How Fascism Works

Fascist politics is running rampant in America, and spreading around the world. A Yale philosopher identifies its ten pillars and charts its horrifying rise and deep history.

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.

Author Biography

Jason Stanley is a philosopher, and the Bissell-Heyd-Associates Chair in American Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Stanley is the author of seven books, including How Propaganda Works and Erasing History- How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. A member of The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, he writes frequently about authoritarianism, democracy, propaganda, and free speech for The Guardian, The New York Times, Project Syndicate, and other publications. How Fascism Works has been translated into twenty-three languages.