Americans rarely think of fascism as linked to the essence of monopoly-finance capitalism, operating under the guise of free enterprise, says historian Michael Roberto. But this is exactly where fascism’s embryonic forms began gestating in the United States, during the 1920s and the Great Depression.

Roberto will examine how the driving force of American fascism comes, not from reactionary movements below, but from the top — big business and the power of finance capital — in a free public lecture at 6 p.m. Monday, March 25, in the Performance Hall, SoCA Armouries.

Entitled “The Origins of Fascism in the United States,” his presentation is part of Humanities Week and is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Group and the departments of political science, philosophy, and history.

Roberto is a retired professor of contemporary world history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and the author of the 2018 book The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940.

Humanities Week continues Tuesday with the lecture “The Right to the Image,” 6 p.m. in the Multimedia Studio, Alan Wildeman Centre for Creative Arts.