9 Quotes by Jason Stanley

Perhaps most disturbingly for me, when I look upon my own discipline, the discipline of philosophy, I find egregious effects of ideology and propaganda. Philosophy is self-consciously devoted to the ideal of objective truth. Yet philosophers from Aristotle to the present day have justified slavery and racism.

Representing the voices of all those whose existence has shaped and formed the world in which we live provides an essential protection against the fascist myth.

Si algo nos enseña el pasado es que el triunfo del fascismo siempre se entiende unos años después: en el momento parece inadvertido, no lo vemos venir, no creemos que pueda pasarnos a nosotros. Siempre es demasiado tarde.

What may begin as a temporary method to circumvent reasoned discussion and debate for the sake of a prized political goal may very well end up permanently undermining the trust required for its existence.

The strategic aim of these hierarchal constructions of history is to displace truth, and the invention of a glorious past includes the erasure of inconvenient realities.

To describe someone as a “criminal” is both to mark that person with a terrifying permanent character trait and simultaneously to place the person outside the circle of “us.” They are criminals. We make mistakes.

Lying too is a betrayal of the rational will. But it is a different kind of betrayal of the rational will than propaganda. At least with lying, one purports to provide evidence. Propaganda is worse than that. It attempts to unify opinion without attempting to appeal to our rational will at all. It bypasses any sense of autonomous decision.

Reconstruction ended when Southern whites enacted laws that had the practical effect of banning black citizens from voting. White southerners propagated the myth that this was necessary because black citizens were unable to self-govern; in the histories advanced at the time, Reconstruction was represented as a time of unparalleled political corruption, with stability restored only when whites were again given full power.

In fascist politics, women who do not fit traditional gender roles, nonwhites, homosexuals, immigrants, “decadent cosmopolitans,” those who do not have the dominant religion, are in their very existence violations of law and order. By describing black Americans as a threat to law and order, demagogues in the United States have been able to create a strong sense of white national identity that requires protection from the nonwhite “threat.