Devil’s Advocate: Why worry about fascism? with Jason Stanley

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Fascism is a very particular ideological structure. The first pillar is the Mythic Past. Then there's Propaganda. Anti-intellectualism. Unreality. Hierarchy. Victimhood. Law and order. Sexual anxiety. Sodom and Gomorrah. And then finally, Arbeit macht frei- 'work shall make you free.'

Each of these elements taken in and of itself, is not fascist. You can think about these individual elements in isolation. When it comes to these fascist tactics, people often ask, "Why do you need to worry about it. There's lots of tactics people use to win power. Why worry about these in particular?"

Jason Stanley’s response is to say that fascist politics wears down democracy. Even if it doesn't result in a fascist regime, it creates the conditions for itself. Fascist politics, it's a politics of fear. So even if we don't get a fascist regime in the end, we destroy the basis of democracy.

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About Jason Stanley:

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context; Knowledge and Practical Interests, which won the American Philosophical Association book prize; and How Propaganda Works, which won the PROSE Award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. He writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian, Project Syndicate and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other publications.

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