We’ve Never Had the Democracy We Think We’re Losing
Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them deserves credit for doing what too few academics are willing to do in this moment: speak plainly. He connects the familiar tactics of fascism—mythologized national identity, obsession with purity, the vilification of truth—to contemporary political reality without hedging behind the comfort of “both sides” framing. For that alone, the book is worth your time.
Stanley writes not as a distant observer but as someone who recognizes that liberal democracy is not self-sustaining—and that fascism is not a foreign pathology, but a domestic threat that thrives on our complacency. He draws on history, propaganda theory, and contemporary examples to show how authoritarianism gains traction in societies that think themselves immune to it. In that, his work echoes the urgent calls of public leaders like Sherrilyn Ifill, who have long warned that democracy depends on active, sustained resistance—not just against fascists, but against the systems that allow them to rise.
But How Fascism Works is not a history book, and that shows. The analytical frame is compelling, but the historical detail is often thin, generalized, or too Eurocentric. There’s a missed opportunity to reckon with American fascist tendencies not as hypothetical threats, but as living realities—deeply rooted in our own racial caste system, white nationalism, and the myth of American innocence. Fascism isn’t just arriving. It’s been here—in the Jim Crow South, in the Red Scare, in COINTELPRO, and in the January 6 insurrection. That context matters.
If Stanley's work has a flaw, it’s that it still sometimes imagines a version of America that is now being “led astray,” rather than one that has never fully reconciled with its foundational contradictions. As Sherrilyn Ifill reminds us, democracy is not something we had and are now losing—it’s something we’ve never fully built. Stanley gestures at this, but doesn’t always sit with it.
Still, this book is vital. It’s accessible. It’s direct. And it gives readers the vocabulary to call fascism what it is—without apology or euphemism. That makes it a valuable tool, especially for educators and activists who are tired of pretending that the stakes aren’t existential.
But don’t stop with Stanley. Read Black scholars. Read resistance historians. Read people who have been living under the boot of state power for generations. How Fascism Works is a good start—but understanding fascism requires more than theory. It requires listening to those who’ve been fighting it all along.
