"How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them": Prof. Jason Stanley, Yale Univ.

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'How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them"| *A Warning For The U.S.*| Paving the Road To Authoritarianism

Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University, and in his new book "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them," he explores the inner mechanics of fascism and the forces that drive dictatorships.

- Stanley joins Hari Sreenivasan to explain his concern at signs of fascism on the rise in the U.S.

- He stresses many serious American issues including how "we incarcerate as large a percentage of our population as the Soviet Union did under Stalin in the early 1950s."

Stanley also says, "we are the world's leader, maybe history's leader in terms of incarcerating our population, especially our black population. Almost 10% of the world's prison population comes from 40 million black Americans."

PBS, Amanpour & Co. July 23, 2020.

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2. Resilience, 'How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them'

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, By Amy Goodman, Nermeen Shaikh, originally published by Democracy Now! October 23, 2018, - Excerpts:

Part 1. In his new book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” Yale professor Jason Stanley warns about the dangers of normalizing fascist politics, writing, “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.” We speak with Jason Stanley in New York.
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Transcript, AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Oct., 2018.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show with a remarkable new book titled How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, which focuses in particular on current trends under the Trump administration, arguing that the president is not as much of an anomaly in American history as we often think. The book’s author, Yale professor Jason Stanley, whose parents were both Holocaust survivors who came to the U.S. as refugees, shows instead that, quote, “In its own history, the United States can find a legacy of the best of liberal democracy as well as the roots of fascist thought (indeed, Hitler was inspired by the Confederacy and Jim Crow Laws),” Jason Stanley writes. He also warns of the dangers of normalizing fascist politics, saying, quote, “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.”

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Jason Stanley, philosophy professor at Yale University. His new book is just out. It’s titled How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. His previous books, How Propaganda Works. Welcome to Democracy Now! Professor, it’s great to have you with us. Why now? Why are you releasing this book, How Fascism Works, now? JASON STANLEY: Well, we have a global, ultranationalist far-right movement crossing many countries—Bolsonaro in Brazil, we’ve just seen—and they feed off each other. So, I think right now it’s very important to make people aware of the features of fascism, the historical features, and to alert people to the fact that the United States has always been vulnerable to this kind of politics.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, explain what fascism—define what it means for you. JASON STANLEY: So, fascism is an ideology based on power. Liberal democracy is based on liberty and equality. Liberty and equality require truth, because you need truth to speak truth to power, and a free press—if you’re lied to, you’re not free. No one thinks the people of North Korea are free. They’ve been lied to. So, if you’re going to attack liberal democracy and replace it with power, you need to smash truth. So, fascism is an ideology based on power and loyalty. It creates—it’s based on hypernationalism, so one group—loyalty to one group. And one person, the leader, represents that group. It’s hypermasculine and hyperpatriarchal.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the 10 pillars of fascism. What are they? JASON STANLEY: The 10 pillars of fascism are, number one, a mythic past, a great mythic past which the leader harkens back to...

JASON STANLEY: Fascism has to be challenged by bringing back a culture of democracy. Democracy is a culture. It’s a set of norms for equal respect, for respect for the truth. And so, we have to—we have to somehow tamp down fear. Fear and panic, xenophobia, these are things that when people feel threatened and anxious and atomized, they turn to powerful leaders to protect them. Secondly, public education brings all of us together into the same community.. And so it makes you realize that we are together as a community, and so we—it’s much more difficult to demonize one another... JASON STANLEY: I’m much more worried about normalization than overreach. Which is the concern now? That we don’t see it when it’s happening, or that we call something—we’re a little bit more extreme in what we call things? I am much more concerned that we don’t label something as it should be labeled than that we sort of cry wolf.. ~ Read
More of the Interview, https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-10-23/how-fascism-works-the-politics-of-us-and-them/

Oct. 2018.
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Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard honored Goodman with the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence Lifetime Achievement Award.