How Fascism Works

How Fascism Works

Title: How Fascism Works
Author: Jason Stanley
Release: 2018-09-04
Kind: ebook
Genre: Political Science, Books, Politics & Current Events, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy
Size: 4209966
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

“With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer

A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history.


As a scholar of philosophy and propaganda and the child of refugees of WWII Europe, Jason Stanley has long understood that democratic societies, including the United States, can be vulnerable to fascism. In How Fascism Works, he identifies ten pillars of fascist politics—an appeal to the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, favoring “the heartland,” and a dismantling of public goods and unions—that amount to an urgent diagnosis of the tactics right-wing politicians use to break down democracies and a critical lens on the current moment.

Stanley knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations, making clear the immense dangers of language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—rhetoric and myth—can become policy and reality all too quickly. Only by recognizing them, he argues, can we begin to resist their most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.

More Books from Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley
David Beaver & Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley & Antoni Gustowski
Jason Stanley, Antoni Gustowski & Aleksandra Stelmach
Jason Stanley
Alexandra Nimetz, Jason Stanley, Emeline Starr & Rachel Holcomb
Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley, Julien Karim Akerma & Rahel Jaeggi