Teaching About Fascism in an Age of Illiberalism: An Alabama Classroom Reflection

This essay reflects on teaching the history of Nazi Germany and fascism at the University of Alabama at Birmingham amid a broader climate of political illiberalism and legislative pressure. Direct equivalences between 2026 America and 1930s Germany are analytically flawed, the author argues, yet the vocabulary of illiberalism, democratic backsliding and scapegoating remains genuinely transferable across eras. Drawing on experiences in the classroom, the essay identifies key shifts in how students engage with the Third Reich. It insists that good pedagogy demands precision rather than slogans, thus resisting easy analogies while still equipping students to recognise the mechanisms of illiberal statecraft.