In 2007, French fascist Le Pen won almost four million votes. In 2009 the British National Party won almost a million votes while Germany's fascist NPD won over 750,000. In 2010, fascist-led organisations like the Engish Defence League and Italy's Future and Freedom party emerged. To help activists understand this twenty-first century wave of fascism, this book gathers together the most important analyses from the 20th century.In "Building unity against fascism" you can read: * German socialist Clara Zetkin, Bolshevik leader Karl Radek and Italian communist Antonio Gramsci on the birth on fascism in the early 1920s* Leon Trotsky's article, including "Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It," explaining why neither capitalist nor Stalinist parties were able to stop fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain in the 1930s.* Maurice Spector's detailed analysis of German fascism in power* Daniel Guerin's 1939 "Fascism and Big Business" and his 1945 preface to its French edition* Ted Grant's booklet, "The Menace of Fascism," which discussed British fascism, the second World War and the Jewish community in Britain* Analysis by Felix Morrow, James P Cannon and Farrell Dobbs of the rise and fall of fascist organisations in the USA in the 20th century.

In 1932 and 1933, during the months surrounding the Nazi seizure of power, Daniel Guerin, then a young French journalist, made two trips through Germany. The Brown Plague, translated here into English for the first time, is Guerin's eyewitness account of the fall of the Weimar Republic and the first months of the Third Reich. Originally written for the popular French left press and then revised by the author into book form, The Brown Plague delivers a passionate warning to French workers about the terror and horror of fascism. Guerin chronicles the collapse of the German workers' movement and reports on the beginnings of clandestine resistance to the Nazis. He also describes the Socialist and Communist leaderships' inability to recognize the danger that led to their demise. Through vivid dialogs, interviews, and revealing descriptions of everyday life among the German people, he offers insight into the tragedy that was beginning to unfold.
Guerin's travels took him across the countryside and into the cities of Germany. He describes with extraordinary clarity, for example, his encounters with large groups of unemployed workers in Berlin and the spectacle of Goering presiding over the Reichstag. Staying in youth hostels, Guerin met individuals representing a range of various groups and movements, including the Wandervogel, leftist brigades, Hitler Youth, and the strange, semicriminal sexual underground of the Wild-frei. Devoting particular attention to the cultural politics of fascism and the lure of Nazism for Germany's disaffected youth, he describes the seductive rituals by which the Nazis were able to win over much of the population. As Robert Schwartzwald makes clear in his introduction, Guerin's interest in Germany at this time was driven, in part, by a homoerotic component that could not be stated explicitly in his published material. This excellent companion essay also places The Brown Plague within a broad historical and literary context while drawing connections between fascism, aesthetics, and sexuality.
Informed by an epic view of class struggle and an admiration for German culture, The Brown Plague, a notable primary source in the literature of modern Europe, provides a unique view onto the rise of Nazism.