{"id":347890,"date":"2018-02-12T08:37:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T07:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-interview-with-mark-bray\/"},"modified":"2018-02-12T08:37:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T07:37:32","slug":"an-interview-with-mark-bray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-interview-with-mark-bray\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview With Mark Bray"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2018_02\/2018_0211s_1.jpg\" alt=\"An Anti-Fascist group known as Philly Rebellion marked the arrest of more than 200 protesters one year ago at the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington, DC, by taking and holding a major intersection in downtown Philadelphia on January 20, 2018. (Photo: Cory Clark \/ NurPhoto via Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">An anti-fascist group known as Philly Rebellion marked the arrest of more than 200 protesters one year ago at the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington, DC, by taking and holding a major intersection in downtown Philadelphia on January 20, 2018. (Photo: Cory Clark \/ NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/org2.salsalabs.com\/o\/6694\/t\/17304\/shop\/item.jsp?storefront_KEY=661&amp;t=&amp;store_item_KEY=3624\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Mark Bray does not shrink from defending antifa, the militant response to fascist movements and events. Read the book that The New Yorker calls &#8220;focused and persuasive.&#8221;\u00a0Get\u00a0<\/em>Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook<em>\u00a0from Truthout by clicking here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Anti-fascism exists in many different forms, from passive disapproval to militant opposition. In this exclusive interview with Truthout, author and historian Mark Bray explains the role of &#8212; and need for &#8212; the antifa movement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark Karlin: Fascism is highly connotative. In summary, how do you define it in your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark Bray:<\/strong>\u00a0Defining fascism is notoriously difficult because fascists have adopted and discarded ideas and positions more readily than perhaps any other political tendency. Fascism rejects rationality and ideological consistency. It&#8217;s not even clear that fascism can be understood as an ideology at all so much as a complex confluence of authoritarian and reactionary tendencies. Especially after World War II when the symbolism, vocabulary and theoretical expanse of far-right politics broadened considerably, it might make more sense to talk about spectrums of the fascistic.<\/p>\n<p>In my book, I include a definition from Robert Paxton&#8217;s excellent\u00a0<em>The Anatomy of Fascism<\/em>, but like Paxton and many other historians, I hesitate to confine this historical phenomenon to an abstract, analytical definition. &#8220;Definable,&#8221; Nietzsche argued, &#8220;is only that which has no history.&#8221; While I may not go that far, I agree with the historian Angelo Tasca that &#8220;to understand Fascism we must write its history.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2018_02\/2018_0211s_2.jpg\" alt=\"Mark Bray. (Photo: Eli S. Burakian)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Mark Bray. (Photo: Eli S. Burakian)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><h3>Trump rode a wave of reactionary and fascistic undercurrents into power, and in so doing, exacerbated their expansion&#8230;<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/opinion\/item\/43510-at-its-core-anti-fascism-is-self-defense-an-interview-with-mark-bray\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An anti-fascist group known as Philly Rebellion marked the arrest of more than 200 protesters one year ago at the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington, DC, by taking and holding a major intersection in downtown Philadelphia on January 20, 2018. (Photo: Cory Clark \/ NurPhoto via Getty Images) Mark Bray does not shrink from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-347890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}