Towards a creative antifascist pedagogy: zine-making in the classroom

 

From Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to Argentina’s Javier Milei and, perhaps, even Donald Trump in the United States, far-right leaders are enjoying electoral success globally. The recent European Union elections saw European far-right parties make significant gains, particularly in France and Germany.

Although the institutional far-right threat in Britain is currently quite small in comparison – though the recent general election result saw Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party win around 14% of votes – our students hear far-right rhetoric spoken by mainstream politicians daily.

A 2024 report from Hope Not Hate pinned the UK-wide increase of the radical right – a label to designate groups that espouse far right rhetoric in pursuit of an illiberal democracy (rather than total institutional overthrow) –  to a new media ecosystem ‘that platforms and elevates Radical Right politicians, activists and ideas.’ This new far-right ecosystem extends to the digital world; under Musk’s stewardship, we are witnessing the ‘toxification’ of X (formerly Twitter) and recent research has identified YouTube as a pathway towards radicalization that shows its users increasingly extreme content.

As a historian of the Italian far right teaching in the UK, it feels remiss to teach in a way that speaks only to the historic past. More than that, it feels explicitly un-antifascist. As historian Guy Emerson Mount wrote in his piece ‘Towards an Antifascist Pedagogy’, ‘the first rule’ of an antifascist approach to teaching is ‘to refuse to continue with “business as usual” and recognize that the anti-fascist battleground is everywhere.’ And so, over the last two years I have incorporated an explicit, comparative ‘then and now’ approach into my teaching.

Designed for second-year students taking a BA in History, my module, ‘The F-Word: Understanding Italian Fascism Then and Now’, is structured around a two-hour ‘then’ class, followed by a one-hour ‘now’ class. We consider a weekly theme (for example: hyper-masculinity; propaganda and truth; race and empire; violence; antisemitism), first considering that theme in the context of historic Italian Fascism before approaching it from a global far-right perspective today.

This structure encourages students to consider how the contemporary far right builds on a tradition established more than 100 years ago, equipping them with the knowledge to identify these trends in the world today. Although module feedback showed students clearly recognised the ways this module equips them with the knowledge to recognise a pressing social and political challenge, a major limitation is that there was little space for students to transform this knowledge into action beyond the classroom because the broader BA programme structure standardizes assessment formats.

That’s why I was delighted to be awarded a Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowship from the Royal Historical Society to incorporate an antifascist zine-making workshop into my teaching. But what exactly are zines, and can we consider them as part of a creative antifascist pedagogy practice?

 

Zines as part of an antifascist pedagogy practice

Zines are multimodal, self-published print publications that combine words and image. Originating in the early twentieth century, they are handmade and cheap to make, combining collage, drawing and writing, and are typically then reproduced using photocopiers. They have traditionally been used within underground subcultures, including punk and radical feminism. A number of historic zines have been animated by an explicitly antifascist drive.

Thanks to their countercultural origins, zines also encourage a range of perspectives. English instructor Chelsea Lonsdale has examined how zines create a space for students ‘who exist on the margins’ to speak openly, because they ‘invite writers to speak freely, often on issues that may not be represented by popular or professional media’.

In encouraging multimodal and multi-genre composition, modelling ‘a variety of vehicles for meaning-making’ and challenging ‘the status quo in terms of authority’, might we consider zines as part of our antifascist teaching toolkit? Given authoritarian media censorship – a recurring theme of my module – the freedom to play with communication, composition and self-expression feels powerful.

 

Figure 1: Students incorporated primary and secondary sources from the module into their zines

 

Thanks to the Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowship, I was able to work with Ioana Simion, creative programmer and arts facilitator and founder of Artizine UK, to devise a zine-making workshop structure that connected to the themes of my module. Together, we created a series of prompts – including primary sources my students had analysed in the classroom, quotes from key readings, and multimedia secondary sources – which we provided to students at the start of the workshop (see Figure 1).

The workshop began with a short discussion of antifascist publishing and a radical zine culture, before Ioana shared her rich collection of art materials with students to help them in their design (Figure 2). Students first made individual zines, sharing resources and ideas. Then, they selected one page from their zine to contribute to the class zine, and worked collaboratively to determine the order in which pages should appear to create a loose  narrative, and to design the front and back cover.

 

Figure 2: Ioana Simion from Artizine UK provided a range of art materials to help students create their zines

 

In their conceptual framework of non-hierarchal learning, James Bury and Yoichi Masuzawa identify the importance of ‘empowerment’, ‘student ownership’ and ‘student autonomy and choice’ in the classroom. This non-hierarchical approach is, surely, a key component of any antifascist pedagogy. Ioana and I laid the foundations for a participatory and collaborative environment in the weeks leading up to the workshop. We empowered students by providing a clear overview of the workshop and how it would run ahead of time, so students were prepared.

Moreover, the layout of the classroom – an open a space that facilitated collaboration through moveable furniture and large desks – allowed us to gather as a group to co-produce knowledge, rather than a traditional instructor-student hierarchy. Students were able to move around freely, allowing for autonomy, choice and freedom of expression.

 

Figure 3: These zines responded to the rise of the online ‘tradwives’ movement, drawing parallels with Fascist ideas of womanhood

 

 

Results and reflections

Student feedback was very positive and can be divided into two recurring themes: the experiential aspect, and the intellectual benefits. Students enjoyed working collaboratively and the chance to be creative, given the heavy focus on traditional essay or exam assessments. Moreover, one student wrote in feedback, the chance to make this form of communication ‘put us in the shoes of people who would be circulating this kind of message, and you could see how [the antifascist] resistance would have to work to deconstruct far-right ideas.’

Moreover, the collage form of zines and the range of primary sources from the historic and contemporary period enabled students to draw explicit temporal links between then and now. As one student wrote, ‘the use of random magazines\literature helped refine one’s knowledge as you are trying to make certain images/words/quotes apply to a specific context within fascism as you design the pages of the zine.’

 

Figure 4: A reflection on toxic masculinity and the weaponisation of nostalgia by the far right

 

Writing in Radical Teacher, Todd Honma argues that as ‘a pedagogical tool, zines exist at the intersection of radical history, analog creativity, participatory culture, and community engagement.’ Zines have the power to do even more in the context of teaching Fascism.

By inviting creative self-expression and the humorous use of deep knowledge to subvert authoritarianism, and in creating an analogue and collaborative environment that challenges the anonymous and fragmented far-right online environment, zine-making is an important part of a creative antifascist pedagogy that empowers students today.

 

The full zine can be viewed here.

 

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About the Author

 

Amy King is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Bristol. Amy writes and teaches on the history and memory of the Italian far right over the past hundred years. She is the author of The Politics of Sacrifice: Remembering Italy’s Rogo di Primavalle, which examines the memory of a 1973 attack on a far-right family in Rome and its role in the construction of far-right identity over the past fifty years.

Amy’s research also considers the construction of Fascist and antifascist martyr narratives in Italian American communities in the United States during Mussolini’s rule, and representations of Giacomo Matteotti as an antifascist martyr during the fall of Fascism and the construction of the new Italian Republic (1943-47). She recently co-authored a piece on the lessons of Matteotti’s assassination today for Time.

Amy is a recipient of the Society’s 2023-24 Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowship for her undergraduate modules on far-right history. This Fellowship has allowed her to establish workshops on zine-making alongside her undergraduate modules.

 

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Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships, 2024-25

 

 

Launched in 2023, the Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships support History teaching in UK Higher Education. The Fellowships are named after Dame Jinty Nelson FBA, President of the Royal Historical Society between 2001 and 2005.

Fellowships support historians in Higher Education who wish to introduce new approaches and initiatives to their teaching—and for which funding, at one of three levels (£500, £1,000 and £1,250 per award), is required to make this possible. Fellowships may also support those seeking to undertake a short study of an aspect of History teaching in UK Higher Education: for example, within a department or more widely.

Recipients are expected to undertake their project within the academic year of the award, with the Fellowship lasting for the duration of the project or period of study.

Applications for the Society’s Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships, for the academic year 2024-25, are now invited from Fellows and Members of the Royal Historical Society.

In 2024 the Society looks to award up to seven Fellowships of sums of £500, £750 and £1,250 to be held over the academic year, 2024-25. The Society is very grateful to the Scouloudi Foundation for its support of this programme in 2024-25 which has enabled additional Fellowships to be made available.