Thank you Atria Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite The Past To Control The Future, by Jason Stanley.

The author primarily studies international politics and countries like Russia, India, Turkey, Israel and Hungary where fascist or authoritarian cultures appear. Unfortunately, that is also happening in the United States, which is the central focus of this book.

The focus on the book is how fascists use education as a political tool. As Putin pointed out, “Wars are won by teachers.”

Stanley pointed out the parallel between the Red Scare and McCarthyism to today’s efforts by the right-wing to go after liberal educators at every level from elementary school to college.

Control of education goes beyond merely deciding curriculum. Education can be used to achieve political objections as well. For example, in “Russia and North Korea today, we can see how education systems help to cultivate an unhealthy reverence for leaders, placing them above the rule of law. In other countries, such as India, the education system is used to place Hindu Indians over Muslim Indians. In each case, education functions to undermine the basis of democratic equal citizenship.”

The author does an excellent job discussing “supremacist nationalism”, which doesn’t acknowledge the country has ever done anything wrong. He uses how the education system has historically been whitewashing slavery and our treatment of minorities to make his case. And he accurately condemns “American exceptionalism” as whitewashing the role of slavery and the genocide of indigenous people.

This is the third book I have by Stanley. I already gave How Fascism Works: The Politics Of Us And Them an A in 2018. While I have a copy of How Propaganda Works, I have not yet read it.

This is a short book. There was a time when I would have held that against it and wouldn’t consider giving it either an A or A+. I am glad that I abandoned that stubbornness about a year and a half or so ago. Despite its lack of length, the author made his case so forcefully that he earns an A on this one.  After finishing this book, I immediately put in a preorder for the audio version, which will come out at the same time as the printed copy on September 10.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This book will be released on September 10, 2024. As requested by the publisher, I will hold off posting the review at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews until a week prior to publication.

Mr. Book finished reading this on July 8, 2024.