How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

It is a disturbing sign of the power of fascist tactics that the only Swedish political party that characteristically employs them, the Sweden Democrats, has as of this writing become the most popular Swedish political party.

When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.

In June 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez created a furor by describing these private detention camps as “concentration camps.” But Ocasio-Cortez’s description is accurate.

We increasingly see connections between powerful business interests and the institutions of state terror. Wall Street gives billions in loans to facilitate the profits of companies who run detention centers; large companies make profits by selling their wares to them, and former high-ranking administration officials serve on their boards. On the local level, county jails bolster their budgets by housing those detained by ICE’s massively broadened mandate.

The goal of ICE is not to make communities safer. ICE’s mission is to reinforce a distinction between “us” and “them.”

In German history, the term “Gleichschaltung” connotes the process by which the institutions of the German government gradually became “Nazified,” moving from liberal democratic organizing principles to National Socialist ones, principally fealty to the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.

Fear and anger get people to the polls, but they also keep people online and glued to the media.

fascist ideology conflicts in principle with expertise, science, and truth.