The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism | Joe Kelly

When American fascists began goose-stepping down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new European import. It was not. It didn't come from abroad. Nor was it new or radical. The seeds of American fascism were planted by elite southern land owners who insisted that slavery need not be addressed in the Constitution because it would soon die out on its own, and/or because it was somehow just.

In The Biggest Lie, historian Joseph Kelly speaks with Jim about fascism's deep roots in the antebellum South; its codification under Jim Crow; and, then, after the Spanish American War, its ascendency in the form of Anglo-Saxon nationalism, proposing that the nation belongs to a master-race – the original lie of American fascism.

Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of two other books on American democracy: Marooned and America's Longest Siege.