The Illustrated Guide to American Fascism

The Illustrated Guide to American Fascism is a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of fascism in the United States leading up to and following the rise of Donald Trump, as well as a stark warning for the future.

This fierce, smart interweaving of punch-packing illustration and punctilious text lays bare the authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny fueling Donald Trump's political rise, the fervor of MAGA extremism, and the alarming political landscape we are travelling through, notably the upcoming 2024 presidential election campaign.

Designed especially to inform and activate younger readers, it pays particular attention to the attempted stealing of the 2020 election, including the harrowing Capitol insurrection on January 6th 2021, and Trump's efforts to evade its legal consequences. Beyond the crimes of Trump, Coe and Eisenman explore the threads of fascism in U.S. history and in today’s foreign policy under President Biden, including the proxy war against Russia, support for genocide in Gaza, and the brutal treatment of asylum seekers along the U.S./Mexican border.

Sue Coe’s art in these pages is, by turns and often all at once, tough, satirical, bracing, sweet, and sober. It secures her place in a pantheon that features the zine illustration of Art Spiegelman, the realism of Philip Pearlstein, the caricatures of Honoré Daumier, the expressionism of Käthe Kollwitz, and the Dadaism of John Heartfield.