The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America; Vanity Fair, March 31, 2025

 KEZIAH WEIR, Vanity Fair; The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America

"Jason Stanley has spent the last two decades writing about power, language, and the ways both are corruptible. He is an expert on authoritarian regimes and the author of seven books, including 2018’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and last year’s Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, and has been a member of the Yale University faculty since 2013.

Last week, in what he calls an “impulsive” decision prompted by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump administration demands, he decided to leave—not just Yale, but the country altogether. This fall he’ll decamp to the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where he was offered the position of Bissell Hyatt Chair in American Studies.

“Educational authoritarianism is frequently accompanied by more general restrictions on knowledge,” he writes in Erasing History, “and by attempts to push mythic representations in place of that knowledge.” In the book he likens conservative activist groups seeking book bans to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels keeping lists of books to be censored, and outlines attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people by various fascist regimes throughout history (among which he counts the Trump administration). When I ask whether he sees warning signs in sectors outside of education, he responds, “Are you fucking with me?”"...

[Vanity Fair] I think an anxiety for many people is, will we only really realize how bad things are once it becomes too late to do anything about it? How would you counsel people who are wondering how you know that it’s time to try to get out?

[Jason Stanley] Not my business. My business is to describe what’s happening. And you can read what I write and decide for yourself, but I’m not going to make other people’s decisions for them. I’m not into moralizing or lecturing; that’s not my thing. I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it. I would love to live in the United States, but I want to live in the United States because it’s a place that is free. A lot of Americans don’t care about freedom. If you look at the polls, they say that Americans don’t value democracy at all. I have a different set of values. Democracy comes before the price of eggs. But what I think is particularly foolish and naive and stupid is to give up democracy and raise the price of eggs."

The Authoritarian’s Worst Fear? A Book; The New York Times, October 3, 2019

Duncan White, The New York Times; The Authoritarian’s Worst Fear? A Book

""Regimes are expending so much energy attacking books because their supposed limitations have begun to look like strengths: With online surveillance, digital reading carries with it great risks and semi-permanent footprints; a physical book, however, cannot monitor what you are reading and when, cannot track which words you mark or highlight, does not secretly scan your face, and cannot know when you are sharing it with others."

The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right; The Guardian, April 26, 2018

Editorial Board, The Guardian; The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right

"Encryption on the internet will be abused, but better that than a society where no one is allowed secrets from the government"

Egypt's revolt met with wide support, censorship; Associated Press, 2/12/11

Associated Press; Egypt's revolt met with wide support, censorship:

"From London to Gaza City to Seoul, the world was savoring the spectacular fall of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, with demonstrators rallying in the thousands Saturday in cities across the world. But other authoritarian regimes weren't celebrating — and some were trying to censor the news.

In China, where the ruling Communist Party ruthlessly stamps out dissent, terse media reports downplayed the large-scale pro-democracy protests in Egypt that forced Mubarak from power and instead emphasized the country's disorder and lawlessness.

In oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, where coup leader Teodoro Obiang has been in power since 1979, state-controlled media was ordered to stop reporting about Egypt altogether, according to African news site afrol.com.

Nearly everywhere else, newspapers congratulated Egypt's revolution, with many headlines carrying the word: "Finally.""