On border fascism

Boston DSA has the good fortune (and connections) to be hosting a talk with Brendan O’Connor on March 5, so I figured that was close enough to a book club to get me to read Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right, which is about fascism and anti-immigration politics. There’s a lot of stuff packed into those two topics and O’Connor covers quite a lot of ground, from the policies and politics of the Trump administration and the several administrations before it, to shitty alt-right microcelebrities and the grassroots antifascists who show up to yell at them. It’s heavily researched and heavily cited, but also features exciting on-the-ground reporting of things like Brendan going to watch a crowd yell at Richard Spencer and Brendan going to the Border Security Expo and getting put in a high-tech cage. There is also a lot of following the money, detailing the far-right billionaires and shady foundations that develop and sell nativist policies to conservative, and sometimes liberal, Americans. In addition to the reporting it also offers a solidly left-wing analysis of the economic and social conditions--and the contradictions thereof--that fuel nativist politics. The theoretical stuff is pretty readable, although it might help to already be at least a little bit familiar with leftist thinking and values. The book is also shorter than it seems, because there’s nearly 100 pages of back matter out of the 250 pages total. I appreciated this because the book is very meaty and information-dense, and in addition the subject matter is emotionally exhausting, so by chapter 6 I was starting to wonder if it might take me forever and a half to actually read the thing because I was making sort of slow progress, and then surprise, I thought I had 100 pages left but I was actually done! If I had been reading a normal paper book I might have realized this in advance and also read faster, but I was reading an ebook on my iPad, which is also a good part of why I got through it so damn slowly. Overall I recommend this book enormously, if you want a better review than mine you can also check out my comrade Peter’s review in Dissent, and if you’re around on Friday, March 5th you should call into our talk with Brendan!