Last fall, just blocks from my apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a gang of neo-Nazis gathered in Harvard Square on a Sunday afternoon. Videos showed a group of masked white men shouting, spitting, cursing homophobic slurs and chest-thumping at students. They were part of the Nationalist Social Club, a local neo-Nazi outfit, nicknamed the “131 Crew,” as if it were a sneaker collective and not a gang.
In researching the rise of the fascist movement in the United States, I have found troubling parallels to 1930s Italy and Germany. From cult worship and rising antisemitism to hatred of minorities and birthrate theories steeped in eugenics, the overlap between the Fascist ideas of the interwar years and our own are too stark to ignore.
Why is it that so many young white men, particularly of my generation, are turning to fascism and the far-right?
