How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

In November 2016, Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general, praised then president-elect Donald Trump’s 1989 comments about the Central Park Five as demonstrating his commitment to “law and order.”

Because he was a criminal with a record. He had paid two fines in court: one for speeding and one for some other traffic fine. They said they finally wanted to do what the court had missed doing all these years: to get rid of all Jews with criminal records. A traffic fine—a criminal record!

Because of what she witnessed in the camp, she was aware, as many of her fellow Jews were not, of the full horror of what was occurring, which was, as with refugee and immigrant detention centers in the United States right now, kept hidden from the general population.

In February 2016, the far-right SVP (the Schweizerische Volkspartei) introduced a referendum in Switzerland to expel “immigrants,” including even second- or third-generation Swiss-born residents found guilty of as little as a few parking violations.

Discussion that uses terms like “criminal” to encompass both those who commit multiple homicides for pleasure and those who commit traffic violations, or “riot” to describe a political protest, changes attitudes and shapes policy.

But the more important question is why harshly punitive measures are considered an appropriate response to adverse social conditions among black Americans. When a community has a particularly high crime rate, there is clearly a social problem requiring empathy and understanding, and an urgent need for policies that address underlying structural causes. The more important question is then: What is the source of widespread lack of empathy for this group?

Transgender individuals and homosexuals are used to heighten anxiety and panic about the threat to traditional male gender roles.

In a male-centered gender hierarchy, where it is assumed that men are better than women and that masculinity is superior to femininity, there is no greater perceived threat than the existence of trans women, who despite being male and inheriting male privilege “choose” to be female instead.

“call for resistance to all tendencies in the theater which are damaging to the people, for the theater in nearly all big cities today has become the scene of perverted instincts. We fight against a constantly spreading corruption of our concepts of justice, a corruption which gives the big swindlers practically a free hand in exploiting the people.”3

In fascist ideology, in times of crisis and need, the state reserves support for members of the chosen nation, for “us” and not “them.”

There is widespread ignorance of the fact that the majority of those who benefit from welfare programs are white.

But what is most terrifying about these rhetorical divides is that it is typical of fascist movements to attempt to transform myths about “them” into reality through social policy.

Arendt’s point is that fascist unreality is a promissory note on the way to a future reality that transforms into fact at least some basis of what was once stereotyped myth.

One roadblock to the kind of us/them divisions described above is unity and empathy along class lines, exemplified in labor unions. In functioning unions, white working-class citizens identify with black working-class citizens rather than resent them. Fascist politicians understand the effectiveness of this solidarity to resisting divisive policies and therefore seek to dismantle unions. Despite its condemnation of “elites,” fascist politics seeks to minimize the importance of class struggle.

As the Harvard political scientist Archon Fung points out, “many societies that have low levels of inequality also have high participation in labor unions.”12

Fascist movements share its ideals of hard work, private enterprise, and self-sufficiency. To have a life worthy of value, for the social Darwinist, is to have risen above others by struggle and merit, to have survived a fierce competition for resources. Those who do not compete successfully do not deserve the goods and resources of society. In an ideology that measures worth by productivity, propaganda that represents members of an out-group as lazy is a way to justify placing them lower on a hierarchy of worth.

This aspect of fascist ideology explains the National Socialist attitude toward the disabled, described as lebensunwertes Leben—life unworthy of life.

But when critiquing the flaws of any institution, it is important to ask what would be lost in their absence.