Food constitutes an important feature in today’s nativist movements. It prompts us to reflect on how embodied and emotional politics bypass organized ideologies, coming across as spontaneously flowing from the ever bubbling spring of the “real people,” regardless of how these are defined.

As the US presidential election approaches, the public controversies about white suprematism, alt-right, and their antifa opposition are heating up to the point of taking center stage during the first Trump vs Biden debate. Liberal pundits and intellectuals have been warning about the similarities between trumpism and fascism, and the dangers such connections entail.

To find my bearings in these urgent discussions, I have been reading about fascism, populism, nationalism, and above all nativism, which is the topic on my current research project. Of course, as a food studies researcher, I have been trying to understand how all sorts of nativist movements leverage food in their communication and their political strategies to engage their supporters and build a sense of community. These uses of food prompt us to reflect on how embodied and emotional politics bypass organized ideologies, coming across as spontaneously flowing from the ever bubbling spring of the “real people,” variously defined by nationality, identity at scales ranging from the hyperlocal to the transnational, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion.

A book that I have found particularly interesting and stimulating for my own reflection on these matters is Visualizing Fascism, which examines different manifestations of fascists aesthetics. The edited volume mainly looks at fascism as a political phenomenon in the years before and during World War II, although it also includes essays on more recent periods. In the introduction, Julia Thomas suggests that fascism needs to be understood as a global phenomenon determined by capitalism, modern communication, and colonialism. She then proceeds to outline a “portable concept of fascism,” a set of propositions that can provide some guidance in identifying current forms of the phenomenon.

Her reflections are worth considering to make sense of the events we observe around us. However, I do not assert that fascism and nativism are one and the same, or that nativism is a contemporary version of fascism. The same goes for nationalism, populism, and what in Europe is known as sovranism, indicating the centrality of national sovereignty and independence. Nevertheless, I do suspect that all these movements and the various occurrences of nativism that have materialized around the world are reactions to global dynamics that present some parallels with the crisis behind the rise of fascist regimes in the 1920s and 1930s. While back then capitalism, modern communication, and colonialism were relevant factors, nowadays the consequences of neoliberal capitalism, social media, and mass migrations caused by the legacies of colonialism and made worse by climate change generate a comparable sense of disaster.

These analogies respond to Thomas’s first and second propositions that fascism is not a phenomenon of the past and that it is a product of political crisis in modern capitalist states. Similarly, it can be argued that nativism is a product of the current crisis in neoliberal politics and policies, together with the end of the grand ideological narratives of modernity. All around the world, states seem to have lost their authority and legitimacy, as “the real people” are  plagued by growing inequalities that separate them from the elites. Against this background, nativism finds new ways to engage individuals by giving them a sense of citizenship whose threatened privileges need to be protected and reaffirmed.

Thirdly, according to Thomas fascism is characterized by violence. Today, we observe violent expressions of nativism that range from physical to verbal, clearly expressed in social media through attacks against specific groups, democratic institutions and elections, as well as values such as human rights.

The fourth proposition is that “an ideology need not be logical or even coherent to be effective…. Fascism’s success seems largely to stem from its ideological vagueness and mystification of power… [it] cannot be countered by reasoned appeals or expert analysis of probable consequences” (8). Emotions become even more central than in other forms of politics, a dynamic that is also recognizable in contemporary nativism.

The centrality of emotions and non-rational elements takes Thomas to her fifth proposition, by which I am particularly intrigued. She states that visuals were important for fascism because its message was “elusive and emotive.” If visual aesthetics can help us understand the modes of representation of fascism, how about other aspects of sensory life? I suggest that food constitutes an important feature not only in historical fascism but also in contemporary politics, prompting us to reflect on modes of embodiment that bypass the discursive dimension. Food shows how practices and materiality can turn into non-verbal experiences of nativist identities. For fascism, the choreographed spectacle film, architecture, and parades was central, often requiring the organized participation of citizens. For nativism, food is embodied and entangled in participative performances, at times public and demonstrative, at times carried out in private or within small circles, but often messy and not strictly choreographed.

So we see apparently spontaneous marches instead of planned parades; graffiti instead of sculptures; destruction of monuments instead of their construction; Tiktok snippets and YouTube videos instead of documentaries and feature films. As nativism flourishes from the idea of conspiracy, the danger in the shadow that corrodes from inside and needs to be uncovered, individuals and groups that feel they have torn the veil of secrecy organized themselves in the loose and constantly shifting form that Zygmunt Bauman defined as a “swarm.”

Food was strategic for historical fascism as well. Elsewhere I examined how fascist dictatorships of the twentieth century (Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Salazar in Portugal) embraced the expansion of agriculture and husbandry, as well as the technological advances in those fields, to increase their control over food production in their countries and the lives of their citizens. Food was a tangible expression of governments’ power and their capacity to take care of their population. As I discussed in my book Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy , during a campaign to increase wheat output Mussolini showed up at harvest season on wheat fields, where he was filmed shirtless as he participated in the work. As early as 1924, the fascist government produced many documentaries focused on the life and production of rural workers, who were presented as the backbone of the country.

Italian fascism also took advantage of the symbolic power of food. Bread became a focus for Fascist propaganda, which prompted citizens to limit its consumption. School children were taught a small poem that Mussolini wrote in 1928 for Bread Day, a day dedicated to the appreciation of the precious food:

Love bread, heart of the home, aroma of the table, joy of the hearth. Respect bread, sweat of the brow, pride of work, poem of sacrifice. Honor bread, glory of the fields, fragrance of the earth, feast of life. Don’t waste bread, wealth of the motherland, God’s sweetest gift, the most scared prize of men’s toil.

Thomas states that “fascist visuality was instrumental, manipulative, and propagandistically conceived…. it is a function dedicated to producing heightened and uncontested allegiance” (10-11). Nativism movements use food in a similar way, regardless of whether they control states local governments or constitute oppositional groups vying for power. Fascist leaders were against political representation because they claimed that there was no gap between the state and its citizens, between the nation and its people, that needed to be mediated and negotiated by elective institutions. Comparably, visual arts was presented as a natural and wholesome reflection of reality without any need of mediation by artists who can offer contrasting approaches. As a consequence, avant-gardes and individual creativity were suspect.

In a similar move, nativism rarely appreciates culinary modernism and haute cuisines all of kinds, even when these intricate gastronomy expressions wrap themselves in the trappings of local food. This is the case for the New Nordic Cuisine or the new interpretations of Polish, Indian, or Brazilian traditions elaborated by high-end chefs in restaurants that are often not culturally accessible or financially affordable to “the people.” This may be the reasons why the chefs behind such initiatives are often engaged in intellectual and cultural endeavors, like the MAD conference or Ferran Adrià’s research on creativity. At times, they embrace social activism, like Alex Atala did through his work with Amazonian communities or Massimo Bottura accomplished with his Refettori, soup kitchens where renowned chefs cook for the needy. Some of them cross over, like José Andrès has done in recent years by putting solidarity at the center of his activity.

Thomas also points out that fascism borrowed elements from the past to create its aesthetics: “With this sort of artistic and ideological mishmash, fascism attempted to forge a past that would anchor its claim to a glorious future while simultaneously obliterating history as a resource for understanding difference and change” (12-13). As Massimo Montanari has demonstrated in his new book Il mito delle origini: Breve storia degli spaghetti al pomodoro, the myth of origin of food plays a crucial role in supporting nativist claims about identity and belonging. Historical facts are taken out of context and shaped into new narratives that establish clear, direct, and unchanging links between a community and its past, negating any external influence. “We have always eaten this.” “This is what the real people eat.” Similar statements have been repeated over and over all around the world, at times in very different contexts. For this reason, any reflection about gastronativism needs a global horizon.

Photo from Cucine d’Italia