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Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism
How the breeding of new animals and plants was central to fascist regimes in Italy, Portugal, and Germany and to their imperial expansion.
In the fascist regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Salazar's Portugal, and Hitler's Germany, the first mass mobilizations involved wheat engineered to take advantage of chemical fertilizers, potatoes resistant to late blight, and pigs that thrived on national produce. Food independence was an early goal of fascism; indeed, as Tiago Saraiva writes in Fascist Pigs, fascists were obsessed with projects to feed the national body from the national soil. Saraiva shows how such technoscientific organisms as specially bred wheat and pigs became important elements in the institutionalization and expansion of fascist regimes. The pigs, the potatoes, and the wheat embodied fascism. In Nazi Germany, only plants and animals conforming to the new national standards would be allowed to reproduce. Pigs that didn't efficiently convert German-grown potatoes into pork and lard were eliminated.
Saraiva describes national campaigns that intertwined the work of geneticists with new state bureaucracies; discusses fascist empires, considering forced labor on coffee, rubber, and cotton in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Eastern Europe; and explores fascist genocides, following Karakul sheep from a laboratory in Germany to Eastern Europe, Libya, Ethiopia, and Angola.
Saraiva's highly original account—the first systematic study of the relation between science and fascism—argues that the “back to the land” aspect of fascism should be understood as a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms, mass propaganda, overgrown bureaucracy, and violent colonialism.
In the fascist regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Salazar's Portugal, and Hitler's Germany, the first mass mobilizations involved wheat engineered to take advantage of chemical fertilizers, potatoes resistant to late blight, and pigs that thrived on national produce. Food independence was an early goal of fascism; indeed, as Tiago Saraiva writes in Fascist Pigs, fascists were obsessed with projects to feed the national body from the national soil. Saraiva shows how such technoscientific organisms as specially bred wheat and pigs became important elements in the institutionalization and expansion of fascist regimes. The pigs, the potatoes, and the wheat embodied fascism. In Nazi Germany, only plants and animals conforming to the new national standards would be allowed to reproduce. Pigs that didn't efficiently convert German-grown potatoes into pork and lard were eliminated.
Saraiva describes national campaigns that intertwined the work of geneticists with new state bureaucracies; discusses fascist empires, considering forced labor on coffee, rubber, and cotton in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Eastern Europe; and explores fascist genocides, following Karakul sheep from a laboratory in Germany to Eastern Europe, Libya, Ethiopia, and Angola.
Saraiva's highly original account—the first systematic study of the relation between science and fascism—argues that the “back to the land” aspect of fascism should be understood as a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms, mass propaganda, overgrown bureaucracy, and violent colonialism.
525 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 7, 2016
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309 people want to read
About the author
Tiago Saraiva
14 books7 followersTiago Saraiva is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Drexel University and Associated Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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July 23, 2024I keep forgetting how thickly surrounded we are in our everyday lives with living beings that have been thoroughly altered by humans, so much so that I don't think there is a single plant or animal that we consume or use in any other way that isn't the product of years and decades of careful breeding. It's frightening how much violence has gone into that process. Anyway, I'd be super curious to find out the legacy of the "fascist pig" after finishing this book. If anyone has any recommendations on what kinds of plants and animals we are using now that were bred during various European fascisms, let me know. I will never look at a potato the same way again.
September 25, 2025
“Every fascist regime of the interwar period became obsessed with projects for making the national soil feed the national body. Food was central to translating the fascist ideology of the organic nation into concrete politics.”
“Wheat, potatoes, pigs, and all other things I discuss in this book are not to be understood as mere symbols of fascist ideology…it is argued they perform fascism and thus are properly considered fascist wheat, fascist potatoes, and fascist pigs.”
“Counter-intuitively, the fascist nationalist obsession with self-reliance, first expressed in internal production campaigns, also naturalized the need to grab land. In the hostile world of the fascist credo, only imperial nations could be considered truly independent.”
3 stars. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that was at once this boring and this fascinating. For sure, it is impossible for me to imagine that more than 20 people out there could possibly care about some of the historical points of the science - or the scientists - covered in occasionally agonizing detail.
What’s more, at times the author veers into some kind of ultra academic fluff which is by turns overstated and meaningless. Take the conclusion for example: “Things, as gatherings, may seem inclusive, but as fascist things remind us, they can also be dangerously exclusionary as well. Another, more fundamental tension exists beyond the Heideggerian one between objects and things: a tension between things, between the different worlds different things sustain.” You cannot tell me that there wasn’t a better, more comprehensible way to express whatever was on the author’s mind here.
More to that point, I think a lot of the argument about “fascist things” and what the history of fascist science reveals to us is overstated. For example it’s not clear to me how the specific scientific enterprises detailed in this book, or the historical contingencies covered here, are any different from how that science did or might have proceeded in non-fascist states facing similar circumstances.
That being said, I found portions of the author’s arguments utterly fascinating. The potions on fascist colonialism were intriguing, and I especially enjoyed the comparison of Italian, Portuguese and German fascist colonialism. Moreover, the points on Auschwitz and on how it was also a place of Nazi science - and how science shaped the Nazi world view - were captivating: “Auschwitz was not just a death factory, it was also a laboratory producing colonial life.”
Finally, the bit on pigs was at times quite interesting, and the argument that fascist regimes were concerned with agriculture and science is well-taken.
Portions of this book are actually probably most relevant to those interested in colonialism more so than to students of science history. I’m not sure who I’d recommend this to, frankly, but I’m glad I plowed through some of the drier sections to finish it.
“Wheat, potatoes, pigs, and all other things I discuss in this book are not to be understood as mere symbols of fascist ideology…it is argued they perform fascism and thus are properly considered fascist wheat, fascist potatoes, and fascist pigs.”
“Counter-intuitively, the fascist nationalist obsession with self-reliance, first expressed in internal production campaigns, also naturalized the need to grab land. In the hostile world of the fascist credo, only imperial nations could be considered truly independent.”
3 stars. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that was at once this boring and this fascinating. For sure, it is impossible for me to imagine that more than 20 people out there could possibly care about some of the historical points of the science - or the scientists - covered in occasionally agonizing detail.
What’s more, at times the author veers into some kind of ultra academic fluff which is by turns overstated and meaningless. Take the conclusion for example: “Things, as gatherings, may seem inclusive, but as fascist things remind us, they can also be dangerously exclusionary as well. Another, more fundamental tension exists beyond the Heideggerian one between objects and things: a tension between things, between the different worlds different things sustain.” You cannot tell me that there wasn’t a better, more comprehensible way to express whatever was on the author’s mind here.
More to that point, I think a lot of the argument about “fascist things” and what the history of fascist science reveals to us is overstated. For example it’s not clear to me how the specific scientific enterprises detailed in this book, or the historical contingencies covered here, are any different from how that science did or might have proceeded in non-fascist states facing similar circumstances.
That being said, I found portions of the author’s arguments utterly fascinating. The potions on fascist colonialism were intriguing, and I especially enjoyed the comparison of Italian, Portuguese and German fascist colonialism. Moreover, the points on Auschwitz and on how it was also a place of Nazi science - and how science shaped the Nazi world view - were captivating: “Auschwitz was not just a death factory, it was also a laboratory producing colonial life.”
Finally, the bit on pigs was at times quite interesting, and the argument that fascist regimes were concerned with agriculture and science is well-taken.
Portions of this book are actually probably most relevant to those interested in colonialism more so than to students of science history. I’m not sure who I’d recommend this to, frankly, but I’m glad I plowed through some of the drier sections to finish it.
November 16, 2021
generous 3 stars here. while empirically insightful and rich, there were many instances of source-dumping without meaningfully engagement to follow. and the theoretical grounding i found to be really thin. the writing style also rubbed me the wrong way, in that i really don’t feel like he managed to stay close to the plant/animal beings and bodies. instead i often felt closer to the perspective of the fascist scientists, which was uncomfy at best and ethically questionable at worst. i really wanted to love this, but im reshelving it with a sigh of disappointment.
March 7, 2019
My main complaint with this book is that it was poorly translated. Many sentences seemed to be missing words, even subjects or nouns. Other than that — a fascinating look into aspects of fascism you probably have not considered.
November 14, 2021
"Things, as gatherings, may seem inclusive, but, as fascist things remind us, they can be dangerously exclusionary as well."
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November 17, 2025DNF too dense.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews