I do not eat red meat because of Sue Coe. Her activist art did not make me into a total vegetarian, but her views of humanity—and especially her 1996 graphic exposé "Dead Meat," which was as shocking as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published 90 years earlier—made me think long and hard about issues like food manufacture and so much more.
Now she is warning us to the potential of fascism to (once more) rear its head in the disruption of our democracy. American Fascism Now (Rotland Press) presents 16 new linocut prints by Coe, completed between 2017 and 2020, and a text by art historian Stephen F. Eisenman that chronicles the current dangerous political precipice the United States is now teetering on. This is an urgent lesson book on the warning signs of fascism as it appears to be advancing into American culture.
"This project is published to coincide with the looming 2020 American presidential election," says Ryan Standfest, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Detroit-based Rotland. "The design of the book nods toward Die Pleite, in the use of [its] typeface and paper color on the covers (I actually scanned an endpaper from an old German volume of George Grosz drawings for the texture/subtle fixing)."
P.S. Yesterday Trump did not confirm he would validate a peaceful transition if he looses a fair election. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/trump-power-transfer-2020-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage. Fascism or Trumpism, take your pick.