Having written two celebrated books on fascism in the 20th century, Jewish-American scholar John Stanley draws direct parallels with the second Donald Trump presidency.

"Fascism is what the Trump administration is now doing," he told DW of the president's second term in office.

In late March, Stanley announced his decision to quit Yale University and move to Canada, where he will work at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He follows Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore,  two Yale history professors who are a married couple, who also left for Toronto after the US presidential election.  

 

A scary place' — Jason Stanley on leaving Trump's America
Stuart Braun

Philosopher Jason Stanley is among several critics of US President Donald Trump who have left Yale University, and the US, to work and live in Canada. He equates the new leadership with "fascism."

 

"I'm afraid of being targeted by the federal government," he said in relation to his decision to leave Yale.

Referencing the vulnerability of immigrant academics who could be deported for speaking out under Trump, he added: "I'm leaving because my non-citizen colleagues cannot speak about politics on social media… or else they might have their visas pulled." 

In Stanley's 2018 book "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them," he describes how fascism "dehumanizes segments of the population" to justify "inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment [to] expulsion."

He says the Trump administration, which has been accused of deporting immigrants in defiance of court orders and has limited free speech by withholding funding for universities or federal agencies who promote so-called "DEI" (diversity, equality and inclusion) policies, can no longer be called "populist."

The word ends up "whitewashing the threat," he said, reiterating his view that Donald Trump's intolerance is fascist by nature — a point made in his 2024 book, "Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."

Trump weaponizing antisemitism to attack universities?

The Trump administration is withholding funds from universities that have been sites of anti-war protestsduring the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying the institutions promote antisemitism.

 

But Stanley points out that "Jewish students at Yale were one of the biggest identity groups participating in the encampments and the protests."

"This regime is drawing a distinction between good Jews and bad Jews, and we know the history of that," he said.

The distinction between right-wing "pro-Israel Jews" and "Jews like me and many of my students here at Yale who criticize Israel's actions in Gaza" also appeals to "a very dangerous antisemitic stereotype," that falsely claims "that we American Jews control the institutions," Stanley said.

The scholar says that Yale University has not given in to the Trump administration's demands and has "protected its scholars." But he is concerned that the likes of Columbia University are succumbing to pressure — the latter has promised to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters to avert multi-billion dollar funding cuts.

"If you agree to these demands, you're not a university anymore," said the philosophy scholar. "A university is a place of free inquiry and critical inquiry. And in the United States, given our relationship to Israel, it's perfectly legitimate to have a protest movement that demands divestment from military support of Israel."

Why not stay in the US and fight?

Jason Stanley, as well as Snyder and Shore, who have all decamped to the University of Toronto, have often been asked why they chose to abandon the US in a time of need.

"Well, it's kind of easier to defend Canada than it is to defend Yale," Stanley told DW.

"The United States is getting to be a scary place generally," he continued. "[The] University of Toronto can be a haven; we can bring scholars and journalists there to protect them better than we can do in the United States."

Stanley aims to help nurture a more inclusive academic environment from his new position. He says the Monk School plans to "create the world's top center for defending democracy," and will welcome journalists from both democratic and authoritarian countries like Russia and the US.

He also wants to protect his children who are Black and Black Jewish. Stanley says that attacks on DEI and on "Black history" are "an attack on Black people."

 "I want my kids to grow up in conditions of freedom."

Marci Shore and her husband Timothy Snyder have focused on fascist regimes in Eastern European — a lens through which they draw parallels with the Trump administration.

"I could feel the reign of terror spiraling," Shore told the Kyiv Independent newspaper of her decision to leave the US. "My impulse was to take my kids and get out of the situation that seemed very dark and very frightening to me."

Jason Stanley points out that, despite his move, he is not abandoning the struggle at home.

"I'm going to be fighting for American democracy wherever I am," he said.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier

 

https://www.dw.com/en/a-scary-place-jason-stanley-on-leaving-trumps-america/a-72139576

 

Stanley is divorced[19] from cardiologist Njeri K. Thande, with whom he has two sons. In 2025, both Stanley and Thande chose to move to Canada. Stanley said, "We are leaving for our kids primarily so they can grow up under conditions of freedom."[19] Stanley likened his departure for Canada to leaving Germany in 1932, 33, 34. "I don't see it as fleeing at all," he said. "I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just like Yale is a target of Trump." He told the Daily Nous, a professional philosophy website, that he decided "to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship".[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Stanley

 

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

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. Metzi, 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.

https://www.amazon.com/Erasing-History-Fascists-Rewrite-Control/dp/1668056917

 

====================

 

Fascism From the Left

Posted on April 25, 2017 

by rawnsleyblog

Fascism has always been defined as a extremity of the right wing, as communism is viewed as an extremity of the left. However, fascism has now become more aligned with the American political left rather than the right, in various ways. The idea that fascism is actually closer to the left than the right is reinforced by the fact that the Nazis were the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Also, the European right is not the same as the American right. That aside, the current liberal ideology in the U.S. proves itself on its own merit.

The reasons were originally going to be separated, however they all play into each other. First off is the idea of speech. As I touched on in one of my other posts, hate speech is an idea pushed by the left. It’s the idea that not all speech is covered by the first amendment, and if it is deemed “too offensive” than it could be banned and/or punishable by law. Recently, Howard Dean tweeted out the same immoral message. This idea in itself is ridiculous. The only speech not permitted by the Constitution is speech that is calling for violence upon other people. For instance, you can’t advocate for the death of certain people. The difference is “offensive” is too subjective. Who then gets too decide what is and isn’t offensive? The idea of being jailed for a differing opinion has been toyed around with, as per Bill Nye, the Used-To-Be-A-Steve-Martin-Impressionist-Not-So-Science-Guy called for so-called ‘Climate Deniers” to be jailed.

The idea that they can ban speakers at will also falls under the fascist category. There are a plethora of cases that show colleges banning/allowing riots to occur at conservative speakers events. There’s the case of Milo Yiannopolous, the recent case of Ann Coulter, and the multiple cases of Ben Shapiro being shut down. Not all these speakers are the same, as some being intellectually gifted and rational speakers, and others being non-ideological trolls, they all should have the opportunity to speak at publicly funded colleges. The idea that one gets to choose who gets to speak and who doesn’t completely undermines the first amendment, and should raise red flags.

Lastly, the Antifa, or “Anti-fascists” have become the most fascist group in the political sphere. There are instances of violence, such as stabbings and rock throwing at people who just want to see a speaker. When pressed, it’s all justified because they’re “fighting fascists.” How more ironic could it be? Violence toward a person with a differing opinion creates a vacuum for totalitarianism and censorship. The more radical the left is getting, the more radical the right’s reaction becomes. A space in which violence is going on is a no-win situation for everyone, and it starts with idea that you have no opinion because I don’t agree with it.

https://rawnsleyblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/fascism-from-the-left/

 

=========================

 

“You need a sufficient amount of ruthlessness to run a country” — Will Chamberlain on “X”

You understand, all these lawsuit shenanigans with select federal judges from Woke-crazed districts like Boston, San Francisco, Rhode Island, and the DC Beltway are aimed at provoking a second civil war. The objective is to burden Mr. Trump with so many restrictions on the executive that the country can’t be governed without declaring a national emergency.

This is the Democratic Party’s desperate strategy to stay alive: to preserve the flow of taxpayer money to its minions stuffed into the organs of government like cancer cells, and the vast network of NGOs that employ its agents and spread its sickness. The Democratic Party is a malignancy within the republic and the money is the blood-flow that feeds it.

DOGE is the chemotherapy that has starved some of the worst tumors, such as USAID. Chemotherapy is always hard on the patient. Cancer is a very tough and resourceful enemy of a healthy body, and fights back by any means available. Ultimately, it seeks to kill the body it has come to inhabit — in this case, the body-politic of the USA. We are fighting for the life of our republic against a demonic enemy.

The Democratic Party displays exactly the characteristics that human beings traditionally associate with pure evil. Above all, it lies about everything that it does. It lies, of course, in order to deceive you, so that you won’t understand how it is working to vanquish you and your posterity (your kids and their future). RussiaGate, Covid-19, the Ukraine War, all were marinated in lies. The lies operate through the perversion of language, so you won’t understand what is being said. For instance: that the Democratic Party is working to save our democracy. That howler persists in their every public performance.

The Democratic Party controls the major organs of information: The New York Times, CNN, Hollywood. They are the conveyers of lies, bamboozling the body politic to divide and conquer it. The Democratic party is a bad faith legion enlisted to defend the Father-of-Lies, America’s Deep State (a.k.a. the blob). That information regime is failing now along with the Democratic Party. The Deep State is failing with them. They are the parasites that kill their host. They intend to kill the republic as they go down.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is supposed to function like an immune system for the body politic, defending it against political sickness. The current organized action in the federal judiciary against the executive is a grave sickness induced by the Deep State that must be corrected by the SCOTUS. We await that corrective action — a sweeping decision in reply to 100-plus lawsuits — that the chief executive is in-charge of the executive department and that his prerogatives to manage the staffing and actions of the executive agencies can’t be arrogated by federal judges.

So far, obviously, the SCOTUS has not yet come to issue that decision. Many of you worry that they will fail to, because Chief Justice John Roberts appears to be somehow under the influence of the Deep State. Let’s have a look. Sheldon Snook is Special Assistant to Chief Justice Roberts, and is deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the SCOTUS. Sheldon Snook is married to Mary McCord. Ms. McCord has been a leading actor, via her various roles in the Deep State, in the seditious operations against President Trump since 2017.

As Acting Attorney General for National Security in 2017, Mary McCord, turned James Comey’s FBI jihad against National Security advisor Mike Flynn into a malicious and ultimately unsuccessful prosecution. (The DOJ dropped the charges, which Judge Emmet G. Sullivan refused to execute, thus necessitating a pardon from Mr. Trump.)

Mary McCord was instrumental in the DOJ’s dishonest FISA application to surveil Carter Page (when Judge James Boasberg sat on the FISA Court). Ms. McCord quit the DOJ to become a counsel to the committee in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. In that role, she assisted Norm Eisen, the Chief Counsel to committee Chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Norm Eisen has gone on since that time to become the chief coordinator of lawfare operations against Mr. Trump. Mary McCord remains a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, sponsored by George and Alex Soros. Sheldon Snook remains at John Roberts’ right hand.

Do you find these connections disturbing? Do they suggest where Justice John Roberts may stand in the war between the Deep State and President Donald Trump? I suppose we are going to find out.

So, if the SCOTUS upholds the arrogation of executive powers and prerogatives by federal district judges, don’t expect Mr. Trump to roll over for that decision. It may come to pass, as per all the above, that he will be constrained to declare a national emergency to vacate the Deep State actors who are trying to make it impossible for him to govern, establishing special tribunals to disarm them. This, of course, will be seen by the Deep State and the Democratic Party as casus belli, an excuse to declare war against the president. We seem to be headed in that direction. There will be friction, heat, and light.

https://www.activistpost.com/bedlam-pending/

 

=======================

 

Across the United States, hundreds of thousands are expected to demonstrate Saturday in opposition to the Trump administration. Protests are taking place in cities throughout the country, part of a broader mood of defiance and anger among workers and youth. 

Millions are horrified by the attacks on immigrants, the assault on free speech and the genocidal war in Gaza, and they want to fight back. But the determination to resist must be guided by a clear understanding of what is happening, what are its origins and what must be done to stop it.

The situation must be stated with absolute clarity: The Trump administration is moving systematically and deliberately to establish a dictatorship. It is implementing a fascist program aimed at abolishing basic democratic rights, consolidating unchecked executive power and crushing all opposition. This is targeting, above all, the working class. What is being tested today on students and immigrants will be used tomorrow to suppress striking workers, all social opposition and political dissent of all forms.

On college campuses across the country, a reign of terror is already underway. Peaceful protesters are being surveilled, seized, detained and deported for opposing the US-backed genocide in Gaza. Under “Catch and Revoke,” an AI-powered surveillance program, students’ social media posts and public statements are being monitored by the State Department to identify targets for removal.

Momodou Taal, a Cornell Ph.D. candidate, was forced to leave the country this week after federal agents attempted to seize him for challenging Trump’s executive orders in court. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and lawful permanent resident, remains in ICE custody. Others—including Fulbright scholar Rumeysa Öztürk—have been abducted in broad daylight by masked federal agents.

The Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act—a wartime statute never before used in this way—to carry out mass deportations and the expulsion of political opponents. It asserts the authority to defy court rulings, override existing laws and grant the president unrestrained executive power. The legal architecture being erected is modeled not on the Bill of Rights but on the authoritarian theories of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who insisted that the sovereign rules through a permanent “state of exception.”

At home, the ruling class is carrying out a war on the working class: firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, destroying social programs, dismantling public education, shredding workers’ contracts and expanding the powers of federal agents to target “insubordinate” workers. As for science and public health, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been tasked with shutting down all Health and Human Services agencies amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the growing threat of an H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic.

Internationally, the Trump administration is preparing for world war. On Thursday, it announced sweeping new tariffs that amount to a declaration of economic war against the entire world. These measures, under the banner of “Made in America,” are aimed at crippling China and forcing every country into alignment with US imperialist interests. They will intensify global conflict and produce massive economic and social dislocation not only abroad but within the United States itself—fueling layoffs, inflation and deepening attacks on the working class. 

Trump has pledged to “finish” the ethnic cleansing of Gaza begun under Biden, “annihilate” Yemen, annex Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, and wage all-out war on China. As Leon Trotsky, the great co-leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, explained during an earlier stage of imperialist crisis, the world is confronting the “volcanic eruption of American imperialism.”

Meanwhile, the billionaires—Trump, Musk, Bezos and the rest—have enriched themselves through fraud, insider dealing and open theft. Wall Street is a criminal cartel. Every institution in this country—political, economic, cultural—is rotting from within. The ruling elite is plumbing the depths of reaction.

The urgent question facing workers and youth is: What is to be done? 

It is first of all necessary to understand that Trump is not an alien force acting outside the system. He is the product of American capitalism, and he speaks for a ruling class that is determined to maintain its wealth and power by any means. Trump is not the devil that came out of nowhere. He is the personification of the oligarchy that is violently restructuring politics to correspond with the nature of American society.

The Democratic Party is not the opposition—It is a willing accomplice. It was under Biden that the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza began. It was under Biden that the persecution of student protesters began. It was the Democrats who ensured passage of the Republicans’ continuing resolution, financing the Trump administration to deepen its attacks on democratic rights.

Biden welcomed Trump into the White House in January, wishing him “success,” not long after Kamala Harris openly called Trump a fascist. The Democrats refuse to oppose Trump’s dictatorship because they agree with its fundamental aims: protecting American imperialism, suppressing social opposition and maintaining the dominance of Wall Street. The Democratic Party is a party of finance capital, of the military-intelligence apparatus, of the CIA and Pentagon, and of privileged sections of the upper middle class. Its main concern is not democracy but the preservation of US global hegemony and the war against Russia in Ukraine.

Trump will not be stopped by appeals to the Democratic Party. Nor will he be opposed through the empty stunts and token gestures promoted by the trade union apparatus, which has responded to mass firings with calls to “write your congressperson”—even as it embraces Trump’s nationalist economic war policies. Nor is it a matter of tinkering around the edges of a bankrupt system, as figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have us believe. Their role is to pacify opposition and keep it corralled within the framework of the Democratic Party.

What is needed is a mass revolutionary movement of the working class, guided by a clear understanding that the threat of fascism arises out of the breakdown of the capitalist system itself.

This fight must be taken into the working class, the true constituency for the defense of democratic rights. The fight against dictatorship must become a mass political movement of the working class, armed with a program to take power, abolish capitalism and establish socialism.

The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers and youth to build rank-and-file committees in factories, workplaces and neighborhoods to mobilize mass resistance, including strikes and demonstrations. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is developing a coordinated network of organizations, independent of the trade union bureaucracies, to carry out a real fight against the massive assault on the working class by the capitalist oligarchy. 

The SEP fights to infuse this emerging movement with a socialist and internationalist program and perspective. The struggle against dictatorship is inseparable from the struggle against the financial oligarchy and capitalism itself. The wealth of this oligarchy must be expropriated and society reorganized on the basis of social need and equality.

The fight against fascism, war and dictatorship cannot be waged within the limits of national borders. The global nature of the capitalist system requires an international strategy. Throughout the world, the ruling class is turning to fascism, dictatorship and war. At the same time, a growing wave of protests and strikes is emerging in every country—from the US to Germany, from France to Sri Lanka. The working class is an international class, and its struggles must be united across all national, ethnic and racial lines.

The ruling class has a plan: dictatorship, war and repression. The working class must have a plan too: to take power, end capitalism and build a socialist future based on genuine democracy, economic planning and the ending of imperialist war.

That is the program of the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). Take up this fight. Join the SEP and the IYSSE! Build the revolutionary leadership needed to stop dictatorship, end war and reorganize society on the basis of human need, not private profit.

Stop Trump’s dictatorship! Break with the Democrats and Republicans! Build a movement of the working class for socialism!

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/05/jkky-a05.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS TURNED TO FASCISM TO FIGHT RUSSIA. NATO IS A FASCIST ORGANISATION... THE KIEV REGIME IS RULED BY A TOTALITARIAN FASCIST BASTARD....

PUTIN IS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY...