“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.

Pau (fictitious name) was taken aback when, speaking about immigration, his 15-year-old son told him that he would never want to have a partner "from outside" or for his sisters to have one. "I didn't know how to argue why, but I was implicitly saying that this is our house and that immigrants lack the same rights. And our family is not suspected of extreme ideas, quite the opposite," explains Pau. Days later, a teenage friend of his son also spoke ill of immigration. Pau was alarmed. "It made me think and worried me," he admits. Elena (also a fictitious name) has never heard opinions in this sense and the atmosphere is rather feminist and progressive. the rise of the influencers. A survey from just a few days ago showed, for example, how young men are the least in favour of democracy and 16% were in favour of a dictatorship. The same survey showed a conservative tendency among younger men, as other surveys already show: 30% are right-wing, a percentage higher than the 10% of younger women.

Italian Jewish writer Edith Bruck, 90, a survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp, has refused an award from Anzio after learning that the Italian city holds honorary citizenship for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. "I appreciate it, but I cannot accept the Peace Prize where active nostalgia for the most shameful era ferments, indelible for those who lived through it", Bruck wrote in an open letter to the mayor of Anzio, Candido de Angelis, of the Lega.

The start of this year saw an insurrection that tried to overturn the result of the US presidential elections, and take hold of the Capitol in Washington, DC. The insurrectionists believe that Donald J. Trump won the election, that there was massive electoral fraud, and some seemed persuaded that they were taking part in a revolution.