by Rachel A. Rosen

Antifa Splatterpunk somehow fell under my radar when it came out a few years ago, despite being entirely my kind of thing. It’s exactly what it says on the tin—an anthology of short stories about fascists dying in gruesome, often hilarious ways, occasionally at the hands of our friends in black. In this collection, far-right extremism is portrayed as the monster it is, a tradition going back to Marx and his vampiric capitalists.

Like any anthology, some of the stories are stronger than others. The highlight for me was “Ay, Carmela,” about an old woman whose anarchist family was murdered when she was a child during the Spanish Civil War, and who lives long enough to see justice done. “The Chad Show,” in which the conservative tendency to play the victim is hilariously and grotesquely lampooned, was another standout. And “Lutznau’s Opus,” a cosmic horror set in the real horror of the Holocaust, is a trippy and haunting ride.

If you like your horror with a side of radical politics, you’ll enjoy this cathartic collection.