How Fascism Works

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—now with a new preface.

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.

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of five books, including How Propaganda Works, winner of the Prose Award in Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers, and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, about which Citizen author Claudia Rankine states: “No single book is as relevant to our present moment.”  Stanley serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative and writes frequently about propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, democracy, and authoritarianism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Guardian.

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
  
• Publish Date: May 26, 2020
  
• Pages: 256
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Paperback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9780525511854
  
• Dimensions: 8.0 X 5.2 X 0.5 inches | 0.4 pounds
  
• BISAC Categories: Politics, Society & Current Affairs, Philosophy, History