"Perhaps the way that fascism comes about is first, by us failing to provide equitable economic conditions, and by us failing to fight corruption, and by us failing to safeguard and protect democratic institutions."

Fascism Doesn’t Work Like That: A Review of Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works

By Peter Ludlow · On December 20, 2018

"But there was a crucial point that Oliver, like Stanley, failed to emphasize. The appeal of despotism (of any valence) typically arises in times of crisis – typically a financial crisis or a governmental corruption crisis – when people come to realize that traditional institutions have failed them. People become desperate, and they seek answers outside of democratic institutions.

This naturally raises a question: What leads to this particular moment of global desperation? Stanley seems to think the crisis is manufactured by fascism itself (“corruption” is nothing but a slogan, it seems) rather than decades of neoliberal economics and foreign policy – policy driven not just by conservatives but by Democrats like Hillary Clinton in her role as Secretary of State. When we witness a rapacious foreign policy that bankrupts and destabilizes nations around the world, we set off a chain reaction of debt, and poverty, and migration, and more debt and more despair, and soon the problem is not contained in the subjects of the neoliberal empire, but within the empire’s homeland itself. And when corruption is institutionalized (for example in the aftermath of the Citizens United US Supreme Court decision), people rightly turn on those corrupt institutions.

Perhaps the way that fascism comes about is first, by us failing to provide equitable economic conditions, and by us failing to fight corruption, and by us failing to safeguard and protect democratic institutions.

This isn’t the sort of thing one is supposed to say in the age of neoliberal identity politics. Money is no longer considered the root of all evil. The new view is that the economic order is fine, and the real problem is white privilege or patriarchy, or cisgender privilege. No doubt those are problems, but they are wrong in and of themselves, and not because they lead to fascism. They should be addressed because they are wrong. However, it is not enough to focus on those ills while ignoring economic inequity, corporate imperialism, and widespread institutional corruption. Those are the problems that open the doors to fascism and provide opportunities for despots to play on our fears and hidden prejudices. For fundamentally, that is how fascism works."