11/16/2024
I was commissioned 25 years ago by the New York Times magazine to do a piece on Fascism for one of six millennium issues that was included in their time capsule at the American Museum of Natural History .Was honored to be with amazing artist in the magazine !
if you do not know history ....
Many authoritarian movements have darkened the 20th century, and the word "Fascism" has been hurled at most of them. But Fascism is a specific phenomenon. It is a form of totalitarianism that is antiliberal and anticonservative as well as anti-Communist -- a form of populist ultranationalism of a racist and militaristic character. It is not, strictly speaking, reactionary. It pursues modernization by summoning up mythic images of a grand and heroic past. The ultimate aim is a hyperefficient state machine, with citizens as its cogs, held in place by private fear, collective rage and tribal enthusiasm. Benito Mussolini, probably the first effective popularizer of Fascism in this century, began as a socialist, but his brand of socialism brimmed with violence and vanguard action. Even he could pass for a moderate, though, in comparison with Adolf Hi**er, whose national socialism surpassed every other version of the Fascist ideology in mechanization, cruelty and mad horror. There have been other forms of Fascism and other campaigns of extermination and racist hysteria -- millions were killed and terrorized in Stalin's murderous Soviet Union, for example. But the savagery of the N***s leaves the bloodiest stain of the century. Aware of Fascism's greatest weapon, its atavistic lure, the photographer Gerald Slota consciously avoided creating a picture "that could be interpreted as heroic." Instead, he blurred specific images to make them universal, and then centered attention on the silent, fearful vigilance of the victims' eyes.
