Introduction³

Perhaps one of the thorniest issues that have been revived in Brazil, mainly due to the intensification of the latest nationwide electoral disputes, fueled by the advance of the extreme right and the notorious public cases of crimes against the so-called 'social minorities,' which is a from the tips of this enormous iceberg, be it the pathological fascination with fascist and/or neo-fascist or even Nazi-fascist ideas.

Initially, based on ^{Konder (2009}), ^{Mascaro (2022}), and ^{Stanley (2018}), we must be intellectually responsible and consider that not every right-wing, chauvinist, and reactionary attitude fits into the classic fascism of the German and Italian regimes of the 20th century, but which nevertheless do not deserve our repudiation, our reflection and our transformative proposals of conscience, and, in this way, we are led to consider that it is only possible to establish the links between fascism and capitalism through Marxist ideas, to beyond chronological-linear readings, but from the point of view of power relations that involve concreteness and totality: “It is not, therefore, a question of inscribing politics - liberalism, democracy, dictatorship, fascism - within the scope of an idealist metric, but to understand it in the concrete movement of classes, their fractions, their interests and their means of achievement. Beyond the institutions of power” (^{Mascaro, 2022}, p. 23).

We still need to justify the use of the term 'Nazi-fascism' applied in the 21st century in the face of the rise of far-right governments with ultra-conservative ideas spread throughout the world. However, we want to avoid being anachronistic because the historical moment demands that our theoretical lens be based on dialectical historical materialism. Nonetheless, even more center-liberal readings, with due criticism, as is the case with the work of ^{Stanley (2018}), add to our effort to unmask the brutal, violent action of political parties and exotic figures who, in recent years, have risen to power via a coup, via parliamentary or even democratic consent, but who pose severe risks to contemporary forms of democracy by establishing a border between 'us' and 'them':

The list includes Russia, Hungary, Poland, India, Turkey and the United States. The task of generalizing around such a phenomenon is always problematic, as the context of each country is unique. But this generalization is necessary at the current time. I chose the label' fascism' for any ultranationalism (ethnic, religious, cultural), in which the nation is represented in the figure of an authoritarian leader who speaks in its name [...] The most striking symptom of fascist politics is the division. It aims to divide a population into 'us' and 'them' (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 14-15, author’s emphasis).

In the work "How fascism works: the politics of 'us' and 'them'", ^{Stanley (2018}), based on the disastrous experience of Trump's rise to power in the United States, characterizes how fascist politics operates and brings us crucial characteristics that, unfortunately, are easily identifiable in our local context: a. the mythical past; B. advertising; w. anti-intellectualism; d. unreality; That is it. The hierarchy of classes and groups; f. victimization; g. law and order to justify violence; and h. sexual anxiety to return to the idea of binarism and patriarchy and, at the same time, condemn any practices other than heterosexuality.

Historically, Brazil has lived and suffered from these fascist ideological marks based on the Italian, Portuguese, and German Nazi regimes, more specifically in 1930, materialized in the integralist movement led by Plínio Salgado, Miguel Reale, and Gustavo Barroso. There is also monarchist nostalgia in national reactionary ideas, called ‘patrianovists’ by ^{Lynch and Cassimiro (2022}), enthusiasts for a Catholic monarchist restoration.

Among these marks, it is pertinent to highlight the conspiratorial paranoia (‘unreality’) that hovers in these regimes, the incessant search for an unreal narrative through political advertisements optimized on a large scale today. The reach of social media means that current fascist-inspired regimes reach an increasingly larger audience; populism is typically built around subjects 'closer' to 'the people', guided by their peers to deliver fallacious sentences but which are very well takenas truths. Accurate information becomes scarce, and reality becomes what this leader and the political group that supports him say is what it is (^{Souza, 2020}):

Fascist politics exchanges reality for the pronouncements of a single individual or perhaps a political party. Blatant and repeated lies are part of the process by which fascist politics destroys the information space. A fascist leader can substitute truth for power, even lying recklessly. By replacing the world with a person, fascist politics makes us incapable of evaluating arguments based on a common standard. The fascist politician has specific techniques to destroy information spaces and break reality (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 66-67).

Regarding the phenomenon of 'populism', determined to stop any advance towards social equality, at least that of the radical right that has resurfaced in recent times, drunk on the Nazi-fascist drink, according to ^{Lynch and Cassimiro (2022}), has three striking characteristics: 1. the appealing propaganda surrounding the struggle between a 'chosen people' and a 'constructed elite' (not necessarily economic); 2. The excess and legal-parliamentary consent of ‘politically correct’ actions, and 3. The fanciful and delusional fable of a risk of democratic threat (in fact, the threat is and comes from themselves).

In the words of the authors, the worsening of radical populism is the unlimited exploitation of hatred towards the democratic regime itself, using the allied base and dismantling the entire power structure that could guarantee opposition:

By 'populism we will designate a style of doing politics in democratic or mass environments, practiced by a charismatic leadership, which claims the representation of a majority against the rest of society' [...] Radical populism lives by exploiting hatred for the system democratic within democracy in its name. It needs to demonstrate power at all times to stimulate the base and intimidate opponents into tolerating its crimes (^{Lynch & Cassimiro, 2022}, p. 15-191, authors’ emphasis).

Also curious is the point of self-pity ('victimization') via nationalism, in ^{Stanley's (2018}) view, nothing more than the ability of fascist politics to achieve, using practically all other characteristics, stamped by emotion' cheap' in hiding the atrocities of the contradictions of their way of conceiving the world, causing a split between what they consider to be 'us' and all the other people against fascism, in this case, the others as 'them', a tactic so warlike capable of erasing the differences and diversities between people, essential in every society, in light of this unreal, fictional and ultra-national feeling:

Nationalism is at the heart of fascism. The fascist leader employs a sense of collective victimhood to create a notion of group identity that is, by its nature, opposed to the cosmopolitan ethos and individualism of liberal democracy. Group identity can be based on several elements - skin color, religion, tradition, and ethnic origin. However, it is always contrasted as an ‘other’, against which the nation defines itself. Fascist nationalism creates a dangerous ‘them’, against which we must protect ourselves, sometimes fight and control, to restore the group's dignity (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 109, author’s emphasis).

Even considering the valuable reading of ^{Stanley (2018}), in any case, in this text, we will focus on our formative experience and one of the only theoretical references, in this case dialectical historical materialism in the work of ^{Marx (1974}) and some classic Marxists such as ^{Gramsci (1982}), capable of interpreting and proposing solutions to eradicate once and for all any remnants of thoughts and attitudes resulting from what Germany and Italy led by Hitler and Mussolini experienced decades ago.

Recently, in the writings of ^{Mascaro (2022}), we noticed an exquisite effort of general critical theoretical organization about fascism; going back to the classics since Marx and passing through the Frankfurt School, the jurist and philosopher points us to the most plausible way out for a material critique of fascism: overcoming the very mode of production responsible for its gestation, in this case, capitalism, therefore, being anti-fascist is not enough, it is necessary to be anti-capitalist, because if the system that creates it, also reinvents it within its contradictions:

Only the understanding of the historical and social materiality of the capitalist mode of production gives rise to criticism of fascism in its causes and specificity. Marxism allows us to establish the links between fascism and capitalism and extract from this both the diagnosis of its manifestation within bourgeois sociability and also the inference of treatment: institutions do not save; generic subjectivity is ideologically constituted and, therefore, forged for exploitation, domination, and oppression, without moral claims having decisive effects. Fascism is always a possibility for capitalism in its reproduction, given its contradictions and crises (^{Mascaro, 2022}, p. 14).

Nowadays, whether due to the seduction and ease of social networks or even the consent of parliaments increasingly to the right in several countries, movements that send out fascist messages have the following characteristics:

a)belligerent nationalism, ultranationalism, or nationalism versus globalism; b) conversion to the homeland as a sovereign entity versus political, class, or identity opposition, often treated as public enemies; c) conversion to a moral universe that imposes on the public sphere adherence to traditional behaviors, linked to heteronormativity, patriarchy, religiosity, and family; d) simplification of the world versus intellectualization or scientific rationality; e) creation of external enemies, such as immigrants and refugees; or internal, such as ‘criminals’, outcasts, poor people, and ethnic-racial minorities, among others; f) imposition of narratives versus reality or facts; g) us and others (^{Silva &Hillesheim, 2021}, p. 8, author’s emphasis).

Loaded with jingoistic, nationalist sentiment and practicing hatred as a policy, the people who currently represent what remains of these Nazi-fascist cells are fomenting situations of catastrophe and supposed economic, political, legal, and parliamentary crisis to use fuel totalitarian regimes with this ideological inspiration. Education, along this path, becomes a dangerous stage for legitimizing these ideas; therefore, aiming to contest and delegitimize this radical movement, we will seek to answer the following central question: 'What are the implications and possible consequences that the rise of extreme right in Brazil caused in education, perhaps in the field of curricular studies?'.

The methodology used to collect the data was the application of a questionnaire aimed at eleven strictusensu postgraduate students who studied, in the second semester of 2022, a discipline in the field of curricular studies and teacher training offered by a Postgraduate Program -Graduate in Education from a public federal university in the central-western region of Brazil.

Our article is organized around the following items: initially, we discuss the concept of fascism in History through a brief bibliographical review; then we weave a critique based on the reference authors on the theoretical implications of the presence of fascist ideas for Education and the field of curriculum and we bring, in the final part of the writings, the analysis of the data collected in the empirical field through the characterization the existence of a 'fascistized curriculum' but also the assumptions of a 'critical and socially anti-capitalist and anti-Nazi-fascist curriculum'; and we close with our final reflections.

Situating the concept of fascism in history: a brief bibliographical review

Dehumanizing and/or transforming a particular human group into the enemy is the powerful fuel to fuel national fascistization; this was the historical movement that occurred in European Nazi-fascist regimes, such as the violent persecution of Jews, homosexuals in Nazism, and communists in Italy. A first, albeit challenging, attempt to conceptualize the fascist political movement would be this:

The term Fascism is derived from the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks from which emerged the iron of the ax that the lictors brought before the first magistrates of Rome and that Mussolini chose as an emblem. In the political sense, it means political doctrine and organization introduced in Italy by B. Mussolini and his followers in 1922, based on the dictatorship of a single party and an all-powerful state, totalitarianism, which exalted nationalism and corporatism by extension, a dictatorship hostile to Marxist-inspired socialism, which took specific social measures (Morfaux&^{Lefranc, 2009}, p. 230-231).

There is no need to transpose, in an automated way, the realities of these regimes into the 21st century and in countries like those in Latin America. However, we cannot live as if the fragments of these ideas did not reach us.

Initially, we can understand fascism and Nazism, or the combination of the two, in this case, Nazi fascism as a phenomenon specific to the 20th century. However, with historical antecedents that are important in the local societies that fostered them (the environment that brought Mussolini and Hitler to power), it is not a case of going more profound. However, authors such as ^{Sassoon (2009}) and ^{Gellately (2011}) have already done so.

Currently, extreme right-wing movements in Brazil, even with the defeat of their supposed most outstanding political leader - considered by ^{Silva Júnior and Fargoni (2020}, p. 10) as practicing a 'necropolitics' capable of bringing together fascist and neoliberal interests in a country of peripheral capitalism and revive “[...] attributes of political ideologies such as fascism and Nazism for domination of the masses and a new subjectivity of the citizen [...]” - continue to coalesce around this controversial figure, constructed over recent decades in the parliament that took shape, forms an electoral discourse bordering on these fascist ideas and with very strong political capital, capable of uniting a broad front since the 2014 presidential elections (when it contributed significantly to imposing a collective doubt on the vitality and validity of the ballot boxes electronic devices and the result of the electoral process itself, a behavior repeated in his recent defeat in 2022, in addition, he aligned himself with the political niche that guaranteed the presidential impeachment (2016) by giving a speech honoring a former military (now deceased) executioner and proven (by the truth commission - ^{Canabarro, 2014}) as one of the most active torturers during the Brazilian military regime, this vote had negative repercussions throughout the world (^{Oliveira, 2016}).

In the study by ^{Silva Júnior and Fagoni (2020}, p. 11), this leader stood out because he brought together this entire political, economic, and religious layer, in addition to the national elite through a “[...] categorical complex [...] ” which resembles the European Nazi-fascist regimes of the 20th century, but in Brazilian fashion: the idolatry of traditions, reactionaryism, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism and arrogance, aversion to plurality, a pact with elites (bourgeois and neoliberal), servile nationalism, necropolitics and necro-state, bellicosity, militarism and 'militias', meritocracy, intolerance and prejudices (machismo, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia) and propaganda.

This conglomerate of ideas can result in very violent atrocities, which lead to de facto, for some psychoanalysts, using the French philosopher Étienne de La Boétie (16th century), which may explain the adherence of groups insistent on unconstitutional demonstrations, such as those that culminated in the coup acts of vandalism and terrorism on the emblematic day of January 8, 2023, culminating in the arrest of around 2,151 coup plotters (^{Lucena, 2023}), is that these people live in a situation of almost hypnosis in what the thinker called 'voluntary servitude' fueled by the use of 'mass psychology.'

In general, those who participate, finance, act, propagate these ideas, and promote an inversion of the rights of human dignity acquired over brutal and bloody battles for centuries against oppressed groups, ethnicities/races, and classes:

The agendas already consolidated in international organizations, such as the UN and the OAS, and in documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, often do not make any sense. The brutal reversal is that they are accused of being responsible for the weakening and collapse of Western values. In its place, it is proposed the resumption of armaments, the exacerbated pride of the nation and patriotism, and the vision attached to a sexist, misogynistic, and homophobic culture (^{Trevisan, 2020}, p. X).

According to ^{Konder (2009}), fascism (very sympathetic to the concentration of capital) emerged at the height of the imperialist movement of the capitalist mode of production, conservative in moralistic ideas under a 'modernizing' mask, in addition to being fueled by rich and dangerous manipulative rhetoric; therefore, venturing into a bibliographical review of this phenomenon is a guarantee of coming across a sea of contradictions from a voluminous collection of profaned works from movements specific to their time, or 'liberal' texts that criticize it, but still defend that the way out of its defeat is in capitalism, going through more superficial and Manichaean 'socialist' readings that demonize it, but that does not seek to associate it with what we are proposing, in fact, the way out, from the two principal authors, in the Konder case (2009) and ^{Mascaro (2022}), it would be a historical and dialectical understanding that can only be exhausted by the multiple determinations in the exhaustion of the current mode of production, and in the path towards a truly socialist society.

However, before that, we need to be aware of some theoretical pitfalls that gain political and social ground and often emanate from fascist sympathizers themselves. We will briefly highlight three of them: the first is the intention of mixing the concepts of right-wing, dictatorship, and fascism to disperse the anti-fascist and anti-capitalist struggle; the second is the unearthing of jingoism and the mythification of the nation against supposed enemies; and, finally, it is the act of resorting to 'enemy' assumptions, in this case, socialist, and giving them a new meaning to make the fascist regime legitimate and when this is no longer having any effect, one then resorts to a stratagem, especially from fascist admirers, very shrewd, which is to make their convictions similar to those of Marxist/socialists seeking to delegitimize truly emancipatory revolutionary conceptions.

^{Stanley (2018}) describes in a very detailed way what happens to what he calls the 'classic bogeyman' of fascism, in this case the ideas contrary to the regime, intentionally classified (all, without distinction) as Marxist and deposited in the account of the institutions of higher education, usually universities, we have seen this occur in recent years in Brazil, the intention is to build a mistaken image of public higher education in society (^{Estadão Conteúdo, 2019}):

Whenever fascism threatens, its representatives and enablers denounce universities and schools as sources of ‘Marxist indoctrination’, the classic bogeyman of fascist politics. Typically used without any connection to Marx or Marxism, the expression is employed in fascist politics as a way of defaming equality. Universities that seek to give some intellectual space to marginalized perspectives, however small, are subject to a denunciation of pockets of ‘Marxism’ [...] (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 54).

Dealing with the first trap, one cannot conceive of trivializing the concept of fascism or using the adjective 'fascist' without due theoretical rigor because groups more to the right tend to be politically associated in the search for the permanence of political and economic privileges and generally align to liberals and neoliberals, however, “Not every reactionary movement is fascist. Not all repression - however fierce whatever - exercised in the name of preserving class or caste privileges is fascist. The concept of fascism cannot be reduced, on the other hand, to the concepts of dictatorship or authoritarianism” (^{Konder, 2009}, p. 25).

The second neuralgic issue is the national and jingoistic use of a utopian idea of social unity to be built and protected at all costs, including by the police force of enemies (internal) and external (foreign), as did Hitler when he used the ' fascist resource of the myth of the nation', to the point of generating Manichaeism within German society itself, as ^{Konder (2009}, p. 84, author's emphasis) shows us: “Hitler explained that, in his view, capitalism was 'sick ', but the fascists did not want to 'destroy' him but to 'cure' him. A distinction was made between the ‘good’ (patriotic) capitalists and the ‘bad’ (complicit in the global Jewish conspiracy).”

The imperialist-capitalist phase in which Nazism was established was propitious for this because, in Nazi rhetoric, if the German nation did not unite in its purity against other nations, it would never reach the top. This speech convinced the most significant and middle bourgeoisie and justified a good part of the atrocities against humanity; it is essential to point out that it was in Germany that the Nazi regime used modern methods of mass state propaganda, this cunning mechanism, even outside the European continent and already in the 19th century. XXI, driven by new network communication technologies, makes global use of this type of criminal action, as ^{Geronimo's research points out; Cerveró and Oliveira (2022}).

Regarding the third ambush, this one more complex, we turn to a historical fact that perhaps explains it better: in 1910, Mussolini published a work 'La lottadiclassi' and remodeled the Marxist theory of the unity of theory and practice into an identity of theory and practice to gain more local followers for their theses. Widespread among fascist followers who want to fascistize society is the irresponsible appropriation of significant works or the reinterpretation of specific, decontextualized excerpts from authors who are critical of the capitalist mode of production, Nazi-fascist regimes, or even intellectual and political leaders who, in their way and time, used essays from socialist societies, such as the extinct Soviet Union.

The strategy is simple, but often effective: society is classified into right and left by demonizing the most critical and progressive terms, concepts, groups, political parties and characters, even those who are not even declared socialists, Marxists or communists, even even the heavenly/infernal language is introduced into speeches and the theology of Christianity, normally the one that reigns in the West, tries to invade political speeches and quickly reaches the most popular layers, moreover, the intentional confusion in appropriating the language itself Marxian philosophical and investigative method of thinking about the mode of production, it is 'natural', linking the most left-wing symbols, with the negative and diabolical idea of regression and automatically the right-wing, conservative and capitalist mottos to Christianity, the 'artificial' struggle is unsaturated ', but very convincing between 'good/political right' (capitalism/liberalism/ neoliberalism/Nazifascism) and 'evil/political left' (socialism/communism/progressivism). In this regard, it is worth paying attention to ^{Konder’s (2009}) longer thought:

In general, all the right-wing thinking that, throughout the 19th century, was committed to the 'demonization' of the left played a significant role in preparing the conditions in which fascism could later interrupt. The 'demonization' of the adversary would make it easier for the fascist right to free itself from some scruples maintained by the 'aristocratic' stance of traditional conservatism: whoever is not 'relentless' in the direct fight against Satan becomes an infamous sinner and loses his soul [ ...] 'Fascism is a revolt against historical materialism,' it is a passionate reactivation of 'idealist' convictions. Mussolini was full of words about ‘sanctity’ and ‘heroism’, about ‘acts in which no economic motivations influence, neither close nor far away’ (Doltrina Del Fascismo). Hitler rejected Marxism (using an idea from Max Scheler) as ‘a primitive doctrine of envy’ (eineprimitivedesNeides) and accused it, in Mein Kampf, of causing a 'decrease in the value of the human person' (Minderbewertung der Person) [...] To support its idealist principles in the polemic against the materialism of Marxists, fascism promoted a systematic confusion of concepts: the term 'idealist' was taken from the field of 'theory of knowledge' and was applied exclusively to the field of morals, where it assumed an undoubtedly positive content; and the term materialist, grossly simplified, amputated from its essential ‘dialectical’ complement [...] (^{Konder, 2009}, p. 60-78-79, author’s emphases).

From these three warnings, it is now possible to approach the second theoretical idea of fascism. Our insistence on epistemologically pointing out, through classic and contemporary texts, the marks and characteristics of the 20th-century regime is nothing more than collaborating to understand that it should not be confused with any violent and truculent form of governing, understand its local contemporary ways and manifestations and finally, identify its possible marks in education, through the field of curriculum studies. Thus, we turn to ^{Konder (2009}) to re-conceptualize fascism; beyond what is already customary to talk about the movement, it is necessary to recognize it as being a chauvinistic and pandering anti-democratic outburst with a certain degree of connivance at the conducive junction of banking capital with industrial capital, resulting in the so-called financial capital, was a phenomenon of its own from the 1930s/1940s, but which was never wholly buried alongside its most outstanding exponent leaders:

[...] fascism is a tendency that emerges in the imperialist phase of capitalism, which seeks to strengthen itself in the conditions of implementation of state monopoly capitalism, expressing itself through a policy favorable to the increasing concentration of capital; is a political movement with a conservative social content, which disguises itself under a 'modernizing' mask, guided by the ideology of radical pragmatism, using irrationalist myths and reconciling them with rationalist-formal procedures of a manipulative type. Fascism is a chauvinist, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-worker movement. Its growth in a country presupposes special historical conditions. This reactionary preparation has been capable of undermining the bases of potentially anti-fascist forces (weakening their influence among the masses). Also, it presupposes the conditions of the so-called mass society of directed consumption, such as the requirement for a certain level of fusion of banking capital with industrial capital, that is, the existence of financial capital (^{Konder, 2009}, p. 53, author’s emphasis).

^{Mascaro (2022}) explains to us, in a very peculiar way, a line of thought that is rare but in line with our historical and conceptual vision of the phenomenon. Initially, by classifying the movement of interpretation into three groups: juspositive readings and non-juspositive readings (both do not break with their capitalist logic of origin and unfolding), the third way, this is the guiding thread of the author's thought, and which serves us of amalgamation, it is sheltered in Marxist readings of the theme from four axes: 'historical factuality'; ‘tactical and strategic’; ‘social subjectivity’ and ‘general theory’. Supported by intellectuals such as EvguiénPachukanis, AfredSohn-Rethel, Max Horkheimer (from the Frankfurt School), NicosPoulantzas, and Antonio Gramsci. ^{Mascaro (2022}) brings us an articulated synthesis of his object of study, the critique of fascism itself; through integration, under a legal-philosophical look permeated by Marx's method, we see the historical facts, the military and cultural tactics to reach each subject (subjectivation) and classically plant its tentacles, both in Italy and Germany, this was only possible through the way of understanding, based on these four theoretical categories of the reference author, the 'concrete thought' (Marx, 1974) designed by the author, and endorsed by us, can only lead to the other: the break with the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of a 'socialist sociability', a battle that begins with the guarantee of human rights:

Even though human rights are an uphill battle against reactionary barbarism, it is necessary to recognize capitalism as a structural barbarism, even if, eventually, legally improved. Just as there is an enormous distance between hating the other, formally respecting the other, and loving the other, there is a similar and enormous distance between hatred of human rights, formal respect for human rights, and love for the structural dignity of all human beings. At this highest point, the revolution and the horizon of humanity must be linked to seek to overcome capitalist indignities in favor of a dignity taken at another level: in socialist sociability (^{Mascaro, 2022}, p. 149-150).

We believe that one of the central fields to promote this revolution is Education. The space of the curriculum through formal public institutions is a privileged stage. However, Nazi-fascist propagators and defenders also know, not for nothing, that the curriculum, illuminated by critical theories (^{Silva & Moreira, 1995}), is conceived as an ideological field of disputes and contestations, our biggest challenge and point of continuity for future productions by us and other scholars in the field is to synthesize, through the dialectical method and data collected from the field empirical, categories that would emerge on two fronts: those of a 'fascistized curriculum' and, at the same time, in the proposition of the 'concrete thought' the assumptions of a 'critical and socially anti-capitalist and anti-Nazi-fascist curriculum'.

Beyond a ‘non-fascist life’: theoretical implications for Education and the field of curriculum

It is essential to consider at the outset that, as ^{Runciman (2018}) warns us, we are at significant risk of democracy coming to an end, and Education, since the 20th century, has been, if not the great dividing line of the world democracies, at least liberal ones of the West, which determined the electoral paths for liberation or confirmation of some extremist regimes. Therefore, the space of science, scientific knowledge, and the institutions responsible for making this type of knowledge more popular is a stage of dispute for fascists.

That is mainly due, according to ^{Bernardi and Morais (2021}, p. 306), to the rise of fascism in current governments spread across the world - as appears to be the case in Brazil in its acute phase in the previous federal administration (2019-2022) - and its intimate connection with the capitalist mode of production, as it causes “[...] the increase in economic and social inequalities, as it dehumanizes segments of the population, excluding groups, exercising repressions of freedom, dividing the population through ethnic, religious and racial distinctions”.

The movements active in the era of the Brazilian extreme right feed on large corporate financing and even the strength of the public machine and social media through the denial of the truth, often delegitimized by the discursive effects of post-truth and in support of the campaign for anti-intellectualism. Post-truth is nothing more than:

Post-truth means the way public opinion is influenced by emotional and irrational appeals that override objective facts or rationality. The deconstruction of ‘truth’ implies the destruction of common sense, understood here as the set of knowledge universally accepted by society. In other words, it implies the rewriting of the worldview, which impacts the revision-distortion of History and all knowledge that offers some support to the vision of reality (^{Silva &Hillesheim, 2021}, p. 9, authors’ emphasis).

Given this scenario, it is inevitable to ask ourselves: What is the role of education in a fascist society? ^{Stanley (2018}) helps us with a very blunt answer:

In fascist ideology, general education in schools and universities aims to instill pride in the mythical past. Fascist education exalts academic disciplines that reinforce hierarchical norms and national tradition. For fascists, schools and universities exist to indoctrinate national or racial pride, transmitting, for example, (where nationalism is racialized), the glorious achievements of the dominant race (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 58-59).

Although our position is based on historical and dialectical materialism (Marx, 194), as a research method and social theory itself in Marx (^{Netto, 2011}), with all the epistemological implications that this implies, such as the reading of the world based on his ontological laws and categories (^{Cury, 1989}) and ^{Triviños (2011}) and the interpretation of any research object taking into account its multiple determinations, we are led to consider the pertinent writing of Foucauldian authors. ^{Rago and Veiga-Neto (2009}), in their work 'For a non-fascist life', outline one of the combative implications that education must deal with, and later in VeigaNeto's chapter on the curriculum, if we do want to exhaust all possibilities (the totality, not the whole), of manifestations in actions, attitudes, that is, in the concreteness of the pedagogical world, which is first and foremost, in our understanding, matter, which forms the subjective being, thus, If we do not perceive ourselves in our daily work, as education professionals, to a certain extent, as propagators, albeit in a veiled way, of fascism, we will not move forward and we will not change this scenario:

[...] in criticizing the unbridled growth of biopolitical forms of social control, denouncing the violence of forms of exclusion and stigmatization that prevail today. They also converge in an attempt to explain how the former self-management of the business sphere was transformed into the well-known management of the private assets of the elites, especially those who appropriate the State and institutions, implementing absurd regimes of truth as natural, absolute, and universal (^{Rago &Veiga-Neto, 2009}, p. 10-11).

Each of us builds our lifestyle based on our lived experiences and constitutes in and for ourselves relationships of multiple powers (^{Foucault, 2001}); if we want to take the idea of the French philosopher in question, we can also understand that 'matter precedes all human consciousness' and people can be interpreted under the aegis of their concrete manifestations based on their social relations generated in the modes of production (^{Marx, 1989}). Whatever the interpretation of human existence, whether Marxist or Foucauldian, what matters in our reflection is that there is a convergence in both views: at least we were led to agree with ^{Veiga-Neto (2009}), although the author only brings Foucault's perspective to elaborate his idea of pointing out the three opponents of a curriculum 'for a non-fascist life': the officials of truth, the technicians of desire and fascism itself. However, based on Foucault, who inspired ^{Veiga-Neto (2009}), we agree how subtle fascism, obviously derived from the classic/historical European regimes of the 20th century, operates within us, imprisoning our personal, social, political, and curricular experience:

[...] it is not just the ‘historical fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, but the fascism in all of us, that hammers our spirits and daily conduct’ (^{Foucault, 2001}, p. 134). If fascism is in all of us, if each of us carries our adversary within ourselves, then part of those adversities are we who bring them into our lives. To some extent, each of us obstructs our path (^{Veiga-Neto, 2009}, p. 16, author’s emphasis).

However, given our theoretical, scientific, and non-religious convictions, we were involved in establishing, seeking to maintain a certain epistemological coherence, this similarity (between Foucault and Marx), but respecting the necessary and healthy theoretical difference and scrutinizing the first adversary against the biggest contender (in this case, fascism and its manifestations of education), which, according to ^{Veiga-Neto (2009}), it is necessary to point out who, in each local context, has been the 'truth official', in order to defeat them in the field of ideas then: “Despite these efforts, perhaps the officials of truth are those who, even today and more than anyone else, continue to obstruct theorization and curricular practices and who take a fascist stance towards 'curriculum programming'” (^{Veiga -Neto, 2009}, p. 23, author's emphasis).

For us in critical curriculum theory (^{Apple, 2006}), these figures can be conceived as being the bureaucrats of the curriculum or as modeling agents who are not always the translators (education professionals) of the official proposals (curriculum programming), the which has been consolidated in the most right-wing nations, politically and with fascist inspiration, are the educational and curricular will of these agents, who have become 'totalitarian agents of the truth', or of the supposed truth, which by force of position, suppress any content, themes, and subjects linked to human diversity and the possibilities of emancipation (^{Gramsci, 1982}).

Moreover, here we use the idea of ^{Pinar (2007}), who conceives the curriculum as an artifact that goes beyond school/academic life, as a path of the entire existential life of humanity itself. Therefore, the choices (the excess) or the gaps (the absence) of specific theories and the ideological inspirations that encourage curricular constructions, whether they are more democratic or totalitarian and even fascist, make us think that curricular decisions cannot do without a broad theoretical and discursive apparatus permeated by the constant democratic struggle for the participation of all people involved in educational processes. It is no surprise that even in classic fascist experiences, education, instruction, training, and school institutions were the object of intense disputes over their direction, and it is not naive to predict that it is the field of curriculum studies that leads the fetish of agents who take power in political regimes of this nature and work with all their might to shape it in their way.

Methodology: What master’s and doctoral students think about the topic

Taking the field of curriculum studies as the space of a 'contested territory' (^{Silva & Moreira, 1995}) and the result of intense discussions, we decided, based on our experience as a postgraduate researcher and teacher, to listen and analyze what we think, regarding the relationship between fascism and the field of curriculum, master's and doctorate students, most of them with research projects linked to Education, who studied a discipline in the field of curriculum studies and teacher training offered by a Postgraduate Program in Education at a federal public university in the central-western region of Brazil in the second semester of 2022.

A questionnaire was administered to 11 of these students (six pedagogues and five others with different training; eight have a master's degree and three a doctorate) with the following questions: 1. What reasons led you to pursue this discipline? 2. What reading do you make of the current political moment in Brazil, considering the recent events of the 2022 electoral election and its developments? 3. What are your perceptions about fascism and its interfaces with Education and the curriculum field? 4. How can the reflections proposed and constructed throughout the course contribute to an anti-fascist curriculum and pedagogical stance?

We will analyze the responses of our interlocutors in the light of the theorists chosen by us, with a view mainly to trying to answer the biggest question that motivated the writing of this text: What are the implications and possible consequences that the rise of the extreme right in Brazil has caused in Education, perhaps in the field of curriculum studies?

To facilitate the interpretation of this data, we relied on ^{Bardin (1977}) and ^{Franco (2008}) in the 'content analysis' methodology to exhaust it through quantification, contextualization, repetition, and exhaustion, also linking the records captured by us in each instrument analyzed; therefore, we understand that this process:

It is a set of communication analysis techniques aiming at systematic and objective procedures for describing the content of messages by obtaining quantitative or non-quantitative indicators, which allow the inference of knowledge relating to the conditions of production/reception (inferred variables) of messages (^Bardin,1977, p. 21).

And still:

In short, what is written, spoken, mapped, figuratively drawn, and/or symbolically explained will always be the starting point for identifying the explicit and/or latent content. The analysis and interpretation of content are steps (or processes) to be followed. In order to effectively move forward in this process, contextualization must be considered as one of the main requirements and even as the background to guarantee the relevance of the meanings attributed to the messages (^{Franco, 2008}, p. 16-17).

^{Bardin (1977}) points out three phases through which the use of the ‘content analysis’ technique passes: a) ‘pre-analysis’ (where floating reading and initial inferences about the empirical field illuminated by theories are carried out); b) ‘material exploration’ (action in which inventories and excerpts of the most significant sections of documents are shaped); and c) 'treatment of data with inference and interpretation', in addition to stages permeated by 'units of record and context' (the final stage where the writing of the synthesis, of the 'conceived concrete', takes place, based on the qualitative crossing of theories and empirical data).

Still, regarding the implementation of the methodology, it is essential to highlight that, between the second and third phases, there is the creation of 'recording units', which result from the intentional and exhaustive fragmentation of the analyzed messages. In this text, we use both the quantification of words and terms (occurrences), as well as the relationship of these occurrences with the repetition of phrases and concepts despite the relationship between the field of the curriculum and the possible advances of the extreme right and fascism itself in Brazil.

That justifies our indication at the end of this section to look for elements and categories (in order to enumerate the characteristics of a 'fascistized curriculum', as well as the marks of a 'critical and socially anti-capitalist and anti-Nazi-fascist curriculum') based on ^{Bardin (1977} ) for observing the following criteria: semantic, syntactic, lexical, and expressive - we use printed semantic and expressive indications. It means the agglutination of frequent terms combined with theories drawn together to create new categories and the genesis of others, united by previous concepts in the literature and confirmed by the data evoked. In this design process, we emphasize the following characteristics to make the analysis rigorous and safe: exhaustiveness, exclusivity, concreteness, homogeneity, objectivity, and fidelity (^{Richardson, 1999}).

Thus, the answers found and treated, through the technique described previously, led us to the following 'units of record' and, consequently, to the categories justified by the 'units of meaning', which are the most significant excerpts extracted from the questionnaires, exposed in Table 1, which justifies the delineation between the elements of the technique applied here:

It is marked by our data, verified and decanted through 'content analysis' (^{Bardin, 1977}; ^{Franco, 2008}), the desire for ideological predicaments, and the harmful consequences that fascist influences cause in the field of the curriculum, this evokes the category of 'anti-intellectualism', the demonization of education and culture (^{Casara, 2020}) and the role of university and school institutions in past regimes of this magnitude and in countries of our time, sympathetic to these conventions. The preponderant role of training spaces in fascist ideology is to re-tell (in a fanciful way) a mythical past from a propagandist point of view aiming to strengthen the regime and, at the same time, discredit universities:

In fascist ideology, there is only one legitimate point of view: that of the dominant nation. Schools introduce students to the dominant culture and its mythical past [...] Fascist politics seeks to undermine the credibility of institutions that harbor independent voices of dissent until they can be replaced by the media and universities that reject those voices (^{Stanley, 2018}, p. 49-50).

In a society with a fascist curriculum, the intellectual is banished, vulgarized, barbarized, and transformed into a subject of social persecution. Meanwhile, the supposed ignorant, the 'uncultured' person, and not because they did not have the opportunity to access formal education, but because they must assume this position, they flatter themselves by using shallow and ready-made phrases, jargon and slogans as resources to propagate false ideas and supposedly get closer to those who are supposed to be like them. In this sense, this group (often with a vast academic curriculum), if not with an average education, manages to coalesce around the herculean Manichaean battle between evil (education, school, training, science, researchers, teachers, books, libraries). Moreover, the good (any idea and information based on opinion or on some 'guru' or 'coaching' that is affiliated with this circus of horrors):

[...] the intellectual (one who differentiates himself through specific knowledge) becomes an object of social disapproval, as the ode to ignorance and lack of knowledge become spectacular. With this situation, more and more people seek to express themselves using impoverished language, slogans, stock phrases, buzzwords, jargon, and grammatically poor constructions (^{Casara, 2020}, p. 94).

In the field of curriculum, this materializes through direct intervention in prescriptive policy, for instance, of Hungary; perhaps it explains - even though the data we inventoried express local desires, very similar to other nations that the evils of ultra-rightist regimes are experienced, in the field of education, via the curriculum (the ways of organizing knowledge) - when he takes power, Viktor Orbán implements the nationalization of the school system and the entire curriculum, previously under the responsibility of local councils, the new content is very reminiscent of the propagandist form of Nazi-fascism (patriotic, jingoistic and mythical): “A new national curriculum recommended the work of anti-Semitic Hungarian writers. Schools were instructed to encourage activities that evoked a glorious and mythical Hungarian national past, such as horse riding and learning Hungarian folk songs” (^{Stanley, 2018}, pp. 60-61).

Therefore, after exhausting the data based on our theoretical framework and capturing, studying, and methodologically organizing it, we outlined the curricular archetypes described in Table 2.

Before moving on to our final reflections, we want to reinforce how central the subject of ‘Human Rights’, ‘human beings’, and ‘humanity’ are when we debate our main topic. We will not achieve a scientific critique with a political scope that results in lasting actions towards identifying what we call 'fascistized curricula', nor will we be able to experience pedagogical practices structured in what we call 'anti-Nazi-fascist curricula', if we do not recognize how much Nazi-fascist ideology and regimes operated against human rights.

The next step is the denial of humanity. ^{Fanon (1961}) shows us this, and perhaps the modern process of black enslavement is the most concrete and harsh example of how Europe knew how to impose its way of seeing what it saw on the rest of the planet as 'human beings', at the same time, due to the need to open the market and bring the strength of this population, it tried to deny part of this racist ideology and sought to minimize part of this speech, so, until the 1930s it was, in large part, not In the Western world, it is discrediting to take a racist stance (^{Almeida, 2019}), what is scary these days is to see the resumption of these stances.

Note that generally, fascist regimes, according to ^{Konder (2009}), are explained and sustained by the artificial climate of crisis and acute chaos in the economy, politics, and social life that are established. Therefore, power needs to be taken, and the militarization of political life and even parliamentary extinction are usually justified by the rise of a ‘reactionary populism’ (^{Lynch &Cassimiro, 2022}).

Still, according to ^{Lynch and Cassimiro (2022}), the recent situation in Brazil makes us reflect and problematize how our previous political leader, the 'Bonaparte' here, as the authors name it, came to power opportunistically and nostalgically. reactionary conservatism that sought to resume a “[...] natural colonial policy [...]” (Lynch &Cassimiro, 2022, p. 77). The ‘Messiah’ promoted and left his controversial legacy marked by ‘satanistbandeirantism’, typical of ‘right-wing reactionary radical populism’, a phenomenon that takes its tentacles into education and the curriculum.

The catastrophic result of the avalanche of these ideas embodied in a society that naturalizes the anti-intellectualism, anti-environmentalism, paranoid and violent, weapons-oriented, flat-earth, xenophobic, sexist, misogynistic, patriarchal, lgbtphobic thinking, and the fetish for creating a dystopian and unreal world permeated by religious conservatism. A true ‘evangelization of politics’ (^{Calejon, 2021}), an imposition of Judeo-Christian values and precepts, this was the legacy of the ‘Messiah’ or the ‘Myth’ as ^{Casara (2020}) prefers to call it, in his legal criticism.

It turns out that all these marks are taken to the archetype of a fascistized curriculum, which, unfortunately, are the legacy of this society, in part, also, contaminated by this 'ultra-authoritarian neoliberal' (^{Casara, 2020}) and Nazi-fascist way of managing communities, including schools, which have been suffering from countless cases of violence in their surroundings and interiors (^{Brazil has a history of high rates… (2023}), also initiated, sometimes on social media (^{Tokarnia, 2021}), and, as countries inspiring, of this armament policy, such as the United States, numerous researches such as those by ^{Assis (2010}), ^{Marcolino et al. (2019}) and United Nations Regional Center for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (^{Unlirec, 2019}) have already proven - contrary to what part of society and parliament affiliated with what remains of this reactionary political group still militates - that the path to combating school violence involves joint actions, such as psychological support for all families and teaching staff, the need for in-depth debates with other social institutions about the very causes of this escalation of violent acts: cases of bullying suffered and experienced in the school environment, family absence, the vulnerability of these children and young people in the face of certain extremist ideologies, enhanced by free access to the internet, as one of the most excellent experts in the study of the proliferation of neo-Nazi cells on the internet has already shown (^{Dias, 2007}) and to social networks, in addition to access, obviously, to firearms⁴.

We note that since the Brazilian Estado Novo, led by Vargas, there were signs of attempts to print ultranationalist, markedly fascist curricular routines, especially in southern schools, as demonstrated by ^{Santos (2012}) when investigating editions of a school newspaper and pointing out this devastating and marked scenario by ultranationalist fascism.

In another comparative investigation, ^{Santos (2015}) demonstrates a concern similar to ours when pointing out, through the study of primary sources (notebooks, textbooks, and school bulletins), how the fascistized society of Italy (under the Mussolini regime, between 1922 and 1945) and the Brazilian one (under Vargas' command, in the period from 1930 to 1945) extended totalitarian ideologies to the school field via the curriculum.Through this instrument of power, both in the bulletins studied by the author in the Italian reality (which included subjects with a classical humanistic basis such as Reading and the Italian Language, and components aimed at behavior such as Religion, Gymnastics, and Conduct) and in the teachers' notebooks here at Brazil, especially in the southern region (national praise guidelines for governments in curricular matters such as Moral and Civic Education, Hygiene, Gymnastics and Domestic Work), there were clear guidelines, in both countries, for propaganda of fascist power via the curriculum.

This brief analysis is only possible from historical and dialectical materialism, equipped with the category of work, since, in the fascist discourse, the issue and the blame given to human rights regarding supposed social and economic failures are supported, no longer nowadays, at least in a frank way, in racist speeches. However, 'veiled racism' has never ceased, but rather in the fanciful supposed ideological, economic, and political barriers that 'these people' push towards capitalism, because if any State supports these 'less favored' groups, the economy, science, and progress automatically cease.

There is discomfort on the part of most of these capitalists who also occupy parliament and who do not look favorably on the increase in wage earners and the new, more democratic forms of politics and association, and this is where the 'temptation of fascism' arises (^{Konder, 2009}). It seems like a magical solution, a kind of 'dead volume' everyone knows exists and that can and should be used in scenarios like the ones we mentioned. We should not forget to pay attention to any of these signs; vigilance for the right to exist as human beings and humanity is still necessary because groups worldwide still deny this (^{Almeida, 2019}). We also bet that the field of curricular studies is a way out plausible that it also collaborates on this broad front to combat Nazi-fascism, not the amorphous and static conception of curriculum, but a living, dynamic, democratic field made by human beings who respect, coexist and naturalize all forms of social existence.

Final considerations - Anti-Nazifascism and anti-capitalism as sides of the same coin

Our intention is not to close the topic; on the contrary, it is to open space for new perspectives, new perspectives of confrontation, even more so when, in our country, we have seen new cells fed by such ideologies strengthen themselves from parliament to homes of different social classes.

This text aims to try to understand the phenomenon of fascism based on dialectical historical materialism and point out this concrete synthesis through a specific methodological delimitation already outlined (in this case, the data resulting from the voices of students) and, thus, designing social, political and intellectual combat actions that prevent and eradicate, in the medium and long term, the advancement of any content, projects and curricular structures rooted in these ultra-rightist movements that are, in fact, as we have seen, a symptom of a fascist and capitalist society, and which can only be completely deleted if this type of economy is also deleted.

After using the 'content analysis' methodology of ^{Bardin (1977}) and ^{Franco (2008}), seeking to align and analyze the data in the interrelationship of categories, units of records, and units of meaning, we captured the following characteristics from our data main elements of what we call 'fascistized curriculum':

• It has an authoritarian and monocentric character throughout its pedagogical architecture.

• It does not take Science as its center; when it does, it disregards ancestral forms from intentionally dehumanized cultures (^{Fanon, 1961}).

• Reinforces the need for the capitalist mode of production, the different forms of the economy, and the neoliberal way of living.

• Seeks to impose regulation and control by focusing its pedagogical processes on metric tests and standardizes the professional advancement of its teachers only through ranking, resulting from large-scale tests.

Furthermore, regarding the ‘anti-Nazifascist curriculum’, these are the central archetypes:

• Takes different forms of democratic collaboration as a starting point for creation, planning, implementation, and evaluation.

• It does not necessarily provide a single theoretical vision as a guiding compass but considers and respects the different ways of being, existing, and remaining in each place.

• Develops, through teaching autonomy, numerous actions to intellectually combat discriminatory practices of all kinds: gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, social class, and religion, among others.

• It seeks to develop another vision of the world and economic production, moving towards ‘socialist sociability’ (^{Mascaro, 2022}).

Even though fascism, neo-fascism, or even Nazi fascism is struggling in the 21st century, according to ^{Konder (2009}), the mode of production itself refuses to let it die. It operates subtly or surreptitiously but also, depending on the nation, in a coup-like manner. The fact is that the rhetoric against socialist thought is gaining strength, and significant financial and political capital encourages the 'silent minority'; this group, without much fuss, represents good customs jingoism, which may even seem harmless for a while, but it may also just be paving the way for what is to come.

We are not, by any means, closing this issue; we rescue ideas that have already been debated; we bring other perspectives and draw attention, with other peers, to the fact that there is no need to think from a combative point of view, about a stance or an anti-Nazifascist curriculum, if we are not also, are and want to be anti-capitalist. It may be that the mythical representations legitimized in the sphere of federal power between 2019-2022 in Brazil were defeated at the polls; however, neoliberalism, Nazi-fascism, and even the meanings elaborated by the followers of the 'myth' remain. From a political and educational-curricular point of view, we must remain vigilant despite fighting hard and hope that another world is also more just, more democratic, and more human because it is not yet material and historically possible.