Week 1: Understanding the Threat

This Week’s Readings

• How Fascism Works - Introduction + Chapter 1-3

• How to Stop Fascism - Introduction + Chapter 1

Hello, Welcome to Week 1 of July’s Resistance Book Club! 

Reading these books has been like reliving my childhood. 2025 has been eye-opening. I grew up in the far-right media echo chamber. After leaving the house at 18, I never turned on Fox News again, and until this year, I never realized it was propaganda. However, I believe Republicans have been instilling fascist ideology for quite some time, as many of the points mentioned in this week’s readings are the exact talking points I grew up with and are still perpetuated by my parents.  

Fascist politics dehumanize groups of people. I grew up being trained to dehumanize Democrats, immigrants, LGBTQ, not explicitly people of color, but I’ve certainly heard my parents make racist remarks. This dehumanization is currently leading to terrible acts of violence towards our immigrant community. They’re being kidnapped off the streets by masked Gestapo. 

The United States isn’t new to fascist politics. Many marginalized communities would probably say we’ve always had some sort of fascist state here all along, but with Donald Trump in office, this fascist state is out in the open for all to see. 

There are specific techniques used in fascist politics, and it seems the Republican Party is using these techniques more and more. These tactics are used to achieve power. This week, we studied the fascist strategies of the mythic past, propaganda, and anti-intellectualism.

What is Fascism?

Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, has “chosen the label ‘fascism’ for ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf.”

According to Paul Mason in How to Stop Fascism, fascism “is a recurrent symptom of system-failure under capitalism. Fascism is the fear of freedom, triggered by a glimpse of freedom. It is the violent mobilization of people who do not want to be free, around the project of destroying freedom.”

Fascism is focused on racism, misogyny, and violence. Fascism loves violent action. This violence is being extended onto every who doesn’t look, act, or think like them. This includes feminists, people of color, scientists, refugees, and LGBTQ. They want Christian Nationalism, which is rooted in white supremacy. They believe they are the chosen nation. 

Trump’s second presidency is going to rely on ordinary people to stand up to the fascists because there are no guardrails this time. The fascist ideology leading us out of a democracy right now is Christian Nationalism, which we will be exploring further in next month’s book club. 

The Mythic Past

Fascists love creating emotional rhetoric around the mythic past, a past that doesn’t exist because it leaves out the horrific past of European descendants and slavery. The mythic past that fascists want is rooted in patriarchal standards, traditional gender roles, and white supremacy. The fascist regimes try to hide the past by passing legislation, like book bans.  Their goal is to replace facts with power. We’ve seen this collectively in the United States through a whitewashed American history. The mythic past, according to our current regime, is White Christian Nationalism, essentially white domination over people of color and all other religions that are not Christianity, swinging us into a theocracy.

Propaganda

Fascist politicians use propaganda to push problematic policies under the guise of popular ideals, such as “draining the swamp”. They claim the system is corrupt while being corrupt themselves. Senator Chris Murphy delivered an excellent presentation on Trump’s corrupt actions during the first few weeks of his presidency. My parents are fascists, and I cannot understand for the life of me how they can turn themselves into a pretzel to justify what Trump is doing. According to Jason Stanley, “fascist politicians know that their supporters will turn a blind eye to their own, true corruption since in their own case it is just a matter of members of the chosen nation taking what is rightfully theirs.” Democracy allows freedom of speech, which sadly allows for a demagogue to exploit the fears of their prey and replace democracy with tyranny. 

Far-right propaganda also mobilizes fascists to commit violent acts. We recently saw this in the murder of Minnesota Senator Melissa Hortman. We also see this in the fascist militia, ICE, snatching up immigrants who are here legally and are trying to obtain citizenship legally, along with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

Anti-Intellectualism 

Fascists attack education and expertise. They view the only valid viewpoint as theirs, any view other than theirs is attacked and labeled as “woke”, “fake news”, “Marxist”, or “indoctrination”. Fascists want to replace teaching facts with myths to bring this mythic past into reality and rewrite history. Oklahoma passed legislation for public schools to teach about “discrepancies” in the 2020 election, which are false. 

What are the Far-Right Extremists Trying to Achieve? 

“All over the world, the main driver of far-right extremism is the fear that people who are not supposed to be free might achieve freedom, and that in the process they might redefine what freedom means.”

The 1% runs the far-right media echo chamber telling people what to believe and think, so of course, they will invest massive amounts of money into this echo chamber and Fox “News”. The 1% wants to own us, the working class. They suck people in through fear. I’ve seen this fear actively presented through my family members when there is nothing to fear other than Donald Trump trying to weaponize the government. White people are afraid of becoming the minority, turning into evil colonizers, and participating in acts of violence against marginalized communities.

This isn’t new to the Republican party. Last month, we studied the book Democrats 101. Through fear tactics, “Fox News”, racism, and bigotry, the Republican party was formed, attracting confederate slave owners from the south.