How Fascism Works summary

Once fascist movements have successfully laid the foundations of an “us versus them” dynamic, they often move on to shifting the way people perceive reality itself. After all, if people are too attached to a shared understanding of truth, it makes it that much harder to promote social division. 

A common place where such efforts begin is within institutions like universities – these are settings that by design are about promoting debate and reason, and exposing students to diverse perspectives. This is why fascists of past and present often denounce universities as hotbeds of “Marxist indoctrination.” Such accusations aim to discredit educational institutions, painting them as run by out-of-touch elites – and therefore fundamentally at odds with the nation’s supposedly traditional values. At the same time, experts and academics who promote ideas that contradict fascist narratives are labelled as corrupt, biased, or worse, part of some shadowy foreign agenda. The goal, of course, is to discredit any other voice of authority that might end up challenging fascist narratives. 

With a state of unreality sufficiently established, a population becomes far more vulnerable to arguments based on emotion over fact. This is also the stage where a burgeoning sense of victimhood is cultivated, but with a cruel twist – the narrative suggests it’s not minorities or other oppressed groups who are the real victims, but instead it’s the dominant “us” who is under siege and facing threats to its status and traditions. 

Adding insult to injury is the fact that calls for equality from minority groups are reframed as discrimination against the majority. A telling example involves President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, who vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act. His argument? That providing the newly freed Black Americans protections after the Civil War amounted to giving them more rights than those of white citizens. And when the dominant group is led to feel that its position and authority is being unfairly eroded, this becomes a powerful source of resentment.

When it comes to powerful stories, the perceived urban-rural divide functions as a compelling way to resonate with large swathes of the population. On one side, you have cities depicted as centers of moral decay and political corruption. And on the other, there’s the idealized image of the “heartland” – a glorious place where purity and tradition abound, untouched and unspoiled by the perversions of liberal decadence. Its inhabitants are made out to be hardworking citizens in self-sufficient communities that have lasted the test of time.

Of course, such a depiction of the heartland, while deeply appealing, is mostly a myth. But it’s proven to be a resilient way to tap into a population’s desire for simplicity as an answer to an age of political chaos and social complexity. In fact, it’s an idea that was embraced by Nazi propagandists on a regular basis. They often cast farmers as guardians of the nation’s racial health and its ability to reproduce itself. In other words, the very essence of the nation’s vitality.

With the careful construction of the urban-rural division – between a hardworking “us” and a supposedly “parasitic,” undeserving “them” – the way is paved towards the chipping away of commitments to collective well-being, like public services or social safety nets. This can be clearly seen in the varying levels of state support given to different communities in crisis. While one group may be deemed “deserving” of aid, another – such as Puerto Rico after a hurricane – is told they simply need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. 

When taken to its most logical extreme, this process ends up with slogans like “Arbeit macht frei,” or “work will set you free.” This, of course, was the insidious inscription over the gates of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. It perversely declared that forced labor could somehow purify people from their inherent laziness or undesirability.