Hey, kids, let's check the calendar! It's getting closer to October and Halloween in the year 2025 -- or maybe 1936. In either case, it's a good time to talk about antifascist horror.
Antifascism themes are common in fiction, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. Try to find a fictional dystopia that doesn't code as fascist. But antifascist horror is much more rare. Science fiction and fantasy often feature brave heroes whose triumphant victories lead their worlds to freedom, justice, equality, and new prosperity. Horror is less optimistic about the future, about human goodness, about our ability or willingness to oppose evil.
Nevertheless, antifascist horror exists, so let's have a quick overview of the subgenre.
It's easiest to find examples in film, and part of that is because director Guillermo del Toro really, really hates fascists. Both "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth" are set in the Spanish Civil War and feature Franco's fascist goons as the chief antagonists. In addition, del Toro co-authored "The Strain" novel trilogy and TV miniseries, which had strong antifascist elements.
Other antifascist horror films range from movies with actual Nazis as the villains -- "The Keep," "Green Room," "Overlord," and the French-Swiss film "Frontier(s)" -- to films with Nazi-adjacent villains -- Hong Kong's "Men Behind the Sun," which is about Imperial Japan's Unit 731, and Chile's "El Conde," which casts Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire -- to movies where the Nazi horrors are more metaphorical -- "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Day of the Dead," "They Live," "The Purge," South Korea's "The Host," "Sinners," and others.
For horror literature, we've got Robert R. McCammon's "The Wolf's Hour," which is about a British werewolf fighting Nazis during World War II, Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," where a hate-filled, genocidal super-computer with godlike powers tortures the last humans on Earth, Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety," in which human-like war robots infiltrate and replace humanity, and P. Djèlí Clark's "Ring Shout," where Black adventurers in the Jim Crow South fight against the demon-possessed Ku Klux Klan.
There are also a couple horror comics with strong antifascist themes. Mike Mignola's pulp-horror "Hellboy" comics star a demon who fights against Nazis almost as much as he fights monsters, ghosts, occultists, and monkeys with guns. And "American Vampire" by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque follows Skinner Sweet and Pearl Jones, a pair of unique American vampires, who occasionally battle fascist-coded European vampires.
Of course, antifascist fiction can be defined pretty broadly. For some folks, antiracist tales would be included by definition; for others, anti-homophobic fiction would qualify. How you define horror has some bearing, too. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is clearly an antifascist adventure movie -- but does the film's climax, with Nazis gruesomely shriveling, melting, and exploding, turn it into a horror movie?
How much can we learn from antifascist horror? Well, it's generally hard to learn real-world lessons from fiction, but these stories tend to stick to what we know about fascism -- that it is hard to get rid of once it's gotten entrenched, and that it tends to kill a lot of people for the sake of the ruling class's hatred, greed, and insanity...
...But also, there's the fact that fascism is very rarely unstoppable. Nazis and the alt-right have been dreaming of a Thousand Year Reich for decades, and they keep falling short. And fascist regimes usually end when the Maximum Leader becomes the Maximum Coffin Occupant. There was no fascist successor once Hitler, Mussolini, or Ceausescu were dead. Hell, Franco ruled Spain for over three decades, and once he was in the ground, they made the jump straight to democracy. You might say that Death is the ultimate antifascist.
Fascism is scary enough without including serial killers or the supernatural. Adding vampires, werewolves, and demons can help make it even more frightening. Or, depending on who's wielding the chainsaws, antifascist horror can become outright cathartic -- and a fun way to plan for an antifascist future in the real world as well as in fiction.
It's that time of year again. Let's try to scare each other.
Write an original scary story. Write a horror-themed poem. Node a story that is in the public domain. Write a factual writeup that is about horror or scary stuff. Write a biography of a writer or actor closely associated with the horror genre. Create a review of a horror film or story. It can be any length and any topic. Ideally, fiction should be scary, and nonfiction should be thematically appropriate. I reserve the right to not include your writeup here if you try to sneak in unscary or unHalloweeny stuff. I also reserve the right to not include your writeups here if you act like an asshole.
What's the runtime for the Quest? The entire month of October, plus November 1, server time. Halloween is too awesome to limit to just one day a year.
If you need inspiration, or if you just want to see some more of the scary stories that Everythingians have produced, check out our previous horror quests: I can make you howl. And vice versa. Let's get down to business., Everything Quests: Scary Stories, The Blood is the Life: A Frightful Halloween Quest, They Hunger For Nodes: An e2 Halloween Scary Story Quest, I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Text: The 2005 Halloween Horrorquest, It's the Season for Graves Cracking: The 2006 Quest for Fear (a deleted quest announcement, unfortunately), The Poet and the Worm, The Night's Plutonian Shore: The 2007 Halloween Horrorquest, Necronodecon: The 2008 Halloween Horrorquest, Pickman's Nodegel: The 2009 Halloween Horrorquest, Ten Years of Terror: The 2010 Halloween Horrorquest, The Nodegel from Yuggoth: The 2011 Halloween Horrorquest, Children of the Night: The 2012 Halloween Horrorquest, 13 O'Clock: The 2013 Halloween Horrorquest, No More Room in Hell: The 2014 Halloween Horrorquest, In the Nodes of Madness: The 2015 Halloween Horrorquest, Grisly Ghouls from Every Tomb: The 2016 Halloween Horrorquest, We All Float Down Here: The 2017 Halloween Horrorquest, Tender Lumplings Everywhere: The 2018 Halloween Horrorquest, The Culture of Fear: The 2019 Halloween Horrorquest, Send More Paramedics: The 2020 Halloween Horrorquest, Behold a Pale Horse: The 2021 Halloween Horrorquest, Everything Is Going to Be Fine: The 2022 Halloween Horrorquest, Libera te Tutemet ex Inferis: The 2023 Halloween Horrorquest, and Live Deliciously: The 2024 Halloween Horrorquest.
Again, the Quest will run for the entire month of October and November 1. If you post early or late -- too bad, so sad.
When you write a story for the Quest, just /msg me with the node title, then softlink your writeup to this node. I'll include a list of all the Quest participants below.
So start thinking horror, boils and ghouls. Halloween is coming. Let's scare each other.
Fiction:
Crossroads Between the Unremarkable Life of Francesca Wells and the Grisly Murder of Frankie by TerribleAspect
a life in the night (a knife in the light (a wife in the afterlight (a life in the afterlife))) by haqiqat
Poetry:
it is in the whispering that you will know by etouffee
The Color of the Roses by lostcauser
Fact:
Gives me the willies by wertperch
Long Lankin by wertperch
witches' stairs by wertperch
Reviews:
The Upper Berth by Jet-Poop
They Live by wertperch
Eraserhead by wertperch
Bad Dreams in the Night by Jet-Poop
Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise by Glowing Fish
The Twisted Ones by Jet-Poop
Hungry Bones by Glowing Fish
Essays:
The Battle for Planet Earth by JD
How to stop witches by wertperch