Author | Jason Stanley |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 4 September 2018 |
Pages | 240 |
ISBN | 978-0-525-51183-0 |
OCLC | 1066694818 |
Preceded by | How Propaganda Works (2017) [1] |
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them is a 2018 nonfiction book by Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. [2] Stanley, whose parents were refugees of Nazi Germany, describes strategies employed by fascist regimes, which includes normalizing the "intolerable". Features of this are already evident, according to Stanley, in the politics of the United States, the Philippines, Brazil, Russia, and Hungary. [3] The book was reissued in 2020 with a new preface in which Stanley describes how global events have substantiated his concern that fascist rhetoric is showing up in politics and policies around the world. [4]
"What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been."
— Stanley. How Fascism Works
Stanley focuses on rhetoric and propaganda. His previous books include Knowledge and Practical Interests, Language in Context, Know How and the award-winning How Propaganda Works. [5] He is a witness to the "consequences of fascism", his parents having fled Germany during the Holocaust. His maternal aunts, uncles and cousins were killed in eastern Poland in 1941 during Hitler's invasion. [6] Stanley identifies the pillars of fascist politics that deepen the divide between "us" and "them"—denying equality, using a culture of victimhood, and feeding the sexual anxiety of men. Strategies include undermining journalists and reporters, promoting anti-intellectualism, the use of propaganda, spreading conspiracy theories, letting fear and anger overtake "reasoned debate", and then calling on "law and order" solutions. [6] Stanley describes how one of the hallmarks of fascism is the "politics of hierarchy"—a belief in a biologically determined superiority—whereby fascists strive to recreate a "mythic" and "glorious" past by excluding those they believe to be inferior because of their ethnicity, religion, and/or race. [2] : 13
According to a New York Times review, Stanley's book—a "slim volume"—"breezes across decades and continents" and says that Donald Trump "resembles other purveyors of authoritarian ultranationalism." [7] Overall, the Times gave a mixed review. [8]
The New Yorker said that How Fascism Works was popular, even though it was by an "academic philosopher"—it "prioritized current events over syllogisms" and "ranged broadly, citing experimental psychology, legal theory, and neo-Nazi blogs." [9]
The Guardian 's "rave review" [8] cited Stanley who said that, one of the "ironies of fascist politics" is that it includes the "normalization of the fascist myth" so that talk of fascism is made to appear to be "outlandish". [10] Fascist politics makes us able to "tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been. ... By contrast the word 'fascist' has acquired a feeling of the extreme, like 'crying wolf'." [10]
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS), which gave the book a mixed review, [8] said that How Fascism Works belongs to a "wave of articles, books and op-eds" that warn us of the "return of fascism"—which includes Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright, On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, When The Mob Gets Swayed with contributions by Paul Neuborn, and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump with contributions by John Gartner. Stanley said in his book that a number of countries—the Philippines, Rwanda, Myanmar, Brazil, Russia, Hungary, Poland and the United States—have currently been "affected by fascist politics". [3]
It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator, and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic. The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.
Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American conservative syndicated columnist, author, political analyst, and commentator. The founding editor of National Review Online, from 1998 until 2019, he was an editor at National Review. Goldberg writes a weekly column about politics and culture for the Los Angeles Times. In October 2019, Goldberg became the founding editor of the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch. Goldberg has authored the No. 1 New York Times bestsellerLiberal Fascism, released in January 2008; The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, released in 2012; and Suicide of the West, which was published in April 2018 and also became a New York Times bestseller, reaching No. 5 on the list the following month.
Alexander Stille is an American author and journalist.
Fascist has been used as a pejorative epithet against a wide range of people, political movements, governments, and institutions since the emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920s. Political commentators on both the Left and the Right accused their opponents of being fascists, starting in the years before World War II. In 1928, the Communist International labeled their social democratic opponents as social fascists, while the social democrats themselves as well as some parties on the political right accused the Communists of having become fascist under Joseph Stalin's leadership. In light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, The New York Times declared on 18 September 1939 that "Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism." Later, in 1944, the anti-fascist and socialist writer George Orwell commented on Tribune that fascism had been rendered almost meaningless by its common use as an insult against various people, and argued that in England the word fascist had become a synonym for bully.
Mark Reed Levin is an American broadcast news analyst, columnist, lawyer, political commentator, radio personality, and writer. He is the host of syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show, as well as Life, Liberty & Levin on Fox News. Levin worked in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is the former president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an author of seven books, and contributor to media outlets such as National Review Online. Since 2015, Levin has been editor-in-chief of the Conservative Review and is known for his incendiary commentary.
Robert Owen Paxton is an American political scientist and historian specializing in Vichy France, fascism, and Europe during the World War II era. He is Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science in the Department of History at Columbia University. He is best known for his 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, which precipitated intense debate in France, and led to a paradigm shift in how the events of the Vichy regime are interpreted.
What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars ever since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".
Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Jason Stanley is an American philosopher who is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his contributions to philosophy of language and epistemology, which often draw upon and influence other fields, including linguistics and cognitive science. He has written for popular audiences in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, and many other publications in the United States and abroad. In his more recent work, Stanley has brought tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to bear on questions of political philosophy, for example in his 2015 book How Propaganda Works, and his 2023 book, The Politics of Language.
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is a book by Jonah Goldberg, who was then a syndicated columnist and the editor-at-large of National Review Online. In contrast to the mainstream view among historians and political scientists that fascism is a far-right ideology, Goldberg argues in the book that fascist movements were and are left-wing. Published in January 2008, it reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover non-fiction in its seventh week on the list.
Fascism has a long history in North America, with the earliest movements appearing shortly after the rise of fascism in Europe. Charles Derber, PhD, from Arizona State University says North American fascism may have inspired Hitler and started as early as 1918, with Hitler and Mussolini possibly able to simultaneously speak in 1919.
Trumpism is a political movement in the United States that comprises the political ideologies associated with Donald Trump and his political base. It incorporates ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism, and neo-nationalism, and has been described as authoritarian and neo-fascist. Trumpist rhetoric heavily features anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nativist, and racist attacks against minority groups. Identified aspects include conspiracist, isolationist, Christian nationalist, evangelical Christian, protectionist, anti-feminist, and anti-LGBT beliefs. Trumpists and Trumpians are terms that refer to individuals exhibiting its characteristics.
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook is a 2017 book written by historian Mark Bray and published by Melville House Publishing, which explores the history of anti-fascist movements since the 1920s and 1930s and their contemporary resurgence.
Refuse Fascism is a U.S.-based anti-fascist coalition organization, led by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Until the 2020 United States presidential election, it was characterized by its call for the removal of the Trump administration by non-violent street protests. Since the election, it has counter-demonstrated at a series of pro-Trump events.
Rose City Antifa (RCA) is an antifascist group founded in 2007 in Portland, Oregon. A leftist group, it is the oldest known active antifa group in the United States. While anti-fascist activism in the United States dates back to the 1980s, Rose City Antifa is the first to adopt the abbreviated moniker antifa. Since 2016, Rose City Antifa has been one of the nine chapters of the Torch Network coalition.
Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time? is a 2018 American political documentary film by Dinesh D'Souza, a US conservative provocateur. In the film D'Souza presents a revisionist history comparing the political climate surrounding the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump to that of the 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. The film argues that the Democratic Party from both eras was critical of the presidents of the time and that the Democrats have similarities to fascist regimes, including the Nazi Party. The film was written and directed by Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Schooley, and produced by Gerald R. Molen. It was produced on a budget of $6 million.
Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America is a book written by Bertram Gross, American social scientist and professor of political science at Hunter College. The book was published on June 1, 1980, by M. Evans & Company as a 419-page hardback book containing 440 quotations and sources. It examines the history of fascism and, based on the growth of big business and big government, describes possible political scenarios for a future United States. According to a 1981 review in the journal Crime and Social Justice, the book is described as "timely" on a subject requiring serious consideration. It is about the dangers of fascism, focusing primarily on the United States, but being aware that monopoly capitalism needs to be understood internationally since capitalism "is not a national mode of production".
Opponents of the alt-right have not reached a consensus on how to deal with it. Some opponents emphasized "calling out" tactics, labelling the alt-right with terms like "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "white supremacist" in the belief that doing so would scare people away from it. Many commentators urged journalists not to refer to the alt-right by its chosen name, but rather with terms like "neo-Nazi". There was much discussion within U.S. public discourse as to how to avoid the "normalization" of the alt-right. The activist group Stop Normalizing, which opposes the normalization of terms like alt-right, developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension. The extension went viral shortly after the release of Stop Normalizing's website. The extension changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". The extension and group were founded by a New York-based advertising and media professional under the pseudonym George Zola.
The Anatomy of Fascism is a 2004 book by Robert O. Paxton, published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The political rhetoric of Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, has been examined in an extensive body of reporting and analysis by linguists, political scientists, and others. Generally categorized as populist, emotional, and antagonistic, Trump's style of rhetoric has been identified as a central reason behind his persuasiveness. Trump's rhetoric, mannerisms, statements and idiolect have been described as Trumpisms and Trumpspeak.