Red-Haired Ash Reads

“The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division. It aims to separate a population into an “us” and a “them.”

This was a very informative book about what fascism is, how it works, and examples throughout history. I learned a lot from this book, especially in understanding how the United States got to this point in time with electing a fascist leader. This also explains how Trump has been following in the lines of Hitler and coping many of his steps to take over, which is worrisome and stressful. 

This whole book was just really informative and I highlighted so much throughout it. I now understand why fascist/republicans push their mythical history onto the world and work so hard to divide people. I think this book does a good job explaining everything without overwhelming you, so I highly recommend it. 

A few impactful quotes:

“Fascist politics lures its audiences with the temptation of freedom from democratic norms while masking the fact that the alternative proposed is not a form of freedom that can sustain a stable nation state and can scarcely guarantee liberty.”

“Fascist politicians justify their ideas by breaking down a common sense of history in creating a mythic past to support their vision for the present. They rewrite the population’s shared understanding of reality by twisting the language of ideals through propaganda and promoting anti-intellectualism, attacking universities and educational systems that might challenge their ideas. Eventually, with these techniques, fascist politics creates a state of unreality, in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.”

“What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been. By contrast, the word “fascist” has acquired a feeling of the extreme, like crying wolf. Normalization of fascist ideology, by definition, would make charges of “fascism” seem like an overreaction, even in societies whose norms are transforming along these worrisome lines. Normalization means precisely that encroaching ideologically extreme conditions are not recognized as such because they have come to seem normal. The charge of fascism will always seem extreme; normalization means that the goalposts for the legitimate use of “extreme” terminology continually move.”

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