A reading list created by a group of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Muslim, and Jewish people who are writers, organizers, teachers, anti-fascists, anti-capitalists, and radicals.
WE studied and pursued methods for revolutionary social change before Trump came to power, and our core focus remains the same: abolishing the ever-enlarging systems of hierarchy, control, and environmental destruction necessary to sustain the growth of capital. With the ascendance of White nationalist ambition to the upper echelons of empire, we have given special attention to struggles waged and endured by marginalized people for whom the fight against capital has always been a concurrent fight against Anglo-Saxon supremacy.
Although there are bleak times ahead, we must remember that for most of us America was never paradise. Democrats and liberals will use this time to revise history. They will present themselves as the reasonable solution to Trump’s reign and advocate a return to “normalcy.” But their normal is a country where Black people are routinely killed by police and more people are imprisoned than any other place in the world. Their normal is a country where millions are exploited while a handful eat lavishly. Their normal is the opposite of a solution; it’s a threat to our lives.
We encourage everyone to use their local libraries and indiebound.org to acquire the books listed below.
ANTI-FASCISM/FASCISM HISTORY
Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance by M. Testa (Ebook free until 11/30 from AK Press)
The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich (PDF)
Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (PDF)
“The Shock of Recognition” (An excerpt from Confronting Fascism by J. Sakai)
Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis (documentary)
A critical review of Hypernormalisation
Fascist Symbols (photo)
Chile:
The Battle of Chile (Documentary): Part I, Part 2, and Part 3
Philippines:
When A Populist Demagogue Takes Power
Argentina:
Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy
Eastern Europe:
In the Shadow of Hitler
Italy:
The Birth of Fascist Ideology by Zeev Sternhell (PDF)
Basta Bunga Bunga
Lessons from Italy: The Dangers of Anti-Trumpism
Greece:
How Greece Put an Anti-Austerity, Anti-Capitalist Party in Power
Russia:
Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, and Movements by Stephen Shenfield
France:
Where Have All the Fascists Gone? by Tamir Bar-On
Neither Right nor Left by Zeev Sternhell (PDF)
Gender and Fascism in Modern France edited By Melanie Hawthorne, Richard Joseph Golsan
The Manouchian Group (French Antifa who resisted the Nazis when Germany occupied France)
L’Armée du Crime/The Army of Crime (Film)
Antifa Chasseurs de Skins (Documentary)
Spain:
Fascism in Spain 1923–1977
“The Spanish Civil War” (Series on Youtube)
Germany/Hitler:
Escape Through the Pyrenees by Lisa Fittko
Male Fantasies, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 by Klaus Theweleit (particularly Chapter 1)
The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class by Donny Gluckstein
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (PDF)
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (fiction)
“Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” by Theodor Adorno (PDF)
Fascinating Fascism
The Horrifying American Roots for Nazi’s Eugenics
United States:
Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams: EPUB, PDF and Audio Documentary
The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill
In the Name of Eugenics by Daniel Kevles
Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South by Saralee Stafford and Neal Shirley
Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North by Thomas P. Slaughter
“Why We Fight” Part I & Part II
Columbus Day is the Most Important Day of Every Year
Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit by Michael Parenti (Essay in book Dirty Truths)
Southern Horrors by Ida B. Wells
Morbid Symptoms: The Rise of Trump
Alt-Right/U.S. Neo-Nazis:
'Hail Trump!': White Nationalists Salute the President Elect
This Is Not a Guide: Is the Alt-Right White Supremacist? (yes)
Why We Must Stop Speaking of Oppression as "Hate"
The Myth of the Bullied White Outcast Loner Is Helping Fuel a Fascist Resurgence
The New Man of 4Chan
The Dark History of Donald Trump's Right-Wing Revolt
Dark Days at the RNC
Trump Normalization Watch
The Real Origins of ‘Lone Wolf’ White Supremacists Like Dylan Roof
Here are assorted alt-right/White nationalist propaganda videos to better understand their rhetorical pull: one, two, three (Note: these videos were made by white supremacists).
U.S. REPRESSION & MCCARTHYISM
A ‘Commission on Radical Islam’ Could Lead to a New McCarthy Era
Newt Gingrich Calls for a New House of Un-American Activities
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance edited by Angela Davis (PDF)
Naming Names by Victor Navasky
Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism by James Zeigler
The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s by Mary Helen Washington
Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the War Against Black Revolutionaries by Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal (PDF)
Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner
The COINTELPRO Papers by Ward Churchill (PDF)
Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition by Griffin Fariello
Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld (EPUB)
Interview with the Rosenfeld on NPR.
Green Is the New Red by Will Potter
War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony by Nelson Denis (EPUB)
War Against The Panthers: A Study of Repression in America by Huey Newton (PDF)
The Story Behind The NATO 3 Domestic Terrorism Arrests
Why Did the FBI Spy on James Baldwin (Review of the book All Those Strangers by Douglas Field)
Cointelpro 101 by The Freedom Archives (Video)
SECURITY CULTURE/THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
The Burglary by Betty Medsgar
Overseers of the Poor by John Gilliom (PDF)
The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy by Violet Blue
The Intercept's Surveillance Self Defense against the Trump Administration
Things To Know About Web Security Before Trump’s Inauguration
How Journalists Can Protect Themselves Online
How To Encrypt Your Entire Life in Less Than An Hour
On Building a Threat Model for Trump
FBI Confirms Contracts with AT&T, Verizon, and MCI
New York’s EZ Pass: We’re Watching You
NYCLU on EZ Pass Surveillance and ACLU blog on EZ Pass Surveillance
New York's New Public Wifi Kiosks Are Spying On You
Why Public Wifi is a Public Health Hazard
The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
US Cited Controversial Law in Decision To Kill American By Drone
Security Notebook (a packet of readings)
Why Misogynists Make The Best Informants
Fusion Centers / What’s Wrong With Fusion Centers (ACLU report) / Fusion Center Investigations Into Anti War Activities
How See Something, Say Something Punishes Innocent Muslims and Spawns Islamophobia
Citizenfour by Laura Poitras (Documentary)
1971 by Johanna Hamilton (Documentary)
RESISTANCE TACTICS
The Ideology of the Young Lords Party (PDF)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (PDF)
The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs, edited by David Hilliard (PDF)
Blood in My Eye by George Jackson (PDF)
Peoples’ War, Peoples’ Army by Vo Nguyen Giap (PDF)
Poor People’s Movements by Frances Fox Piven
Policing the Planet, edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
In the Shadow of the Shadow State
A Concise History of Liberation Theology
Organizing Lessons from Civil Rights Leader Ella Baker
The Jackson Kush Plan (by Cooperation Jackson/MXGM)
Fuck Trump, But Fuck You Too: No Unity with Liberals
the past didn't go anywhere -- making resistance to antisemitism part of all our movements
10 Points on Black Bloc (Text or Youtube)
How To Set Up an Anti-Fascist Group
How To Survive A Knife Attack: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4
BLACK LIBERATION
Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois (PDF)
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture by Angela Davis (PDF)
Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton (PDF)
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja (PDF)
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable (PDF)
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Repression by Robin DG Kelley (PDF)
Interview with Robin DG Kelley about his book
Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson (PDF or EPUB)
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (PDF)
Black Jacobins by CLR James (PDF)
A History of Pan-African Revolt by CLR James
Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert Allen
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by Elizabeth Hinton
This NonViolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed by Charles E. Cobb Jr (PDF or EPUB)
Eddie Conway in conversation with Charles E. Cobb in How Guns Kept People Alive During The Civil Rights Movement: Part I, Part II and Part III
The Young Lords: A Reader (PDF)
Black Anarchism: A Reader (PDF)
We Charge Genocide’s Report on Community Policing (PDF) | The group’s talk with DOJ
An Open Letter To My Sister Angela Davis by James Baldwin
Cooperation Jackson: Countering the Confederate Assault and The Struggle for Economic Democracy (Video)
American Nightmare: Black Labor and Liberation (Documentary, not yet released)
On Reparations: Resisting Inclusion and Co-optation by Jamilah Martin
Beyond Nationalism but Not Without It by Ashanti Alston
The Liberal Solution to Police Violence: Restoring Trust Will Ensure More Obedience
The Weapon of Theory by Amilcar Cabral
The Work Continues: Hannah Black Interviews Mariame Kaba
RESISTING ICE AND DEPORTATIONS
Mapping Trump's Coming War on Immigrant Sanctuary Cities
Migra Map: Crowdsourced map of ICE raids
Fight Trump: Stop Deportations By Any Means by George Ciccariello-Maher
What To Do If ICE Comes To Your Door / How To Avoid an ICE arrest and sudden deportation / The difference between ICE warrants
ICE Agents Lure Immigrant Out of Church Using Fake Text Messages
Testimonies and Evidence for Luring Garcia Family out of the Church
ICE Lied To Get Inside Immigrants’ Homes During Raid, Lawyer Says
This Is What a Deportation Raid Looks Like
Unconstitutional ICE Raids in Georgia
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s Policies in Latin America
The Clinton Foundation Left a Toxic Legacy in Colombia
US Government Deporting Central American Migrants to Their Deaths
“They Are Refugees”: US Government Deporting Central American Migrants Who Fled Extreme Violence
DACA Guide by Immigrant Resource Legal Center
NYCLU statement on IDNYC
Similar municipal ID programs exist in D.C., New Haven, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland and Phoenix.
Churches Offer Sanctuary to Immigrants in Danger of Deportations
Goes over legality—and lack thereof—of sanctuary spaces
The Deportation Machine Obama Built
CHICANO OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE
Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s by Francisco E Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez
Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in the United States by William D. Carrigan
The Chaparral Insurgents of South Texas
THE BORDER, THE WALL
Border Patrol Nation by Todd Miller
Migra! A History of the US Border Patrol by Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Visualizing the U.S.–Mexico Border
I Went Undercover with a Militia and the US-Mexico Border. Here’s What I Saw
BLACK MIGRATION
The Big Truck That Went By: How The World Came To Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster by Jonathan M. Katz
The State of Black Immigrants (Report by Black Alliance for Just Immigration)
Part I: A Statistical Portrait of Black Immigrants in the United States
Part II: Black Immigrants in the Mass Criminalization System
History Is Repeating Itself At Guantanamo Bay
An American Concentration Camp, Guantanamo Public Memory Project
“Testifying to Rightlessness: Haitian Refugees Speaking from Guantánamo” by Naomi Paik (PDF)
The Mass Deportation of Black Immigrants Seeking Asylum That You Haven’t Heard Of
Haitians Carve a Dangerous 7,000-mile path to the U.S. from Brazil
US Policy in Haiti Over Decades Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of Natural Disaster Is So Severe
Bill Clinton’s Trade Policies Destroyed Haitian Rice Farming
MUSLIM SURVEILLANCE/MUSLIM RESISTANCE
Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes from and What It Means for Politics Today by Steven Salaita
We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11 by Tram Nguyen
Towards a Black Muslim Ontology of Resistance
What Wasn't Said at Senator Durbin's Hearings on the State of Muslim Civil Rights in the US
FOIA Documents Show FBI Illegally Collecting Intelligence Under Guise of "Community Outreach"
The Long Roots of the NYPD Spying Program
The Perils of American Muslim Politics
Welcome to America — Now Spy on Your Friends
First They Came for the Muslim-Americans
Chicago Arab Youth to Push Back Against Racial Profiling
Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)
Burhan Mohumed Speaks Out Against Government Repression of Somali Community
The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism. He Couldn't Tie His Shoes.
How the U.S. Government Has Used 9/11 to Criminalize People of Color
How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds
Rising Up: The Alams (documentary)
INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE
500 Years of Indigenous Resistance by Gord Hill
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz (PDF of introduction, excerpt)
Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog
#StandingRock Syllabus (a large packet of readings)
Thesis 2: Capitalism No More by Glen Coulthard (excerpt of book Red Skin, White Masks)
Anti-Colonial and Anti-Fascist Action
FEMINIST HISTORY, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, TRANS AND QUEER RIGHTS
Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis (PDF)
Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women by Beth Ritchie
Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, edited by Dayo F. Gore (PDF)
What You’ve Got Is a Revolution: Black Women’s Movements for Black Power by Ashley Ford (forthcoming, 2017)
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex | Interview with the editor, Eric Stanley
Baedan 3: Journal of Queer Time Travel (particularly the chapters “Anal Terror” and “Between Strangers and Friends”)
Queer Ultraviolence: Bash Back! Anthology
Where Abolition Meets Action: Women Organizing Against Gender Violence
Abu Ghraib and U.S. Sexual Exceptionalism
This Is Not a Love Story: America’s Deadly Domestic Violence Problem
Why Are So Many Black Transgender Women Getting Killed in Detroit
Here’s What’s Missing From Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up
What Trump Means for Sex Workers
What Bresha Meadow’s Faces Next
In Conversation with Cece McDonald, Joshua Allen, and Alok Vaid-Menon (Video)
Ignoring Aids: The Reagan Years (Video)
Resisting Gender Violence without Cops or Prisons (Video)
POETRY
“The White House” by Claude McKay
“An American Poem” by Eileen Myles
“Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander
“Brazilian Is Not A Race” by Wendy Trevino
“A Song for Many Movements” by Audre Lorde (audio)
“Afterimages” by Audre Lorde
“I Want a Dyke for President” by Zoe Leonard
“Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni
“The President has Never Said the Word ‘Black’” by Morgan Parker
“Spirits Unchained” by Keorapetse Kgositsile
“Conditions XIV” by Essex Hemphill
“Feeling Fucked Up” by Etheridge Knight
Selections from Poems from Guantanamo
“For Malcolm X” by Margaret Walker
“I Come From the Nigger Yard” by Martin Carter
“Young Blood” by Assata Shakur
“Our Wandering” by Dawn Lundy Martin
“Addressed to Alabama” by Langston Hughes