Fascism now there is a word that is getting a workout these days….almost as popular as ‘socialist’ was in the not so distant past.
But how many that use the term actually know anything about it?
Here’s a hint: Very Few!
Then here is a very simple definition to get us started….a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
But if that is too simplistic for you then maybe this will make more sense to you…..
When far-right personalities and movements started popping up during the last two decades, there was, in some quarters, strong hesitation to use the “f” word to describe them. Indeed, as late as less than three years ago, I had to defend the use of the word fascist in the Cambridge Union debate against academics who were squeamish about employing it to describe far-right movements in Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. What Donald Trump and the Jan 6, 2021, insurrection have shown, however, is that the distinction between “far right” and “fascist” is academic. Or one can say that a “far-rightist” is a fascist who has not yet seized power, for it is only once they are in power that fascists fully reveal their political propensities.
Fascism 101 for Today’s Geopolitics
But like so many other political philosophies there are many aspects within the ‘movement’….
Primo Levi used to say that every era has its own fascism. What is the fascism of our time? I define fascism as the socio-political condition of capital concentration which, without democratic control, legitimizes total indifference to the humanity of others. Therefore, fascism is a phenomenon specific to capitalist societies. I’ve been making a distinction between societal fascism (when one social group holds the right of veto over the life of another group) and political fascism (a type of authoritarian regime). Today, I think we are moving towards fascist assemblages in which previously distinct components (cultural, economic, social and political) are combined. The fascism of our time has the following faces: social neo-Darwinism, political religion, the traditional far right, lawfare, acedia individualism. Any of them is compatible with democracy, as long as democracy is not much more than a game of appearances.
Social neo-Darwinism. Neoliberalism, as an economic policy, is a device for concentrating wealth through transfers from the poor and middle classes to the upper classes by reducing the freedoms proposed by liberalism to economic freedom. As a social policy, neoliberalism translates into neo-social Darwinism: sacralization of individual autonomy in parallel with the denial of the conditions for being effectively autonomous, which leads to defending the incapacity of the state to alleviate inequalities of opportunity; glorification of order, security and tranquillity guaranteed by police repression and the mass incarceration of discontents or nonconformists; conversion of wealth and economic power into privileged criteria of human dignity; cooperation and altruism are unnatural; the means are always more contingent and disposable than the ends; the production of death is collateral damage in the struggle for success or power.
The Different Faces of Fascism
There are many faces to fascism and I feel we have not seen the end of any of them.
Be Smart!
Learn Stuff!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”