Sean Illing: What Is Fascism? Yale Philosopher Jason Stanley Explains How It Works: "This is probably a good time to pivot to the glittering elephant in the room: Donald Trump. Is he a fascist?" Jason Stanley: "I make the case in my book that he practices fascist politics. Now, that doesn’t mean his government is a fascist government. For one thing, I think it’s very difficult to say what a fascist government is...
...For another thing, I think the current movement of leaders who use these techniques (Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, to name a few) all seek to keep the trappings of democratic institutions, but their goal is to reorient them around their own cult of personality.... Trump is... very clearly using fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions, and that’s very troubling. But the blame there is as much on the Republican Party as it is on Trump, because none of this would matter if they were willing to check Trump. So far, they’ve chosen loyalty to Trump over loyalty to rule of law....
We should heed the warning of the poem on the side of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which says, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not Jewish. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.” At a certain point it’s too late. We learned first from that poem who the targets are. The targets are leftists, minorities, labor unions, and anyone or any institution that isn’t glorified in the fascist narrative. And even if you’re not in any of those groups, you have to protect those who are, and you have to protect them from the very beginning. Simple acts of courage early on will save you impossible acts of courage later.
To be clear... We’re not on the brink of some fascist takeover..... We’re fortunate enough to have liberty and equality baked into our founding ideals. We have a long history of people appealing to those ideals and saying, “We might disagree on a number of things but we agree that truth, liberty, equality are things we stand up for.” So whatever happens, we have to continually double down on those ideals—that’s what will save us....
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