Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley's new book is How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

From his Q&A with Isaac Chotiner at Slate:

Isaac Chotiner: There have been several books about fascism recently. What is it that you thought you could bring to the table that is new?

Jason Stanley: My book is about fascist politics. Not fascism as a system of government, but rather fascism as a set of rhetorical tropes to run for office to gain power. What I’ve been working on in this past almost decade now is propaganda and rhetoric. So I’m drawing on my expertise in the domains of propaganda and rhetoric and the history of political philosophy, because the history of political philosophy tells us that, in certain moments, democracy is a very vulnerable system and it’s vulnerable in particular to a high degree of inequality. Plato’s Republic and Rousseau are very clear about this: that in moments of terrible inequalities, resentment is easy to create.

Secondly, I think people make a mistake by not distinguishing the very particular kind of rhetoric that goes with fascist politics from other kinds of authoritarianism. There are lots of bad things. And fascism is just one kind of bad thing.

How is it different?

Well, fascism is one kind of authoritarianism. There’s also communism and systems that threaten our freedom by holding out the possibility of radical class equality. And that’s a very different rhetorical structure than with fascism. For instance, in fascist politics, you always have a return to a mythic past. Fascist politics involve this idea of purity, and the idea is that somehow this wonderful, incredible, glorious path of the pure nation has been ruined by liberalism, by foreign invasion, by feminism, by the tarnishing of the traditional family. That is completely different than the kind of thing you get in communist authoritarianism, where the idea is...[read on]

Visit Jason Stanley's website.

The Page 99 Test: How Propaganda Works.

--Marshal Zeringue