Reading, watching, posting about (4.13.23)

You may be familiar with a genre of Substack post in which the writer, pressed for time and/or short on other ideas, gives you a run-down of some of the books, movies, and such that they’ve taken in lately. Well that’s me, right now! In all seriousness though, I think you will enjoy some of these. I might even mess around and make this a regular feature for paid subscribers, we’ll see.

In this issue we’ve got:

• An anarcho-communist’s history of Silicon Valley

• The latest in TikTok conspiracy theories

• The best anti-fascist movie you will ever see that stars one of Mussolini’s grandkids

• And more!

If you’d like to know more — and want to support my work — please subscribe below. You won’t just be able to read this issue but get every edition of the Racket, access to four years’ worth of previous editions, subscriber-only chat threads, and more. Thanks as always for your support.

First, we travel to scenic Italy, in the auspicious spring of 1938: