What is fas­cism? Fas­cism is an ide­ol­o­gy devel­oped and elab­o­rat­ed in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry West­ern Europe and enabled by tech­nol­o­gy, mass media, and weapons of war. Most of us learned the basics of that devel­op­ment from grade school his­to­ry text­books. We gen­er­al­ly came to appre­ci­ate to some degree — though we may have for­got­ten the les­son — that the phrase “creep­ing fas­cism” is redun­dant. Fas­cism stomped around in jack­boots, smashed win­dows and burned Reich­stags before it ful­ly seized pow­er, but its most impor­tant action was the creep­ing: into lan­guage, media, edu­ca­tion, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions. None of these move­ments arose, after all, with­out the sup­port (or at least acqui­es­cence) of those in pow­er.

There are dif­fer­ences between Ital­ian Fas­cism, Ger­man Nazism, and their var­i­ous nation­al­ist descen­dents. Mus­soli­ni secured pow­er chiefly through intim­i­da­tion. But once he was appoint­ed prime min­is­ter by the King in 1922 he began con­sol­i­dat­ing his dic­ta­tor­ship, a process that took sev­er­al years and required such deal­ings as the cre­ation of Vat­i­can City in 1929 to secure the Church’s good­will. Some lat­er fas­cist lead­ers, like Augus­to Pinochet, came to pow­er in coups (with the sup­port of the CIA). Oth­ers, like Hitler, won elec­tions, after a decade of “creep­ing” into the cul­ture by nor­mal­iz­ing nation­al­ist pride based on racial hier­ar­chies and nurs­ing a sense of aggriev­ed per­se­cu­tion among the Ger­man peo­ple over per­ceived humil­i­a­tions of the past.

In every case, lead­ers exploit­ed local hatreds and inflamed ordi­nary peo­ple against their neigh­bors with the con­stant rep­e­ti­tion of an alarm­ing “Big Lie” and the promis­es of a strong­man for sal­va­tion. Every sim­i­lar move­ment that has arisen since the end of WWII, says Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy Jason Stan­ley in the video above, has shared these char­ac­ter­is­tics: using pro­pa­gan­da to cre­ate an alter­nate real­i­ty and pay­ing obei­sance to a “cult of the leader,” no mat­ter how repug­nant his tac­tics, behav­ior, or per­son­al­i­ty. “Right wing by nature,” fas­cis­m’s patri­ar­chal struc­ture appeals to con­ser­v­a­tives. While it mobi­lizes vio­lence against minori­ties and left­ists, it seduces those on the right by promis­ing a share of the spoils and val­i­dat­ing con­ser­v­a­tive desires for a sin­gle, uni­fy­ing nation­al nar­ra­tive:

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. 

Rather than sim­ply destroy­ing insti­tu­tions, fas­cists twist them to their own ends. The arts, sci­ences, and human­i­ties must be purged of cor­rupt­ing ele­ments. Those who resist face job loss, exile or worse. The impor­tant thing, says Stan­ley, is the sort­ing into class­es of those who deserve life and prop­er­ty and those who don’t.

[O]nce 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. 

The appeal to “law and order,” to police state lev­els of con­trol, only applies to cer­tain threat­en­ing class­es who need to be put back in their place or elim­i­nat­ed. It does not apply to those at the top of the hier­ar­chy, who rec­og­nize no con­straints on their actions because they per­ceive them­selves as threat­ened and in a state of emer­gency. It’s real­ly the immi­grants, left­ists, and oth­er minori­ties who have tak­en over, “and that’s why you need a real­ly macho, pow­er­ful, vio­lent response”:

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.”

Stan­ley offers sev­er­al his­tor­i­cal exam­ples for his assess­ment of what he breaks down into a total of 10 tac­tics of fas­cism. (See an ear­li­er video here in which he dis­cuss­es 3 char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ide­ol­o­gy.) Like Umber­to Eco, who iden­ti­fied 14 char­ac­ter­is­tics of what he called “ur-fas­cism” in a 1995 essay, Stan­ley notes that “not all ter­ri­ble things are fas­cist. Fas­cism is a very par­tic­u­lar ide­o­log­i­cal struc­ture” that arose in a par­tic­u­lar time and place. But while its stat­ed aims and doc­trines are sub­ject to change accord­ing to the psy­chol­o­gy of the leader and the nation­al cul­ture, it always shares a cer­tain group­ing, or “bun­dle,” of fea­tures.

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.

Below we’re adding Stan­ley’s recent inter­view where he explains how Amer­i­ca has now entered fascism’s legal phase. You can read his relat­ed arti­cle in The Guardian.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies Three Essen­tial Fea­tures of Fas­cism: Invok­ing a Myth­ic Past, Sow­ing Divi­sion & Attack­ing Truth

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

20,000 Amer­i­cans Hold a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den in 1939: Chill­ing Video Re-Cap­tures a Lost Chap­ter in US His­to­ry

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Myths emerge from the murky depths of human pre­his­to­ry, leav­ing their sources shroud­ed in mys­tery. But on rare occa­sions, we can trace them to a sin­gle point of ori­gin. The myth of Atlantis, for exam­ple, the ancient civ­i­liza­tion that sup­pos­ed­ly sank into the sea, has one and only one source — Pla­to — who told the sto­ry in both the Timaeus and Critias, some­time around 360 BC, as an alle­go­ry for cor­rup­tion and civ­i­liza­tion­al decay.

Pla­to puts the tale of Atlantis nesos, the “island of Atlas,” in the mouth of the aged Critias, a char­ac­ter in both dia­logues, who says he heard the sto­ry sec­ond-hand from Solon — “not only the wis­est of men, but also the noblest of poets” — who in turn brought it from Egypt, where he sup­pos­ed­ly heard it from a priest in a city called Sais.

As you can hear in the dia­logue that bears his name, read above in the Voic­es of the Past video, Critias gives a lengthy descrip­tion of the island’s size (in Timaeus it is “larg­er than Libya and Asia put togeth­er”), its loca­tion (“the Pil­lars of Her­a­cles”), and its geog­ra­phy, cities, peo­ples, and so forth. In Timaeus, Socrates declares that this tale (unlike his imag­i­nary republics) “has the very great advan­tage of being fact not fic­tion.”

But there was nev­er such a place in the ancient world. While islands have dis­ap­peared after earth­quakes or vol­ca­noes, “I don’t think there’s any ques­tion,” says geol­o­gist Patrick Nunn, “that the sto­ry of Atlantis is a myth.” Pla­to made up the lost civ­i­liza­tion and for­mi­da­ble rival to Athens, who sound­ly defeat­ed the Atlanteans, as a dra­mat­ic foil. “It’s a sto­ry that cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion,” says Bard Col­lege pro­fes­sor of clas­sics James Romm. Its pur­pose is illus­tra­tive, not his­tor­i­cal.

[Pla­to] was deal­ing with a num­ber of issues, themes that run through­out his work. His ideas about divine ver­sus human nature, ide­al soci­eties, the grad­ual cor­rup­tion of human soci­ety — these ideas are all found in many of his works. Atlantis was a dif­fer­ent vehi­cle to get at some of his favorite themes.

Why has there been so much desire to find Plato’s account cred­i­ble? Ear­ly mod­ern Euro­pean read­ers of Pla­to like Fran­cis Bacon and Thomas More — authors of The New Atlantis and Utopia, respec­tive­ly — treat­ed Atlantis as philo­soph­i­cal alle­go­ry, a fic­tion like their own invent­ed soci­eties. But lat­er inter­preters believed it, from ama­teur schol­ars to colo­nial adven­tur­ers, explor­ers, and trea­sure hunters. Atlantis, wher­ev­er it is, some thought, must be full of sunken gold.

Nation­al Geo­graph­ic quotes Charles Ors­er, cura­tor of his­to­ry at the New York State Muse­um in Albany, who says, “Pick a spot on the map, and some­one has said that Atlantis was there. Every place you can imag­ine.” Yet what­ev­er sim­i­lar­i­ties it may have had to a real place, Pla­to’s yarn was strict­ly para­ble: Its inhab­i­tants were once divine. “Sired and ruled over by Posei­don, and thus half-gods and half-mor­tals,” writes Aeon, they “despised every­thing but virtue.”

But Atlantis grew cor­rupt in time, Critias tells us, “when the divine por­tion began to fade away, and became dilut­ed too often and too much with the mor­tal admix­ture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their for­tune, behaved unseem­ly, and to him who had an eye to see grew vis­i­bly debased, for they were los­ing the fairest of their pre­cious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true hap­pi­ness, they appeared glo­ri­ous and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unright­eous pow­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Para­bles of the Human Con­di­tion

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.