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How to Stop Fascism · The Lucas Bean Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wondering why so many people see what's happening
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: in this country right now and we don't do anything about it.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't know what to do about it.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to do some research on how we can stop fascism.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In 2025,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: a man firebombed the Pennsylvania governor's home on Passover while his wife
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: and four kids slept inside.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The same year a man dressed as a cop executed a Democratic state lawmaker
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: and her husband in Minnesota and shot another one that same night.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Police found a hit list in his car with more names on it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Trump posted that members of Congress committed sedition,
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  SPEAKER_00: punishable by death,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: because they made a video telling the military to not follow illegal orders.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, ballot drop-off locations are being guarded by the military in Washington, D.C.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is illegal, and most of America scrolled past all of it, like it was just another day.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Fascism doesn't survive because it's strong.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fascism survives because people watching it happen don't say or do anything to stop it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: In 1993,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: political scientist Gene Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution published
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: a short manual on how ordinary people can dismantle dictatorships without violence.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: From Dictatorship to Democracy, Sharp identified 198 methods of nonviolent resistance.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: His manual was smuggled into Burma,
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  SPEAKER_00: printed underground in Serbia,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: and translated into Arabic before the Egyptian Revolution.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Resistance movements from Serbia to Egypt and Ukraine used his playbook.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sharp spent his career proving that dictatorships don't fall because of armies or heroes.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Dictatorships fall because enough ordinary people learn the right behaviors
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: and refuse to stop using them.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers have since tested and expanded that blueprint.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: They found five behaviors that predict whether a fascist movement survives or collapses.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the five steps to stop fascism.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Name it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: In 1981, researcher Robert Altmaier at the University of Manitoba
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Started studying why certain people follow authoritarian leaders without question.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: He called these people right-wing authoritarian followers.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a measurable psychological profile of people who submit to authority,
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  SPEAKER_00: attack whoever the leader points at, and punish anyone who doesn't fall in line.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Altmaier spent 40 years tracking this pattern.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: He found that authoritarian movements don't succeed because the leaders are powerful.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: They succeed because ordinary people refuse to see what's happening until it's too late.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: They insist on calling fascism something softer than what it really is.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: They wait for someone else to say it first.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: That hesitation is built in to how human brains handle threats.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: When something feels too big to confront, the brain looks for a smaller, safer version of it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It files fascism under politics because politics feels manageable.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fascism doesn't feel manageable.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a feature of the human brain.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's a feature of the system.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Fascism counts on polite people staying polite.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It counts on good people to follow the rules,
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  SPEAKER_00: while people in the fascist movement don't follow the rules.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It counts on good people to follow the rules.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It counts on everyone waiting just a little bit longer before they say something.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: The single most important step is the one nobody wants to take.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Stop calling it a difference of opinion.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascism.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Say it out loud.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tactics to fight against fascism.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: When someone tells you both sides are the same, ask them what side called Americans vermin.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: When someone says the media is blowing it out of proportion, ask them which part.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The rally on January 6th where Trump told them to fight or the insurrection
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  SPEAKER_00: that followed the rally.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't fight something you won't name and stand against.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Two, be the one that speaks out.
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  SPEAKER_00: In every group there are people who know the truth and say nothing
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  SPEAKER_00: because nobody else is saying it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: In 1951,
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  SPEAKER_00: psychologist Solomon Ash at Swarthmore College put a volunteer in a room
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  SPEAKER_00: with seven other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: He showed them a card with three lines on it and asked them a simple question.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Which line matches the one on the left?
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  SPEAKER_00: The answer was obvious.
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  SPEAKER_00: One line was clearly the same length.
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  SPEAKER_00: A child could see it.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the seven other people in the room were actors.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of them pointed at the wrong line on purpose.
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  SPEAKER_00: One by one, they all chose the same wrong answer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was the real participant's turn.
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  SPEAKER_00: They looked at the card.
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  SPEAKER_00: They knew the right answer.
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  SPEAKER_00: They could see it with their own eyes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And 75% of them still said the wrong answer anyway.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because every other person in the room had said it first.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ash called it conformity pressure.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even though they could see it was wrong right in front of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The brain treats social rejection the same way it treats physical pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: Going against the group doesn't just feel uncomfortable.
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  SPEAKER_00: It registers as pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like a threat to their very survival.
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  SPEAKER_00: So people go quiet.
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  SPEAKER_00: They swallow what they know to be true.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because saying it out loud feels like it costs too much.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ash also found something else.
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  SPEAKER_00: When just one person in the group gave the correct answer, conformity collapsed.
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  SPEAKER_00: It dropped to only 5-10% conformity.
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  SPEAKER_00: One voice.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's all it took for the entire system to collapse.
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  SPEAKER_00: One person willing to say what was true broke the entire spell for everyone else in the room.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Tactics to fight against conformity pressure.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Next time someone says something wrong at dinner,
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  SPEAKER_00: at work, or in a group chat, say, that's not true.
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  SPEAKER_00: Say it out loud in front of everyone.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're not trying to change the mind of the person talking.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're showing everyone else in the room that they're not alone.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a majority.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a movement.
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  SPEAKER_00: You need to be the one person who says this is wrong because the moment you do,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: the spell breaks and you give everyone else permission to say it too.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Three, inoculate your people.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: By the time someone in your family starts repeating propaganda,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's already too late to argue with them.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: In 2017,
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  SPEAKER_00: researcher Sandar van der Linden at the University of Cambridge began testing
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  SPEAKER_00: a theory about propaganda resistance that had been around for decades,
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  SPEAKER_00: but no one had applied it at scale.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: They called it psychological inoculation.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It works exactly like a vaccine does, so you know the MAGA cult won't be interested.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: You expose people to a weakened version of a manipulative argument
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  SPEAKER_00: before they encounter it in a real-world setting.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Once they've seen the technique, they recognize it when it shows up for real.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they can reject it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The brain builds resistance the same way the immune system does.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: A small controlled exposure trains the brain to fight off the real thing in real life.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Without that exposure, the brain has no defense.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: The brain absorbs propaganda the same way it absorbs any other information.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't know the difference.
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  SPEAKER_00: The researcher and his team tested this on YouTube.
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  SPEAKER_00: They ran inoculation videos as advertisements to over a million users.
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  SPEAKER_00: Short clips that showed people how manipulation techniques work.
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  SPEAKER_00: The people who watched those videos became significantly more resistant
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  SPEAKER_00: to propaganda when they encountered it at a later date.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they now know what it looks like.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they've become inoculated.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: This effect held across liberals and conservatives.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Tactics on how to defeat propaganda.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are five techniques that show up in almost every piece of political propaganda ever made.
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  SPEAKER_00: At least one of these five tricks are in every speech,
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  SPEAKER_00: every ad, and every viral post put out as propaganda.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fear-mongering.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Immigrants are coming for your jobs, your homes, your families.
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  SPEAKER_00: They make you scared so you stop thinking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Scapegoating.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everything wrong in this country is because of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: They give you someone to blame so you don't have to look at who's actually in charge
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  SPEAKER_00: and who's actually really to blame.
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  SPEAKER_00: False dilemma.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're either with us or you're against America.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They make it sound like there's only two choices when there's hundreds of options.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can disagree with leadership and still be an American.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fake authority.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: They'll say things like, a lot of people are saying, or everyone knows.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is saying that.
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  SPEAKER_00: They just made that up and put people are saying in front of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Conspiracy theories.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to know this.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who's they?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is no they.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a trick to make you feel like you figured something out
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  SPEAKER_00: when someone actually just told you what to think.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sneaky.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once you can name all these tricks, they stop working on you.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait until your parents are radicalized and then try to argue with them.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Show them how manipulation works before it gets to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's how you protect the people around you.
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  SPEAKER_00: 4.
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  SPEAKER_00: Stop being a bystander.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every atrocity in history had one thing in common.
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  SPEAKER_00: A massive group of people who saw what was happening and did nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1989,
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  SPEAKER_00: researcher Erwin Staub at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst published
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  SPEAKER_00: the results of a career spent studying how genocides happen.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it active bystandership.
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  SPEAKER_00: The difference between people who watch and the people who act.
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  SPEAKER_00: Staab was a Holocaust survivor.
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  SPEAKER_00: As a six-year-old in Budapest, he and his family were marked for death.
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  SPEAKER_00: Staab's family survived because the people who had no obligation
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  SPEAKER_00: to protect them chose to protect them anyway.
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  SPEAKER_00: A Swedish diplomat forged papers while neighbors hid the families.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ordinary people who could have looked away decided not to look away.
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  SPEAKER_00: That shaped his entire life's work.
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  SPEAKER_00: The single biggest factor in whether political violence escalates
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  SPEAKER_00: or stops isn't what the fascists do.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's what the bystanders do.
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  SPEAKER_00: When bystanders stay silent, the perpetrator reads that silence as permission.
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  SPEAKER_00: It tells them nobody is going to stop them.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they go further.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Silence is not neutral.
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  SPEAKER_00: Silence is permission.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Active bystanders break that cycle.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to be heroes.
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  SPEAKER_00: They just have to do something.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Speak.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Show up.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Refuse to look away.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Staub found that the earlier a bystander intervenes, the more effective it is.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Waiting makes it harder.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So don't wait.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every day you say nothing, the bar for speaking up gets higher.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Tactics on how to use active bystandership.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you see someone getting harassed in public,
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  SPEAKER_00: The only difference between people who saved lives during the Holocaust and the ones
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: who didn't save lives during the Holocaust was that they chose to act.
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  SPEAKER_00: 5.
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  SPEAKER_00: Show up.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most people who oppose fascism never do anything beyond their phone screens.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: They post, they share, they wait for someone else to go first.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: In 2011,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: researcher Erica Chenoweth at Wesleyan University published the largest study
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  SPEAKER_00: of political resistance movements ever conducted.
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  SPEAKER_00: She called it the 3.5% rule.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: She studied every major political uprising from 1900 to 2006.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of campaigns
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  SPEAKER_00: Violent and nonviolent.
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  SPEAKER_00: Successful and failed attempts.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: She found one number that predicted a successful overthrow of a fascist dictator government.
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  SPEAKER_00: One number that if we reach it, no government survives.
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  SPEAKER_00: 3.5%.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: No government in the last century has survived when 3.5% of the population Engaged
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: in a sustained non-violent resistance.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter how powerful the regime was.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: When enough people showed up and kept showing up, the system couldn't handle it.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the United States, 3.5% is about 12 million people.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: A 12 million person sustained strike or protest is all you need to shake things up for good.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Over 7 million Americans showed up to the No Kings protest in a single day.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the largest demonstrations in American history.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were 5 million short of changing everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: The only reason it didn't work is because everyone went home.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: If the American people had a sustained strike without an end date, we would change everything.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tactics on how to make showing up work.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Vote in every election.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: School boards, city councils, DA, sheriff, judges.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: The big elections get all the attention.
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  SPEAKER_00: The local ones are where the ground actually shifts.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what else you pick.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Call someone, knock on doors, show up to meetings.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is you do it next week, and the week after, and the week after.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: The people who stop fascism aren't the loudest.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who never go home until we get the change we want.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every single researcher came to the same conclusion.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing fascism needs to win is for enough people to do nothing.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: When this is all over, everyone's going to ask the same question.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not what did the fascist regime do.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's going to already know what the wannabe dictator did.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to ask, where was everyone else?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where were you?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you do anything?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's you, right now.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's the questions your kids are going to ask you.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what you do right now will be your answer.