How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

In addition to the clear link between incarceration and the inability to get jobs, the combination of severe cuts to the social safety net and job programs and punitive crime polices has led to a population of black Americans with stubbornly high unemployment rates. Pointing to this population, politicians employing fascist tactics can speak of a crisis of laziness supposedly underlying multigenerational poverty, rather than to its real causes. The “laziness” can then supposedly be “cured” by forcing this population into “hard work” by slashing the safety net further. Given that the evidence suggests whites are not hiring black men, especially formerly incarcerated ones, this would then simply further entrench such patterns of unemployment—thereby perpetuating a flawed stereotype that is useful in fascist politics.