Last week, President Trump signed an internet censorship order after one of his Tweets was removed for glorifying violence. Earlier this week, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against protesters. What can we make of this ongoing descent into fascism and authoritarianism during a global pandemic and civil unrest?
Today on the show, we hear from two of the world’s leading experts on fascism, historian Federico Finchelstein and professor of philosophy Jason Stanley. They offer useful definitions and histories of fascism and its cousin political ideologies, discuss the role of religion and the military in Trump’s America, talk about fascism during the pandemic, and make an urgent call for Americans to get out on the streets, to vote, to defend independent journalism, to get back to unions, and to organize in our communities in the fight for democracy.
Federico Finchelstein is professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City. He is the author of several books, including Transatlantic Fascism (Duke University Press, 2010) and From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press, 2019).
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of five books, including How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2016) and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House, 2019).
Cover image by David Bruyland from Pixabay