When Jason Stanley withdrew from Twitter in late 2022, I missed his insightful, colorful and numerous tweets. So it was time to study his book which was long overdue on my reading list. Short and very readable, the book identifies the “tactics” employed in fascist politics to achieve power. This is a must read to understand the politics and tactics of the right wing in many democratic countries around the world.

Stanley’s book points out again and again how the tactics of right-wing parties are, one can say, taken from a fascist playbook (my use of this phrase, not Stanley’s). As these tactics become normalized, the right seeks to change the definition of fascism to exclude them from it.

The book is laid out in a most reader friendly way. First, Stanley provides a broad definition of fascism as “ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader. . . .” (p. XIV). Second, he identifies in the following two paragraphs the nine tactics of fascist politics as summarized below (each tactic is put in quotes):

Fascist politicians justify their ideas by breaking down a common sense of history in creating a “mythic past” to support their vision for the present. They rewrite the population’s shared understanding of reality by twisting the language of ideals through “propaganda” and promoting “anti-intellectualism,” attacking universities and educational systems that might challenge their ideas. Eventually, with these techniques, fascist politics creates a state of “unreality,” in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.

As the common understanding of reality crumbles, fascist politics makes room for dangerous and false beliefs to take root. First, fascist ideology seeks to naturalize group difference, thereby giving the appearance of natural, scientific support for a “hierarchy” of human worth. When social rankings and divisions solidify, fear fills in for understanding between groups. Any progress for a minority group stokes feelings of “victimhood” among the dominant population. “Law and order” politics has mass appeal casting “us” as lawful citizens and “them,” by contrast, as lawless criminals whose behavior poses an existential threat to the manhood of the nation. “Sexual anxiety” is also typical of fascist politics as the patriarchal hierarchy is threatened by growing gender equity. (pp XVI-XVII)

Taken alone, individual tactics may not lead to fascist dictatorship. But they become dangerous when they build upon each other, coming together as a strategy. Fascist politics seeks to divide rather than unify, to differentiate a virtuous “us” from a dehumanized, despicable “them.” Each chapter examines one tactic, with a segue from the conclusion of one chapter to the beginning of the next. In addition to his own analysis of each tactic, Stanley includes examples taken from history and current events (as of 2018). These examples range from Jim Crow laws, Naziism/Adolf Hitler and Italian fascism through the genocides of the Armenians and the Rohingya to recent events in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey and the United States. The recent US examples are incredibly useful in helping the reader understand what is happening today in American politics. Of course, since 2018 there have been numerous significant new developments (election denialism, political violence) in the United States and other countries that would clearly justify an expanded edition, perhaps most usefully including relevant developments in a (lengthy) appendix or addendum rather than making the individual, readable chapters longer. Stanley also supplements his analysis with helpful insights from the social sciences, in particular social psychology, which help explain the appeal of fascist arguments to its intended audience. Stanley seeks to provide “critical tools” to enable the reader to differentiate legitimate tactics in democratic politics from fascist tactics aimed at destroying democracy. (p. XVI)

The first tactic involves evocation of a mythic past that was tragically destroyed by liberalism and other modern tendencies. The mythic past is patriarchal and hierarchical to justify the authority of the leader in the present and the submission of women and marginalized groups. The mythic history “erases past sins” and asserts that groups that committed such sins are being victimized. Thus, “Turkey’s Article 301 of its penal code outlaws ‘insulting Turkishness,’ including by mentioning the Armenian genocide . . .” (p. 17). “[T]he Republican Party seek[s] to harness white resentment . . . by denouncing accurate historical scholarship about the brutality of slavery as a way to ‘victimize’ whites.” (p. 18). Fascism creates a fake past to preclude rational debate on policy which is grounded on a common understanding of an accurate past. Mussolini even acknowledged that the mythic past need not be true but serves to set forth goals to be translated into present reality. The mythic past harnesses the emotion of nostalgia as a force to change the present.

The mythic past transforms history into propaganda, the second tactic of fascism. The purpose of propaganda is to mask fascist goals behind ideals that are accepted. “Political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind otherwise objectionable ends.” (p. 24) Fascists attack corruption, even though fascists are more corrupt than those they attack. Nixon’s “war on crime” was a propaganda screen for incarcerating blacks; the rhetoric of law and order covered a racist agenda. In Book 8 of the Republic, Plato recognizes that the demagogue uses free speech to become the strong leader and that democracy is a self-undermining system whose very ideals lead to its own demise. Freedom of speech is used as a weapon to limit the speech of others and to undermine rational public discourse. Behind its appeal to ideals, fascist propaganda has an undemocratic intent. It wants to dismantle the rule of law so it accuses judges of bias. See the cases of Poland and Hungary.

The discussion of propaganda leads to anti-intellectualism. Fascists attack expertise, universities, and language itself to undermine confidence in reason in favor of emotion. The David Horowitz Freedom Center and others use “free speech” to _target universities and argue they are hypocritical. “[These] attacks lack legitimacy. Given the formal protections of academic freedom, universities in the United States host the freest discussion of expression of any workplace.” (p. 41) There is no free speech in private enterprise. “Attacking the only workplace in the country with genuine free speech protections using the ideal of free speech is another instance of the familiar Orwellian nature of propaganda.” (p. 43) Of course, these critics don’t really believe in free speech on university campuses. For them, the true role of education is to support the myth of the nation. They also seek to undermine the ideal of equality by linking feminism and the other gender studies to the Marxist bogeyman or Jewish conspiracy. Putin repurposed universities in Russia to attack feminism. Pointing to the University of North Carolina, Stanley argues that fascists seek to force universities to concentrate on classes to prepare individuals for jobs and raise tuition to make it unaffordable for students to study social sciences and humanities. “The priorities make sense when one realizes that in anti-democratic systems, the function of education is to produce obedient citizens structurally obliged to enter the workforce without bargaining power, and ideologically trained to think that the dominant group represents history’s greatest civilizational forces.” (p. 49) Stanley cites the examples of Hungary’s fight against the Central European University and Erdogan’s dismissal in 2016 of more than 5000 professors and changing the curriculum in Turkey to be more nationalistic and anti-secular in 2016. Today examples abound in the state of Florida.

The discussion of anti-intellectualism leads us to the element of “unreality” in chapter 4. The fascist goal is to put reality in doubt, so there can be no agreement on truth. “A fascist leader can replace truth with power, ultimately lying without consequences.” (p. 57) Reality is exchanged for pronouncements of a single individual. Conspiracy theories are used to raise suspicion about the credibility of traditional media, which do not report unfounded and false theories. An important example is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which put Jews at the center of a global conspiracy dominating mainstream media outlets and the global economic system. In 2016, the Pizzagate conspiracy was used to connect Democrats to child trafficking.

Stanley asks why freedom of speech does not lead to truth winning out over propaganda, anti-intellectualism and conspiracy theories. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote that silencing false opinion is wrong because truth will emerge from deliberation, which has become the ideal of the so-called marketplace of ideas. Unfortunately, when language is not used chiefly to convey information but rather to elicit emotions and incite hate, reason may not prevail against emotion. For example, the cacophony of media outlets like the Russian channel RT have the effect of undermining trust in basic democratic institutions rather than wringing out falsehoods. The objective truth is drowned out to destabilize the kind of shared reality that is in fact required for democratic contestation. Mill gets it wrong because he assumes that the opponents have a shared set of presuppositions about the world. The space for discussion disappears when one side of the argument believes, for example, that Obamacare is part of a Muslim plan to destroy America. The loss of a shared common reality makes democratic deliberations impossible. News becomes a sport and the strong man becomes the star. Fascism seeks to destroy mutual respect between fellow citizens with the message that only the leader can be trusted.

Two things that undercut the US form of representative democracy are money in politics and inequality. The money needed to run elections means that representatives end up representing large donors rather than the people who elected them and they must pretend that the best interests of the multinational corporations that fund their campaigns are also the common interest.
Fascist reject equality in favor of hierarchy. Dominant groups feel threatened as liberal thinkers extend equality to marginalized groups such as the disabled. “According to fascist ideology, nature imposes hierarchies of power and dominance that are flatly inconsistent with the equality of respect presupposed by liberal democratic theory.” (p. 79) Natural law places men over women. Racists assert that science supports a racial hierarchy. Politicians like Trump divide the population into the deserving versus the undeserving. “The fascist project combines anxiety about loss of status for members of the true “nation,” with fear of equal recognition of hated minority groups.” (p. 88) Equality is viewed as a Trojan horse of liberalism. “Fascist politics feeds off the sense of aggrieved victimization caused by loss of hierarchical status.” (p. 90)

In the United States, ”victimhood” as a justification to deny minority rights goes back to Reconstruction. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 because it gave blacks safeguards that had never been provided to the white race. W.E.B. DuBois noted that Johnson perceived the minimal safeguards at the start of the path toward future black equality as “discrimination against the white race.” (p. 92) Today white Americans overestimate the extent of progress toward racial equality. Social psychology research has shown that increased representation of minority groups is experienced by dominant groups as threatening. Having to share power creates feelings of victimization in dominant groups. Fascists exploit the feeling of victimization. A genuine sense of loss “is manipulated in fascist politics into aggrieved victimhood.” (p. 99) As a result, efforts to address structural inequality such as affirmative action and the Black Lives Matter movement are rejected as discriminatory against the historically dominant group.

“Law and order” policies are directed at minorities, immigrants and others who may appear to threaten the dominant group. In the United States, law and order has served as code words for incarcerating descendants of slaves. In principle, laws treat everyone equally, but the fascist concept of law and order divides the population into two groups: those who are lawful by nature (“us”) and those who are inherently lawless (“them”). In 2016, Trump explicitly connected immigrants to criminality. Criminal becomes less of a legal term and more of a method of attributing bad character. Thus, when “they” commit even a technical violation of law, they are criminals, while when “we” commit crimes it is shrugged off as a “mistake.” Politicians seek to position themselves as protecting “us” from the criminals. Other language is also misused. The Warsaw ghetto uprising is not described as a riot, but protests in Watts and in Harlem are. “Nixon’s administration [because of its law and order policy] is generally viewed as laying the groundwork for the subsequent mass incarceration of black American citizens.” (p. 116) “Mass incarceration of Americans of African descent has its roots in racist propaganda tracing back to the days of slavery that cast members of this group as irredeemably criminal.” (p. 126) Empathy is not shown to blacks who take illegal drugs, but much empathy is shown to white victims of the opiate crisis. W. E. B. DuBois attacked “pseudoscientific attempts to write crime into race.” (p. 122) The facts do not support such theories. Alasdair MacIntyre describes these theories as exercises of “manipulative expertise.” Fascist propaganda represents the “criminal” groups as threats to the purity of the nation, and the concomitant allegations of intergroup rape raise the issue of sexual anxiety.

Fascism raises fears of interbreeding and sexual assault as a threat to the patriarchal myth of family and manhood. Examples abound: mass hysteria in Germany in 1919 when African-American and African soldiers served in the occupation of the Rhineland; the lynching narratives in the United States which Ida Wells showed in most cases did not even involve an accusation of rape, much less actual rape; ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in 2017 because of fears of alleged Muslim sex schemes to prey on Buddhist women; Hindu claims of the threat of Muslim sexual assaults against Hindu women in India; Trump’s assertions of sexual assault by immigrants; Russian propaganda about Middle Eastern immigrants raping white women in Europe; and attacks on transgender girls, claiming they were a sexual threat to cis-gender women. Fascist politics cannot directly attack freedom and equality without losing public support. Thus, “the politics of sexual anxiety is a way to attack and undermine the ideals of liberal democracy without being seen as explicitly so doing.” (p. 138) Fascist politics evokes fear and anxiety about the expression of gender identity or sexual preferences, thus using the patriarchal myth to attack the exercise of sexual freedom. “A robust presence of the politics of sexual anxiety is perhaps the most vivid sign of the erosion of liberal democracy.” (p. 139)

Sexual politics brings us to the fascist attack on urban centers as the source of social ills and threats to traditional rural values. Cities tend to be diverse, cosmopolitan and pluralist. Immigrants go to the city. Rural residents are portrayed as more hard-working and self-sufficient (i.e., they do not need government support). In 2017, rural residents were much more opposed to immigrants than residents of cities. In the United States, politicians feed the myth that rural areas support the cities with their taxes when the opposite is true.

In the final chapter, Arbeit Macht Frei, Stanley addresses several broader themes. Hard work is used to differentiate “us” from “them.” “They” are lazy and do not deserve support from the state, even during a crisis. Hannah Arendt pointed out that it is “typical of fascist movements to attempt to transform myths about ‘them’ into reality through social policy.” (p. 160) The Nazis expropriated Jews, making them poor and thus candidates for labor camps (where they were murdered). According to Stanley, a purpose of the US criminal system is to makes stereotypes about blacks real. “The structure of policing and incarceration, and the white reaction to them, is central to explaining how racialized mass incarceration in the United States constructs and seemingly legitimates negative group stereotypes.” (p. 165) A criminal record becomes a scarlet letter, preventing the individual from finding employment. Nixon made the policy shift from job initiatives of the JFK and LBJ era to punitive crime measures including building prisons. Meanwhile, the safety net is cut to force “hard work.” “We now know that aggressive anti-crime measures _targeted at minority populations paired with reduced social services will lead to disastrous consequences.” (p. 169)

Fascist seek to dismantle labor unions which are roadblocks to us/them distinctions along racial lines. “Despite its condemnation of the “elites,” fascist politics seeks to minimize the importance of class struggle.” (p. 171) Fascists want workers to be individuals dependent on a party or leader and alone in the face of global capitalism. Also, fascism can be most effective in a context of stark economic inequality, and labor unions can counteract inequality. Stanley details episodes from US history of attacking unions and using them to foment racial division.

Social Darwinism is at the base of fascist politics. Economic libertarianism which defines freedom as unconstrained free markets has much in common with fascist ideals. Stanley states that “[t]he fascist vision of individual freedom is similar to the libertarian notion of individual rights -- the right to compete but not necessarily to succeed or even survive.” Although the fascist commitment to group hierarchies may appear incompatible with economic libertarianism, libertarianism also supports the hierarchical principle such as in the form of business corporations.

Stanley argues that liberal institutions may be imperfect and frustrating but we are worse off without them. They bring us together in a collective effort to address problems. Fascism, on the other hand, promises to solve tensions and differences not by unified action but through division between “us” and “them.” By authorizing “us” to look down on “them,” fascism simplifies human existence. Stark economic inequality opens the door to demagoguery.

In the epilogue, Stanley sums up: “The mechanisms of fascist politics all build on and support one another.” (p. 187). The normalization of the fascist myth is dangerous. What was once unthinkable becomes normal. Examples include racialized incarceration and mass shootings in the United States and the brutal treatment of refugees around the world. The morally extraordinary becomes the ordinary. However, use of the term fascism is seen as extreme, so that as its elements are normalized the goalposts are changed for the use of that term. Whatever it is called, in the end fascism does not solve the problems of society. The marginalized suffer, and the intended audience of fascist politics is ultimately betrayed by the economic, social and political policies of fascist governments. ( )

This book by Jason Stanley is brilliant. I wish I could say the book has no relevance to our times, but this will be a lie.

Fascism is like diabetes. Unless you control it from the start, it will eat your insides. Diabetes eats your body, whereas fascism eats society.

In this brilliant book, Jason Stanley has dissected the political belief system of fascism and fascists. The chapters explore the different facets of fascism and make for compelling reading.

Why is the book relevant? After all, Hitler and Mussolini died several decades ago. When you read the book, and analyse what is happening in democracies around the world, you understand the dangers and risks we face.

Once again, an excellent and relevant book. ( )

This is a bad book. The author attempts to characterise fascist politics, but unironically commits commits most of the tactics he attributes to fascists. He defines what he means by "fascist" and by implication "fascist politics", and then appears to write parts of the book based on two other definitions. I don't think the author is disingenuous or attempting his own propaganda - I think he's guilty of wooly thinking and/or wooly writing, possibly in an attempt to make the book accessible to lay readers. This "lay reader" was not impressed.

On page xiv, the author writes "I have chosen the label 'fascism' for ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf." He continues later on the same page "My interest in this book is in fascist politics. Specifically my interest is in fascist tactics as a mechanism to achieve power. ... Fascist politics does not necessarily lead to an explicitly fascist state, but it is dangerous nonetheless."

His chapter titles provide a list of what he presents as fascist political tactics/stances/myths:
1. The Mythic Past
2. Propaganda
3. Anti-Intellectual
4. Unreality
5. Hierarchy
6. Victimhood
7. Law and Order
8. Sexual Anxiety
9. Sodom and Gomorrah
10. Arbeit Macht Frei

His evidence for the list is simple - he finds authors he can label fascist who wrote something of the kind. Or failing that, he finds historians who attribute such beliefs to one or other of the fascist states of the world war II era. He never looks for non-fascists doing the same thing. And as the book progresses, it becomes clear that not supporting various American left wing political beliefs (presumably those shared by the author), is adequate evidence for fascism, though he prefers to pick fascist examples at least associated with a political party or candidate labelled "right wing".

Worse, I routinely caught him using tactics similar to those he attributes to "fascist politics". Given my cynicism about political writing in general, this failed to surprise me - many of these are things politicians routinely do, regardless of affiliation. But I can surely use this book as an existence proof for several of these tactics not being limited to fascists - unless you want to argue that this book consists of "fascist politics" in support of modern American left wing causes.

This list might be useful to someone unfamiliar with what I'd prefer to call right wing preoccupations and shibboleths. Many of these do, in my opinion, turn up more frequently among right than left wing political tracts, platforms, shibboleths, etc. (I note, of course, that there's no clear definition of "right wing" to be had, particularly if you don't limit yourself to the last few decades of history in a single country.) Even fewer are the exclusive domain of the "right wing" - or "fascists", for that matter, unless you use a circular definition ("fascists are people who use any of these tactics").

And as for the politics of "us and them", well this author clearly sees fascists/populists/right wingers as very much "them". Whereas his book is addressed to an "us" that takes various mostly US left wing positions as self evident truths.

The best use of this book is for it to be read by "true believers" to who want to be confirmed in their beliefs, reinforce their negative views of their opponents, enhance their sense that those opponents' goals are catastrophically bad, all while adding a veneer of intellectualism and system to their chanting of The Political Truths (TM).

Sadly, this author is my political "ally", in the US two party system. I wish my allies would show some sign of bring better, on average, than my opponents, but it's all too easy to find gems like this that bring their average down - easier, for me, than finding similar rubbish among my opponents, where I can't as easily distinguish my own biases from reality. And to be fair, while this book is very disappointing, the average person-in-the-street I encounter regularly emits worse. ( )

I found this book a clear description of fascism. Scanning the table of contents summarizes the book's points, and I recommend that everyone read at least that much. The book's body, with its constant references to the politics of the day, scared the bejeezus out of me. I worry the references to current events may make the book quickly seem dated. That would be a shame. ( )

For a short book, it drug on and on often lost in quotes and repeating itself. It could have been better. ( )