Exhibit A for how book cover art designers for books on fascism or far right are stuck in the ever-present red-black-white colors that evoke the Nazi flag. Please stop this, *maybe* unless the book is actually about the Third Reich. It sends signals that don’t align with 1/ https://twitter.com/anaauslouisiana/status/1296873670074339330

modern far right movements. It misses the mainstreaming and normalization of far right extremism and keeps it in the “Nazi” box, which makes it harder for people to recognize the khaki-and polo-shirt marchers as the same nefarious ideologues as the brown shirts. I’m ever 2/

grateful to @PrincetonUPress art and design team for listening to my concerns on the color choice for my books. They knocked it our of the park, both times. Iconography matters. Images tell part of the story & evoke deeper, gut-level feelings that shape our interpretation of 3/

what we read and observe. The far right knows this, & have deliberately and strategically worked to clean up their aesthetics bc it makes it more likely, in the words of one neo-Nazi blogger, that people will listen to their ideas. I’ve written about this a lot when it comes 4/

to t-shirts & clothing. To sum it up, as i wrote for @guardian, “Far-right leaders knew all too well that the public would struggle to connect hate with a style of dress that looked more like the kid next door than the neo-Nazi of their imagination.” 5/ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/29/far-right-fred-perry-mainstream-fashion-camouflage-brands

But clothing isn’t the only place aesthetics matter. Book covers & lecture advertisements & protest fliers & all the places where iconography is used to spark interest matter too. If we want the public to understand how the far right is evolving, visual cues are part of it. End.