seats, while the CDU goes from 40 deputies to 16. The humiliation of the German Christian Democrats is so resounding that submitting to the adversary would be a definitive surrender in the current times, with the risk of being absorbed. And paradoxes of history, everything will depend on the BSW, an eccentric and marginal left-wing party opposed to immigration, willing not to contribute to blocking the far right. A gesture that would not cease to be indicative: a left-wing party would join the growing trend on the European right of giving recognition to neo-fascism. That is to say, the reactionary impulse crosses borders: it has already swept enough on the right, now it only remains for the left to join in. In any case, whatever happens, one thing is certain: the taboo of Nazism, which had been established in the postwar period, is dissolving in Germany, which would thus join the shift towards the far right like almost all of Europe.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt warned against a society divided into two camps: those who believe in omnipotence—capable of organizing themselves to bring order to the prevailing chaos (if necessary, by force)—and those who experience the deepest helplessness.

Football fans, economic elites –like the richest man in the world, Elon Musk– and markedly ultra-right formations have developed a taste for raising their right arm high in tribute to the Nazi and Italian fascism of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. And they are not the only ones. For years, the famous phrases "Life was better under Franco" and "This didn't happen under Franco" have also been heard, assertions that, often and paradoxically, come from young people for whom the image of Franco is that of a bald, old man who could barely walk and who, therefore, couldn't have been very dangerous.

La Redenta, the protagonist of the novel Els dies de vidre (Amsterdam), by Nicoletta Verna (Forlì, 1976), is born on the same day that the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti is assassinated by the fascist squads. “It is a crucial moment,” recalls the author, because that June of 1924 Mussolini assumed moral and historical responsibility for the crime before Parliament. “It was the beginning of the dictatorship. The birth of La Redenta becomes a tragic succession: if Matteotti was the political victim of fascism, she will be the civil victim,” says Verna.

It was, I believe, in early April 2001. I was living in New York at the time. I went into a bookstore in Miami because I had run out of reading material and it turned out the bookseller was from Barcelona. His name was Juan Carlos Castillón, he had just published a quasi-autobiographical novel titled La muerte del héroe y otros sueños fascistas and, yes, he had a decidedly fascist past which, out of self-respect, he did not renounce.

Fascism is a sentimental issue. It arises, above all, from certain masculine sentiments. Economic, social, and cultural causes can be sought, but it is fundamentally the collective expression of a series of personal frustrations.

Traditionally, there has been much debate in France about whether French fascism did not exist or if it had been a marginal phenomenon before the Nazi occupation. There is growing consensus that no country can boast of being immune to fascism, but the Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto (Rome, 1963) goes a step further and states in the book El primer fascista (Pasado y Presente) that the first fascist was a French aristocrat: Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa (1858-1896). Better known as the Marquis de Morès, he soon became convinced that the capitalist elites were contaminated by what he considered the Morès failed in practically all the projects he undertook: as a rancher in the Dakota territory, where he tried to revolutionize the meat industry; in the construction of a railway line in Asia, and, finally, when he returned to France to make a career as a populist leader and antisemitic demagogue. In this latter context, he played a particularly dark role within the , a political scandal that deeply divided French society. Luzzatto maintains that Morès's activism contributed to creating the ideological climate that made the accusation against the Jewish French officer credible. Morès ended up being murdered in the Moroccan desert, but, despite his failures, Luzzatto believes he was a visionary.

“The entire basement was a terrifying expanse of dead men, and examining them all, one by one, was a harsh test of my endurance. The thought of finding Planes there troubled me more than the thought of not finding him. He was there, however, and before recognizing the person, I identified a navy blue suit with white pinstripes, which I had seen him wear many times. He also wore an unmistakable sky-blue shirt. I leaned over him until my face was level with his, and there was no longer any hesitation, despite an unknown grimace of terror that had remained frozen on his lips”.

The French writer, mathematician, and journalist Hervé Le Tellier (Paris, 1957) was searching for a "birthplace," a place where he could invent roots, in Montjòus, near Dieulofet, in what is now the French region of Auvergne-Roine-Alps, and stumbled upon a name on the wall: André Chaix, a member of the French Maquis against the Nazis. Through the search for the short life of this young Frenchman, the author reflects on the rise of Nazism, but also paints a rather unsettling portrait of our society. The name on the wall (Edicions 62/Seix Barral), translated into Catalan by Jordi Boixadós, the editor and literary critic, winner of the Goncourt Prize 2020 with The anomaly (Editions 62)It speaks of solidarity and resistance, but also of how easily we can become fascists.

"Fascism will return, and when it does, it will do so in the name of freedom." These prophetic words of Thomas Mann were spoken in the United States in the 1950s after his dramatic experience of Nazism. The totalitarian impulse never truly disappeared, and today the conditions are ripe for its powerful resurgence. For some years now, we have spoken of the right's mutation toward populism. However, we have ample evidence that we are witnessing the return of fascism in both form and substance, and that what lies before us is a new battle between fascism and democracy. Although history does not repeat itself, the political, social, and ideological conditions of 1930s Europe are being fulfilled. Now, the playing field is the entire world. The leadership of the totalitarian project is spearheaded by the United States—see the events in Minneapolis—but it has contaminated the domestic politics of almost every country. What were initially illiberal proposals, in Orbán's words, have ended up becoming an open bid to revive dictatorships. The culture of force and contempt for individual and national freedoms is being openly imposed.

American historian Mark Bray, specializing in human rights, terrorism and radicalism, and author ofAntifa. The Antifascist Manual (Captain Swing) decided to leave the United States with his family last October. He had become a target of the far right, sponsored by Donald Trump. He now lives in Madrid and This Friday he participated in Enfoquem, the solutions forum organized by the ARA. During his speech, he explained how neo-fascist movements adopt forms that used to belong to left-wing protests, but without their substance. "They use violence not as a tool, but as a value to return to an imagined past where hierarchies are respected," he stated. The author also denounces the patrimonial regime that prevails in the United States, where the boundaries between the public sphere and private profit are increasingly blurred.

Democracy, care, truth, and dialogue are the keys to confronting the fascism that is growing everywhere. This is the recipe that Jordi Mir, PhD in Humanities and professor at UPF, presents in Our fascism (Cápsula Editorial).

The novels of a man whose convictions have wavered are often better than those of a man with dogmatically unwavering convictions. In dissent, in divided passion, in ambivalent or bifurcated commitments, literature grows more powerful and lucid than in absolute certainty and militancy.

Just weeks before the fiftieth anniversary of Franco's death, the rise of the far right is worrying the world as it hasn't for almost a century. In this context, and after two years living in Madrid as a member of parliament for the ERC party, journalist and essayist Francesc-Marc Álvaro publishes the book Francoism in the time of TrumpIn it, he paints a portrait of the reactionary rise in Spain, centered on Vox, or as he says in the book, "the disturbing evidence" that fascism did not die with the end of the dictatorship.

Rob Riemen's (Netherlands, 1962) latest book is full of great names in the history of thought. George Orwell, Simone Weil, and Thomas Mann appear, but not in grand, ponderous texts on philosophy, but rather through a series of stories that are more reminiscent of oral tradition, tales that parents, grandparents, and teachers might tell us from a young age. Through them, Riemen champions humanism, classical European culture, and the word to combat fascism. The word that conquers death (Arcadia) is, in his own words, an essay on what true greatness is.

When it comes to talking about Mexican Railways, the editor of La Segunda Periferia, Miquel Adam, says that this novel by Piedmontese Gian Marco Griffi (Montemagno, 1976) is "a miracle." The truth is that the book was bound to go unnoticed and, most likely, would never have ended up in his hands if it weren't for the enthusiasm of Italian readers. Translated into Catalan by Pau Vidal, Mexican Railways is a nearly 700-page novel starring Cesco Magetti, a soldier in the Fascist Italian Republic who receives the bizarre assignment of mapping Mexico's railways for his superiors. From there, Magetti embarks on an adventure filled with eccentric characters and bizarre stories, on a fascinating journey that is, at the same time, a tribute to great names in literature such as Juan Rulfo and Roberto Bolaño.

These days mark six months since the start of Trump's second term as president. YankeeIt's only an eighth of the total, but the feeling is one of infinite agony. Trump's media and virtual hyperexposure exhausts us because it has already invaded us, it's already part of our daily lives. These aren't new techniques, but they are the most powerful for articulating fascism in the digital age, because they are wielded from the great digital laboratory that is the Trump administration. Monopolization of media and networks; excessive charisma of the leader; massive control and harassment of dissidents; denigration of political rivals; and, above all, a prevalence of the staging of action over reflection and debate. These aren't empty words, but the sum of the exercises of micropower that many of us experience and continue to experience every day.

In current gardening there is a tendency to leave gardens untidy and to mix planted seeds with wild herbs, the so-called weeds (and pardon the redundancy). chaos gardening, as this modality is known in English, advocates that nature take its course and that human intervention be minimized. The world itself is a chaos garden, But human intervention has turned it into a space filled with human weeds. Because the so-called weeds have been dogged by a terrible reputation that has seriously wounded the pride of plants, but the term goes a long way to clarifying what kind of people should be eradicated from society: those who don't let the rest live in peace. On the contrary, they keep growing.

Violence and seduction. This was the double face of the man who founded fascism, the Sweet. This was a century ago. Mussolini had started out as a socialist militant (he directed the party newspaper, Avanti) and then had renounced and established himself as the leader of a new nationalist populism. We already know how history went: both socialism and fascism became bloodthirsty totalitarianisms.