How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen
“With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer
A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history.
As a scholar of philosophy and propaganda and the child of refugees of WWII Europe, Jason Stanley has long understood that democratic societies, including the United States, can be vulnerable to fascism. In How Fascism Works, he identifies ten pillars of fascist politics—an appeal to the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, favoring “the heartland,” and a dismantling of public goods and unions—that amount to an urgent diagnosis of the tactics right-wing politicians use to break down democracies and a critical lens on the current moment.
Stanley knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations, making clear the immense dangers of language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—rhetoric and myth—can become policy and reality all too quickly. Only by recognizing them, he argues, can we begin to resist their most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.
“With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer
A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history.
As a scholar of philosophy and propaganda and the child of refugees of WWII Europe, Jason Stanley has long understood that democratic societies, including the United States, can be vulnerable to fascism. In How Fascism Works, he identifies ten pillars of fascist politics—an appeal to the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, favoring “the heartland,” and a dismantling of public goods and unions—that amount to an urgent diagnosis of the tactics right-wing politicians use to break down democracies and a critical lens on the current moment.
Stanley knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations, making clear the immense dangers of language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—rhetoric and myth—can become policy and reality all too quickly. Only by recognizing them, he argues, can we begin to resist their most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.
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Community Reviews
According to Jason Stanley, Fascism uses the following tactics:
The Mythic Past: “Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed." (3) “These myths are generally based on fantasies of a non-existent past uniformity.” (4)
Propaganda: “Political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind otherwise objectionable ends.” (24)
Anti-Intellectualism: “When education, expertise, and linguistic distinctions are undermined, there remains only power and tribal identity.” (36)
Unreality: “When propaganda succeeds at twisting ideals against themselves and universities are undermined and condemned as sources of bias, reality itself is cast into doubt. We can’t agree on truth.” (57)
Hierarchy: “Establishing hierarchies of worth is...a means of obtaining and retaining power.” (85) "In fascism, groups are ordered by their capacity to achieve, to rise above others, in labor and war" (178)
Victimhood: “Promulgating a mythical hierarchal past works to create unreasonable expectations. When these expectations are not met, it feels like victimhood” (101)
Law And Order: “Fascist law-and-order rhetoric is explicitly meant to divide citizens into two classes: those of the chosen nation, who are lawful by nature, and those who are not, who are inherently lawless.” (110)
Sexual Anxiety: “Since fascist politics has, at its basis, the traditional patriarchal family, it is characteristically accompanied by panic about deviations from it” (127)
Rural versus Urban: “Fascist politics feeds the insulting myth that hard-working rural residents pay to support lazy urban dwellers, so it is not a surprise that the base of its success is found in a country’s rural areas. (148)
“We” versus “They: “In an ideology that measures worth by productivity, propaganda that represents members of an out-group as lazy is a way to justify placing them lower on a hierarchy of worth.” (177) “In fascist politics, ‘they’ can be cured of laziness and thievery by hard labor. This is why the gates of Auschwitz had emblazoned on them the slogan Arbeit Macht Frei–Work Shall Make You Free.” (157)
“Fascism is not a new threat, but rather a permanent temptation" (xxi)
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