Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and a member of The Justice Collaboratory of Yale Law School. He writes and speaks about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration and other topics.

Jason is a descendant of Holocaust survivors – his uncle served several years in Auschwitz, his mother was raised in a Siberian labor camp, and his father experienced the madness of Kristallnacht. The impact of his family’s experiences led him to dedicate much of his work to studying the ideology and structure around injustice and how it is enabled and concealed. In his book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Jason identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, he reveals that the stuff of politics – charged by rhetoric and myth – can quickly become policy and reality. How Fascism Works is a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and Claudia Rankine says of the book, 'No single book is as relevant to the present moment.' His most recent book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future was published in 2024. This urgent, piercing and altogether brilliant book exposes how the fight to learn from our past is ultimately a fight about the promise of our future.