Reading Circle
First Session: October 1, 2023, 4–5:30pm ET
Second Session: October 29, 2023, 4–5:30pm ET
Author Event with Charisse Burden-Stelly: November 15, 7–8:30pm ET
The April Institute reading circles are focused on studying the long traditions of fascism and antifascism in the U.S. Our goal is practical: to improve our ability to identify and fight fascist tendencies and defend the marginalized communities they threaten. This fall, we will be reading selections from the collection For Antifascist Futures, which explores the significance of fascism for understanding authoritarianism today by offering a range of anticolonial, Indigenous, and Black Radical traditions to think with.
Past Events
Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 galvanized a grassroots, transnational social movement known as the Hands Off Ethiopia campaign. Around the world, a broad multiracial coalition of antifascist, anticolonial, and antiracist activists engaged in mass meetings, public demonstrations, street fights, work stoppages, and strikes to challenge Fascist Italy’s pursuit of a new Roman Empire in the Mediterranean and Northern and Eastern Africa. The Black Left was at the forefront of these efforts, merging Pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and the Communist internationalism of the era to make a bold stand against Fascist imperial domination of a free African country. This panel explores the nuances and significance of the Hands off Ethiopia movement and the broader impact of the Black antifascist left in the interwar period.
Black Antifascism and the “Hands off Ethiopia” Movement
March 15, 2023
4:30pm MT
A public conversation at the University of Colorado Boulder, featuring Minkah Makalani, Joseph Fronczak, and Anna Duensing. Moderated by Chad Kautzer.
It’s been five years since the so-called Alt-Right became known to the general public with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which sought to defend a Confederate monument. Please join us for a conversation with historians Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders and Karen Cox to reflect on the histories leading up to this moment and consider the extent to which Confederate memory and Neo-confederate ideas and politics contribute to a distinctly American form of fascism.
Sponsored by the April Institute with generous support from CU Boulder’s President’s Fund for the Humanities and the Departments of History, English, and Geography.
U.S. Fascism and Confederate Memory Today
January 27, 2023
4:30pm MT
A Public Conversation Featuring Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders and Karen Cox
Public narratives about the history of fascism and antifascism in the United States are sporadic, uneven, and often distorted. This is due in part to the failure of state institutions to educate the public about past and present fascist movements, and in part to the successful campaigns of far-right groups to intentionally misrepresent those movements and their opponents. The result is that public understanding of contemporary fascist tendencies lacks the context of their deep historical roots, and those engaged in resistance are deprived of the insights gained by a long and successful antifascist tradition.
U.S. Fascism: Origins, Patterns, and Continuities
November 11, 2022
4pm PT / 7pm ET
A Virtual Discussion Featuring Gerald Horne, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, and Jason Stanley. Moderated by Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders.
Public narratives about the history of fascism and antifascism in the United States are sporadic, uneven, and often distorted. This is due in part to the failure of state institutions to educate the public about past and present fascist movements, and in part to the successful campaigns of far-right groups to intentionally misrepresent those movements and their opponents. The result is that public understanding of contemporary fascist tendencies lacks the context of their deep historical roots, and those engaged in resistance are deprived of the insights gained by a long and successful antifascist tradition.