How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

Hitler was not wrong that there are genuine tensions in a society that has a democratic political system and an economy based on private enterprises that function under principles of hierarchy. Many of us live in such societies, and hence live with the tensions bred in the conflict between democratic norms and economic ones. Out of such struggle, the labor movement has won the weekend, the eight-hour day, and many other victories, none of them trivial, but none ultimately democratically transformative. Hitler was correct that in a democratic society, there are tensions between the varied practices and structures of families, workplaces, government bodies, and civil society. Fascism promises to solve this by eliminating such differences. Instead, in fascist ideology, all institutions, from the family to the business to the state, would run according to the Führer Principle. The father, in fascist ideology, is the leader of the family; the CEO is the leader of the business; the authoritarian leader is the father, or the CEO, of the state. When voters in a democratic society yearn for a CEO as president, they are responding to their own implicit fascist impulses.