An 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.

Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of two other books on American democracy: Marooned and America's Longest Siege. He also wrote Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon and he edits the popular Seagull Reader anthologies of stories, poems, plays, and essays. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.