I just came across this quite long but interesting PBS documentary on the German-American Bund, a fascist movement in America in the 1930s. Of course, it rose in large part out of the aftermath of the First World War, Jim Crow Laws, the great depression and so on, and the historians speaking in the film go to some length to emphasise that it was very much a minority movement. They also stress how much opposition there was to it. Yet to be honest, in the light of what is currently happening in the US, I can’t help thinking that this dark chapter of American history is suddenly becoming very salient, and that the Bund could well have been more popular than these historians will be comfortable with. In the film we see pictures of huge parades with people waving swastikas alongside American flags, and rallies in Maddison Square Garden. As much as mainstream liberal society may want to deny it, there always seems to have been a dark, racist or xenophobic undercurrent in American culture, stretching back to their civil war and beyond, which is sadly currently enjoying a resurgence.