How does fascism oppose liberalism

In the past, fascist politics would focus on the dominant cultural group. This is why fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss. The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power.

Almost every manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative. Why is the destruction of truth, as a shared ideal, so critical to the fascist project?

The two ideals of liberal democracy are liberty and equality. Nobody thinks of the citizens of North Korea as free, because their actions are controlled by lies. Truth is required to act freely. So freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything. Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality.

This is partly why I think of fascism as a kind of anti-politics. I remember reading a quote from Joseph Goebbels , who was the chief propagandist for the Nazis, and he said that what he was doing was more like art than politics. The thing is, people willingly adopt the mythical past.

This is probably a good time to pivot to the glittering elephant in the room: Donald Trump. Is he a fascist? I make the case in my book that he practices fascist politics. But the blame there is as much on the Republican Party as it is on Trump, because none of this would matter if they were willing to check Trump. Can you elaborate on that? He explicitly praised the Immigration Act , which severely limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter the US, as a useful model.

The s and the s was a very fascist time in the United States. And yet at the same time there are countervailing forces that push us in the opposite direction, and so America exists in this perpetual tension between liberal democracy and reactionary fascism.

We have an exceptional devotion to liberty and equality, as embodied in our struggle for civil rights and our fight against fascism in World War II. But, as you said, the fascist threat is always lurking, and we just have to be aware of it.

What does your book have to say about the way forward? If we are indeed threatened by fascist movements, both here and abroad, what can citizens and governments do about it? Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not Jewish. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. We learned first from that poem who the targets are. Simple acts of courage early on will save you impossible acts of courage later. Our weapons are our high ideals of liberty and equality, and we have to fight to keep those American ideals.

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