The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism
by Sue Coe and Stephen Eisenman
OR Books, £17.99

IT may seem somewhat contradictory to admire a book and be critical at the same time.

This book is undoubtedly praiseworthy, simply on the basis of its aim in exposing creeping fascism in the US and for the powerful series of linocuts and drawings by Sue Coe that visualise the danger.

In his introduction Profesor Stephan Eisenman provides an excellent and succinct history of fascism and also provides a running commentary on Sue Coe’s art and the role of a political artist today. It is an ideal handbook for teachers and students seeking to discuss fascism.

I wonder, though, whether those who would really profit from such a book will actually encounter it? This is a key problem that faces left-wing cultural workers: how can we effectively promote our ideas in the face of the mainstream, hegemonic steamroller of ruling-class culture and ideology?

Artist Sue Coe is an animal rights activist and anti-fascist. She has depicted the struggles of women, children, queers, animals, refugees, and political dissidents. Her art has also exposed the horrors of factory farms, zoos, prisons, and refugee camps.

Her prints, drawings and paintings are found in many major art museums, and her illustrations have been published in The New York Times, The Nation and elsewhere. The New York Times itself is quoted in praise of this “Prescient... searing social-political art.”

Her co-author Stephen F Eisenman is professor emeritus of art history, as well as an art critic and columnist for Counterpunch and co-founder of the environmental justice organisation, Anthropocene Alliance.

Their book is certainly a powerful and impactful interweaving of punchy art and precise words that together lay bare the authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny that characterises much of the political landscape of the US today. And its message applies everywhere, not just to the US.

Designed especially to inform and activate younger readers, the book pays particular attention to the threats facing the most basic tenets of US democracy, exemplified by the attempted stealing of elections, violence on the streets, and the evasion of legal consequences by the most powerful in the land.

Beyond the crimes of Trump and his cohort, The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide explores the threads of fascism in US history and reveals their insidious influence on today’s foreign policy, especially in terms of support for genocide in Gaza, and the brutal treatment of asylum-seekers along the US-Mexican border.

Sue Coe’s powerful black and white images are reminiscent of Frans Masereel’s poltical woodcuts for his series of “wordless novels,” and draw inspiration from artists like Kathe Kollwitz and John Heartfield.

I feel, though, that sardined together as in this book, their individual significance and impact gets lost.

Eisenman, in his clarifying and lucid texts, also addresses the issue of how artists of the left can achieve political relevance. “Effective political art is hard to make,” he writes. “It requires... historical insight as well as a finely honed craft. And even with these, there are significant pitfalls: Firstly, bathos – the inadequacy of an artwork in the face of momentous events.

Second — an issue faced by all political artists — the use of melodrama, the exaggerated emotional effect that results on focusing on grief, pain and suffering. A similar risk is sentimentality, the overemphasis of feeling at the expense of understanding.

“And, third, ‘preaching to the choir’ — a central problem, in my view. How can we avoid preaching only to the converted? And fourthly, the hazard of expiration. Political artists are by their very nature dealing with contemporary and topical issues, which by their very nature become rapidly outdated.”

All vital problems faced by political artists.

Nevertheless, this is a useful aid in explaining fascism to a younger generation.