How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

In fascism, the state is an enemy; it is to be replaced by the nation, which consists of self-sufficient individuals who collectively choose to sacrifice for a common goal of ethnic or religious glorification. In a tension that we will explore in the next chapter, fascist ideology involves something at least superficially akin to the libertarian ideal of self-sufficiency and freedom from “the state.”

To boost the nation, fascist movements are obsessed with reversing declining birthrates; large families raised by dedicated homemakers are the goal.14 In fascist politics, cities are denounced as sites of declining birthrates, which are blamed on the supposed weakening effect of cosmopolitanism on a population, making men and women less capable of fulfilling traditional gender roles (as soldiers and mothers, for example).

In the National Socialist education system, “Jews are not seen in the occupations of factory worker, bricklayer, blacksmith, locksmith, miner, farmer, plasterer. In other words, the Jew avoided work with his hands and avoided heavy labor while ‘living off the sweat of his neighbors. He is a parasite, like the mistletoe on a tree.’ ”17 In fascist politics, the laziness of minorities in cities is cured only by forcing them into hard labor. Hard labor, in Nazi ideology, had a remarkable power: It could purify an inherently lazy race.

In fascist ideology, in times of crisis and need, the state reserves support for members of the chosen nation, for “us” and not “them.” The justification is invariably because “they” are lazy, lack a work ethic, and cannot be trusted with state funds and because “they” are criminal and seek only to live off state largesse. In fascist politics, “they” can be cured of laziness and thievery by hard labor. This is why the gates of Auschwitz had emblazoned on them the slogan ARBEIT MACHT FREI—work shall make you free.

Of course, variables such as racism, the belief that the poor are lazy, and endorsement of certain forms of individualism are not independent of one another. Many white Americans hold false beliefs about who is poor. There is widespread ignorance of the fact that the majority of those who benefit from welfare programs are white. Furthermore, as in the previous chapter, the valorization of self-sufficiency is at the core of fascist ideology, inextricably intermingled with hostility toward certain hated minority groups. We might distinguish between respective beliefs in the laziness of black people and of poor people and in the value of self-sufficiency. But in those susceptible to fascist ideology, they often come together.

The “hard work” versus “laziness” dichotomy is, like “law-abiding” versus “criminal,” at the heart of the fascist division between “us” and “them.” But what is most terrifying about these rhetorical divides is that it is typical of fascist movements to attempt to transform myths about “them” into reality through social policy. We see this regularly with movements of refugees.

Fascist movements share with social Darwinism the idea that life is a competition for power, according to which the division of society’s resources should be left up to pure free market competition. Fascist movements share its ideals of hard work, private enterprise, and self-sufficiency. To have a life worthy of value, for the social Darwinist, is to have risen above others by struggle and merit, to have survived a fierce competition for resources. Those who do not compete successfully do not deserve the goods and resources of society. In an ideology that measures worth by productivity, propaganda that represents members of an out-group as lazy is a way to justify placing them lower on a hierarchy of worth. This aspect of fascist ideology explains the National Socialist attitude toward the disabled, described as lebensunwertes Leben—life unworthy of life. Disabled citizens were regarded as lacking in value, because value in National Socialist ideology arose from the value of one’s contributions to society through work. In Nazi ideology, those who depended on the state for their survival lacked value of any kind. Fascist governments have exhibited some of humanity’s worst cruelty toward disabled populations. Nazi Germany’s 1933 Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases mandated the sterilization of disabled citizens; this was subsequently followed by the secret T4 program, which carried out gassings of disabled German citizens, and eventually, in 1939, phy...

We often think of fascism as anti-individualistic, deriving its power from uniform masses. Yet Hitler repeatedly extolled both the value of the individual and the ideal of meritocracy. It is the social Darwinist conception of individual worth that gives structure to fascist hierarchy and explains the charge of laziness. Groups are ordered, in fascism, by their capacity to achieve, to rise above others, in labor and war. Hitler decries liberal democracy because it embodies a contrary value system, one that grants worth independently of victory in a natural, meritocratic struggle. Hitler denounces democracy as incompatible with individuality, since it does not allow individual citizens to rise above others in competitive struggle. The fascist vision of individual freedom is similar to the libertarian notion of individual rights—the right to compete but not necessarily to succeed or even survive.

The doctrine of economic libertarianism understands freedom in a very specific way—freedom is defined by unconstrained free markets. It consists of having access to a “level playing field,” in the form of markets that are not constrained in any way by regulations. If one ends up being weaker in the struggle, one’s losses are one’s own responsibility. Economic libertarianism connects both freedom and virtue with wealth. According to these principles, one “earns” one’s freedom by accruing wealth in struggle. Those who do not “earn” their freedoms in this way do not deserve it. Though fascism involves a commitment to group hierarchies of worth that is flatly incompatible with true economic libertarianism, which does not generalize beyond the individual, both philosophies share a common principle by which value is measured. Economic libertarianism is, after all, the Manhattan dinner party face of social Darwinism.

In the 2012 American presidential election, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan repeatedly spoke of American society being divided into “makers” and “takers.” Ryan argued that it was imperative to advance policies that increase the number of “makers” in society and decrease the number of “takers.” At the time, Ryan repeatedly raised the concern that the United States was becoming a society with a majority of “takers” and a minority of “makers,” a society in which “takers” are those “who get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes.” According to this ideology, the “makers” in society, by virtue of their wealth, have more value than the “takers.” More recently, Ryan has abandoned the vocabulary of “makers” versus “takers,” but he has retained the same policies that clearly favor those with more wealth at the expense of those with less wealth. Those Americans inclined to place, for example, different skin colors on “makers” and “takers,” in so doing, move beyond libertarianism into fascism.

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.