'Fascinating and trenchant, this account of contemporary Italian neo-fascism is both original and shocking' - John Foot, historianThe dominant force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia — a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging to prominence in recent years, it has waged a fierce culture war around national identity, polarised political debate around World War II, and secured the largest vote share in Italy's 2022 gener...

The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia—a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging to prominence in recent years, it has waged a fierce culture war against the left, polarized political debate around WWII, and even secured the largest vote share in Italy's 2022 general election. Eighty years after the fall of Mussolini, his heirs, and admirers are again on the brink of taking power.Mussolini's Grandchildren d...

OctoberBy: David BroderCan an angry, disaffected, self-destructive young man find hope and solace at an insane asylum when he doesn’t believe they can possibly exist?It is 1983, and Derek is twenty-one and at war with existence itself. If he is vanquished, he lives. If he is victorious, he dies.October challenges all the life-affirming ideas we have been imbued with by calling into question the notions that life has value and meaning, that love is not selfis...

During the final years of the Second World War, a decisive change took place in the Italian left, as the Italian Communist Party (PCI) rose from clandestinity and recast itself as a mass, patriotic force committed to building a new democracy. This book explains how this new party came into being. Using Rome as its focus, it explains that the rebirth of the PCI required that it subdue other, dissident strands of communist thinking. During the nine-month German occupation of Rome in 1943-44,...

Italy’s political disaster under a microscopeThere is little that hasn’t gone wrong for Italy in the last three decades. Economic growth has flatlined, infrastructure has crumbled, and out-of-work youth find their futures stuck on hold. These woes have been reflected in the country’s politics, from Silvio Berlusconi’s scandals to the rise of the far right.Many commentators blame Italy’s malaise on cultural ills—pointing to the corruption of public life or a...

An examination of how mainstream feminism has been mobilized in support of racist measuresFeminist Christine Delphy co-founded the journal Nouvelles questions féministes with Simone de Beauvoir in the 1970s and became one of the most influential figures in French feminism. Today, Delphy remains a prominent and controversial feminist thinker, a rare public voice denouncing the racist motivations of the government’s 2011 ban of the Muslim veil. Castigating h...

Harnessing the power of storytelling for political progressMythocracy examines the narrative mechanisms that script our lives through the stories we tell one another. Digging beneath common anxieties about fake news, Yves Citton looks at the attention economy, which organises our political perceptions around affective attractors. These are much more powerful than the truth value of any given narrative. The time has come for the left to reclaim the power of...

Déjà vu, which doubles and confuses our experience of time, is a psychological phenomenon with peculiar relevance to our contemporary historical circumstances. From this starting point, the acclaimed Italian philosopher Paolo Virno examines the construct of memory, the passage of time, and the “end of history.” Through thinkers such as Bergson, Kojève and Nietzsche, Virno shows how our perception of history can become suspended or paralysed, making the distinction between “before” and “aft...

One of the world’s leading radical philosophers analyses the failure of the Syriza experience in GreeceOver the last six years, Greece has provided the world with “an open-air political lesson.” The country’s deep economic and social crisis has exposed the fundamental contradictions of the European Union, and indeed the capitalist world as a whole. It has been a test case for movements seeking to put an end to the authoritarian anarchy of neoliberal capitalism. The...

An unforgettable history of Algerian independence, seen through the eyes of those who experienced its turmoil and triumphAlgeria 1962: A People’s History offers a gripping portrait of one of the twentieth-century’s most dramatic turning points—the birth of independent Algeria. Malika Rahal immerses us in the tumultuous year when, after more than a century of French settler rule and eight years of war, Algerians claimed their freedom. The result is a histor...

Eminent Italian historian Giovanni Levi once notably remarked that “no one is a Marxist anymore,” pointing to a paradox in Italian cultural history. While what is called "Marxism" was supposedly hegemonic over Italian culture, and especially history writing, for decades in the postwar period, it then seems to have suddenly disappeared.This study questions such a vision of a monolithic and hegemonic Marxism. It starts from the most effective anecdote to all ideologising narratives—t...

In the nineteenth century, France embarked on the colonization of whole swathes of Africa and Asia. What drove this policy, and what methods did it use to establish and enforce French domination? What disruptive effects did this have on the colonized societies, and what did it mean for their economic and social development? Today, can we say they have been completely decolonized? Empire on the Cheap offers new answers to these ever-controversial questions.Drawing on extens...