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JASON STANLEY: Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country's media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces. And that's why you need a really macho, powerful, violent response.

The fascist leader says he will solve the problem. Fascism is right-wing by nature. It's based on ultra-nationalism. However, you can have ultra-nationalist movements that are ultra-nationalist movements of minority groups. There is left-wing authoritarianism. There are bad things on the left. Stalin killed many, many people. Mao killed many, many people. These are terrible figures. But not all terrible things are fascist. Fascism is a very particular ideological structure. When thinking about fascism, you can't think about these individual elements in isolation. They come as a bundle.

My name is Jason Stanley. I'm the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of five books, most recently, "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them."

We forget that many fascist regimes started off as democratic political parties. We forget that Hitler, the Nazi Party, ran in an election. Fascist parties start as fascist social and political movements before they come to power. So it's important to see that these tactics occur even in societies that do not have a fascist regime. All nationalism involves a mythic past. You can say, "Look, we're Polish people," people who spoke Polish and were sheep herders and another bunch of Polish people who were fishermen, and you can talk about how things were wonderful when we were all Polish together. That's a fine mythic past, but then there's the fascist mythic past. In the past, we were great. Wherein did our greatness consist? In our military. And in the past, the dominant racial group ruled over others. And then the fascist leader says, "That has been taken from you by the leftists and communists. They wanna weaken our military. They wanna weaken our greatness."

Propaganda is ubiquitous, and everyone uses propaganda. In political propaganda, your main message is something other than the the information you're conveying. Fascist propaganda is a very particular structure. It's based around a friend/enemy distinction. The political opponent, they are a merciless threat to your very existence and your traditions. They are the other. When they are in charge, it subverts the nation. So the structure of fascist propaganda is based on the idea that the other are fundamentally opposed to the nation.

As Hitler says in "Mein Kampf," "Science is only useful insofar as it strengthens the nation." Fascism is a cult of the leader. It involves the leader setting the rules about what's true and false. So any kind of expertise, reality, all of that is a challenge to the authority of the leader. If science would help him, then he can say, "Okay, I'll use it." Institutions that teach multiple perspectives on history in all its complexity are always a threat to the fascist leader. The center of democracy is truth. You're not free if you've been lied to. Nobody thinks the people of North Korea are free. The people of North Korea will vote for Dear Leader every time because they've been lied to. It's not a free vote because they don't have access to the truth.

Equality, similarly, requires truth because equality and democracy doesn't mean we all have the same amount of money. It doesn't mean we all have the same car. It means political equality, that each of our voices matters the same. And political equality means speaking truth to power. If someone really powerful is humiliated when they're caught lying, that's the core of political equality. So if you're gonna rip the heart out of democracy, you get people used to lies. Here's a fact about humans: we all pretty much suck to the same degree.

One group of us is not better than another group of us. Hierarchy is central here because it's the big lie at the center of things. What racism but one big lie? Racism is a lie that one group is better than another. You're told this religion is better, this race is better, this gender is better. It's really a moral claim, has more moral worth. And then once you have hierarchies set up, you can make people very nervous and frightened about losing their position on that hierarchy. Hierarchy goes right into victimhood because once you convince people that they're justifiable higher on the hierarchy, then you can tell them that they're victims of equality. German Christians are victims of Jews. White Americans are victims of Black American equality. Men are victims of feminism. Once you convince people that they should be better, that they have earned a position on the hierarchy over others, then you can tell them that equality is actually victim. Loyalty to the dominant group means law-abidingness. And the minority group is by its nature not law-abiding. Law and order in fascist politics means the members of a minority group who accept their subservient role, they're law-abiding, and the members of the dominant group by their very nature are law-abiding.

By definition, the leader can't violate law and order. So law and order doesn't mean justice. Law and order doesn't mean equality. Law and order structures who's legitimate and who's not. Everywhere around the world, no matter what the situation is, in very different socioeconomic conditions, the fascist leader comes and tells you, "Your women and children are under threat. You need a strong man to protect your families." They make conservatives hysterically afraid of transgender rights or homosexuality, other ways of living. These are not people trying to live their own lives. They're trying to destroy your life, and they're coming after your children. What the fascist politician does is they take conservatives who aren't fascist at all, and they say, "Look, I know you might not like my ways. You might think I'm a womanizer. You might think I'm violent in my rhetoric. But you need someone like me now. You need someone like me 'cause homosexuality, it isn't just trying for equality. It's coming after your family."

Fascist movements typically, though not invariably, rest on an urban/rural divide. The cities are where there's decadence, where the elites congregate, where there's immigrants, there's criminality, there's Sodom and Gomorrah. In the city, there's not real work. The pure, hard-working, real members of the nation live in the rural areas, where they work hard with their hands. When our politicians talk about inner-city voters or urban voters, we all know what they mean.

Arbeit macht frei, "Work shall make you free." This was written on the gates of Auschwitz. The idea is that the minority group, they're lazy, and they need to be made to work. Free labor. The minority group and the leftists, they're lazy by their nature, and it gives them a work ethic. Labor unions are run by communists who are trying to make things easier. Hard work is a virtue. In liberal democracy, we don't value people by how hard they work. What would happen to disabled people who can't work? They would then have no value. It's why the Nazis had the T4 program to murder the disabled because the disabled were Lebenunwertes Leben, life unworthy of life, because to be valued was to be capable of hard work.

Each of these individual elements is not in and of itself fascist, but you have to worry when they're all grouped together, when honest conservatives are lured into fascism by people who tell them, "Look, it's an existential fight. I know you don't accept everything we do. You don't accept every doctrine. But your family is under threat. Your family is at risk. So without us, you're in peril." Those moments are the times when we need to worry about fascism.

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JASON STANLEY: Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country's media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces.

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Now is the time to #DefundthePolice and abolish prisons to create the more just and more loving feminist world we deserve.

As a result of the uprisings happening around the country, the decades long strategic organizing of Black feminist movement builders and theorists, and the clear articulation of a platform of demands by The Movement for Black Lives, we are living through a historic moment of possibility around reimagining safety and justice in this country. We believe that defunding the police and abolishing prisons is not only possible, it is a necessary step towards creating a feminist vision of health, safety, and security for all people in this country, but especially for Black people who are overwhelmingly the victims of police and prison violence. Many people have not yet had the opportunity or the cause to think about alternatives to police or prisons and so this concept may sound outlandish or terrifying. This list of resources and books is not only about divestment (pulling resources away from policing and prisons) but also investment (redirecting the majority of the massive police, prison, and military budgets at every level of this country to proven alternatives that increase safety--including better physical and mental healthcare, equitable free education, sexual abuse and sexual violence education and prevention, housing programs that help people stay in their homes and aquire safe housing, drug and alcohol programs that support the wellness of individuals instead of criminalizing behavior, reproductive care for people across the spectrum of their lives and their choices about building families--just to name a few).

Some people fear that divesting from police and prisons will make people more likely to be victims of crime or will make those who have already experienced harm even more vulnerable. One way to begin exploring alternatives to police and prisons is to consider the concept of Transformative Justice, which encourages a process where all the stakeholders affected by an injustice have an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and to decide what should be done to repair the harm. Transformative Justice also considers the individual in relation to societal factors that influence behavior and seeks pathways for resolution that also make society as a whole more just. To be clear, this is a long term shift of values, funding, and priorities in which new systems must be built to create containers of safety and accountability for harm. One of the ways we can begin to create the world that we want to inhabit is to open our minds and hearts to what actual justice might look like and feel like outside a retributive or "eye for an eye" model.
Suggested Reading Online:
If you have not yet read The Movement for Black Lives full policy platform we encourage you to do so, but especially the platform on police and prisons so you can better understand the demands we are fighting for.

We love this well sourced and researched article from lesbian/queer magazine, Autostraddle, it's a great explainer and introduction to these concepts: Police and Prison Abolition 101: A Syllabus and FAQ
If you would like to work locally to defund prisons and the police consider the following actions:
Go to https://defund12.org/atlanta and use the template to draft a letter before June 15, 2020 asking for funds to be redirected from APD in the 2021 budget and allocated to other more pro-human budget items.

Support Women on the Rise's work to hold the Atlanta City Council's feet to the fire to defund the Atlanta City Jail and turn it into a positive space for the city.
Suggested actions in your personal sphere:
Talk to friends about not calling the police. (Need more ideas about what this could look like? Read this and this.)

Encourage your school, church, gym, or other institution to cancel its contract with the police or private security.

Get rid of your Ring doorbell camera or other devices that are frequently used to profile Black people. Here's the ACLU's position on this.

Delete your "Next Door" account or commit to actively interrupting every instance of profiling you see on your neighborhood list. If you aren't interrupting you are condoning. Here's more info about NextDoor's long game.

Delete your Amazon account (yeah yeah this is self-serving because Amazon is our #1 nemesis for many reasons but you should know what your money supports.) How Amazon's Ring works with Police. Amazon is the backbone of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which is still caging children and adults at the U.S. border.

We encourage you to explore this list of books. On this list you will find books about the history of policing--its roots in slavery--and why it is an inherently anti-Black institution that cannot be reformed. You will find feminist critiques of the police and prison systems. You will find first person accounts by Black activists on the harms of policing and prisons and the necessity of abolition. Finally, you will find a wealth of books on the roots of Transformative Justice--ideas that come from many places including Black Feminist theory, Reproductive Justice, the Christian Left, Disability Justice Movements, and Queer Kin and Accountability Networks. As feminists we believe it is not simply our duty to tear things down, it is primarily our duty to imagine a more beautiful, healthy, and life-affirming future for all people. We hope you will consider these resources and begin thinking about actions, large and small, that you can take to divest from police and prisons in your life.

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Transformative Justice and Prison Abolition

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Now is the time to #DefundthePolice and abolish prisons to create the more just and more loving feminist world we deserve. As a result of the uprisings happening around the country, the decades long strategic organizing of Black feminist movement builders and theorists, and the clear articulation of a platform of demands by The Movement for Black Lives, we are living through a historic moment of possibility around reimagining safety and justice in this country.

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CLAGS News caught up with Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, & Kay Whitlock, co-authors of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, just published by Beacon Press as part of its Queer Ideas Series, after their May 7th lecture at CLAGS, and asked them to share insights from the book, directions for future research and advocacy, and resources for readers.

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Recent weeks have been scary and regressive in state legislatures across the country. Several states -including Arizona, Oklahoma and Florida - have passed distressing legislation and promoted extremist policies to gut abortion rights and prevent pregnant people from accessing reproductive health care. Kentucky passed legislation that makes it effectively impossible to obtain abortion care (though it was blocked by a federal judge last week). Some states, including Texas, have authorized the public as "bounty hunters" to enforce these dangerous abortion bans.

And it's not just reproductive rights that are being attacked. From Alabama to Idaho, there is also a clear and undeniable push to strip pregnant people and LGBTQ+ individuals of their rights over their bodies and life choices. A few examples: Florida's governor signed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, restricting any discussion related to sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. The governor of Texas issued a directive that requires state agencies to investigate situations in which young people receive gender affirming care, calling such practices "abusive procedures." In Arizona, the governor signed a series of bills prohibiting gender affirming care for minors and restricting transgender girls from playing sports.

It's not a coincidence that these anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion laws are being introduced and passed simultaneously. The same people fighting to limit abortion care are also working to deny transgender and LGBTQ+ people of their health care and identity. Far-right conservatives have launched a coordinated effort in state governments to control the most private parts of our lives: who we love and marry, our bodies and reproductive freedoms, and our decisions about when and if to have a family. It's all a part of a misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic coordinated attack on bodily autonomy; all a part of a cynical campaign of control.

In 1973, the decision in cemented the right to privacy, reaffirmed the right to contraception, and underpinned rulings that protect rights related to procreation, marriage and the ability to rear your children as you see fit. In early summer, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide Dobbs v. Jackson, a case that will have far-reaching implications for privacy and potentially dismantle the protections in Roe. As a result, we are poised to see an even greater tidal wave of oppressive laws introduced across the country.

Here's the good news: we know how to fight back - in Massachusetts and across the nation. These battles are not going to be won in the courts, and unfortunately, a fractured Congress doesn't have the numbers to guarantee our rights in law. That's why we need to invest our resources, energy and policy solutions in our state governments.

The same people fighting to limit abortion care are also working to deny transgender and LGBTQ+ people of their health care and identity.

We need to flip anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ seats one-by-one and overturn these hate-based laws. We need to dedicate our efforts in local and state elections because, as Texas and Florida prove, they matter when it comes to reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights. We need to ensure that LGBTQ+ folks and people who can become pregnant have voices in our government. Here in Massachusetts, we must serve as a model for the rest of the nation by advancing bold, progressive, forward-looking policy.

Massachusetts can be a haven for reproductive health access. That's why we are fighting to pass legislation to ensure health insurance covers the full spectrum of pregnancy care - from prenatal care to abortion care - without any kind of cost sharing, give public college and university students access to medication abortion at their campus health centers, and ensure that when people do decide to start a family, they can raise children in a safe and healthy environment without breaking the bank on childcare.

We are also working alongside community partners to advance legislation in Massachusetts that secures LGBTQ+ people's rights, abilities and resources to build families and establish parentage. Currently, there are two bills in the Legislature that will help support LGBTQ+ families receive the protections and treatment they deserve. These bills would affirm that queer families like ours are entitled to equitable treatment under the law and have access to the necessary resources to build their families.

Far-right conservatives have launched a coordinated effort in state governments to control the most private parts of our lives: who we love and marry, our bodies and reproductive freedoms ...

As children are being forced to hide their true identities in classrooms across the country, Massachusetts must seize this moment and stand up as a beacon of equity and equality by supporting our LGBTQ+ residents' bodily autonomy and health in a manner that is honest about how people live their lives. That's why we must pass legislation that reinforces LGBTQ+ health care needs by empowering young people to access lifesaving, preventative HIV medication, PrEP.

The far-right is attacking abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but they have also unlocked our superpower. By making our movement intersectional and interconnected - understanding that these issues cannot be discussed, fought or won in a vacuum - we unleash organizing power that can't be defeated. Reproductive justice is about more than just abortion; it's about eliminating the ways that all people, including LGBTQ+ individuals, are denied access to healthcare, rights, and dignity by these systems of oppression. And we won't stop fighting in states across the country until we break down these systems and ensure justice for all.
Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Twitter.

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Simultaneous attacks on abortion and LGBTQ rights are not coincidental

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Recent weeks have been scary and regressive in state legislatures across the country. Several states -including Arizona, Oklahoma and Florida - have passed distressing legislation and promoted extremist policies to gut abortion rights and prevent pregnant people from accessing reproductive health care.

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feature image via livingneworleans.com
Y'all, good news: U.S. society has officially accepted queers, the fight is over! In fact our sexuality is as boring as our middle school haircuts. So says David Carr, the New York Times' brilliant media columnist, in a piece that made me shake my head sadly.

Carr earned his reputation as an expert on media - how it works, where it's headed and its impact. I've met him twice, a fact I use to make my journalist friends jealous, and he's as bright, well-spoken and insightful in person as he normally is in print. But in the column, Carr does what many well-meaning writers and public figures do - he conflates the relative social acceptance of gay white men with the achievement of justice and equality for queer people.

In the piece, he rightly chastises Gawker for harassing and outing Fox News anchor Shepard Smith in a particularly Gawkerish fashion. He notes, also correctly, that these sorts of public outings rarely receive much attention anymore.

"We know why: The culture has moved on," Carr writes. "People see other people who happen to be gay at their workplaces, in their schools and on their televisions. Somewhere along the way, what was once a scarlet letter because just another consonant in the personal résumé. And now that gay marriage is a fact of life, a person's sexual orientation is not only not news, it's not very interesting."

Being gay is so passé it makes me rhyme!

He then explains how totally chill everyone is about gay marriage - solidly more than half of Americans support it, although only 14 states allow it. Carr's focus on marriage is telling given that the original Gawker piece had nothing to do with Smith marrying anyone. Thanks to mainstream LGBT rights groups like the Human Rights Campaign, marriage equality stands out as the most visible queer fight.

Even Smith's employer Fox News, Carr writes, has mostly gotten over its hostile aversion to marriage equality: "From what I can tell, Fox News has done a decent job of representing the broad range of conservative views on same-sex marriage and seems to have, along with the rest of the country, evolved." Fair enough - Bill O'Reilly no longer says gay marriage is the same thing as bestiality. Sally Kohn, the station's only openly lesbian contributor, left Fox last week to head to MSNBC, but viewers responded well to her during her three years with the network.

That's something. But it's not enough to have token gay representation and to not be constantly declared icky in prime time. Bill O'Reilly's tacit approval of gay and lesbian marriage does not satisfy me.

I don't mean to downplay the significance of marriage equality for many people. In a way, too, it indicates progress that a famous gay white man can hang out at a bar with his boyfriend and that no one bats an eye when a widely-read blog publishes a story about that man's sexuality. But pieces like Carr's cause damage because they encourage straight allies and queers to raise a drink (perhaps a gin and cucumber like the one Smith was drinking in the bar) in celebration of a fight fought and won.

The journey toward queer equality and justice includes so much more than marriage, and so much more than the social stability of famous white gay men. It includes promoting mental and physical safety for queer youth like the transgender high school student being persecuted by the California Justice Institute. It includes fighting for laws guaranteeing nondiscriminatory access to housing and employment.

According to a 2010 analysis of FBI crime data, LGBT people are more likely to be the target of hate crimes than any other group and the 2011 NCAVP Hate Violence report found transgender people of color specifically are almost 2.5 times as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers. An Argentinian psychologist told NPR in 2012 that the average life expectancy for trans* people is 30-32 years. According to a study from the UCLA School of Law, LGBT youth make up 40 percent of homeless teens.

In his capacity as media guru, Carr offered a meaningful objection to the Gawker pieces and offers an interesting analysis of the ways in which "the culture has moved on." But columns like his give people a pass to keep right on moving on instead of sticking around to pursue the necessary fights to make it possible for all queer people to live in safety, pursue economic security and live full and happy lives.
Audrey is a Texan living in Managua, Nicaragua. She loves journalism, country music and talking to strangers. Follow her on Twitter @audreywhitetx.

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Queer Justice Means More Than Gay White Men Having Public Boyfriends

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It's not enough to have token representation and to not be constantly declared icky in prime time. Pieces like Carr's cause damage because they encourage straight allies and queers to raise a drink in celebration of a fight well fought and won.

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Massive, unrestricted, decades-long funding to conservative think tanks which draft and workshop these laws

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Massive, unrestricted, decades-long funding to conservative think tanks which draft and workshop these laws

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Funding conservative clerkships and judges at local scales so we end up with conservative judges

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Funding conservative clerkships and judges at local scales so we end up with conservative judges

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Creating categories of us vs. them - and "them" is coming for you

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Creating categories of us vs. them - and "them" is coming for you

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Amplification of the extremes - outsized influence even if it's a relatively small # of people

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Amplification of the extremes - outsized influence even if it's a relatively small # of people

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Voter suppression and erosion of voting rights

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Voter suppression and erosion of voting rights

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And also, reducing impact our votes have by rigging system in other ways

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Emphasis on individualism, American dream, making your own way in the world, myth of the meritocracy

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Emphasis on individualism, American dream, making your own way in the world, myth of the meritocracy

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Prevention of collectivism, systems changes

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Fascists slowly but surely targeting conservatives and bringing them over to their way of thinking

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Fascists slowly but surely targeting conservatives and bringing them over to their way of thinking

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Cancel culture hysteria - fear of accountability - prevention of growth and knowledge building

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Cancel culture hysteria - fear of accountability - prevention of growth and knowledge building

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Recruiting white women to the alt-right through the "wellness" and DIY movement

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Recruiting white women to the alt-right through the "wellness" and DIY movement

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What are some of the tactics you have seen the right use to consolidate their power? Who are they coming after, and why?

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What are some of the tactics you have seen the right use to consolidate their power? Who are they coming after, and why?

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How we choose to create family and community.

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Intersectionality and interdependence    

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Intersectionality and interdependence    

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Ability to create and choose how we create family and community   

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Ability to create and choose how we create family and community   

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Abolition and transformative justice

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Dismantling binaries wherever we may find them    

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Dismantling binaries wherever we may find them    

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Joy - Queer joy

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Expansive freedom of living and thriving beyond the binary

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Expansive freedom of living and thriving beyond the binary

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No straight adjacency - we are different and also deserve x, y, z things - pluralism celebrated rather than oppressed

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Queer rights and queer justice as 2 different things 

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Queer rights and queer justice as 2 different things 

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Freedom from the state's oppressive apparatuses; challenging social norms    

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Freedom from the state's oppressive apparatuses; challenging social norms    

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Access to housing

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unapologetic joy and pleasure

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Liberation of all queer and trans people to live full, safe and abundant lives

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Liberation of all queer and trans people to live full, safe and abundant lives

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Bodily autonomy, safety from violence, ability to thrive

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Access to deep joy and pleasure without any single shred of fear of retribution

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Access to deep joy and pleasure without any single shred of fear of retribution

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freedom from the state's oppressive apparatuses; challenging social norms

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Where does the sensation of injustice live in your body?

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Where does the sensation of injustice live in your body?