EXCLUSIVE: “How Fascism Works” Author Jason Stanley Plans to Leave the U.S.

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Christiane. Professor Jason Stanley, thanks so much for talking with us once again.

JASON STANLEY: Thank you, Michel. It’s great to be in conversation in this existential time.

MICHEL MARTIN: So, so you’ve been thinking about and writing about authoritarianism for quite a while.  You recently wrote a piece for The Guardian in which you said that “President Trump is leading the country down the path of educational authoritarianism.”  What does that mean?

JASON STANLEY:That means that he’s creating a culture of fear in universities. They already have done this in states like Florida, creating a culture of fear in K-12 education. But authoritarianism requires a culture of fear. It requires feeling like the state is always looking over your shoulder, feeling like there are vague rules that you can be punished for, and your fellow citizens have been empowered to report you. That’s the first thing it means.

The second thing it means is that there’s an official state ideology, and if you violate the official state ideology, you get in trouble.

MICHEL MARTIN:  What sparked your latest piece for the Guardian was this Dear Colleague letter that the Department of Education issued, the Office of Civil Rights issued on February 14th. It was a letter to American educational institutions, and it essentially reinterpreted federal civil rights law. Let me just read a little bit of it. It said that “educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and structural racism and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. And that proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them, particularly during the last four years under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” You know, DEI “…smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race consciousness into everyday training, programming and discipline.” So, so first of all, your reaction to this and, and tell us why you were so concerned about this that you, you said that this is, what is the, is the sign that that is the intention of the administration to move toward this path?

JASON STANLEY: Well, the “Dear Colleague” letter announces that it’s the intention of the administration to move towards this path. And then Linda McMahon’s final mission statement of the Department of Education, she mentions patriotic education as sort of the goal here to impose on K-12 and universities.

So the problem here is that the United States IS founded and built upon systematic, systematic racism and inclusion. It’s part of our founding documents that we wanted to take more indigenous land. So slavery — the United States is built on slavery. There’s no factual argument about that. So when you begin by saying that universities and K-12 schools are not allowed to teach facts, then you are already on a very problematic playing field.  and part of the point of these guidelines is to be vague because it allows wide latitude to target professors and to encourage students to report professors for anything that might suggest that the United States was not always the greatest nation on earth and was essentially free from sin.

MICHEL MARTIN: Is, is part of the issue here – because, I mean, ’cause to take it from the other direction, I mean, conservatives would say that — progressives or non-conservatives, whatever you wanna say — are just mad because they’re offering an alternative ideology, that they’re replacing one ideology with another. And that, you know, I think their argument is elections have consequences and they get to do that. Like, what do you say to that?

JASON STANLEY: There’s no such thing. I mean, in a democracy, the State cannot impose a required patriotic ideology. I mean, universities are not there in a democracy to stoke egos of the citizens of a country.

Just imagine what your cartoon vision of an authoritarian country. It’s where the purpose of schools is to tell students to love their country and not question it. In a democracy, universities are there to teach the facts. They’re not there to breed patriotism. These documents explicitly tell us the purpose of schools and universities is to create patriotic citizens. That is not the purpose of uni – that’s nationalist education. That is not democratic education.  

what they’ve been doing – by banning critical race theory, which is essentially banning black history ’cause you’re banning the study of institutions that developed under slavery and Jim Crow that have repercussions today. So you’re banning that with these vague guidelines. You know, they say, we’re not banning that, but the guidelines are so vague that you would be, you know, you would be foolish to test whether or not it’s really banning that. 

MICHEL MARTIN: What’s your evidence of that though? What’s your evidence that that is the case? Because I think other people might look at that and say, well, they’re vague. That means that there’s room for interpretation. So why do you say that the vagueness is itself a problem? 

JASON STANLEY: Well a conservative intellectual and a New York Times article where I was also quoted said, you know, terms like DEI are vague, so they allow us wide latitude to target people because they leave it open to interpretation. And that’s the point. So we can basically target anything we want by calling it DEI.

And that’s what Christopher Rufo, one of the main political activists behind the strategy said. He said early on, we’re gonna call the federal bureaucracy critical race theory, and then people will want to take it on, take it down. This is evocative of the Republican southern strategy of calling anything they don’t like “welfare” and then that would create negative attitudes towards it.
Now this does – the vagueness does leave room for contestation, but would you like to go in front of a school board? Would you like to go in, in front of a Title VI office with a lawyer to defend that cons–  that interpretation that it does not that you’re teaching about slavery or Jim Crow or mortgage redlining does not fit does not fall under these prohibited guidelines? That’s really a distraction from your work. Legal fees are very expensive. Most teachers and professors, if not all teachers and professors, would like to avoid that.

MICHEL MARTIN:  American universities have been engines of tremendous wealth.  tremendous innovation. There’s a reason why people wanna come from all over the world to study at these universities, including people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk because of their role in creating private wealth through the accumulation of knowledge.  So why is it that they – in your estimation – that these activists are so – and this administration is so – sort of hell bent on bringing universities to heal?

JASON STANLEY: Can I be frank, Michel? 

MICHEL MARTIN: Yeah. I hope so.

JASON STANLEY: They’re destroying my country. They’re intentionally destroying my country. Vla– they’re saying Vladimir Putin is an ally. They’re taking down the federal bureaucracy. They’re taking down the schools and universities to enrich the billionaire class. And then they’re throwing scapegoats to the American people, to the working people, trans women, black Americans…

it’s about juicing up dominant group victimhood. It’s about telling white Americans, YOU are the real victims. And once we target all the people who made you feel like you weren’t the real victims, all the people who are making you feel guilty for inheriting your house from your parents when they didn’t have a – couldn’t inherit a house from your parents – once we do that, then everything’s good for you. And we can dismantle the country. That’s what’s going on.

And starting out with the universities is vital   You take down the universities, you tell people, universities are just for job skills. They’re not for, they’re not democratic institutions anymore. And then so you encourage people not to go. And you encourage people not to go to universities. You make student loans more difficult, more expensive, privatize them and then you delegitimize the university.

MICHEL MARTIN: One of the things that you talked about is the fact that Columbia University is the source of particular ire to this administration, and also to, let’s say, members of Congress who made a point of making a pilgrimage to the university, to you know, to express their outrage, what they consider to be anti-Semitic demonstrations. That started in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza.  Columbia agreed to a list of Trump demands in order to reinstate some $400 million in federal funding that the administration revoked, as they said, for punishment, for Columbia’s failure to protect its Jewish students. So let me ask you about this, because the reality of it is there are a lot of Jewish students, students at Columbia who did feel threatened and demeaned by these, by these demonstrations.  so some people are looking at this and they say that this is kind of an outrageous capitulation on Columbia’s part, but other people are saying, well, you know, maybe this was just a pragmatic step to try to survive this era. What, what do you think?

JASON STANLEY: There were a tremendous number of Arab students who felt incredibly threatened at Columbia. What about them? They’re people too. First. Secondly, at Yale, and I’m sure this is true of Columbia, there were a very large number of Jewish students in those protests, because who on campus cares the most about the behavior of Israel? Well, one group are Jewish students. But the way the administration is using the term “antisemitism” is synonymous with leftism, which is ironic because the large majority of Jewish Americans voted for Kamala Harris, you know, comparable to Black Americans. So, but the administration is using the term antisemitism as short for leftism. So Jewish Americans like me, who are highly critical of Israel – I mean, I don’t know what the phrase “right to exist” means, but, you know, I’m not, you know, I don’t want to take down the state of Israel, I’m some kind of Zionist – however, I’m very critical of the behavior of the state of Israel. And there were plenty of students. It was, it was, you know, tied for the largest identity group in the protests. So why don’t they count as Jewish? Well, the administration is saying there are good Jews and bad Jews, and good Jews are the ones who support Israel’s actions in Gaza and bad Jews are the people like me, who who are highly critical of what is happening and push for Palestinian rights because Palestinians deserve every bit of political equality that Jews, Jewish people deserve. So this – yeah.

MICHEL MARTIN: You, you argue that the Trump administration is using the pretext of Jewish safety to justify crackdowns on dissent and critical scholarship. And you act, actually have said that you think this actually reinforces anti-Semitic tropes. So can you say, can you say more about that?

JASON STANLEY: This is reinforcing anti-Semitic tropes all across the political spectrum. What is the most, the most, what are the most toxic anti-Semitic tropes? Well, Jews control the institutions. This is absolutely reinforcing this. Any young American is gonna think, remember what happened when they took down the world’s greatest university system on behalf of Jewish safety. And this will go down in history books. The history of this era will say that, that Jewish people were the sledgehammer for fascism. So if we don’t speak out, if we, American Jews do not speak out against this, this will be a grim history, chapter in our history as Americans.

It’s the first time in my life as an American that I have been fearful of our status as equal Americans, not because of the protests on campus – which as I said, were, had a lot of Jewish students in them – (24:19) but because we are suddenly at the center of politics, of US politics, it’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us. And we are being used to destroy democracy. The history books are going to be harsh unless we, Jewish Americans can say, this should not be done in our name.

And finally, by focusing on us, they’re erasing the atrocities and horrors that are happening in Gaza. And they’re shifting the true victims here, not just Palestinians who are here  but the victims in Gaza and the West Bank of the Israeli government’s policies.

MICHEL MARTIN: Well, then well, I have two questions here, that – first of all, why do you think that Columbia has agreed to these terms, including, you know, banning face masks and empowering campus police officers to remove people from campus or arrest them if needed?   So why, why would Columbia, which is not a poor institution, agree to these terms?

JASON STANLEY: Two reasons. First of all there are people within the Columbia structure who are essentially betraying Columbia. They agree with this ideological attack. I think that is really problematic. They’re not seeing that they are in fact traitors to their own institutions. So that’s one point.

The second point is that you know, this – Columbia is completely bending to an authoritarian regime. And what we’re seeing across universities, Michel, is we’re seeing this culture of fear, this idea that if we just do what they say, everything will be okay.

But I’m seeing this everywhere. And it’s one reason that I am probably leaving the United States to the University of Toronto.

MICHEL MARTIN: Is that, is that, is that – I was going to ask what are your thoughts about your own course here? So you, you feel strongly enough about this, that you are going to leave the country?

JASON STANLEY: Yes. Because what I – I would NOT do this if I saw all of our universities banding together. But it’s not just the universities, Michel, it’s the law firms. It’s all of our American institutions. When Paul Weiss, Paul and Weiss, capitulated –  the part of the reason they capitulated is other law firms, instead of defending them, were going after their clients. Now we see universities saying things, including my university, like, we’re gonna keep our head down so we’re not targeted. As soon as I heard that vocabulary, I knew sort of, you know, it might be that game, the game is over because you’re not banding together if you say, we’re gonna keep our head down.

MICHEL MARTIN: So, so, so I wanna get back to you though. You, you are, you are leaving. And, any regrets about that? Do you, you feel in a way you’re abandoning the fight? Or how do you see it?

JASON STANLEY: I think Canada is very centrally in the fight right now. So you know, I would return to the United States, my home, in a heartbeat. And I hope, you know, and that’s why I’m saying I’m probably moving to Canada because I might return to Yale, if so, if the, they essentially allow me with, with leave structures, I’m leaving because the political climate for the universities and the political climate for freedom looks grim in this country. We face a fascist regime. So so I can best fight it in a country that is dedicated to free to the, the values that I love, the values that America, the United States was formed on freedom and equality. And Canada definitely centers those values. I have two black children, two black Jewish children, and, you know the United States – to erase, to, to use one of their identities as a sledgehammer for fascism and to try to erase another of their identities is deeply problematic for me and you know, there’s all these longstanding features of this country, like mass incarceration, that I worry and violent policing that obviously with two black sons concern me as well.

But I, this is my home. The United States is my home. It will always be my home. I’m a patriotic American, and I want to fight for our country, but I do have two small children. I do have two young children. And I do think that the institutions that I love are being existentially threatened, and they’re not defending themselves in a way that gives me any kind of hope that free inquiry will still be possible.

MICHEL MARTIN: Professor Jason Stanley, thank you so much for talking with us. You’ve certainly given us a lot to think about.

JASON STANLEY: Thank you so much, Michel.