How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

In “Why Now? It’s the Empire, Stupid,” a June 2016 article in The Nation, the NYU historian Greg Grandin argues that Donald Trump’s politics is effective in the context of the 2016 campaign because it comes at a time of decline for the American empire. We are witnessing the passing of the era after the end of the Cold War in which the United States reigned supreme in the world as the only remaining superpower. In the article, he argues that an empire gives rise among its citizens to a comforting myth of superiority, thereby concealing the various social and structural problems that otherwise would lead to political difficulties. With its demise, the citizens of a once powerful empire must confront the fact that their exceptionalism was a myth.