Jason Stanley on "How Fascism Works"

This United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law event, sponsored by democracyFIRST, features Jason Stanley. Stanley is a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of How Propaganda Works and How Fascism Works.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law Speaker Series,

(00:04):
presented by Democracy First.
Join us for a special conversation with author and professor, Jason Stanley.
Jason is a leading expert in political philosophy and is the author of Erasing History,
How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.
This conversation was recorded in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in September 2024,

(00:27):
moderated by Pennsylvania State Senator, Nikhil Saval.
I do want to get to the book, but first I want to get started, actually,
if you don't mind with your previous, or with one of your earlier books, with How Fascism Works.
So How Fascism Works came out in 2018.
And, you know, of course, fascism was a word that was in the air at the time and continues to be.

(00:50):
And rather than sort of consider whether, you know, the various movements and, you know,
the right-wing movements that we were seeing were or were not fascist,
you sort of just dissected what fascism was and what it did and how we could recognize it.
So I'm wondering if you could actually just start there with what it is,
because it's also an important word in this book.

(01:11):
So let me first address, first of all, it's really an honor to be at Midtown Books.
This is a remarkable place, kind of unique.
And, you know, so it's a real honor.
I mean, these are democratic institutions, bookstores, like libraries, you know.

(01:32):
So How Fascism Works is really about the rhetoric and ideology of fascism.
The notions of hierarchy, dominant group victimhood, sexual anxiety,
like talking about LGBT is threatening your children.
The rural-urban divide.

(01:56):
The attack on labor unions, attack on Marxism, painting anything that's democratic as Marxist.
And the construction of a mythic past to which we must return.
So that book is like the ideological structure of fascism.
It's really about rhetoric.
It's really about how people talk about the world.

(02:18):
But I'm a philosopher of language, and I don't believe that you can separate the way people talk about the world
from other kinds of practices.
So it's not like speech practices can be completely separated from how you behave.
In other ways, speech is a kind of behavior.
So if people are speaking that way, then you can kind of predict what they're going to do.

(02:43):
That's why it was easy to see that a coup would happen.
So people were like, oh, he's just talking.
But that's like rarely true.
And so when you get used to talking about the world, you get used to talking about people like vermin,
then eventually you're going to treat them like vermin.
So this book is about the educational practices of fascism.

(03:07):
So which, and because I faced a puzzle when we saw in the United States the rise of, say,
DeSantis and, at any rate, the core element of education in this American far-right movement.
And I asked myself, why are these attacks on democracy and voting?

(03:29):
Why are they always accompanied quite centrally with attacks on schools and universities?
It's, I mean, yes.
It's one of the critical questions.
And I guess I'm curious in between, of course, the publication of How Fascism Works and your new book,

(03:50):
a lot has happened.
In 2018, Donald Trump was president.
Then two years later, we experienced the largest global pandemic in many years.
A million Americans ultimately have died so far.
We experienced a major uprising following the murder of George Floyd in virtually every city

(04:12):
in small town in the United States on, in some ways, questioning fundamental tenants
about policing, prisons, the nature of the economy.
We have massive social spending, a tremendous amount.
And so what, I'm curious, I'm curious, a lot that interposed in a way between the publication

(04:34):
of How Fascism Works and Racing History.
How do you, you know, what role does that sort of experience play in your book,
in your current book, and to what extent did it motivate the writing of this book?
Here's how I think about the relationship between, say, Black Lives Matter
and Germany in the early 30s and late 20s.

(04:54):
There were pitched battles on the street, actual battles between fascists and communists.
They were used, but they were sort of set off by fascists.
And the fascists promised that they would create law and order and eliminate all protests and all.

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But those were violent.
This wasn't violent, but you get the radical, the far right.
I mean, the Trump and Maga Republicans speaking of these nonviolent protests and rebellions,
speaking of them as if they're the communist, you know, communist rebellions in the Weimar Republic.

(05:39):
And when they do that, when people are like, we're going to impose law and order,
you know, that's reminiscent of what the fascists, Nazis, promised.
So that's one point that when you look for fascism, you look for an excuse that fascist parties give

(06:05):
to cut down, to seize power, use the military to essentially turn against democracy,
invoke the Insurrection Act.
So like you can see the Reichstag fire moment, you know, oh, the communists burned down the Reichstag.

(06:27):
So we need to end democracy and target.
So that's part of it.
Another part of it is the basis in American history.
You know, one of my students at Yale once asked me, Professor Stanley, you know,
I don't remember in which backlash this occurred, but he said, Professor Stanley,

(06:52):
ever since I was born, it's been like a police killing than a rebellion against the structure.
And then everyone agrees they're going to do something about it.
And then there's a backlash and it just gets worse.
What's going on with that?
And I was like, yeah, that is a practice that structures history.

(07:16):
The historian Elizabeth Hinton in her brilliant book, American Fire, calls that the cycle.
That, you know, you get the police, and she shows that that cycle existed, you know,
from the 60s to the 70s in all sorts of small towns in America, not just Detroit,

(07:39):
not just Harlem, but in like Cairo, Illinois.
So I think we have a repetition of the cycle falling in to a kind of classic,
kind of fascist politics, which is going to use that cycle against democracy.
And so, but this takes the role, as you examine your book, and there's a quote here,

(08:06):
you know, that you say truly understanding fascism and success, however requires discerning,
not just how it operates and seizes power, but how it achieves legitimacy.
And so, and so thus we turn to schools and education.
Why is school, why is schools, why is education, why is that important to the legitimacy of the

(08:26):
fascist enterprise? So Vladimir Putin endorsed my book a few months ago.
He said, did you accept it? I did.
It's the beginning of one of the chapters. He said wars are won by teachers.
So the book, we've been talking about the United States, but this book like how fascism works,

(08:48):
what I'm doing here is I'm looking at, I'm a philosopher, not a historian.
This historian's repeatedly pointed out to me. So as a philosopher, the generalizations are what we
look for in different societies. And then we, what I do is I use,

(09:14):
you put fit the United States into that. It's another example like Hungary, for example.
And this kind of, there are particular ways in which authoritarianism manipulates the past
in order to further its goals. Let me give two short examples, not from the US.

(09:38):
Russian textbooks. Russian textbooks represent, there is, there being no independent history of
Ukraine. So Ukraine doesn't exist. You know, there's just, it was Russia and now some crazy people
are saying it's something else. And they erase the history of the Russian genocide in Ukraine,

(10:04):
Holodomor in the 1930s. And then they represent every Russian aggressive incursion into a neighboring
country as helping independence movements in sassions. And so that's why Vladimir Putin says
wars are won by teachers. Because you know, you're going to think, who are these crazy Ukrainians,

(10:30):
people who call themselves Ukrainian. It's just an anti-Russian identity, which is what Putin said.
So that's a very clear example. There are other very clear examples. India is a very clear example.
The textbooks under B.B.J.P. I won't go into the details. But you know, they're trying to sell
Gandhi as slowly as a trader. And then Turkey. So then, and the United States of course, very clearly

(11:02):
in the Jim Crow era, or we talk about like the Virginia textbooks in the early 1960s saying,
you know, the slaves were neither as unhappy as the Northerners thought, nor as happy as the
Southerners thought. But you know, going all the way up into, so these, what I'm trying to do is

(11:25):
figure out what are the patterns that are anti-democratic patterns? Just on that Virginia
textbook, that's not, that, of course they published those during the Jim Crow era, but as you note,
there are some recent revisions to curricula that, where that's not, that sounds fairly reminiscent.

(11:45):
Absolutely. For example, in Florida, you're not allowed to teach the Black Lives Matter movement
what happened in 2020. You're not allowed to teach that social movement. People don't, might not
realize, but teachers and professors in states like Florida, now Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee,

(12:10):
are terrified, undergoing a horrific authoritarian attack on what they do. And you know, these,
so you asked what happened between how fascism works in this. There was the attack on critical
race theory. There was, there were, by Christopher Rufo, there was the attack on gender, there was

(12:32):
the international attack on LGBT perspectives that came here in Florida. Think about, think about,
so, or let's just take Moms for Liberty. Like Moms for Liberty says, you know, we want to
be able to intervene in schools to make sure our kids aren't made uncomfortable. But think about if

(12:58):
you're the child of a same, of same-sex parents, or you're a child who's LGBT, then you're an LGBT
person. How are you going to feel when your perspective is not allowed? It's not like a
LGBT, a same-sex couple can say we don't like all the heterosexual representations. Right. That's

(13:22):
not going to work. So the Black parents, Indigenous parents can't be like, we want the white people
taken out. We don't want them to be normative. So what does the liberty in Moms for Liberty mean?
It means white heterosexual supremacy. It's, Toni Morrison makes this point that very often,

(13:43):
liberty and freedom in the United States only make sense when contrasted with a Black unfreedom.
So this is what we're seeing. It's, it's at the universities, Florida, you know, there are these
cookie-cutter bills that are passing in state after state, and they're designed to sort of hide

(14:06):
what's happening. So Florida passed a post-10-year review, which has conditions like maintaining
ideological diversity in the classroom. And in the new post-10-year review, the first post-10-year
review happened several years later, and almost 20% of university Florida professors failed.
So 10-year has been, so presumably they're going to, I think they're losing their jobs. So,

(14:33):
so Ohio passed that same, same, the University of Indiana passed that. So in the University of Indiana
and Ohio State are two of the greatest public university systems in the world, and the universities
in the world. So it's so bad out there. And that really extreme attack on the educational system,

(14:57):
which I think is, was less invisible than, say, the attack on the courts that we saw,
made me just, it was like a puzzle for me. Why is this so central? And why is it so like
horrifying? Yeah, I mean, it's, it really, it really, you know, happened in the space of a very

(15:19):
short period of time. I'll just say, you know, it was, as someone who studied critical race theory
just in graduate school, it was shocking suddenly to see, think of this, one, because it just felt
like a fairly obscure topic. And then suddenly everyone was talking about it, it became this
subject of this very successful attack largely on, you know, complex studies. And there's a couple

(15:41):
things going, a couple things going on specifically with the attack on critical race theory. First
of all, it's an attack on the expression critical race theory. As Christopher Rufo said, I'm not
the one who called it critical race theory. Because without knowing what it is, it sounds scary.
And it's reminiscent of the old conspiracy theory that Jews are convincing black people to create,

(16:11):
into a race war, right? And then it fits the whole narrative like Marcuse, Angela Davis's professor,
you know. So critical race theory evokes this sort of conspiracy theory. But secondly, critical
race theory, it's really, it's really a home run because critical race theory just is black history.

(16:34):
You know, critical race theory is the study of structures that maintain racial inequality
independently, because they were originally conceived at racist times. But then even when
explicit racism goes, you still have the structures in place. So Hinton's work in American Fire is
about police structures, policing that keep, you know, the way police function in segregated cities

(17:01):
like New Haven where I live, to maintain racial hierarchies. Mortgages and redlining,
that's a study, that's a critical race theory. So like I recently met, I'm blanking on her name,
but a woman who did critical policy in studies, she was looking at the legal frameworks that

(17:23):
tilted the land ownership to Jews rather than Palestinians, non-Jewish Palestinians.
So it's the study of those structures. So critical race theory, so it's both a scary label,
and you can get at black history because if anyone teaches, you know, mortgage and redlining,

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it's critical race theory.
You mentioned earlier, you mentioned India earlier, I'm Indian, born here but from families
from South India. And you know, I follow Indian politics fairly closely because much of my family's
there, and one of the things that critics of the current, you know, of the current government or

(18:08):
the ruling party have been called is anti-national. So when you start criticizing India, you start
criticizing what's happening in a particular way, you're called an anti-national. And it became this
proud thing for actually for many people, you know, who were critics of the government, they
would have their Twitter handles and they'd say anti-national. And there were shirts that were,
you know, because you were like, oh no, I'm just a, I'm a proud anti-nationalist. And so one of the

(18:33):
things you talk about in your book is the concept of nationalism as a kind, and it's that, and how
nationalism, you know, is a way of conducting an assault on history and what have you. And specifically
you come up with a term called supremacist nationalism. I'm wondering if you could talk about
what that is and what, you know, what makes that distinct. I didn't realize you followed Indian

(18:56):
politics, I think of you as so, right, so Indian politics, yes. So let me begin by saying what
they're doing in India strategically. They're the Hindu nationalists, the original Hindu nationalist
theorist in the 30s. What was it then, Black Anas, name again? Sivarkar? Sivarkar. Sivarkar was,

(19:21):
look at the Nazis, what they're doing with Jews, we should do that with Muslims. So,
they're explicitly modeling themselves on the Nazis. So, and they've taken over, Modi was the
head of Gujarat, that was the prime minister of Gujarat during the Gujarat program when, you know,

(19:43):
he let the Hindus go wilding against Muslims, killing thousands, and then he becomes head of India.
Now, what they do, what BJP does is they conceal their supremacy. So, I make a distinction in the
book between anti-colonial nationalism and supremacist nationalism. What you have with

(20:07):
Hindu nationalism is supremacist nationalism, sort of the clearest, you know, Israel and India might
have the clearest examples of supremacist nationalism around right now, and Russian national, those.
But in India, they say Muslims are invaders, Muslims are imperialists, India was a pure Hindu

(20:28):
nation, and so Muslims are imperialists and the colonizers, they have to drive the colonizers out,
and they're really immigrants, the 200 million Muslims, Indians, they're really immigrants
from Bangladesh or something, and they need to be driven out. And so, they're, so the Hindu
nationalists are anti-colonialists because Muslims are, you know, so they're cloaking, and anytime

(20:57):
you come in to criticize them, like anytime I used to tweet about Hindu nationalism, I'd get like,
you white colonialist western, and I'm like, you guys are, you guys like, I'm a Nazi, so if I'm not,
if I'm not mistaken, we're pretty western. So, that's anti-colonial, that's supremacist

(21:17):
nationalism, asking as anti-colonial nationalism. These two kinds of, so I've spent a lot of time
in Ukraine in the last year, in Ukraine during wartime, and there's a, Ukraine is an extremely
an extremely democratic civil society. I thought, essentially, a racing history began

(21:42):
in my course in Kiev in August 2023, which was called colonialism and fascism, that course.
So, and then when I came back to Ukraine to teach another course, this May, the people in that
course, there are hundreds of people in the course, but all the young people were all like
leading journalists, and so the conversation about colonialism and nationalism had been,

(22:07):
it wasn't me, it was already my, New York Times did a profile of Miriam Naim, who was my teaching
assistant at the time, and this discussion of what kind of nationalism should we have now
and after we win. And so, this is just a huge public discussion there, where people are like,

(22:31):
it can't be that after the war, you know, we end up with this supremacist form of nationalism,
when now we're like defending LGBT rights and inclusion, and so during wartime,
you need nationalism, a point Finon made. You know, Ukrainians need nationalism now, but

(22:54):
it's got to be the right kind of nationalism so it can transform and not become a kind of
supremacist nationalism, like we find in Israel, like we find in India.
That is extremely fascinating. I mean, in particular, just that that debate is already
taking place right now and taking place in a very charged context. That question kind of

(23:22):
comes up in American politics as well. It's just, of course, often people who are critics of the
United States or internal critics, right, of what's going on in the US or of US war aims or what have
you, get called unpatriotic. And, you know, I think in, so the one question I guess I have for

(23:42):
you is, do you think there is an appropriate American nationalism or kind of that isn't
supremacist or... So, Nikhil, going back to your earlier point about India, this is what you find
everywhere authoritarianism rises is you find attacking education systems as anti-national

(24:04):
in whatever vocabulary people use, anti-American, anti-Hungarian, anti... Another commonality you see
is, I just, in case it doesn't come up, I want to mention it, for some reason, they go after,
these authoritarians go after the Nobel Prize winners in literature of the dominant,
of the national minority. So, Hungary removed Imra Kertaz, the only Hungarian post-war

(24:32):
Nobel Prize winner in literature from its national curriculum. He was a Jewish Holocaust survivor
talking about what it's like to be a Jewish Holocaust survivor in Hungary and pre-war as well.
And they removed him from the curriculum and replaced him with two mediocre,
far-right writers who no one cares about, who Horty, the quasi-fascist leader, the guy who

(25:00):
allied with Hitler, kept on wanting to get them the Nobel Prize in literature, but they're just...
So, that's what we see here, so we see it in India. It's just kind of... One of the depressing
things is how paint by number this often is. So, just like you see state after state passing

(25:20):
the same exact bill that probably Alec wrote or something like that, you see country after country
adopting the same technique. You're anti-Indian after the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in
2018-2019, the protests in universities, nonviolent protests from Muslim equality, universities were

(25:44):
painted as anti-Indian, and the students, two of the original organizers are charged with
incitement to murder, attempted murder, incitement to riot. And so, and this is what...
I needn't mention what is happening with U.S. universities and protests recently.

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So, in the case of the United States, my worry, I don't think we're at the point where we can
even ask whether there's a kind of healthy American nationalism. I do believe in healthy
versions of national... I mean, I don't know. I do know that Tim Snyder and I had a debate in
the Yale political union resolved nationalism leads to tyranny and he wiped the goddamn floor with me

(26:31):
because I was saying it does. So, I don't want to... So, there's a move Snyder makes where you're like,
but nationalism leads to this. It leads to patriarchy. It leads to racism. It leads to...
Well, maybe racism leads to racism and patriarchy leads to treating women badly. Well,
I think it's nationalism that is the... So, anyway, there's lots of moves you can make. So,

(26:55):
nationalism might be... The right kind of national identity might be necessary for the kinds of
projects that you do. Like, what you're doing is you're constructing in your work an American...
caring for other Americans as part of our American identity.
You know, your political work involves... You know, you're doing... You're a national leader on

(27:23):
things like building houses, addressing affordable housing, presumable and kind of for patriotic
nationalist reasons because Americans should have housing. So, that's a healthy nationalism.
Unfortunately, the nationalism that all of us grew up with looks like exactly the nationalism that

(27:48):
the Nazis inherited and built up off of. I remember when I was in... I was first in Ukraine in 2017,
and I was giving a talk on these issues, and I said, unhealthy versus unhealthy nationalism.
And I said, supremacist nationalism would be like when you said your country is the greatest on earth,

(28:09):
your country. So, Hitler, the Nazis said, Nazi Germany is the successor to Greece and Rome.
And I heard that, I think, in school about our founders. So, I said this. I was like,
supremacist nationalism is when you say your country is the greatest ever. Like, imagine
Ukrainians saying their country is the greatest ever. Now they're making a case that they're

(28:34):
pretty great. And someone raised their hand and said, but your President Obama says that all the
time about your country. So, we have a kind of... We have supremacist American nationalism as our
national narrative. And if you're looking at that in the way I do as a philosopher, looking in a sober

(28:55):
way at the kind of dangerous nationalisms that prepare a country for fascism, it looks a lot like that.
So, even... We should just be cautious, right? Or skeptical, even of those claims. Even when
they're not made by... You know, when they're not made sensibly by the political right, right? They have...
That's what's scary about the... We talk a lot about the material basis for fascism. There's a

(29:23):
great depression. And so, there's, you know, economic anxiety. And so... But there's also an
ideological basis for fascism. And the ideological basis for fascism is laid down by the schools.
If the schools are already giving you... You are the greatest ever, then it's easy to say,

(29:44):
oh, our nation is in decline. I want to get to, at some point, how we get out of this. And then...
But we... But before we... Oh, haven't we run out of time now? Are we... Are we...
That was a joke. No, that was a joke. That was a joke. And so, we... You're going to tell us.

(30:06):
You're going to tell us how we get out of this. We... There's a... Just because it, you know, in
particular, appeals to me. I... There's... You have a chapter on the kind of adoption of classical
education. And, you know, just to rehearse some things, you know, we... When I was growing up,

(30:28):
you know, that one of the big debates was about the cannon wars, right? And so,
the... And you... And so, one of the questions was, you know, there was a... There was maybe,
let's say, a side that said we needed a more traditional cannon that, you know,
some would argue was too white and male, but... And others would want to, you know, modernize it
and bring newer authors or neglected authors or authors that, you know, women authors, black authors,

(30:52):
into literature. And that the same applied to art history and music and things like that. And so,
the debate in some ways seems, you know, you might say people would argue that you shouldn't teach
Toni Morrison because you're replacing Milton with Toni Morrison. And that all seems fairly quaint
right now, that argument. I mean, right now, we, you know, in your chapter, there's just the

(31:14):
wholesale demolition of some of these, you know, these traditions. I mean, one Milton was banned,
was what Paradise Lost was pulled out, one of 150 books pulled out of a public library in Florida.
But, you know, just what is the... You know, there is this now, this new insistence. I mean,

(31:36):
not maybe not so new, but on this sort of classical education. And so, what function does that
serve in this context? Great. What is it? Like, what... And why is Hillsdale College saying,
you know, pushing Christian nationalism under the banner of classical education? So, you know,
the idea is this attack on classical education, this new fangled LGBT... LGBT perspectives threaten

(32:03):
classical education because classical education supports the nuclear family. You know, Marxism
threatens the classical education because Marxism is opposed to the nuclear family. Well, in the
symposium, the highest height of love is between an old male teacher and a young boy he's teaching.

(32:26):
So, you know, I'm not really sure, you know, classical education is anti-LGBT perspectives.
And, you know, the... Secondly, Socrates in the Republic argues that in Calipolis, the ideal city,
all children are removed from their families at birth. So, this kind of absolute crap that

(32:53):
Christian nationalism is classical education and that these ideas, you know, Martin Luther King had
a... had an exam for his social and political philosophy class at Boston University. One of the
questions was, list the radical ideas in Plato's Republic. So, you know, Plato's Republic has an

(33:14):
argument, you know, argues for... that both women and men can equally be rulers because...
because he said, you know, the response to Socrates is, well, there are different natural
aptitudes and Socrates says, well, bald people and people with hair have different natural
aptitudes. It doesn't bear on their ability to rule. You know, so Plato argues for female equality.

(33:41):
Plato argues that children should be removed from their families at birth because then,
if you don't know who your kids are, you'll make sure to take care of everybody. And if
young people don't know who their parents are, they'll make sure that all older people are taking
care of. So, you know, so it's just bullshit. And so what's going on, all these radical ideas

(34:07):
have occurred in the classics. There's a whole bunch of different confusions on this. Another is
that, oh my God, black studies and women's studies are challenging the enlightenment ideals of reason
and objectivity, you know, and moral progress and moral personhood. It's all this newfangled stuff,

(34:29):
but Herda in the 18th century, Kant's main opponent, thought that there was no universal
notion of moral personhood. There was no such thing as universal reason, you know, and he used it to
argue against colonialism. He said, you can't invade another country to like save them because
there's no such thing. They speak a different language. There's no... So all these ideas that

(34:52):
they're saying come from women's studies and, you know, area studies come right are contemporaneous
with the enlightenment. They're the counter enlightenment, the anti-enlightenment. So it's
all bullshit. So what's... Because the concepts of classical education, the discussions are much more

(35:13):
radical. All sorts of the positions taken on enlightenment ideals and pro and against are
all taken by white men. And so what one worries about, I mean, the Nazis loved classical education.

(35:34):
They, you know, was funded like physics, but they didn't teach it because of the ideas. They taught
it because they wanted to promote white men. They wanted to create this idea of whiteness going from
the Third Reich backwards to ancient Greece. You know, all great texts are done by white men.

(35:57):
And the Nazis, as George Mosse said, the Nazis in their textbooks represented the greatest Roman
emperors as really German. And they suggested that, like, really the ancient Greeks were Germans.
So that was this kind of whiteness red backwards. And very often what we're getting is whiteness

(36:18):
red backwards, the expression classical education, a personalist use of classical education.
Classical education used as a method of promoting whiteness.
We, there's so much more to talk about in the book that I want to make sure that we, you know,

(36:40):
get to our audience. So I think at this point we want to get to questions and we do have mics
or a mic. And so please, if anyone has questions for regarding the book.
Yeah, please just raise your hand. I'll bring you the mic. I'll ask you to ask the question
into the mic so everyone can hear you. So the senator asked you, I don't think he answered

(37:11):
the question or we ran out of time or whatever. The question was, how do we get out of this?
So I think that on a national level, people might be aware of the little fascist like
incursions into society. But I don't think that the American public is as aware of those things

(37:37):
or they even care as much about those things when they're on a state level. And the state level is
where most of this stuff is happening. Right? So what's the answer? Well, those are different
things you're bringing up. But I mean, this you're absolutely right that, you know,
a state like Tennessee is like basically a fascist state, one party state, like the

(38:02):
abortion is illegal, even in the cases of rape and incest, you need, it's like a
Christo Christian nationalist authoritarian state. Contraception is required parental consent is
required for contraception 18 and under. And one could go on. So we've let these things
happening happen. There's an online reporting form for professors. So you can report professors who

(38:27):
teach divisive concepts. So, you know, they're they they narrowly rejected criminal penalties
against such professors who taught like about white privilege or mortgage redlining.
So it's so extreme what's happening now. It's meant to create this culture of authoritarianism

(38:48):
where you turn each other in, where you're encouraged to turn each other in. So, so what do
you do? I think you fight the culture of authoritarianism, you fight the fear. They're
using they target teachers, right? They target people who serve on local election boards,
and they make their life hell. So, so, and every there's a tendency to want to scurry away

(39:14):
when there's this attack. I've seen it happen started in the universities, you know, the
targeting professors, turning points, USA campus reform, they target someone for like a tweet or
something. And then they make that person's life like absolutely hell, absolute hell. And that's
what they're doing on that strategy has gone into the local level. And what we everywhere, it's,

(39:38):
you know, so I think what's vital is the solidarity, like someone's being attacked,
don't scurry away and say, you know, you know, it's thank God, it's not me, bring them an apple pie,
have someone videotape you, take a video of you bringing them an apple pie and post it on social
media. The make it a badge of honor to be hunted out as, you know, to as someone who pushes for,

(40:07):
you know, LGBT perspectives to be represented in schools. So, so support the democratic
institutions, teachers unions, the public schools are being attacked, the public school is central
to democracy. That's why it's being attacked. The Freedman's Bureau created public schools and

(40:28):
black Americans created public schools in the south because they're central to democracy.
That's why they're attacking them support unions unions are central to democracy.
And have solidarity when they try to go after go after us.
Thanks for coming to Harrisburg. I didn't read your book yet. I just purchased it.

(40:56):
Do you think there's a danger in over focusing on political fascism
and political authoritarianism and avoiding talk of economic authoritarianism, economic fascism?
I mean, the corporate structure itself is a fascist structure.
Oh, good. Excellent. Now, one thing Timothy Snyder says is, you know, just in conversation,

(41:25):
is that the Marxists were wrong about mid-century fascism, but they're right about what we're seeing
now of so monopoly capitalism. So monopoly. So you really what you're saying is you forgot to
mention the role of monopoly capitalism and fascism, which is correct. I'm sorry. I should be,

(41:46):
you know, I talk about it in how fascism works more, but it's a central part as we're seeing.
We're seeing the tech billionaires. We're seeing the fossil fuel industry line up behind Trump,
because it's a very natural thing. It's the opposite of free market. Even if you're just
a straight Orthodox capitalist, you should be really opposed to what's happening, which is

(42:11):
monopoly capitalism, which is a bunch of super rich people are lining up behind an autocratic
leader, hoping to get special deals on cornering the market. So that's what's happening. That's
what the Marxists said was happening in 1930s Germany. It's much clearer that it's happening now.
It's very clear. It very clearly happened with the Putin very cleverly used monopoly capitalism

(42:38):
to seize Russia. You know, he got the oligarchs behind him and suddenly the oligarchs found out
so that's what we're seeing here. It's another paint by numbers thing. You know, it's it's
monopoly capitalism. People are hoping crony capitalism. People are hoping they're going to

(43:01):
be able to court, you know, get the special deals. Trump very clearly in his first term went after
firms that, you know, he split up that merger with I forget time and I forgot he split up
mergers on political reasons. He did DeSantis showing off went after Disney, you know. So

(43:22):
everybody's like, you know, so the monopoly capitalists are like, hey, we can get in with
these good guys with these guys right now. We won't be targeted and we'll get special deals.
Other questions. We're up on the gallery. Okay, cool.

(43:42):
Hi. So kind of going off of your quote, war is won by teachers fighting the fear.
And earlier you answering about, you know, supporting teachers union supporting the teachers
as a teacher for you as history. What kind of recommendations do you have for us who are

(44:03):
kind of on that battlefield? You know, as we kind of move forward through this,
you know, kind of war on these topics, as someone who has seen certain topics being removed, even
in PA from my own curriculum, and me trying to have them back, what kind of just advice or
recommendations do you have for us? I'm going to disappoint you because to me,

(44:28):
your question is a little bit like if a Ukrainian soldier asked me, what kind of recommendations
you have for us on the front line, you know, I mean, when the Russians are shooting at me,
what does philosophy say we should do? So, you know, you're on the front lines. So,
you know, the emails I'm getting from you and your colleagues are things I'm learning from.

(44:52):
You know, we have this model of like I talk about in the book, the Jarvis Givens and Amonipare's
Black Teacher Archives, which is digitalized where you're really looking at teachers in the gym,
black teachers in the gym, cross out trying to keep the memory of slave rebellions, of black

(45:14):
agency and black resistance alive. What to do right now? You're in a moment where we can stop a
certain slide. Like recently, you know, I was in Europe over the summer, and when one of my
talks, a woman stood up and she's like, I'm Russian, and I'm getting my masters here, and then I'm

(45:36):
going to go back to Russia. What can I do to stop the authoritarianism in Russia? I said, you could
stay the hell away from Russia because you will be killed if you try to stop the authoritarianism
in Russia. So, we don't want to get there. We don't want to get to the place where we want to stop
it right now because it slides. Russia is an extreme example, but Hungary, lots of examples now

(45:58):
where you can be, you know, you're going to be in the political crosshairs, and we already are,
you already are in the political crosshairs. So, you know, you're a frontline soldier,
and, you know, you guys, what's crucial, I think, you know, this is why Tim Snyder's

(46:19):
on tyranny is so useful because it's all about solution, what you're supposed to do. So, chapter
one is anticipatory obedience. So, don't start throwing, changing your curriculum in advance
before you have to. Yale, my own institution, is like, you know, it's like almost like textbook

(46:40):
anticipatory obedience for reasons that I won't go into because they pay my salary. So, but, you
know, there are professors who are trying to fight back on that. But, so anticipatory obedience, but I
feel terribly telling you, a US history teacher, like you should not get, you know, I mean, you're

(47:02):
going to just by the very fact you're here suggests, you know, you're trying to figure out what to do
on, but, you know, God bless you. Hello. So, the question I had is just from time from like the
last 10 years, a conversation between patriotism versus nationalism has come up quite a lot.

(47:24):
So, my question for you is why should we lean towards a more healthier version, which I think
needs to be explored a little bit more of nationalism versus patriotism? Like, what would
be the difference for you and why go towards nationalism instead? Good. I mean, this is a much
vexed, you know, like, is there acceptable patriotisms? I don't myself, I mean, you know,

(47:49):
some people would say, yeah, it's all, it's sort of definitional, like you could say you could be
proud of, you could be patriotic about the ideals of your nation, you know, like democracy or something.
But, but I don't, the problem I have is that the resonances of the term patriotism tend to be pretty

(48:10):
authoritarian. National, probably the resonances of nationalism too, but nationalism historically
emerges as a response to monarchy. So, it's not like by definition, you know, it's, you know,
the, it used to be all kings and queens, right? And it wasn't like the Habsburg Emperor and,

(48:32):
you know, the British Emperor, you know, the British King, their children would marry. And so,
nationalism comes in the 19th century and it was actually a movement, you know, that involved
undermining monarchy. So, and nationalism, you know, try telling, like, there are portions of the

(48:53):
world where it has a different valence, think of, think of, I mean, BJP has done heroic work on
turning it from a good, nice good valence to a bad valence, but in Africa, African nationalism
generally has a good valence, right? So, you know, no one's like, oh, the terrible African

(49:15):
nationalism, you know, so, so whereas, you know, patriotism, I'm not convinced there's, there's,
I don't know what the core of patriotism is supposed to mean. If it means idolatry of symbols,
then it's problematic. And it often seems to mean idolatry of symbols.

(49:38):
I have a question really quick, which I want to ask because there's sort of a debate happening on
our YouTube live stream of this event. And it's sort of a devil's advocate question, because I think
here in central Pennsylvania, we all interact with people in our friend groups and our families who
are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. And these events as much as the issue of, you

(50:02):
know, anti-fascism should be nonpartisan often are not often we do have these conversations in
something of an echo chamber. And we're sitting here talking about, I think, right wing authoritarian
movements pretty heavily, but people wanting to debate this issue and wanting to erase history

(50:23):
and rewrite it often say that the other side of the aisle is doing the exact same thing, saying
that communism is trying to take over, you know, all of our systems, all of that. So how do you
approach that question, that accusation, that issue, especially with people who, you know,
we all know and we love them and we just want them to see sense. Yeah. So I have all my living

(50:48):
relatives are Orthodox Jews and Trump supporters. But I know why they're Trump supporters because,
you know, he's going to deliver for fundamental for Orthodox Jews. Like, like, you know, he's going
to allow the religious schools to remain, you know, you know, not, not having to have standards. So
people are to read things like that. So getting it done for your community, like religious communities

(51:14):
might see the abortion agenda in a certain way. But there's a puzzle, right? The Nazis won by
saying the same thing that the Maga Republicans are saying now. But the Nazis were right. There
were actual communists. There were Stalinists. There were scary communists. I mean, I'm not a

(51:36):
communist. The the I'm a social Democrat, but I'm not a communist. I mean, there were scary
communists and Goebbels was correct when he talked about that they were existential threats to, like,
religion and, you know, Stalin did terrible, you know, was an existential. So long as there was a

(51:57):
threat to religious freedom. So but now there are no communists. So what the hell is going on?
Because there's not people going around, we're going to forcibly take the Christians and force
them to be atheists. Like, that's not happening. So so, you know, it's not, you know, we don't have

(52:23):
people saying we're going to mass execute, like, we're going to all live miserable lives. So in
the futures, like in communism, everybody's miserable, you know, fascism, some people are
too happy, other people are miserable, really miserable. In communism, like, it kind of sucks
for everybody. That's just not happening. So but what they're doing is they're saying that ordinary

(52:49):
that like, they're painting people, they're painting a neoliberal like Barack Obama, who restocked
all the banks after the financial crisis with trillions of dollars. He they're saying he's a
Marxist, you know, who had Arne Duncan as his secretary of education, who had Tim Geithner as

(53:12):
his secretary of Ram Emanuel was his with his chief of staff. And he's a Marxist, you know,
so what they're saying is like, even neoliberal center centrists, who are not supporters of
Donald Trump are Marxists and communists. And it's ludicrous. And so it's just a mystery to me,

(53:36):
how you're going to take, you know, how how are you supposed to respond when you're saying that,
I mean, the Nazis did some of this, right? They I mean, they did a lot of this, they said everyone
who isn't a Nazi is a communist. So, you know, they did that too. So there were but there were
communists. So you could be like, Oh, look, those scary people, they're like them. But now there

(53:59):
are no communists. There's some people, police, there's always been people policing speech more
than they should or whatever. Yeah, sometimes you'll get, you know, you'll get socially shunned if you
do things. That's probably been true forever as well. You know, are there do those social mechanisms

(54:23):
exaggerate other bad uses of them? Sure, there are. That's probably always been true as well.
But communism, like taking over closing the churches, you know, making sure that everyone is,
you know, everyone is the same level of relative poverty. That's just not happening. So it's another

(54:46):
one of these, you know, dual reality things. You know, Barack Obama is not a communist. Timothy
Geithner was the head of a Goldman Sachs. He's not a communist. He was the secretary of treasury
under Barack Obama. So how do you argue with people who say the CEO, the head of Goldman Sachs,

(55:12):
is a communist because he served in a communist, you know, it's kind of,
I don't know how to react because there's no, which is not to say that there aren't like,

(55:33):
like Orthodox Jews. I have many more Trump supporters in my family than, you know, like,
almost everyone is a Trump supporter. And we love, we, you know, when we're together,
they argue with me sometimes, but they're not Trump supporters because they think there's
communists like running or Stalinists running around. They just have particular interests that,

(55:56):
you know, Trump is delivering for certain right-wing interests, among them deeply socially
conservative religious people like my family. I'm glad you are as mystified by it as I am.
We do have time for one or two more questions.
When I look at what you're saying, I really look at structural problems that cause divisiveness,

(56:25):
because when it comes down to it, it's people have different ideas about things go. And right now,
we're in a presidential election cycle. Well, we're going to go through that and we're going to be
partisan because that's what you do. You vote against the other side. Well, as soon as that's
over, we're into a midterm election cycle. You do the same thing. No sooner do you get into the

(56:48):
midterm election cycle, what happens, the next presidential election cycle comes up. So there
is a structural thing which says we are going to be hyperpartisan almost every month or every year.
So what is really the idea is what's really keeping us from our hyperpartisanship. And as you know,

(57:14):
you're out there in academia. And as everybody else knows, you've got 24-hour news and you also
have the internet and a blogosphere. So all these things have put us on edge every single point.
And guess what doesn't happen? It's called governance. We're running for office, but we're not

(57:35):
legislating in office. Thank you. So, yeah, legislatures are pretty dysfunctional.
I was going to... No, I mean, on the federal level, on the federal level, he's not...
He gets it done. Well, that's what's so impressive about you is, and politicians like you,
who are actually using government to get things done for the good, which is like,

(58:00):
actually, it's supposed to be the idea of a state. We have... So, abstracting from the weird
Mago Republican structure we have now, which actually is very pro-state, like Ron DeSantis,
is going to use... They're going to use the state to go after schools. They're using the state to

(58:21):
go after Disney. They're definitely using the state. So, that's like not what I'm going to talk
about, the anti-state, the sort of Reagan legacy of Reagan, libertarianism. They want to say the
state, they want to destroy the power of the state. They want to say, states can't work for you.

(58:42):
That's the old school stuff, the old school sort of from the 80s, 90s.
But, so the work you're doing is showing that states can function, and that sort of idealism is what
we need in politics. We need people who want to work together to make things function. And I think

(59:03):
you can actually have some overlap on goals. Like, some of the Mago Republicans
do sometimes, are sometimes, populists, genuinely populists. Like, I think J.D. Vance did

(59:23):
cosine legislation with Elizabeth Warren. So, those are ways... I mean, he's also Peter Teal's
protégé, so it's hard to make sense of. But, you can have some overlaps. Like, if you're going
to be serious about the populism, let's do something about the finance industry together.

(59:50):
So, those are ways to... We have now democratic socialists. We have national conservatives.
There could be some possibility of overlap if we had some seriousness about
the populist aspect. However, I'm very pro-hyper partisanship. Like, just as a thought experiment,

(01:00:20):
would you be hyperpartisan in the 1932 German elections? Yeah.
Yeah. Right. So, it really... You really sometimes have to be hyperpartisan.
And it was very similar there. Like, suddenly every people's friends were like, I like Hitler.

(01:00:43):
He's getting, oh, don't pay attention to the rhetoric. He's going to get it done. And
Victor Klemper and his language of the Third Reich talks about this. He's like, I rented to a guy,
student, he's a friend of mine. Klemper was Jewish and he kept on saying, oh, no. And this
friend of mine just like, no, no, Hitler doesn't mean it about the Jews. And sometimes you have

(01:01:06):
to be hyperpartisan. And unfortunately, as we have the unhelpful but accurate political science
expression, asymmetric polarization, where on the one hand you have the center centrist like, I guess,

(01:01:26):
Clinton's, Obama, Clinton's, maybe Kamala, we don't really know. And then the far right who want to
like, make it illegal to teach LGBT perspectives in schools and do blanket bans on abortion and

(01:01:50):
just go after what you replace secular education by Christian nationalism.
I think you probably have to be partisan in those moments.
And this will be our last question.
How you doing, Professor Stanley? Thanks for being here. So I might ask two things. You can

(01:02:13):
choose which one you want to respond to. The first is reading the book. I couldn't help thinking
about the seven mountain mandates that's not in the book. So if you can respond to that, talk about
that a little bit. That's the Christian nationalist aspect. Yeah. And why that's not included.
Dominionist. Because it's a mistake. My agent told me to include it. She was right.

(01:02:39):
Well, the other one was. Dominionism. Okay. Right. Dominionism. Yeah. Dominionism should be,
it's, it's, I'm focusing more on, it's a great question and vital point. What we're facing is
a theocracy and explicit theocracy. So, and then we have cynical figures like Trump and I think

(01:03:05):
DeSantis who, you know, just want to be autocrats and they're going to bring in the theocrats to
support them. So I think that's what's going on. But the specific thing we face is theocracy.
Yeah. Well, thank you. The second question I was going to ask, maybe you can leave us on a positive

(01:03:30):
note. See the light at the end of the tunnel. We've been here before in the 20s, the 50s, the 70s,
early 2000s. And here we are. So looking back at history, do you see the light at the end of the
tunnel where things start to, the pendulum swings back again? Totally. I think that people, the

(01:03:54):
history of authoritarianism is so long. Democracy is very rare. And you're always going to have
to fight to preserve democracy because people are kind of often natural followers of authority.
So, I mean, we can go and delve into why that is. The literature suggests it does have to do with a

(01:04:20):
nuclear family. If you're raised in a, not nuclear, but if you're raised in a patriarchal family,
you are more, you have a greater tendency to accept, or go for authoritarianism over democracy.
That's why, you know, with my kids, unfortunately, I always like engage their reasoning faculties.

(01:04:41):
And so, you know, and it takes a lot longer to like get to a restaurant. So, but you're supposed to do that.
Yeah. So I think democracy is really hard. Here's the good news. I think it's always going to be like
this. So, you know, probably always has been like the 90s, you know, the very idea that the 90s were

(01:05:11):
so great is a very white thing in the United States. They were horrors. The 90s, you know, the
Clintons in the 90s, like, you know, the crime bill, 100 to one crack. I mean, it was like, it was
very brutal time of racism and mass, you know, crime is dropping, incarceration is shooting up.

(01:05:36):
So things always suck for a lot of people. You know, what we need is, it looks like economic
inequality, as the standard theories of fascism would have it, is a serious driver of, say,
stereotypes, negative stereotypes, you know. So dealing with these structural issues, I think

(01:06:03):
the Inflation Reduction Act is a very powerful thing. It's like an anti FDR kind of thing,
where you're bringing material support to communities who might be inclined to support
fascism, support authoritarianism. So look at Biden. I mean, I think Biden, you know,

(01:06:29):
occupy walls. Look at you, look at politicians like you, you know. They didn't exist in 2011.
It was all like, oh, the Democrats and Republicans both are for privatizing everything, you know.
Like, and now we have Democratic socialists, you know. So occupy Wall Street, people are saying,

(01:06:50):
oh, it didn't really work. Yes, it did. It's downstream effects. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie
Sanders, we have grumpy old senators who are definitely not corrupt. And, you know, so we have,
we have movements of people, this was, Biden administration was an administration where they

(01:07:13):
were giving, where they were redistributing. I think it's the first administration in decades,
where there was redistribution. So from the, oh, there's always redistribution. It's just usually
from the bottom up, but it was redistribution in the other direction under Biden. So, you know,
I think, you know, the emergence of Democratic socialists who want to focus on making our

(01:07:43):
material lives better, you know, affordable housing, you know, creating maybe different
models of policing, not defunding the police, but, you know, having police be restructured
so they're not militarized. You know, I think these are all, you know, a lot of what we're seeing is

(01:08:04):
the backlash to that. You know, but maybe we can work together on some issues if they're,
if they're, if they're Maga Republicans are serious about helping working families. And maybe we can,
you know, I don't think they're serious about it, but maybe, you know, so we have a sort of breaking
up of the traditional neoliberal, you know, different versions of neoliberalism. And they're,

(01:08:31):
you know, I think there's hope there. All right, with that, anything you wanted to add?
Oh, I was just going to say there's hope, right? So there's, that was just going to echo that. And,
I just wanted, I was hoping to ask the audience again to thank and Jason Stanley and thank you
for coming and presenting this book. It's great to have you. Thank you.