How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

Author:Jason Stanley
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Political Ideologies, Fascism & Totalitarianism, 20th Century, Philosophy, Political, Modern, Political Science, General, History
ISBN: 9780525511854
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-26T15:54:51+00:00

These ideas also reflect a somewhat nostalgic longing for that past world, when men believed they could simply take their places among the nation’s elite, simply by working hard and applying themselves. Alas, such a world never existed; economic elites have always managed to reproduce themselves despite the ideals of a meritocracy. But that hasn’t stopped men from believing it. It is the American Dream. And when men fail, they are humiliated, with nowhere to place their anger.7

Promulgating a mythical hierarchal past works to create unreasonable expectations. When these expectations are not met, it feels like victimhood.8

Those who employ fascist political tactics deliberately take advantage of this emotion, manufacturing a sense of aggrieved victimization among the majority population, directing it at a group that is not responsible for it and promising to alleviate the feeling of victimization by punishing that group. In her book Down Girl, Kate Manne illustrates this by drawing a distinction between patriarchy and misogyny. Patriarchy, according to Manne, is the hierarchal ideology that engenders the unreasonable expectations of high status. Misogyny is what faces women who are blamed when patriarchal expectations are left unfulfilled. The logic of fascist politics has a vivid model in Manne’s logic of misogyny.

Breitbart News is a powerful far-right U.S. media outlet filled with anti-immigrant propaganda representing refugees as public health threats, threats to civilization, and threats to law and order. In such outlets, we find clear expression of the way in which an aggrieved sense of victimization of dominant majorities can be weaponized for potential political gain. Breitbart has run dozens of articles with headlines related to Somali refugees in the United States, including those with titles such as “296 Refugees Diagnosed with Active TB in Minnesota, Ten Times Any Other State; Majority Are Somalis,” and “Somalis: Least Educated of Refugees Arriving to U.S. in FY 2017.” Breitbart was only a part of a wave of such propaganda in the United States around this time. In a video viewed three million times since it was posted in April 2015, Ann Corcoran of the far-right anti-immigrant group Refugee Resettlement Watch speaks of a plan of “Muslim colonization” of the United States, aided and abetted by international organizations such as the United Nations, federal agencies such as the U.S. State Department, and “Christian and Jewish groups assigned to seed them throughout the country.” These outlets spread a sense of paranoia at a “fifth column” of “liberal” groups in our midst using the vocabulary of human rights to undermine the nation’s traditions. But in doing so, they not only undermine liberal ideals, but also suggest that their targets should be subject to intense scrutiny or punishment merely on the basis that the dominant group feels fearful.

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