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cherrynat's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This book is one of those who open up the mind and conjure ties that might seem invisible to the normal eye. Jason Stanley is thoroughly academic yet insanely didactic and easy to understand. Much of my understanding to political affairs in my country and the world, I owe to this book.
trevodravis's review
5.0
Needed to marinate for a day or two on this book, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book was incredibly eye opening at just how much of our society has become accustomed to fascism, especially in the United States and even closer to my home state of Oklahoma. Going into this book, I was expecting to read through and think of things that happened between 2015 and 2020, and while that was certainly the case, my mind more often wandered to things happening in the present day. Attacks on the Oklahoma education system from our own State Superintendent, the latest republican talking point on drag queens and trans individuals “grooming” children, migrants being bussed to blue states by politicians looking to make a statement, republicans looking to increase work requirements for social welfare programs, appealing to prejudices as a form of connecting with people rather than finding actual solutions to our problems — all of these actions are rooted in fascism and the list could go on and on. Before reading, I always equated fascism with Nazism and didn’t really understand how both were able to become so mainstream in German society and I was totally unaware of the manifestation of fascism in our present society. I feel like I could always denote what is good and what is bad, but after reading this book, I am now able to decipher how actions fit into the grand fascist plan of separating “us” from “them”. These lessons will not be lost on me.