Entertainment or Enlightenment? Fascist and Ultraconservative Alternative Histories in Tele- vision Entertainment and Neo-Populist Grass- roots Politics
Fasistiset ja äärikonservatiiviset vaihtoehtohistoriat 2010-luvun televisioviihteessä ja uuspopulistisessa ruohonjuuritason politiikassa
Abstract
Alternative histories are part of today’s ‘alternative understanding’, in which expertise and facts are no longer necessarily central to the definitions of history. This article focuses in particular on four alternative historical prestige television series examining fascism in its various forms, The Man in the High Castle (2015–), SS-GB (2017), The Plot Against America (2020), and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017), and their appearance in the grassroots politics of the 2010s. In particular, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in November 2016 brought to life alternative historical depictions – novels and films – previously widely featured in US public and media life in the 1930s, in which the United States also slipped into fascism or authoritarianism. Movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter also strongly coloured the contemporary experience attached to the traumatic memories of US history. The Brexit vote in June 2016, which led to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, sparked similar political and cultural activism in the UK. The article examines the effectual historical context of the series, their audio-visual aesthetics, public history dynamics, and alternative historical speculations in the activities of both the neo-populists and civil rights groups.
