Jason Stanley on how authoritarians rewrite the past
"Authoritarian regimes must erase any history of social movements for democracy."
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“Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed,” Jason Stanley wrote at the very beginning of his 2018 book, “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” Six years later, Stanley — a philosophy professor at Yale — is publishing a kind of prequel.
“Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future,” released this month, is a study of how authoritarian regimes create their mythic past through silencing and erasing anyone who questions the myth. The book chronicles the right-wing attack on education and memory in K-12, in universities, in public discourse, in the US and abroad.
“Authoritarianism’s great rival, democracy, requires the recognition of a shared reality that consists of multiple perspectives,” Stanley writes. He then explains, systematically, how the right is working to undermine that shared reality, often with frightening success.
It's not a cheerful book, but it’s a necessary one. As Stanley told me by phone, with a rueful laugh, “You know, people are like, ‘Oh, fascism threatens!’ And I’m like, fascism has always threatened.”
Fighting the right is nothing new, and we do know how to oppose it — in part by remembering the past that authoritarians want us to forget. Stanley’s book, therefore, is both about the effort to erase history and a chronicle of a history that the right wants erased. It calls for, and inscribes, public remembering.
The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
Noah Berlatsky
Why are fascists threatened by historical memory?
Jason Stanley
First of all, quite clearly, authoritarian regimes must erase any history of social movements for democracy.
In China you're not allowed to talk about Tiananmen Square. In the Soviet Union, you had to erase the history of Ukrainians or Jewish people, their particular route through history, because you wanted to represent World War II as just an attack on communism.
So, you have certain myths that you want to promulgate, myths that underlie whatever version of authoritarianism is at issue. In the case of a version of authoritarianism that's fascist, you would want to glorify the dominant group and erase the perspectives of non-dominant groups. You want to enforce rigid gender roles, so you'd make it seem that gender fluidity or LGBT relationships are not normal. In this way, when there is any challenge to the dominant group, people won't understand those challenges.
Democracy is not about everybody being the same, but it's about everybody understanding each other's perspectives. In a democratic culture, everyone has equal voice. But you can't hear someone's voice if you don't know their history.
Noah Berlatsky