Jason Stanley > Quotes

“Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live.
For example, we can reduce our public engagement to consumption, viewing our labour as whatever we need do to enter the consumer marketplace with money in our pockets, free to choose our widgets, to shape an identity based upon consumption.
Or we can go global and expand our understanding of “us” by wandering the world and appreciating its cultures and wonders, considering both the people living in the refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns of Iowa to be our neighbours, while maintaining a connection with our own local traditions and duties.”
― Jason Stanley

“These feelings of intolerance stand in direct opposition to democracy's ideal of freedom which requires that everyone be free to live as they wish and love who they wish. Fascist movements, therefore, can leverage these feelings to turn citizens against democracy itself.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“To fully understand the imminent threat of fascism today, we must pay careful attention to fascist movements that are not necessarily based on reverence for the leader.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“Owens neglects to mention Haiti, the first country in history to be born from a successful slave rebellion, which began in 1791. She seems ignorant of the fact that Haiti, not Britain, was the first country to abolish slavery, in 1793.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“It's characteristic of a number of kinds of authoritarianism to represent politically neutral organizations as biased against you, because the rule of law IS biased against you if you're a criminal.”
― Jason Stanley

“In 2024, the Black population of the United States was 14 percent of its total population, yet 42 percent of its incarcerated population.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“It is a core tenet of fascist politics that the goal of oratory should not be to convince the intellect, but to sway the will.”
― Jason Stanley

“In the autumn-winter of 2013/14, the most acute domestic political crisis erupted in Ukraine. Its most important consequence was the inclusion of two new states, the federation of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol both became part of Russia. This happened on the basis of a referendum held in Crimea.25”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“Indeed, the Hindu supremacist who assassinated Gandhi, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, did so on the grounds that he had been acting in the interests of Muslims.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“Hierarchies of value violate the fundamental ideals of liberal democracy—and, indeed, cannot tolerate the equal moral and political status of all people.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“20 A few months later—shortly after declaring that Hungary would not become a “mixed-race” country—Orbán was featured as a main speaker”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“When groups in power use the mask of nationalism of the oppressed, or of genuine oppression in the past, to advance their own hegemony, they are using it to undermine equality.”
― Jason Stanley

“Freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth.”
― Jason Stanley

“When authoritarians attempt to erase history, they do so through education, by purging certain narratives from the curricula taught in schools, and perhaps by forbidding their telling at home.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“Through exposure to multiple perspectives, citizens learn to regard one another as equal contributors to a national narrative.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“What does the information an immigrant must learn about American history to become a naturalized American reveal about mythical norms? Does it elevate one group’s history over others? Does it allow certain misconceptions to be normalized?”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“In the autumn-winter of 2013/14, the most acute domestic political crisis erupted in Ukraine. Its most important consequence was the inclusion of two new states, the federation of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol both became part of Russia. This happened on the basis of a referendum held in Crimea.25 These “history” books do not mention any presence of Russian soldiers involved in Crimea or Donbas, only peaceful transitions to Russian rule, supported by majorities in these territories. Colonial military invasions in the service of violent expansions of empire are here represented as peaceful and voluntary.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“The Hutu Power movement, a virulent form of ethnic nationalism, fomented hatred of Tutsis as a basis of Hutu identity, ultimately planning and carrying out a genocide of Tutsis between April and July of 1994, in which five hundred to eight hundred thousand Tutsis were massacred.26”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“The southern United States under the Jim Crow system of segregation, for example, was governed by a form of racial fascism premised not on a single powerful leader, but on decentralized groups of vigilantes and terrorists. To fully understand the imminent threat of fascism today, we must pay careful attention to fascist movements that are not necessarily based on reverence for the leader. Regardless of how it is led, a fascist culture, or form of life, often has certain features that make it an ideal environment for fascist politics. These cultures will, for instance, elevate an already dominant group of people to a mythic status, exalting them as “the people” who constitute the nation, while relegating others to second-class citizenship.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation...in the face of what the fascist leader says a takeover, and that is why you need a really macho, powerful, violent response. The fascist leader says he/she will solve the problem.... We forget that many fascist regimes started of as democratic political parties, and Hitler, the Nazi party, ran in an election. So it is important to see that these tactics occur even in societies that do not have a fascist regime.”
― Jason Stanley

“educational authoritarianism, a strategy in which politicians restrict the knowledge that educators can convey, with the goal of intimidating them into spreading an anti-democratic ideology.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“The most significant of these omissions pertains to Holodomor, a genocide of the Ukrainian people, in which millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death after Stalin demanded draconian requisitions of grain from them, knowing full well that this would have devastating consequences.”
― Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

“fascist politics preys on the human frailty that makes our own suffering seem bearable if we know that those we look down on are being made to suffer more (183)”
― Jason Stanley