“A vital go through for a country under Trump.”­-The Guardian

“By placing Trump in transnational and transhistorical perspective, Stanley sees patterns that others miss . . Twenty weeks into Trump’s presidency, the data is normally mounting that he’s correct.”-The NY Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

Fascist politics are running rampant in America today-and spreading all over the world. A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise about how exactly Fascism Functions: The Politics folks and Them and deep background.

As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep knowledge of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Countries don’t need to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. Actually, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here around the buildings that unite them, laying out and examining the ten pillars of fascist politics-the vocabulary and beliefs that split people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits collectively reflections on history, school of thought, sociology, and critical race theory with tales from modern Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes very clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of the methods, which include exploiting a mythic edition of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; regulation and order politics predicated on the assumption that associates of minority organizations are bad guys; and fierce episodes on labor groups and welfare. These systems all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society susceptible to the appeals of authoritarian command.

By uncovering troubling patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals the fact that stuff of politics-charged by rhetoric and myth-can swiftly become plan and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we withstand its most dangerous effects and return to democratic ideals.

“With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to your current national issue of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”-William Jelani Cobb, author of The Chemical of Hope