Since his return to the White House seven months ago, the nation and the world have witnessed Donald Trump and his administration implementing a flood of extremist anti-democratic policies, including the often violent mass deportation abductions being carried out by masked ICE agents; attacks on judges, universities, media companies, and law firms; and the demonization and termination of anyone associated with diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We’ve seen the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles and the more recent emergency federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police department, with Trump sending some 800 National Guard soldiers in response to what he falsely claims “is a situation of complete and total lawlessness.”
Trump, who has long embraced censorship of facts and opinions with which he disagrees, has ordered a comprehensive audit of the federally-funded Smithsonian Institution’s eight museums to ensure their exhibitions align with his own views.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jason Stanley, who had been a professor of philosophy at Yale University since 2013, where he’d written his best-selling book, “How Fascism Works.” But in March, Stanley announced he would be resigning from his position at Yale and leaving the U.S. for Canada, because he wanted “to raise (his) kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.” Stanley will be joining Yale historians Timothy Snyder and his wife Marci Shore, who also study fascism, to take new positions at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Here, Stanley assesses Trump’s first seven months of authoritarian rule in his second term and the Trump regime’s current effort underway to alter and censor history, a topic he addressed in his recent book, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.”
JASON STANLEY: Fighting fascism is hard, but relocating to another country with your ex-wife and two young kids is even harder. If anything, it’s just a very significant thing to leave your home country with your kids. Of course, there’s one sort of boringly obvious perspective on the choice I made, which is that I was sending an alarm to Americans — and I was definitely doing that. That was my intent and it was sort of more effective than all the books I’ve written together, I think, and so it did what I wanted it to do. If no one had noticed or talked about it, then it would’ve been really hard. Now that I’m dealing with all the practicalities of moving my life, I think it was effective in that regard. But really the real part of the story will be what will I do in Canada? What will Tim Snyder, Marci Shore, and I do in Canada at the Munk School?
I want to go there and create a place where academics, journalists, civil society leaders can gather from different countries — from backsliding democracies can gather and do democracy work in safety. This is a global fight we face and one of the things I’ve noticed from my friends in different countries, including the United States, is how mono-maniacally focused they are in their own countries. And the global far right, the fascists are not mono-maniacally fully focused on one country. They are linked together. For example, just to give one example, the new reorganization of the State Department is going to have an Office of Remigration. Now “remigration”, hmmm. That’s an interesting word that you might not have heard before, doesn’t really occur naturally in the English language. It was the slogan of the AfD, Alternative for Deutschland. It was their campaign slogan in the last election and they’re the fascist, the proto-fascist party in Germany that is now the most popular party in Germany.
In other words, at the very highest level of the Trump regime, they’re in conversation and contact with the German fascists. I’m hoping Canada will be a place in the University of Toronto and the Monk School will be a place where we can abandon those kind of parochial perspectives and bring journalists from Brazil. Bring journalists from India. Bring journalists from the United States, bring journalists from countries threatened by authoritarianism or under authoritarian rule — democracies that are now under authoritarian rule like the United States or India — and pool resources and knowledge, just like the global far right is doing.
SCOTT HARRIS: Professor Stanley, Trump has fully embraced censorship of facts and history he doesn’t like. We’ve seen that, of course, over and over again. Most recently, he’s ordered an audit of the Smithsonian Institution’s eight museums to ensure their exhibitions aligned with Trump’s own views. There’s no doubt that exhibits celebrating black, Latino, Asian, LGBTQ achievements, labor unions, et. cetera, will likely be targeted. Already referenced to Trump’s two impeachments in his first term had been removed from one Smithsonian exhibition. It’s as if Trump is using your book, Erasing History along with Project 2025, obviously as a how-to guide.
JASON STANLEY: Yeah, (chuckling) I mean, at this point, I really think that How Fascism Works and Erasing History are being read and being imitated. I think it’s just bewildering. But absolutely right. I mean, I wrote up racing history in 2023 and the beginning of 2024, so I had some benefit of getting a sense of what was going to happen from what I was seeing being plotted.
But it was also just like “If you’re a fascist, this is what you do.” The author John Gantz has said that fascism is a best thought of as a theoretical hypothesis that could then allow you to predict what’s going to happen, and it’s proven to be a very rich theoretical hypothesis. The detractors people who say you shouldn’t call this fascism, will say things like, “Well, they don’t speak German, They don’t speak Italian. “It’s not exactly the material circumstances of mid-century Europe.
Taking over the cultural institutions, fascism as a cultural component, a central cultural component, it phrases the greatness of the nation. It doesn’t allow you to look at the pragmatic aspects of a nation’s history. And what’s really ironic is that we’re explicitly being told that these institutions have to promote the narrative of American exceptionalism.But the narrative of American exceptionalism says, “We’re a beacon of liberty. We’re the home of freedom and democracy.”
So what they’re saying is you need to tell people we’re going to force you — by legal means — to tell people that we’re the kind of place that doesn’t force institutions to do these things. In other words,
SCOTT HARRIS: Exactly. Yeah.
JASON STANLEY: It’s as usual. It’s one of these bewildering inversions. Every museum has to say “We’re the home of freedom and liberty” — otherwise we will fire you or throw you in prison.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Jason Stanley (27:08) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation. For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform. Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
