Review: "How Fascism Works" by Jason Stanley

Warning, spoiler alert. Read this book only if you dare.  I mean this in all sincerity.  If you are a fan of history, interpretive history and/or governmental paradigms you may find this book, not only interesting, but shockingly timely.

Author Stanley published this book in September 2018 in the middle of the first Trump Administration.  Although primarily a tome on the pillars of fascism, there are many intricate associations with governments from the mid 20th century until today.  Reading the book now, May 2025, almost six years since publication, it’s like looking into an evil mirror and seeing…well, everything.

Among Stanley’s pillars of fascism include: propaganda, anti-intellectualism, hierarchy, law and order, victimhood, and sexuality, among others.  Each individual topic could be a book in itself and I still wish for even greater elaboration.  Although the themes of fascism are generally well known to most of us (I try to imagine the small percentage of human beings who do not recognize the name “Hitler”.), this book ties them together in a complicated, interlocking puzzle.

Here’s my take and my concern.  If Donald Trump and his followers read this book (and honestly, I believe some must have) they have taken the most basic ingredients, the actual nuts and bolts of fascism and declared, “Oh my God, here’s our playbook!  Let’s do this!  Let’s go all in!  We’ll just re-brand.  Call it patriotism, love of country, No!, God and country!”

This is a difficult, unrelenting read.  If I read this 30, or 20, or even just 10 years ago I might have a completely different mindset.  I would be thinking: “Instructive, eye opening, informative, historical.”  Today I’m thinking: “Instructive, shocking, informative, current.”  There are no safe havens from a government hell-bent on fascism.  But we have not learned that lesson.

Reader beware.

Note: Jason Stanley is a former Yale professor focusing on philosophy of language.  As of March 2025 he has decided to leave his post and has accepted a professorship at the University of Toronto because of what he perceives to be “America’s descent in a fascist dictatorship.”