I Study Fascism. I’ve Already Fled America.
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More To The Story: Jason Stanley isn’t afraid to use the F-word when talking about President Donald Trump. The author of How Fascism Works and Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future is clear: He believes the United States is currently under an authoritarian regime led by a fascist leader. At a time when the Trump administration is putting increasing pressure on private and public universities to conform or lose funding, Stanley recently left his position at Yale University and moved his family to Canada, where he’s now the Bissell-Heyd chair in American studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The move, he says, has allowed him to talk about the US in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if he remained in the country. On this week’s More To The Story, Stanley traces the recent rise of fascist regimes around the globe, and explains why he describes what’s happening in the US today as a “coup” and why he thinks the speed and scope of the Trump administration’s hardline policies could ultimately lead to significant pushback from those opposed to the president.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
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Read: He Studies Fascism: Is He Now Living Through It? (Mother Jones)
Listen:Trump’s New World (Dis)Order (Reveal)
Watch: We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US (The New York Times)
Read: How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Random House)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I knew that if I stayed at Yale, there would be pressure not to bring the Trump administration's wrath onto Yale. |
| 0:09.2 | I knew that Yale would like try to normalize the situation, escape being in the press, you know, |
| 0:16.6 | urge us to see the fascists as just politically different and talk about polarization. |
| 0:23.6 | Coming up on more to the story, how one professor decided moving to Canada was the best way to fight fascism. |
| 0:30.6 | Don't go anywhere. |
| 0:31.6 | Malcolm Gladwell here. |
| 0:39.6 | This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama |
| 0:45.2 | where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. |
| 0:48.7 | There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody |
| 0:57.0 | than it was to be divorced. |
| 0:59.0 | From Revisionist History, this is The Alabama Murders. |
| 1:03.0 | Listen to Revisionist History, the Alabama murders, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:18.0 | This is more to the story. |
| 1:18.9 | I'm Al Ledson. |
| 1:23.3 | Philosophy professor and author Jason Stanley studies fascism. |
| 1:28.5 | He's written two books on the topic, how fascism works and his latest erasing history, |
| 1:32.1 | how fascists rewrite the past to control the future. |
| 1:36.9 | But what drew a lot of attention to Jason this year was his decision to leave his tenured position at Yale University and move his family to Canada. |
| 1:41.2 | Yale University professor Jason Stanley. |
| 1:42.9 | Jason Stanley, author of how fascism works. |
| 1:47.0 | Jason Stanley is so worried about how he's leaving Yale University and the United States. |
| 1:51.0 | He's now moving to Canada. |
... |
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