How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

Stanley explains that fascist politics always claim to be rooted in the past, but that it is not actual, historical past. Instead, based on how the particular iteration of fascist politics defines “the nation,” fascist politics evoke a mythical past when the country’s racial, religious, and cultural identity was pure, patriarchal families ruled, and the nation gloried in conquest and dominance.

The idealized state of the nation portrayed through myth as the true past also provides the goals fascist politics advance. Standing in the way of its attainment, supposedly, are liberal, cosmopolitan, “universal” values like equality. These values are said to have weakened the nation and are thus its enemies.

While not all nationalism movements are fascist, all fascists are nationalists. The nationalism of fascist politics celebrates a homogenous past and invents a history in which the nation conquered other, inferior groups.

The mythic past, Stanley explains, provides the “proof” of the supposed hierarchy among races, religions, and cultures that fascist politics aim to impose upon the present. Within the fascists’ mythic past, society is based around the patriarchal family. Further, the state replicates the patriarchal structure, such that the leader is the father of the nation.

Drawing on examples over the past hundred years, from Nazi Germany to the Justice Party of contemporary Poland, Stanley emphasizes that rigid gender roles are a consistent feature of fascist ideology. Women’s highest calling is procreation, and they are necessarily and permanently inferior to men. Women, therefore, are not seen as inherently or independently valuable and may even be defined as the property of men.

Stanley notes several examples, including recent writing and mainstream political tactics from the United States, that suggest an ongoing rise in rigid concepts of gender. Fascists mythologize a supposed historical distinction between the dominant group’s adherence to the supposedly natural gender roles and those who do not adhere to them. This distinction purports to identify the others as inferior and to provide the reason for attacking them.

The rise of the right wing in Hungary during the 2010s on the promise to “make Hungary great again,” reaches all the back to Saint Stephen in the first century A.D. to situate the country’s mythic past. The Hungarian right wing draws on those myths to strictly define the role of family and of women in what is effectively the Hungarian constitution. Similar mythical use of the past is apparent in Nazi Germany and in far-right elements of India’s Hindu population.

In all of these examples—including several drawn from the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War and mythologization of it during and after Reconstruction—the function of these elements of the mythic past is essentially the same. Stanley writes, “The strategic aim of these hierarchical constructions of history is to displace truth” and allow “erasure of inconvenient realities” (15).

The historically accurate histories, then, are viewed as a conspiratorial narrative created by enemy others to weaken the supposed nation. This also allows fascist politics to present its vision of the pure “nation” as valid. For example, the ethnic cleansing operations in Myanmar effectively erased all signs of the Muslim Rohingya people in some areas where they once thrived alongside the dominant Buddhist Rakhine population, thus advancing the vision of a pure Rakhine population.

Finally, fascist politics eliminates from its vision of the mythic past any potential stains or dark moments. This can be seen in the far right French and Polish political organizations that deny past involvement with Nazi Germany and in Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide. 

Stanley describes the purpose of propaganda as the concealment of “clearly problematic goals by masking them with ideals that are widely accepted” (24). As a prime example, he cites President Richard Nixon’s “war on crime.” Privately, members of the Nixon administration explicitly stated their goals were to address an African-American “problem” without appearing racially motivated. The use of “law and order” rhetoric to conceal a plainly racist agenda, as Stanley describes it, epitomizes propaganda as the concept is used throughout the book.

Fascist politics, Stanley explains, frequently employ anti-corruption rhetoric despite the reality that its practitioners are generally more corrupt than the officials they replace. However, when fascist politicians decry “corruption,” the term serves as a reference to the supposed corruption of the pure “nation” to those who agree with the fascist, while appearing to all others as an appeal to liberal values of good governance.

Nazis, for example, consistently attacked the democratic Weimar Republic in Germany as “corrupt” during their rise to power. Yet once the Nazis had power, the government they established had corruption as its “central organizing principle” according to one respected history of the period (25).

Likewise, as the free Black Americans of the Reconstruction era began to thrive, they were soon accused of corrupting the South simply for exercising their rights. That charge justified the sharp reduction of African American rights that followed.

Stanley writes, “To many white Americans, President Obama must have been corrupt, because his very occupation of the White House was a kind of corruption of the traditional order” (27). Fascist politics characterizes any success by outgroups —including women, racial or ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ individuals—in attaining power as a “corruption.” Their own misconduct when in power, however, is viewed as members of the chosen population simply taking what they are owed.

Fascists also use the language of freedom and liberty to repress and exploit minorities. Stanley notes that “states’ rights” rhetoric was developed and employed in the United States primarily to oppose the federal intervention necessary to guarantee protection of African American rights.

The potential to exploit democratic protections to seize power and end democracy has been recognized since Plato’s Republic. Stanley argues that the present illustrates the problem, pointing to the former Alabama senator and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ apparent calls for free speech on university campuses as he simultaneously pursued prosecution of a civil libertarian for laughing at his confirmation hearing.

Finally, Stanley writes that the fascist elevation of irrational fanaticism over reason is accomplished through the language of reason. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, for example, states that his fanatical hatred of Jews was a result of reason and reality overcoming his “heart.” 

According to Stanley, the anti-intellectualism of fascist politics targets expertise, education, and language. This, Stanley says, leaves only power and tribal identity with which to construct any form of public discourse.

Schools become an instrument to indoctrinate students into the dominate culture and spread the myth of the past. As such, education is either the nemesis of fascism or a key foundation for it.

Right wing groups often focus on the supposed hypocrisy of universities regarding free speech. This reflects fascist politics’ effort to undermine the credibility of institutions that nurture independent thought and protect dissenting views.

Stanley cites David Horowitz as an individual who has moved from the fringe into the mainstream on this matter. The Trump administration pursues similar ideas, targeting universities as lacking adequate free speech. In these examples, “political correctness” serves as a euphemism for the agenda of the far right, Stanley suggests.

Other effects on universities relate to what fascist politicians label “Marxist,” which includes anything outside the dominant perspective and, especially, anything threatening to it. Gender studies, African American studies, and the like are usual targets in the U.S.

Stanley directly confronts the frequent right-wing argument that universities should have greater representation from a broader range of views on their faculties. As an example, he highlights that universities do not need to add flat-Earthers to the faculty and fund research in support of their position in order to have appropriate scientific inquiry. Likewise, he argues that the ISIS ideology or the false argument that Jews are genetically disposed to greed do not require university support.

The point of the arguments of fascist politics in this instance has little to do with free speech. Instead, it seeks to introduce myth as fact, glorifying its mythic past.

Achieving the fascist political goal here would require eliminating the recently added perspectives of the historically marginalized. However, these perspectives are not mere “political correctness.” Instead, Stanley identifies them as “an essential means of protection against fascist myth” (47).

Policies concerning universities in Hungary and elsewhere demonstrate the continuing fascist agenda of eliminating differing viewpoints and reinforcing the dominant myths. In 2017, universities decried as centers of liberal indoctrination were told to promote the glorious Hungarian mythic past, while the legislature began regulating movement of faculty and students due to supposed national security. Likewise, the Turkish president dismissed more than 5,000 academicians from the country’s universities.

The American radio host Rush Limbaugh illustrates the broader fascist assault on expertise, literally attacking all of “government, academia, science, and media” as corrupt (52).

Instead of expertise, fascist politicians are portrayed as so-called men of action. They thereby eliminate sophisticated debate. Further, the language of politics is degraded to provide a cover to hide reality and promote their myth.

Hitler explicitly argued for propaganda, stating that it must aim at the least informed audiences. Therefore, he argued it should say very little and all of its points should fit into a slogan.

Where democracy requires precise language to effectively convey complex information to support robust policy debate, fascist politics seeks to eliminate this precision and to instead rouse emotion while debasing the intellect. Hitler expressed the goal of propaganda as replacing reasoned argument in public life with irrational fear and passion. Stanley suggests that is precisely what the Trump administration does.