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The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915
Not yet published
Expected 21 Jul 26An eye-opening work of narrative history tracing the roots of American fascism back to the Antebellum South.
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 exceled 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.
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 exceled 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.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
400 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication July 21, 2026
About the author
Joseph Kelly
65 books9 followersLibrarian note:
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Or An Aristocrat’s History of the United States.
This book is a historical retelling treating fascism as a formula that arose out of, is equivalent to, or even was defined by, American history, and more particularly the history of the treatment of Black people in the United States. In particular, the author looks at the notion of herrenvolk democracy, a description of apartheid states where the disenfranchisement of some groups works along with the liberation of others. In this form of government, the discrimination is not bug but feature. This maps well with the southern U.S., most notably during the post-Reconstruction period.
The book works as a sort of counterfactual. Descriptions of fascism treat it as a 20th century creation, having historical analogs (and itself requiring a sort of malignant nostalgia) but built from Nationalism and technology. This book plays with it as realized much earlier. Racism and racialized government is more calculated than mere bigotry here to advance the purposes of the upper class, or a trench of it.
The writing is strong in a compositional, creative non-fiction sense of building up a historical narrative. The individual deep dives into aspects of history are great, particularly the discussion of Thomas Dixon Jr., author of the book (The Clansman) that would become the movie Birth of A Nation. There is an odd parallel to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle here, where it feels like, to paraphrase Sinclair, Dixon aimed for the heart and hit the gonads. Unfortunately, the strength of the writing can work against the thesis to the book. I ended up being thrilled by the reading, but pausing to not see how it worked for the book as a whole. There is a sort of odd twist where the author makes the historically traceable decisions to end up in an unequal racist society so tactile that it frustrates the thesis. Looking at all the exits that the nation could have taken from a racist structure, that so many treated as a foregone conclusion, ends up more a story about how Not Racist people were. I did feel some Gell-Mann at some of the science-y, specifically around eugenics, which has become something of a hobby for me*. There were wobbly descriptions of things, accurate but disingenuously framed, that make me a wary about some of the other text. None of it is sufficient to derail the book, but it bothered me.
The ugly bit is much the same as Chain of Ideas. History writing is not Scooby-Doo, we do not get to rip off the mask of social ossification to reveal the Capitalism underneath for the oligarchs to say that they would have gotten away with it, if not for those leftist historians, as the people start singing. I do not mean to overstate the overstatement here. There is evidence, some quite dramatic and visual evidence in this book, of the ways that racism and nationalism and imperialism is meant to plaster over economic subjugation and make people feel good despite feeling bad. But it bleeds with a sense that surely, it is mere ignorance at work. Surely, people are just not aware of the work of racism in preventing labor from rising up. Surely, this next sentence must be the one that will cause people to experience a class consciousness. Surely this this sentence will strike fear into the elites. Or this next one. Or this next one.
My thanks to the author, Joseph Kelly, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, for making the ARC available to me.
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* - Author's note: do not put this in your Hinge profile.
This book is a historical retelling treating fascism as a formula that arose out of, is equivalent to, or even was defined by, American history, and more particularly the history of the treatment of Black people in the United States. In particular, the author looks at the notion of herrenvolk democracy, a description of apartheid states where the disenfranchisement of some groups works along with the liberation of others. In this form of government, the discrimination is not bug but feature. This maps well with the southern U.S., most notably during the post-Reconstruction period.
The book works as a sort of counterfactual. Descriptions of fascism treat it as a 20th century creation, having historical analogs (and itself requiring a sort of malignant nostalgia) but built from Nationalism and technology. This book plays with it as realized much earlier. Racism and racialized government is more calculated than mere bigotry here to advance the purposes of the upper class, or a trench of it.
The writing is strong in a compositional, creative non-fiction sense of building up a historical narrative. The individual deep dives into aspects of history are great, particularly the discussion of Thomas Dixon Jr., author of the book (The Clansman) that would become the movie Birth of A Nation. There is an odd parallel to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle here, where it feels like, to paraphrase Sinclair, Dixon aimed for the heart and hit the gonads. Unfortunately, the strength of the writing can work against the thesis to the book. I ended up being thrilled by the reading, but pausing to not see how it worked for the book as a whole. There is a sort of odd twist where the author makes the historically traceable decisions to end up in an unequal racist society so tactile that it frustrates the thesis. Looking at all the exits that the nation could have taken from a racist structure, that so many treated as a foregone conclusion, ends up more a story about how Not Racist people were. I did feel some Gell-Mann at some of the science-y, specifically around eugenics, which has become something of a hobby for me*. There were wobbly descriptions of things, accurate but disingenuously framed, that make me a wary about some of the other text. None of it is sufficient to derail the book, but it bothered me.
The ugly bit is much the same as Chain of Ideas. History writing is not Scooby-Doo, we do not get to rip off the mask of social ossification to reveal the Capitalism underneath for the oligarchs to say that they would have gotten away with it, if not for those leftist historians, as the people start singing. I do not mean to overstate the overstatement here. There is evidence, some quite dramatic and visual evidence in this book, of the ways that racism and nationalism and imperialism is meant to plaster over economic subjugation and make people feel good despite feeling bad. But it bleeds with a sense that surely, it is mere ignorance at work. Surely, people are just not aware of the work of racism in preventing labor from rising up. Surely, this next sentence must be the one that will cause people to experience a class consciousness. Surely this this sentence will strike fear into the elites. Or this next one. Or this next one.
My thanks to the author, Joseph Kelly, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, for making the ARC available to me.
-
* - Author's note: do not put this in your Hinge profile.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Joseph Kelly argues that “fascism is a native weed, a homegrown American phenomenon”.
In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, Kelly puts forward the argument that white nationalism is the titular biggest lie in American history, and that its roots are based in a fringe group of wealthy elite slave owners who cultivated an “us vs them” mentality.
Most of the history covered in The Biggest Lie was skipped over, barely mentioned, or minimized in school. This is the real story of this county, of American chattel slavery, Jim Crow and “separate-but-equal”, our early wars both at home and abroad, Native American treaties made and broken.
An example: Andrew Jackson betrayed the native population through the articles of capitulation in 1815, which paved the way for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which paved the way for the eventual “Trail of Tears”. This one example in a greater pattern of xenophobia in the infancy of our nation depicts that the American elite and a not-insignificant percentage of the populace has historically trended towards white supremacy and ethno-nationalism.
“White Americans coveted their neighbor’s “vineyard” and had the power to take it. Jackson might dress up Indian removal as a way of preserving tribal sovereignty, but Evarts saw the truth. “No sophistry,” he wrote, “no rationalization ‘can elude [God's] scrutiny.’”
The Biggest Lie covers events not widely taught - one such being the American-Filipino war - and underscores that America has always had a predilection for fascism and authoritarianism, especially when it comes to colonizing and the “white man’s burden” to so-called “third-world countries”.
“Americans have never really faced up to the truth about the Filipino-American War. For a long time, it was erased from American history. You can understand why. When you look into it, the American empire was not a pretty thing.”
The Biggest Lie provides an excellent overview of the history of yellow journalism, robber barons, and their historical prevalence to the modern social media propaganda machine and their obvious manipulation by the corporate elite aids the reader in identifying and understanding how modern America ended up with mass media conglomerates that control and disseminate misinformation and blatant propaganda. The messaging in both eras is almost exactly the same.
The Biggest Lie answers the question regarding fascism: “can it happen here?” -- It already has, and we exported it to the world. It’s only natural that the weed is growing again in its native habitat. However, Americans have also always attempted to pull this weed, and Kelly’s argument includes good people engaging in acts for the greater good and that echoes into the future.
“Progress toward democracy, [W.E.B. Du Bois] thought, was not a “sudden assault but a long siege”
There is so much more I could have said about this book and indeed there were about ten paragraphs that I cut from this review for the sake of brevity. This work is more important than ever in the current political climate and compiling all of this information in one place will be a boon for historians and those wishing to understand how we got where we are.
My sincere and humble thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, and Joseph Kelly for providing a digital ARC. The Biggest Lie will be available July 21, 2026.
In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, Kelly puts forward the argument that white nationalism is the titular biggest lie in American history, and that its roots are based in a fringe group of wealthy elite slave owners who cultivated an “us vs them” mentality.
Most of the history covered in The Biggest Lie was skipped over, barely mentioned, or minimized in school. This is the real story of this county, of American chattel slavery, Jim Crow and “separate-but-equal”, our early wars both at home and abroad, Native American treaties made and broken.
An example: Andrew Jackson betrayed the native population through the articles of capitulation in 1815, which paved the way for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which paved the way for the eventual “Trail of Tears”. This one example in a greater pattern of xenophobia in the infancy of our nation depicts that the American elite and a not-insignificant percentage of the populace has historically trended towards white supremacy and ethno-nationalism.
“White Americans coveted their neighbor’s “vineyard” and had the power to take it. Jackson might dress up Indian removal as a way of preserving tribal sovereignty, but Evarts saw the truth. “No sophistry,” he wrote, “no rationalization ‘can elude [God's] scrutiny.’”
The Biggest Lie covers events not widely taught - one such being the American-Filipino war - and underscores that America has always had a predilection for fascism and authoritarianism, especially when it comes to colonizing and the “white man’s burden” to so-called “third-world countries”.
“Americans have never really faced up to the truth about the Filipino-American War. For a long time, it was erased from American history. You can understand why. When you look into it, the American empire was not a pretty thing.”
The Biggest Lie provides an excellent overview of the history of yellow journalism, robber barons, and their historical prevalence to the modern social media propaganda machine and their obvious manipulation by the corporate elite aids the reader in identifying and understanding how modern America ended up with mass media conglomerates that control and disseminate misinformation and blatant propaganda. The messaging in both eras is almost exactly the same.
The Biggest Lie answers the question regarding fascism: “can it happen here?” -- It already has, and we exported it to the world. It’s only natural that the weed is growing again in its native habitat. However, Americans have also always attempted to pull this weed, and Kelly’s argument includes good people engaging in acts for the greater good and that echoes into the future.
“Progress toward democracy, [W.E.B. Du Bois] thought, was not a “sudden assault but a long siege”
There is so much more I could have said about this book and indeed there were about ten paragraphs that I cut from this review for the sake of brevity. This work is more important than ever in the current political climate and compiling all of this information in one place will be a boon for historians and those wishing to understand how we got where we are.
My sincere and humble thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, and Joseph Kelly for providing a digital ARC. The Biggest Lie will be available July 21, 2026.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews