To my History colleagues: If you have a messy Zotero collection (w/ double/triple copies of attachments, broken stored files links, etc.), you can download and install this Zotero plugin I just vibe coded (w/ Chat GPT) called StorScan. Here's the GitHub webpage: github.com/brian-j-grif...

GitHub - brian-j-griffith/StorScan: Audit, organize, repair, rename, and manage linked attachments in Zotero.

Audit, organize, repair, rename, and manage linked attachments in Zotero. - brian-j-griffith/StorScan

github.com

If you're researching neo-fascism in Europe and/or if you're interested in incorporating visual primary sources into your classroom, consider exploring Where Monsters Are Born's "Classroom Lessons": www.wheremonstersareborn.com/classroom-le...

Classroom Lessons | Where Monsters Are Born: Documenting a Fascist Revival in the Streets of Rome, 2018-2019

Where Monsters Are Born is an Omeka-based digital archive featuring over forty neo-fascist and anti-fascist posters, stickers, and various ephemera from the streets and alleyways of Rome, Italy.

wheremonstersareborn.com

Where Monsters Are Born@wmab-2018-2019.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Our “Mourning and Memory in Historical Context” lesson plan prompts students to compare and contrast the collective memory strategies surrounding war dead and fallen “comrades” of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the contemporary Italian far right. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/lesson-2-mou...

Arrivederci to Carlo Ginzburg -- a historian who fundamentally changed the way I see the historical discipline.

If you're researching neo-fascism in Europe and/or if you're interested in incorporating visual primary sources into your classroom, consider exploring Where Monsters Are Born's "Classroom Lessons": www.wheremonstersareborn.com/classroom-le...

Classroom Lessons | Where Monsters Are Born: Documenting a Fascist Revival in the Streets of Rome, 2018-2019

Where Monsters Are Born is an Omeka-based digital archive featuring over forty neo-fascist and anti-fascist posters, stickers, and various ephemera from the streets and alleyways of Rome, Italy.

wheremonstersareborn.com

Where Monsters Are Born@wmab-2018-2019.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Our “Mourning and Memory in Historical Context” lesson plan prompts students to compare and contrast the collective memory strategies surrounding war dead and fallen “comrades” of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the contemporary Italian far right. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/lesson-2-mou...

Congratulations to this year's History Department graduates! 🎉🥳

Collected on this day in 2019, this Youth Front poster, which features the silhouette of a Roman centurion, proclaims "Europe Is Renewed by the Youth." URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/32

This poster, which features the slogan "Today Just as Yesterday, (East) Rome Is Anti-Fascist," appeared in the alleyways of Rome's Prenestino-Centocelle neighborhood to promote a celebratory public march to Piazza delle Camelie on April 25th, 2019. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/26

While this CasaPound Italy poster was intended to promote a discussion on the "magical archeology” of Giacomo Boni at the group's headquarters, its appearance on April 25th, 2019 was intended to visually disrupt Rome's "Liberation Day" celebrations. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/25

Buona festa della liberazione amici!!! #25aprile To learn more about the significance of April 25th in Italy, see the following entries in Where Monsters Are Born: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/22 www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/26 www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/27

Roma est antifascista - ((East) Rome Is Antifascist) | Where Monsters Are Born: Documenting a Fascist Revival in the Streets of Rome, 2018-2019

This "Liberation Day" handbill appeared in the alleyways of Rome's Prenestino-Centocelle neighborhood in the early weeks of April 2019. Intended to promote a celebratory public march and subsequent le...

wheremonstersareborn.com

Robert O. Paxton's 9 qualities of fascist movements (summarized by Dan Tamir):

Dr. @amycking.bsky.social and I wrote a teaching module on "Authoritarian Aesthetics and Youth Appeals" in Fascist Italy for the American Historical Review's "Authoritarianism 101" project. See below! And please share widely.

Authoritarian Aesthetics and Youth Appeals – AHA

historians.org

Collected on this day in 2019, this poster highlights the way in which Georgia Meloni’s far-right political party, the Brothers of Italy, transformed its public image from a “post-fascist” to a “center-right” party via political branding. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/20

Check out my latest Book Talk with Dr. Masha Fedorova-Warden! 👇

Fresno State History Department@fshistory.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Episode 7 of our Book Talks series has been published on the department's YouTube account. In this seventh episode, Dr. Maria Fedorova (Macalester College) speaks about her recently-published research monograph, Seeds of Exchange (NIUP, 2025).

March 23, 2026 marks the 106th anniversary of Benito Mussolini's founding of the Italian Fighting Squads movement. This poster, which I collected in Rome's EUR district, was put up around Italy by CasaPound Italy's youth group, Student Bloc, to celebrate the centennial of Fascism's founding.

Where Monsters Are Born@wmab-2018-2019.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Collected on this day in 2019, this poster was produced by CasaPound Italy’s neo-fascist youth group, Student Bloc, to commemorate the centennial of Benito Mussolini’s founding of the Italian Fighting Squads movement in Milan on March 23, 1919. URL: www.wheremonstersareborn.com/items/show/19

One of my former UCLA mentees, Isabella Terrizzano, published this fantastic OpEd in Georgetown University's History Department student journal, The Footnote!

Cultural Memory and Reimagining Irish Identity

Isabella Terrizzano Just before Saint Patrick’s Day 2025, twenty-seven years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, two Irish artists from opposing sides of Belfast performed on stag…

the-footnote.org

Is the Trump administration using ChatGPT for our foreign policy? 🙃🫠

BOOK REVIEW: Rita Maricocchi and Brian Quinn on Jürgen Zimmerer, Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025).

Review: Jürgen Zimmerer, Germany’s History Wars - The New Fascism Syllabus

Zimmerer, Jürgen. Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025. On November 12, 2025, the German parliament accepted a new [...]

newfascismsyllabus.com

Comrade Farmer: "An example of the former—the eccentric—was the ingenuous farmer who named his pig after the duce in order to have the pleasure of going into the field every morning and shouting (with impunity, he thought) ‘Mussolini Pig’ at the top of his voice (he got five years of confino)."

If you're interested in learning about the history of American-Soviet agricultural exchange during the interwar decades, join Dr. Fedorova and I on March 24th from 11am to 12:30pm via Zoom. RSVP here: fresnostate.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Fresno State History Department@fshistory.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Join Dr. @brianjgriffith.bsky.social and Dr. Maria Fedorova (Macalester College) on Tuesday, March 24th from 11am to 12:30pm PST for an episode of the Fresno State History Department "Book Talks" series. 1/3

New book chapter on its way! This one's on the (quasi-abandoned) field of Generic Fascism. I hope to make somewhat of a splash with a Digital History integration. More soon!

I recently hosted Dr. Simone Cinotto at the @fresnostatelibrary.bsky.social for a book talk on his latest research monograph, Gastrofascism and Empire: Food in Italian East Africa, 1935-1941 (Bloomsbury, 2024). The following is a video recording of Dr. Cinotto's presentation.

Fresno State History Department@fshistory.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Episode 6 of our Book Talks series has been published on the department's YouTube account. In this sixth episode, Dr. Simone Cinotto speaks about his recently-published research monograph, Gastrofascism and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2024).

In May 1924, Giacomo Matteotti -- the influential socialist MP under Benito Mussolini's pre-dictatorship government -- accused the Blackshirts of intimidating voters at the polls. In some cases, Matteotti contended, the Duce's fascists flashed daggers or pistols, ...

Ari Drennen@aridrennen.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Steve Bannon: “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.”

Welcome to Hell.

UN risks 'imminent financial collapse', secretary general warns

António Guterres says the international body could run out of money by July due to members' unpaid fees.

bbc.com

To my Fresno State colleagues and friends, please consider attending!

Fresno State History Department@fshistory.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Dr. @brianjgriffith.bsky.social will be hosting Dr. @simonecinotto.bsky.social on 2-13-26 b/w 10am and 11:30am in the Ellipse Gallery (2nd Floor of the @fresnostatelibrary.bsky.social) for a presentation on Dr. Cinotto's monograph, Gastrofascism and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2024).

See the open letter co-signed by over 300 scholars on the state-sponsored attacks against historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. We stand against intimidation and for academic freedom. #AcademicFreedom #History #Holocaust #Poland

An Open Letter in Defense of Academic Freedom and the Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe - The New Fascism Syllabus

We, the undersigned, protest against the state-sponsored defamatory attacks on the German-Polish Holocaust historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe and the ongoing campaign of intimidation against scholar...

newfascismsyllabus.com

Congratulations to Dr. Maritere Lopez on the launch of her podcast, "The Early Modern Monster Manual." ABOUT THE PODCAST: What made a monster in the early modern world? In The Early Modern Monster Manual, students at Fresno State explore how monsters were imagined ...

S1 E6: Early Modern Monsters and Early Ideas of Race

open.spotify.com

The panopticon perfected.

404 Media@404media.co · 7mo ago

SCOOP: 404 Media has obtained material that explains how Tangles and Webloc, two surveillance systems ICE recently purchased, work. One can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or to their employer.

On Jan 7, 1978, five members of the MSI’s youth group were ambushed by militants in Rome’s Tuscolano neighborhood. Franco Bigonzetti was killed at the scene; Francesco Ciavatta died shortly after. This event, at the Via Acca Larenzia social center, remains a flashpoint in Italian history. 🧵

Where Monsters Are Born was reviewed in this month's issue of The Public Historian! See below.

Where Monsters Are Born@wmab-2018-2019.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Where Monsters Are Born has received its second scholarly review in The Public Historian (University of California Press)! See the URL below.