The Ever Present Threat of Fascism



Jason Stanley has written a still very timely book: How Fascism Works:  The Politics of Us and Them.

One reviewer described it this way:  “No single book is as relevant to the present moment".  

That it seems to me is a fair description.  Stanley wrote it in 2018 in the midst of Trump’s administration.  But the factors which he so eloquently cites that are accounting for a rebirth of fascism, not just in the U.S. but in other countries including Hungary and Poland, are neither new nor did they end with Trump’s departure.  As Stanley writes, “A moral of this book is that fascism is not a new threat but rather a permanent temptation.”  In fact, it’s been with us to one degree or another throughout our history, surfacing to higher levels at times of the inequality and pressure on the majority group that feels it’s being displaced by some new contaminating group.

 

Stanley meticulously dissects several elements that combine to form the foundation for fascism’s appeal.  They include the mythic past, propaganda which at its worst turns into denying the existence of truth, anti-intellectual, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, the appeal to law and order, capitalizing on sexual anxiety and citing large cities and urban elites as the source of contamination.

 

The America First movement led by Charles Lindbergh was the public face of pro-fascist sentiment in the U.S. as the ‘30s went on.

 

The particular danger of fascist politics comes from the particular way it dehumanizes segments of the population.  Genocides and campaigns of ethnic cleansing are regularly proceeded by the kind of political tactics we have seen in Myanmar, Nazi Germany, Serbia and the Deep South under Jim Crow.

We must be aware of, confront and counter this ever present danger of dehumanizing others. We must remember: Every Counts, always.