‘The desire to not have a stain on your soul…’
More brilliant and motivating words from Professor Jason Stanley, from an interview with Perry Bacon Jr. of The New Republic‘s Right Now podcast
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I have been feasting on the words of Jason Stanley for years, so whenever a new interview drops, I try to listen immediately.
There are people in this fight who have the words and expertise to cut through the noise and when I find them, I bring them in front of RadPod and Bette as quickly as I can.
With truth constantly under siege, the ability to clearly assess the myriad battlefields in a clickbait fascism world is ever vital.
In this Substack live interview with Perry Bacon Jr. from The New Republic’s Right Now podcast, Stanley explains how fascism is working in America under Trump, but he also offers words of motivation — inspired by Minneapolis.
Although I encourage you to watch the entire interview, with Bacon a solid and very smart host, I isolated some key quotes from Stanley, who wrote How Fascism Works and is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto and Chair of the American studies program, where he’s building a center to defend US democracy.
I know many Bette members prefer the printed word over video — I am one of them — so I hope you find these quotes as helpful and useful as I did. You can support Jason’s substack here. And you can support Perry Bacon Jr. here.
‘The desire to not have a stain on your soul…’
On Fascist Imperialism
Jason Stanley: So when those of us a decade ago saying started saying Trumpism-MAGA is a fascist social and political movement, one that builds on the racial fascism that had so long characterized the United States, people said, ‘Well, if it’s fascism, where’s the imperialism? It can’t be fascism unless it’s expansionist imperialism.’ So that was the main objection to the fascism thesis. There are a couple other objections, but that was the main one — that fascists always try to expand. They always do wars of aggression. So this is really taken that objection, from a scholarly perspective, quite off the table. And I just want to note how many mainstream pundits claimed that, without any harm to their reputation, that Trump was an anti-war president, that he was going to end foreign wars…
I’ve always been saying that rhetoric was fake… It’s really remarkable to see how much the same people can say one thing on Tuesday and then Thursday, act like they never said it.
So now what we’re seeing is exactly what we would expect from fascism, which is wars of aggression that ignore any kind of international order.
On Netanyahu
JS: Israel is an ethno-state waging imperialist war. I think they want to create failed states around them and expand Israel on behalf of particular identity. It happens to be my own identity, to Jewish people, but I would be inconsistent if I didn’t apply my ethics and politics here to — and I’m not Israeli, I’m American — so it’s not my country. I can call it what it is — it’s practicing apartheid. It’s a fascist ethno-state.
Netanyahu has been in power for almost as long as Putin. When I was in Ukraine, a Ukrainian public figure said to me, ‘You Westerners think that our autocrats, Eastern European autocrats, admire Putin the most. They don’t. They admire Netanyahu the most because Netanyahu has somehow tricked the world into thinking that Israel is a democracy, and he’s the Democratic leader.’
White Supremacy as Policy
JS: White supremacy is now the official state policy of the United States. It’s the government policy… so ethnic cleansing in the United States…
Fascism Helps Predict Future
JS: Fascism helps you predict the future… Fascism is like hypothesis that then it gets tested, it allows you to make predictions — like there are going to be wars of aggression. It allows you to make predictions, like, they are, in fact, going to hunt down immigrants and put them in concentration camps and try to make the United States clean out non-whites from positions of power.
Fascism allowed you to predict the January 6 coup. Fascism will tell you that they’re going to try to mess with the elections. Fascism will tell you that ICE is going to be a military beholden to Trump. It’s going to tell you that the concentration camps that they’re building for immigrants will get ever more dangerous, and it’s going to tell you that at some point they’ll start stripping citizens rights for political disobedience… It will also help you see that it’s going to be incompetent, because fascism prizes loyalty over competence. So Kash Patel… he’s fanatically loyal. So that’s our in, there’s going to be a lot of incompetence.
Imposing Will on This Hemisphere
JS: I’m worried that it’s going to accelerate, because I think Trump is — we have to remember the American people elected him twice — I’m not in for this idea of letting Americans off the hook, but I think Trump is such a capricious, unpredictable individual… he wants to impose American will on this hemisphere… for some strange reason, he has this partnership with Netanyahu. I think that’s his fascist partner more than Putin.
What I worry about is that he’s emboldened — he’s sort of getting addicted to smashing, which is what you would expect from a fascist mentality. So who knows what’s going to happen to Greenland? Like, who knows what’s next? Because now the US military is his toy, his play thing, like ICE is his play thing inside the United States.
What Can Pro-Democracy People Do?
JS: I think you saw it in Minneapolis. The first thing is stop the infighting… That’s got to stop you. You’ve got to get a much broader group of people and get everyone to feel included in trying to stand up for America, for America’s core values, the values of the Constitution, because they’re trying to change them to blood and soil.
So Minneapolis showed us we had a broad spectrum of activists. We have to avoid special interest takeover. We can’t have one group of people saying, ‘Oh, we’re running the anti-fascist show. It’s the Gaza protesters.’ It has to be a broad spectrum of Americans who say, ‘This is not us.’
America’s reputation is beyond in the mud right now, it’s not cute to be American at all. Like it’s not cute to be Russian. Trump is destroying America’s reputation, making people really dislike Americans. So that kind of pride has to be harnessed, and I view Minneapolis as the start.
ICE learned from Minneapolis. They learned how brutal they can be. They’re going to come back harder next time, as the protesters are learning. I think everybody needs to have basements with apartments where they can hide immigrants. You have to entertain those strategies — underground railroad style. That’s what we’re facing into. So there has to be covert communication between groups, and no violence. Can’t be any violence, because ICE has the budget of a military. So again, the protesters in Minneapolis showed the way…
Everything Together
JS: I think we have to do everything together. What we can’t do is this splitting off, throwing people under the bus, throwing trans Americans under the bus, throwing abortion rights under the bus, that is just not helpful…
Our incarceration rate is eight times the level of Canada’s. Canada’s incarceration rate is 1/3 the incarceration rate of the US state with the lowest incarceration rate. So it is off the goddamn charts. So we’re building a massive system of concentration camps for mostly non-white immigrants, using that as a model, except that it’ll be more brutal, because there’s going to be no rule of law inside…
So we need a broad-based coalition. We cannot be attacking people anymore for disagreeing with you an inch.
On Leaving the US
JS: Well, I had a great opportunity — I’m building a center to defend US democracy. So what I’m doing here is about trying to help my country. I can do it better here than I could there.
In the meantime, I hope not to be paying much tax to the US war machine… there’s an element of complicity for me… I love America. I love my country, but I don’t want to be involved and associated with this. But everything I’m doing here is for the United States. I’m the Chair in American Studies at the University of Toronto, and I’m building this center to fight for US democracy. I’ve choosen to go somewhere where I think I can be more effective…
The Ick Factor
JS: Everyone has to make an individual choice about all those things. There were these personal factors, the kind of ‘ick factor’ about being associated with the United States right now… I don’t have to be to feel like I’m complicit in that system, but I’m doing what I’m doing for the United States… I’m devoting all my effort to that.
If You Stay
JS: If you stay in the United States, you have an immense responsibility… anyone who stays in the United States has to be deeply involved in their local organizations, protecting immigrants and trans Americans, protecting election integrity. Everyone has to be involved. If you’re not involved, your grandchildren will be asking, ‘What did you do at that time?’
Minneapolis is the beginning. I think ICE is going to crack down harder. But I also think that many Americans don’t want to see their neighbors taken away. They don’t want to see their kids witness that. It’s very traumatic to see your kids witness that. Many Americans don’t want this stain. That’s a good way to think about it if you aren’t doing something: the desire to not have a stain on your soul, I think should be motivating.
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