How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

In the Old Testament, God singled out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to be destroyed for their residents’ sins. In the Christian imagination, if not the text itself, these sins are widely regarded to be sexual. They represent what the fascist ideology most fully resents.

Chapter 9 begins by recounting the first chapters of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in which he leaves an idyllic home in the countryside to struggle in Vienna. Calling the city a snake dominated by Jews, Hitler expresses his hatred for the racial and cultural mixing in Vienna and for the city’s lack of German national pride. This recalled, to some extent, a Romantic tradition in German literature that casts the cities as the cause of social ills and idealizes the countryside. Thus, the pure German values prized by Nazis were conceived as rural values.

Fascist politics vilifies the cultural products of the cities as well, viewing them as a corrupting culture and generally attributing them to Jews and immigrants. Rural life is cast as purifying and the source of the nation’s values.

In the United States, there is a sharp distinction between urban and rural residents with regard to immigrants. Rural residents view them as a burden and threat far more than urbanites. In France, support for the far right is much higher in the countryside than in Paris.

Fascist politicians exploit the perceived harms that urban centers cause rural areas, especially during periods of globalization. In particular, they frequently support the myth that lazy urbanites function as parasites on the hardworking rural residents. That cities frequently provide the economic engines undergirding the possibility of a rural life is irrelevant to such politicians. They do not need the urban vote, in many cases. This dynamic was apparent in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when Trump regularly miscast cities as sites of unprecedented danger and crime despite historically low crime rates and strong urban revival.  

Urban centers tend to exhibit more pluralism and greater tolerance than rural areas. Fascist ideology despises these values.

In contrast to the supposed parasites of urban areas, fascists like Hitler have long characterized rural areas as imbuing an ethos of self-sufficiency and strength.

Fascist ideology attacks the state and particularly eschews welfare systems. It seeks to replace the state with a nation of self-sufficient and pure individuals seeking glory.

To promote that vision, fascism encourages large families among the dominant group. As illustrated in a 1927 speech by Benito Mussolini, cities are seen as ultimately lowering birthrates of the dominant group and culminating in a population of sterile and elderly degenerates.

The supposed parasitism of urbanites is said to be fed by the state, unlike the rural area where self-sufficient members of the dominate group supposedly form the backbone of the nation.

The reaction of many Americans, including President Trump, to two 2017 hurricanes—one of which hit Houston, Texas, while the other hit Puerto Rico—was extremely different. One resident of Houston who received significant federal aid after the disaster said it was not the job of the United States to provide similar aid for Puerto Ricans, who are also American citizens.

Fascist ideology posits that state aid should be reserved for the chosen nation’s people in times of need. The reason is invariably because the others are “lazy,” a problem to be cured through hard labor.

The title of the chapter—“Arbeit Macht Frei”—is the phrase hung above the gates of Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It means, “Work shall make you free.”

Nazis portrayed Jews as lazy and the state as their vessel. Hitler sought to dismantle the state and disdained “welfare” programs as robbing individuals of economic independence.

In the United States, the attitude of White Americans to “welfare” programs is best predicted by their support for the judgment that Black Americans are lazy. It plays a larger role than even their own economic self-interest.

Stanley notes, however, that many White Americans have inaccurate beliefs about who “the poor” are. The majority of beneficiaries of welfare programs are, in fact, White.

Hard work versus lazy, lawful versus criminal, and other such distinctions in fascist ideology are representative of the fundamental us versus them division at the core of fascism. However, they do not remain merely rhetorical when fascists take power. Instead, the goal of the fascist program is to make these divisions become reality, as Arendt noted.

In summarizing concepts put forward by Arendt, Stanley maintains that “fascist unreality is a promissory note” in that fascist policy seeks to create the reality reflective of its hateful stereotyping myths (161). Thus, Stanley explains, fascist governments often create conditions that seem to legitimize the coming genocidal policies aimed at a portion of the population.

In the Slovak state created after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, the leaders expropriated Jewish property and thereby displaced them from the middle class. Then, they addressed an artificial “Jewish question” of what to do with the impoverished people. Soon, those Jews were deported to Auschwitz.

Similarly, the 2017 ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar was rooted in a travel prohibition that prevented them from working. Combined with constant harassment, this left Rohingya in conditions that were said to legitimate brutality against them.

In the United States, a similar effect of making stereotypes appear real is underway, according to Stanley. The likelihood of being incarcerated is one in three for Black males, but one in 17 for White males. Further, both being Black and having been incarcerated reduce one’s chances of employment despite qualifications. Thus, Black Americans have a far lower chance of employment due to both direct racism and the systemic racism that imprisons them at unjustifiably high rates. The stereotype of Black Americans as lazy, then, can appear to be justified by low employment when one ignores its causes. Fascist politicians then call for “curing” the problem by ending welfare programs. Although Stanley argues that eliminating such benefits will not cause the supposed improvements, such proposals currently animate the Republican party.

Labor unions can stand in the way of the fascist agenda if they unite Black and White Americans along class lines against the wealthy. To counteract this, as Hitler illustrated, fascist politicians universally attack labor unions.

Another reason that fascists attack unions is that fascist politics are most successful where economic inequality is stark. Labor unions provide the best means of addressing such inequality, according to social science research.

Fascists embrace a social Darwinist concept of the world in which life is a competition for power. They measure worth by productivity, so when they portray an out-group as lazy, they effectively argue that such people are inherently worth less.

It is this piece of the fascist ideology, Stanley writes, that was expressed by the Nazi policy toward the disabled. That policy began with mandatory sterilization of the disabled in 1933, progressed to secret gassings, and required physicians to kill the disabled by 1939.

This social Darwinism at the heart of fascism explains its views on laziness, as well as its hierarchical ordering of the worth of groups. Stanley suggests that contemporary economic libertarianism, which conceives of freedom as unconstrained free markets, is “the Manhattan dinner party face of social Darwinism” (178). So while economic libertarianism is contrary to fascist group identification, it nonetheless shares a common measure of worth and vision of life as competition. Both, for example, draw distinctions between “makers” and “takers” in the social system.

The key for liberal visions of political equality to flourish, Stanley concludes, may be the absence of stark economic inequality. Liberal ideology offers many benefits, but they require broad experiences and a high degree of education. Stark economic inequality can make liberal democratic norms all but impossible to achieve. 

Stanley explains that the features of fascist politics surveyed in the book work together to create the fundamental us-versus-them myth that sustains it, despite conflicting with reality. He also defends his argument against potential concerns that the contemporary examples he cites are not appropriately juxtaposed with Nazis and the like. He maintains that “the threat of the normalization of the fascist myth is real” (187). This is important, Stanley continues, because those who have lived through the transition from democracy to fascism report “the tendency of populations to normalize the once unthinkable” (188).

At the same time, the word “fascist” has come to seem extreme. However, this would be expected as fascist politics gains ground because normalization of its ideology would make the label seem like overreaction. That is what normalization means—the transformation becomes difficult to detect because the ideology comes to seem normal, as if things had always been this way.

For that reason, Stanley argues for a specific definition and understanding of fascism. With those tools, one can assess recent political developments objectively, rather than relying on an untrustworthy sense of normality. The book is intended “to spell out [fascism’s] structure so that it can be recognized and resisted” (192).

Finally, Stanley makes explicit a theme of the book that remained under the surface throughout: although there obvious direct targets of fascism—various out-groups, labor unions, etc.—the “chief target of fascist politics is its intended audience” (193). Fascism targets them for mass delusion, while others are cast off into camps. By resisting the charms of fascism, however, democratic societies remain free without the false overlay that fascism demands of all who become subject to its control.