Well, this is scary. If you want to pretend like the GOP isn't marching towards fascism, then maybe don't read this. Well researched, well argued points about the elimination of US history from all but the whitest white people.

ERASING HISTORY by Jason Stanley is subtitled "How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future" and we have certainly heard the term fascist quite frequently in this election cycle. According to the publisher, Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, "exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right's attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots." Stanley points to the importance of multiple perspectives and says that "erasing history helps authoritarians because doing so allows them to represent it as a single story, a single perspective." He is apparently not the only one to feel this way; one of the most chilling quotes is from Vladimir Putin: "Wars are won by teachers." Stanley writes movingly and convincingly:

"Today we are unquestionably returning to something like the era of the Red Scare. Right-wing activists and politicians are targeting educators at all levels for their supposedly leftist ideologies, with the goal of suppressing any teaching that challenges racial hierarchy or patriarchy." And

"By removing the history of uprisings against the current status quo from the curriculum (or never allowing that history to be taught in the first place), authoritarians leave students with the impression that the status quo has never been -- and cannot be -- challenged."

Student researchers will find much to ponder here, particularly about how education, knowledge, and critical thinking skills provide the foundation for democracy, agency, and self-rule. Unlike those who blame the "enemy within," Stanley stresses the importance of educators and investigative journalists. Those concerned with the future of democracy will find this text to be very informative. Approximately fifteen percent of ERASING HISTORY is devoted to notes and an index.

Erasing History, how fascists rewrite the past to control the future by Jason F Stanley, I am being totally sarcastic when I say I can’t believe a Yale professor is writing a book that could be looked at as anti-Trump. I just want to make it clear I in no way shape form or fashion like or would vote for the dictator want to be Trump or any of his cronies. I also want to say I am not a liberal I am a person who reads the articles and not just the headlines and make up my own opinion and when I see something on Facebook that shocks me I investigated and not just tell others as if it’s fact. Now after reading this book I am amazed that the author/Professor acts as if the fashist and tightly wuonde Republicans are the only ones who try to rewrite history I am a big lover of reading things in history and have really been getting upset at all the “newfangled historians“ that I am assuming are all liberals. They cancel out people who have a lifetime of achievements because either they married someone who had slaves or they owned slaves or did some other 21st-century faux pas that makes the historian indignant and deemed them undeserving of any praise. To me liberal historians are like 17th century grave robbers because they’re busy digging up bones and only the decade and the eroded kind because in my opinion some of them only look for the negative. And only want to report the ugly. Not to mention if it was just the right wing and a fascist who uses schools to indoctrinate our children we wouldn’t have Columbia law students protesting in the street and other Ivy League university students pacing up and down Wall Street trying to prove a point with their mommy and daddy‘s credit card in their back pocket. I am not against liberals nor am I for them same with the Republicans I’m just saying before you point your finger pointed at yourself first. As far as the history in this book goes I did enjoy that and if you could make it through all of it including his so clearly obvious opinions then read it. #NetGalley, #JasonFStanley, #ErasingHistory,#AtriaBooks,

“Whether we call them fascist or not, there is widespread agreement that the social and political movements we are witnessing today employ many of the same political tactics and rhetorical techniques that past fascist movements have — conjuring of violent vigilante mobs to threaten those who oppose them, stacking courts with loyalists to a leader or a party, directing hatred against immigrants and LGBTQ citizens, dismantling, reproductive rights, and using education to indoctrinate the young in a narrative of national greatness, rooted in a glorious past.”

“… fascist education works by strategically erasing accounts of history and current events that include a diversity of perspectives, narrowing the scope of what can be taught until students are presented with a single viewpoint, which is formulated specifically to justify and perpetuate a hierarchy value between groups. This narrowing is inconsistent with multi-racial democracy, antithetical to egalitarianism, and carries a possibility of conjuring mass violence.”

“Besides lying, those in power can band concepts necessary for understanding the world we inhabit, such as structural racism, and institutions, such as the Gulag. They can ban concepts such as human rights or the equality of humankind. They can ban inquiry into the human caused climate change. Those lacking such essential concepts, or knowledge of essential facts, will respond differently to events. Unaware of the range of explanations and options, they can easily be manipulated.”

You would have to be intentionally blinkered to avoid recognizing the fascist-leaning elements in the current United States. Such elements are also alive and well in other parts of the world. This book helps identify the methods employed by fascists. Fascism thrives on ignorance and miss information. Knowledge is power. This is a useful book. Although short, it is well researched and covers a lot of history. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Dion Graham. He did an excellent job as always.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This read like a journal article or thesis/dissertation and at times, an annotated bibliography. That isn't bad but because of that I thin this could have been a really good thirty page journal article and not a whole book. I loved the subject matter because HISTORY IS IMPORTANT and its actively under attack in America. I also loved the examples from all across the world about how fascists try to rewrite history, tho for the most part I don't think I learned much.

One thing I will say is that this book convinced me that Trump AND the Republican party are the second coming of Hitler and the Nazi party...so yay?

*Arc provided by NetGalley*

Jason Stanley’s <i>Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future</i> joins Stanley’s earlier <i>How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them<i>, Madeleine Albright’s <i>Fascism: A Warning</i>, and Timothy Snyder’s <i>On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century</i> as required current reading for understanding past and current fascism.

In <i>Erasing History</i>, Stanley focuses on the threat that liberal education poses to fascism and the threat that fascism poses to liberal education. An honest portrayal of history constitutes a profound rebuke to fascism, because history truthfully told entails providing multiple perspectives on the past. Put simply, history-as-truth teaches us that “Make America Great Again” rests on the faulty premise that America was formerly great for all who lived there, including African and Native Americans. Fascism cannot tolerate an history that looks beyond an heroic mythic national or ethnic past. Fascism demands educational authoritarianism that radically simplifies the historical record in service of supporting and advancing its myths.

<i>Erasing History</i> is brief but demands attention: a valuable book, but one that I would have enjoyed more without Professor Stanley’s touching but diverting family memories, distinguished and path-breaking as his father was.

Four stars

Thank you NetGalley and One Signal Publishers/Atria for generously providing me with access to an advanced readers’ copy of this excellent book.

As I read, I wondered at times who this excellent book is for. Or rather, it’s for me and other progressive readers, but the people who ought to be confronted with Stanley’s arguments and his historical analysis will never read Erasing History—or if by some miracle they did read it, they’d dismiss it and then try to get it banned from the public library.

Stanley describes—accurately, as far as my fairly extensive knowledge of the relevant histories enables me to judge—the means by which fascist states, fascist-leaning states, and fascist wannabes (e.g., Ron De Santis) distort and deny history, the goal being, of course, to consolidate their own power in the service of an ideology that valorizes hierarchy and control. Unsurprisingly, the hierarchy in question puts white non-queer men at the top and strips the rest of us (as well as those white non-queer men who aren’t on board with the fascist project) of full citizenship: we’re not very bright, we’re best suited to laboring on behalf of our betters, we’re dangerous to The Children, we’ve contributed nothing to human intellectual life, etc. ad nauseam.

Erasing History lays out the whole infuriating mess in brisk, clear language. But you already knew that the US is well on its way to autocracy and worse, didn’t you? I’m writing this review from Ireland, where my wife and I have gone to scope out a possible refuge since I’m eligible for EU citizenship. Yet neither of us is at all sure we’d be able, if push comes to shove, to leave friends and family behind. And the autocrats seem to be gaining ground everywhere anyway. How shall we stop them, if neither feelings nor facts matter?

The title is slightly misleading - it is not until the very end that Stanley discusses how the erasing of history is used by fascists. The beginning parts were a deeper exploration into what fascism really is, with little bits and pieces about the erasing of history and culture. This book's cover gives off a vibe that is distinctly not academic, but this book felt very dense to read. That isn't a bad thing, just something of note. A lot of the book's topics, such as the limiting of education to 'the Classics' by fascists, could be entire book topics on their own. This book was also very timely published, as it has sprinkles of references to the ongoing tragedy in Gaza that neatly fit into the author's thesis.

As someone who has done relatively little reading on fascism, this felt like a great starting point, if you're willing to read a slightly drier text.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was an excellent history on how social studies education is used as a powerful tool for controlling the narrative. I will definitely be using excerpts of this book with my students, but it should be required reading for all educators.

An important exposé that demands to be read. Maybe then everyone would be ready to face down the fascists rather than being shocked, shocked by them doing exactly what they said they’d do. Some general words of advice: when it comes to the fascists, treat every word that dribbles from their lips as a poisonous promise. Assume they mean exactly what they say they mean, no subtext or hyperbole.

ERASING HISTORY should occupy the same shelf space as books such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race. In terms of being an introduction to how fascism works and where we can see examples of fascism in our history and current events, it’s successful. I did wish, however, that it could have committed to a more discerning definition of fascism, as well as focused more on rising fascism in the US.

Jason Stanley is a professor specializing in philosophy of education, so he has the depth and breadth to write about this subject. In ERASING HISTORY, Stanley first gives us an overview of the reasons why fascists are threatened by a democratic, pluralistic view of history: because understanding that there are multiple perspectives on history is tantamount to admitting that different perspectives, and therefore different people, are valuable, and fascism is all about controlling the narrative for the powerful to maintain their influence. Things that made me think from reading ERASING HISTORY include:

- Settler colonialism using the erasure of indigenous history and culture to justify implanting their superior culture on an “unclaimed” land;

- “Civilization savagism” as the act of rendering the local population deserving of being colonized or ruled by the colonizing nation’s universally superior cultural norms;

- The need for “supremacist nationalism” to justify their manifest superiority by portraying themselves in only a good light, e.g. the way in which US conservatives have tried to rewrite the US’ history with slavery and the actions of the Ku Klux Klan as being beneficial to Black people;

- The five themes of fascist education being national greatness, national purity, national innocence, strict gender roles, and vilification of the left;

- The susceptibility of populations educated with myths of national supremacy to the Great Replacement Theory (or the fear that their position of influence in their society will be replaced by invading foreign stains), because their nationhood is predicated on the belief that they are superior to others.

Stanley pulls on historical examples from Nazi Germany, India, Hungary, Russia, and more to support his arguments. All of this is fascinating, but I found myself wishing he would stick more to analyzing historical and current US events, as ERASING HISTORY inadvertently gives off the impression that “Well, the US may be bad in some ways, but at least we’re not Nazi Germany!” which is not really the message that we need right now.

Indeed, one could argue that Stanley is so quick to assign the label of fascism to contemporary societies that it starts to lose its impact. In taking a broader view in his analysis, the book could end up confusing or misleading readers into thinking that fascism is less a threat to the US than it really is, because he switches from talking about non-US examples of fascism to US examples in a way that sort of obfuscates the seriousness of the rise of fascism in the US.

Finally, I wasn’t that impressed that, for someone so quick to throw out the labels of fascism and genocide (he calls what Russia is doing to Ukrainians a genocide, or at least a “cultural genocide”), Stanley delicately yet noticeably avoids labeling Israel’s actions against Palestinians as a genocide. Every time Israel is brought up as an example, the book is careful to preface it by saying that Israel acted in response to a “horrific” terrorist attack by Hamas, whereas Israel’s actions are only “arguably genocidal”. Interesting because on his social media he DOES call a genocide a genocide, but limitations were placed on this book? Shrug.

As far as literature on fascism is concerned, I’m not sure if ERASING HISTORY breaks any new ground, but it is a good summary of the concept for those who are, perhaps, just beginning to un-learn the things that we had been taught. A more specific focus on the US and more actionable measures that we can take against fascism would have made it a stronger read for me.

Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

This book goes beyond being about any sort of specific historical period, and is more of a meta-read going into the practice of history itself and how fascism manipulates it for political gain. At only 256 pages, this book is not very long or completely comprehensive, but it provides a wonderful entry point to readers who want to understand how the current situation with right-wing extremists in US education is tied to larger narratives of fascism and authoritarianism.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is that Stanley cites a lot of real-world examples of past fascist regimes and how they have utilized the practice of history to achieve their goals. When people try to explain political methods or ideologies, readers and listeners sometimes have a hard time understanding without examples, and may try to claim that these things have never occurred or aren’t problems. This book manages to reach an audience that isn’t super knowledgeable on the subject by including a lot of detailed real-world examples interwoven with more conceptual explanations. These examples also taught me about a lot of places, people, and events I didn’t know about before.

In a world where political movements often appear absurd, this book helps to explain the reasoning behind the absurdity. Stanley reveals that a lot of the talking points of the alt-right are, in fact, intentionally malicious and not just the result of their proponents “not knowing better” or lacking critical thinking skills.

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this one. It is short enough that I don’t really see a need to “pick it apart” any further given that the book’s organization by theme speaks for itself and all of the topics flow into each other naturally enough for readers to keep up. I am also aware that Stanley has written some other books, which I plan to seek out and read at some point because his writing style is very approachable while also communicating multiple levels of nuance, as is appropriate for the subject matter at hand.

Great book...if you are into liberal propaganda! This book is full of nonsensical claims of the so called right wing fascists and is a play by play of everything the left is doing. Full of false claims and twisting of the facts. Most of what the author is saying is exactly what the liberal progressives are doing. I am sure liberals will eat this up.

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
Posted on September 7, 2024 by Jack

The book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley. The book is scheduled to be published on September 10.

I know that certain factions have insisted on a revised of history. It never made any sense to me. But that is probably because I am an American. The government could insist that something was true and maybe even force the education department to go along with it.

But in a democracy there would always be a those who voiced another opinion. And as Americans we would be free to decide who to believe. But what if we were not be free to disagree with the government version of history. There was only 1 acceptable version. And that was designed to make us believe what the government wants us to believe.

In Erasing History, Jason Stanley discusses how and why rewriting history is part of authoritarian and fascist governments method to gain power and eliminate democracy. This has happened in many counties around the world. So now I understand why they want us to believe their version of history and how they use it to enhance there power over the people,

It is happening in the United States and must be stopped if we would like to remain a free country.

Several years ago I reviewed a book called The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic by Benjamin Carter Hett.

I was stuck in particular by the statement:

“among the Weimar Republic’s more fatal defects was that millions of its people deeply believed things that were verifiably untrue.”

This is true in America today. I closed my review by asking:

Is history repeating itself? It is not exactly the same but some things seem pretty close.

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This book is wonderful, concise, and MANY people are going to be opposed to it. Give it to your friends, family, and nemeses.

I love a great researched book with lots of citations! This book delivers! Bonus, a lot of hightlighted content to review later (likley in in debates). Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley, exposes the attack from facisits we are under here in the United States thorugh the education system. (check out what he writes about the “Trad Wife” movement). A fast amazing read!

Thank you NetGalley and Atria/One Signal Publishers. #ErasingHistory #NetGalley

As a librarian, I hear a lot about book banning from the news, but I haven't seen much about the theory and history behind it besides short references to Nazis. It was great to get a more comprehensive look at the history of hiding history around the world, especially with more recent international examples.

I have had Jason Stanley's other book, How Fascism Works, on my TBR for years so when I saw this one was available, I jumped on the opportunity. Genuinely a fantastic decision!

This book is a must read for anyone wanting to better understand how and why erasing or rewriting history is part of authoritarian and fascist governments and groups. Stanley's explanations are concise, precise and accessible even without much prior knowledge or understanding of fascism (or any other concept that might intimidate you).

I highly recommend reading one chapter at a time and then taking a breather to fully reflect on and absorb what you've just read. Not because it is complicated, but rather because it is somewhat mind blowing when you consider how each aspect links with the others to build this manipulation of "history".

I will now be pushing all his other books to the top of my list.


Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books | Atria/One Signal Publishers for the opportunity to read this book,

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

In “Erasing History,” Jason Stanley masterfully dissects the far-right’s insidious assault on education, revealing how rewriting the past becomes a weapon to control our collective future. With urgency and precision, Stanley navigates the treacherous terrain where authoritarianism thrives—our schools and universities.

Authoritarians target our common understanding of history, aiming to dismantle the bedrock of democracy. By erasing historical context, they leave us unmoored and susceptible to their divisive narratives.

Democracies entrust educational institutions with preserving a memory of positive change—generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right seeks to erase this history, stifling critical inquiry and progress.

Stanley exposes the tactics and funders behind this assault. From discouraging critical examination to threatening violence, authoritarians weaponize education to rewrite narratives in their favor.

“Erasing History” is a battle cry for our times. Stanley’s clarity and urgency resonate as he reminds us that the worst fascist movements began in schools—a sobering truth. By understanding the fascist playbook, we can safeguard our shared history true history and help protect democracy.

For those who believe in the power of knowledge and the resilience of truth, “Erasing History” is essential reading. Let’s defend our past to shape a more just and informed future.

Sometimes the fight to preserve the truth is the fight for our very existence. 📚🔍

I read this after reading "how democracies die" I felt like they paired well together. I have recommended this book to several other.