The Biggest Lie
August 4 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
New from Bloomsbury Publishing, The Biggest Lie presents a newly explored introduction to fascism in America in the 20th century from College of Charleston history professor Joseph R. Kelly in conversation with author and friend of CLS, Erik Calonius. With a timely perspective on the Civil War-era, this well-researched and eye-opening work navigates themes of oppression and a narrative history traces the roots of United States fascism not to the twentieth century but back to the first decades of the republic.
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About the Book
When American fascists suddenly goosestepped down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new European import. It was not. It didn’t come from abroad. Nor was it new or radical. The seed of American fascism was planted by elite southern planters who insisted that slavery need not be addressed in the Constitution because it would soon die out on its own. In The Biggest Lie, Joseph Kelly chronicles fascism’s deep roots in the antebellum South; its codification under Jim Crow; and, then, after the Spanish American War, its ascendency in the form of Anglo-Saxon nationalism, proposing that the nation belongs to a master-race-the original lie of American fascism. In this dark hour of American history, Kelly’s gripping story reminds us that the monied elite have always excelled at deploying disinformation to bias and inflame the masses, and that there have always been courageous patriots helping us to fight our way out of darkness toward the light.
About Joseph Kelly
Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of two other books on American democracy: Marooned and America’s Longest Siege. He also wrote Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon, and he edits the popular Seagull Reader anthologies of stories, poems, plays, and essays. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
About Erik Calonius
Erik Calonius is a former reporter, editor, and London-based foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He served as Miami Bureau Chief for Newsweek. The Wanderer is his first book. He lives in Charleston, SC, with his wife and son.