Friday, January 17, 2025
Oceanside native Brian Gruber, 69, had a concern that the U.S. was heading in an authoritarian direction and his questions led him on an overland tour from Lisbon to Istanbul to speak with historians, experts, authors, journalists, people on the street, and artists about how fascism ascended in Europe. Gruber wanted to find out what fascism or authoritarianism looked like. His goal was to write a book before the election.
The result of his research is the recently published “My Fabulous Fascist Summer.” Gruber is currently in the United States promoting it.
Gruber graduated from Oceanside High School in the 70’s, Queens College, and then graduate school at Pepperdine, studying media and communications. He was the first head of marketing for C-span when he was in his 20’s, where he also hosted 2 live call-in shows a week with senators and congressmen.
“That was an amazing experience for a young guy,” he said.
After marketing executive positions in various urban cable systems, including for a cable company in Australia, Gruber started some online public forums for organizations such as the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Chautauqua Institution, and the New York Public Library.
After spending a month on Ko Pha Ngan island in Thailand writing a book, he fell in love with it and eventually moved there. Living on Ko Pha Ngan provided him the opportunity for a different kind of life, close to nature, with low overhead, where he could do whatever creative work he wanted, regardless of commercial benefit.
Gruber’s latest book concept was to understand what fascism is. The book talks about historical authoritarian regimes like Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, Franciso Franco in Spain, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Adolf Hitler. It discusses some contemporary regimes like Victor Orban in Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
Gruber focuses on the way fascism came about in each country, the human costs, and the unique flavor of fascism in that country.
During his travels, a German political artist and publisher walked Gruber through the Munich Documentation Center on the site of The Brown House, which was the headquarters of the Nazi party. It is now a well-curated museum that walks the visitor through the history of Germany, starting in WWI, through the 1920’s when Hitler started to agitate, then the 1930’s when he came to power, and WWII.
Gruber was struck by a photo of the prisoners of Dachau Concentration Camp, forced on a march through German villages when American troops were coming to liberate the camps. The caption said that the Germans in the village “were watching with a mixture of indifference and fear.”
“And that word indifference just really shook me,” Gruber said. “And I thought, what are we indifferent to in this country. Looking at that photo really shook me up and what that museum did well was show how it was all normalized.”
In order to get a different perspective, Gruber started his European tour by having dinner in Budapest with an official of the Victor Orban regime. He gave Gruber a different understanding of the authoritarian regime.
“Listening to people with a different point of view is always enlightening and I was surprised how much I enjoyed that conversation with him,” Gruber said.
Gruber plans to promote this book over the next year and then start his next project, a book called “The Fourth Quarter.” He’ll interview NBA and NFL coaches and athletes to find out how they play differently in the fourth quarter when time is running out, they’ve been banged up a little, and they are a little wiser. He will talk to people who have reinvented themselves in the “fourth quarter” of life, as they see an opportunity for a different way of life.
