Fascism and Book Bans (with Maggie Tokuda-Hall)

A fearsome scene from the animated Watership Down, which is weirdly one of the better stories about fascism out there

Science fiction has been warning us about fascism for decades — so why haven't we listened? How did Nazis become just another monster in our stories, like werewolves or cyborgs? Plus we talk about the new wave of book censorship with Maggie Tokuda-Hall, co-founder of the new organization Authors Against Book Bans.

Notes

Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s website. Plus find Maggie on Bluesky and Instagram

Maggie’s next book is The Worst Ronin. You can also get her latest, The Siren, the Song, and the Spy.

Maggie is a co-founder of Authors Against Book Bans

The Authoritarian Personality was written by Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues, to measure people’s susceptibility to fascism

Paul Verhoeven told the Guardian in 2018 that he loathed Heinlein's militaristic novel Starship Troopers and decided to make a movie that essentially skewered it.