Narrator: In the 1930s, America had a hero. Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated aviator, was the embodiment of American courage and ingenuity. Yet, this same national icon became a leading voice for the America First movement, publishing essays that flirted with Nazi ideology and warned against an alliance with "foreign races." This jarring contradiction—a hero of a nation that would soon fight to liberate Europe from fascism, yet who himself promoted fascist ideas—is not just a historical footnote. It reveals a deep and unsettling tension that runs through history. How can the language of patriotism, freedom, and strength be used to pave the way for oppression?

In his incisive book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Yale philosopher Jason Stanley dismantles this question. He argues that fascism is not merely a historical event defined by a specific time or leader, but a set of predictable and repeatable political tactics. These tactics are designed to divide a population, erode democratic norms, and consolidate power by appealing to our deepest fears and anxieties. The book serves as a field guide to recognizing these methods, whether they appear in the past or are echoing in the headlines of today.

Narrator: Fascist politics begins not with a vision for the future, but with a story about the past—a glorious, mythic past that has been tragically lost. As Benito Mussolini himself declared, "Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation!" This isn't history; it's a carefully constructed fiction. This idealized past is always portrayed as a time of purity, strength, and traditional order. Central to this myth is the patriarchal family, where men are warriors and women are mothers, tasked with preserving the nation's bloodline. Nazi ideologues like Gregor Strasser made this explicit, stating that for a man, military service is the highest calling, but for a woman, "it is motherhood!"

This manufactured nostalgia is a powerful political tool. It allows leaders to frame any social progress—such as gains in gender equality or civil rights—as a corruption of sacred tradition. Stanley shows how this tactic is used across the globe. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government enshrined a "Fundamental Law" that defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman, grounding the nation's identity in Christian heritage and traditional family values. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) attempted to enforce a near-total ban on abortion, framing it as a return to the country's true Christian traditions.

This mythologizing also requires erasing a nation's sins. To create a purely glorious past, inconvenient truths must be dismissed as liberal propaganda. Stanley points to the ongoing debate over Confederate monuments in the United States. These statues, mostly erected long after the Civil War, were part of a campaign to rewrite history, portraying the Confederacy as a noble cause and downplaying the brutal reality of slavery. When efforts arise to connect these monuments to their racist origins, they are often decried as an attack on "heritage," a perfect example of protecting a mythic past over historical fact.

Narrator: Once the mythic past is established, fascist politics works to dismantle the public's ability to discern fact from fiction. It does this by weaponizing language and attacking the very institutions responsible for creating knowledge. One of the most insidious tactics is masking destructive goals with virtuous language. Stanley provides a chilling example from a private conversation with President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. Nixon admitted that "the whole problem is really the blacks," but knew he couldn't say so publicly. The solution? To "devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." That system became the "War on Crime," a campaign waged under the banner of "law and order" that led to policies disproportionately harming Black communities.

The next step is to attack the sources of truth. Universities, with their commitment to independent thought, are a primary target. They are often painted as hotbeds of "Marxist indoctrination" or leftist bias. Stanley details the work of activists like David Horowitz, who has spent decades publishing lists of "dangerous professors" and accusing universities of suppressing conservative speech, a tactic that has since moved into the political mainstream. This creates a narrative where the institutions designed to protect free inquiry are ironically accused of stifling it, eroding public trust.

This assault culminates in the replacement of reality with conspiracy and emotion. Fascist politics thrives not on reasoned debate, but on fear, resentment, and spectacle. Stanley explains that conspiracy theories, like the "birther" myth against President Obama or the "Pizzagate" theory, are not necessarily meant to be believed literally. Their function is to sow chaos and mistrust. They delegitimize their targets—political opponents, the media—by associating them with depraved acts, and they make the media look biased for failing to cover the "story." This creates a world where, as political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote, the masses "do not believe in anything visible" but only in the consistency of the conspiratorial system itself.

Narrator: At the heart of fascist politics is the division of society into a virtuous "us" and a threatening "them." This division is fueled by stoking a sense of victimhood in the dominant group. Stanley highlights research showing that when white Americans are reminded of the demographic projection that they will become a minority by mid-century, their support for conservative policies increases. The feeling of losing status is expertly reframed as a form of oppression. Efforts to achieve equality, like the Civil Rights Act of 1866, are twisted into an attack on the dominant group. President Andrew Johnson vetoed that act by arguing it gave "for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government have ever provided for the white race"—a classic reframing of equality as persecution.

This sense of victimhood is then used to justify a "law and order" regime that formally divides the population. The "us" are portrayed as inherently law-abiding, while the "them"—often racial or ethnic minorities—are cast as innately criminal. This explains the tragic case of the Central Park Five, where five Black and Latino teenagers were coerced into confessing to a brutal crime they didn't commit. Fueled by a sensationalized media and calls for their execution from figures like Donald Trump, they were convicted in the court of public opinion long before their trial. They were seen not as individuals, but as symbols of a lawless "other."

This division is often mapped onto geography. Fascist rhetoric romanticizes the rural heartland as the repository of the nation's true soul—hardworking, pure, and traditional. In contrast, cosmopolitan cities are demonized as "Sodom and Gomorrah," centers of racial mixing, sexual deviance, and liberal corruption. Hitler’s disgust for the "motley collection" of races in Vienna is a historical example. A more recent one is the 2017 French presidential election, where Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant message found its strongest support in rural towns and villages, far from the diverse urban centers.

Narrator: To cement the "us vs. them" divide, fascist politics employs two powerful psychological drivers: sexual anxiety and the work ethic. Fascist ideology is obsessed with patriarchal control and purity. It stokes panic about any perceived threat to the traditional family, especially the sexual threat posed by the "other." Stanley recounts the propaganda campaign of the "Black Horror on the Rhine" after World War I, where German nationalists spread fabricated stories of mass rapes committed by French African soldiers to fuel racial hatred. This same tactic was used to justify lynching in the American South, where the myth of the Black man as a sexual predator was used to terrorize the Black population and maintain white supremacy.

Alongside sexual anxiety, the concept of hard work is weaponized. The dominant group ("us") is defined by its strong work ethic, while the minority group ("them") is stereotyped as lazy, parasitic, and seeking to live off state handouts. This narrative justifies stripping "them" of social support and legal protections. Stanley shows how this logic was used to create the conditions it claimed to describe. In Nazi-occupied Slovakia, Jewish property was expropriated, leaving the population impoverished and dependent. This manufactured poverty was then used as "proof" that they were a burden, justifying their deportation.

This tactic also explains the fierce opposition to labor unions. Unions build solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, uniting workers based on shared economic interests. This directly threatens the "us vs. them" narrative. Stanley traces the origins of "right-to-work" laws in the U.S. to explicit racial motivations. Lobbyist Vance Muse, a key proponent, warned that without these laws, "white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’." By destroying unions, fascist politics breaks down class solidarity, leaving workers divided and more susceptible to racial and ethnic demagoguery.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from How Fascism Works is that fascism is not a storm that arrives without warning. It is a slow, methodical erosion of reality, built piece by piece through a series of identifiable political tactics. It begins by inventing a mythic past, uses propaganda to attack truth, divides the world into a victimized "us" and a threatening "them," and justifies that division through fear and stereotypes.

The book’s most challenging idea is its warning about normalization. Stanley tells the story of his grandmother, Ilse Stanley, who risked her life to rescue Jews from a concentration camp in the 1930s. When she tried to warn her Jewish neighbors in Berlin, they couldn't comprehend the danger. They could still live in their homes and worship in their temples. The horrors were happening, but life felt normal enough. As Ilse Stanley wrote, "He didn’t realize that we were all waiting for the end." The ultimate question the book leaves us with is a deeply uncomfortable one: By tolerating what was once intolerable, what are we normalizing today, and what end might we be waiting for?