2025 Readings 56

 Last night I finished Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, which I had started the day before; obviously, it was an engaging/enraging read. Snyder is one of two Yale professors (along with Timothy Snyder) who write on fascism and tyranny who decided to transfer to the University of Toronto. When you have professors who specialize in authoritarianism leaving the country, you're clearly not in a good place. I think I mentioned earlier that I'm planning to teach a class on fascism next spring, although I don't suspect that the University of Toronto will take me in once I'm deported. I think anyone who is paying attention understands where we're heading, and it's not simply that I have a unique understanding as a historian (although it helps). Still, Stanley lays out out so clearly, and in such a structured fashion, it would be difficult to read this book and not understand this moment in time. Just looking through the chapter titles alone would allow any educated reader to fill in the blanks: 1) The Mythic Past, 2) Propaganda, 3) Anti-Intellectual, 4) Unreality, 5) Hierarchy, 6) Victimhood, 7) Law and Order, 8) Sexual Anxiety, 9) Sodom and Gomorrah, and 10) Arbeit Macht Frei ("work will make you free," from Auschwitz). The problem is, of course, the paucity of educated readers, or even readers. Hence, the importance of teaching a class on fascism, although I'll do my best to avoid overdoing the bully pulpit. My main goal is to give students the intellectual content to make sense of this age. As Snyder tells us in chapter 3:

Fascist politics seeks to undermine public discourse by attacking and devaluing education, expertise, and language. Intelligent debate is impossible without an education with access to different perspectives, a respect for expertise when one's own knowledge gives out, and a rich enough language to precisely describe reality. When education, expertise, and linguistic distinctions are undermined, there remains only power and tribal identity.

As I discussed in the previous post, all you can do is do your best and fight on.