How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

Fascist politics is the politics of “us versus them” along racial, ethnic, religious, or other lines of tradition. This theme is the core thesis of the book, which argues that the fascist ideology and fascist political techniques for obtaining and maintaining power are defined primarily through their delineation of an “us”—a segment of the population that is good, hard-working, law-abiding, and entitled to dominate other groups—and a “them”—other segments of the population who are fixated on depriving “us” of our rightful privilege and feed off the state. These adversaries are framed as lazy, criminal, and inherently inferior. Ultimately, this concept embraces the social Darwinist concept of human life as the contest among various racial or ethnic groups who are, by nature, unequal in ability, character, and moral worth. The “us” group is presupposed to be simply better and more valuable in every way than the “them” group, and these categories are theorized to be “natural” in the sense that they are inborn and unchangeable. Everything in fascist politics, as Stanley explains it, flows from this division between “us” and “them,” primarily as a product of the ongoing struggle that is cast in mythical terms.

The fascist conception of the nation—distinct from the governmental state—is the essence of the “us” in the “us versus them” thinking.