Erasing History
How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a global call to action that tells us “why the past is a frontline in the struggle for a future free of fascism” (Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author) as it reveals the far right’s efforts to rewrite history and undo a century of progress on race, gender, sexuality, and class.
In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people around the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past.
In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress.
In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And with his “urgent, piercing, and altogether brilliant” (Johnathan M. Metzl, author of What We’ve Become) insight, he illustrates that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fascist governments begin and thrive by undermining and at times destroying education, according to this uninspiring follow-up to 2020's How Fascism Works. With a particular focus on authoritarian leadership in Russia, India, and Israel, Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, argues that the seeds of nationalism are planted when public education is threatened and replaced with schooling that emphasizes inherent hierarchies, traditional gender roles, and "national innocence" (meaning the absolution of a country's past sins). The end result is a worldview that presents a clearly defined enemy and a clearly defined victor, which, Stanley suggests, is the essence of the us-versus-them mentality of fascism. The book is filled with examples of various nations that have accomplished this, but sparse on details as to how, and readers may find themselves wishing to hear more about what led governments to succeed or fail at these anti-education goals. Somewhat confusingly muted, the narrative gives an overall impression of mild interest more than the duress one associates with the threat of impending dictatorship, which Stanley does see as a legitimate possibility ("If one looks at what is happening at the best universities in India, one can see a grim but plausible future near term course for America's"). This warns of an imminent fascist future but doesn't delve far enough into how to stop it.
