How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

History in a liberal democracy must be faithful to the norm of truth, yielding an accurate vision of the past, rather than a history provided for political reasons. Fascist politics, by contrast, characteristically contains within it a demand to mythologize the past, creating a version of national heritage that is a weapon for political gain.

whites in the South, with the collusion of Northern elites, brought an end to the Reconstruction era because of the widespread fear among the wealthy classes that newly enfranchised black citizens would join with poor whites in developing a powerful labor movement to challenge the interests of capital. Du Bois shows how the Reconstruction era was a time of just governance, when black legislators not only did not govern from their own self-interest but bent over backward to accommodate the fears of their white fellow citizens. At the time, Black Reconstruction was largely ignored by white historians; but by the 1960s, the history Du Bois there recounts became widely recognized as fact.