We are living in interesting times1. Right now, that means fascism, unfortunately, is a buzzword again2. It’s a battering ram of a word, one that carries the metallic waft of oppression, cruelty and violence, and is inextricably tied to a specific group of 20th century tiny tyrants with big egos and even bigger rap sheets. Whilst most of us have been fortunate enough to avoid close contact with that ideology and its harbingers, protectionism, censorship and nationalist propagandising are ramping up in our geopolitical neighbourhood. Now, more than ever, it’s important to know what to look out for - to better spot the tell-tale signs of proto-fascist ideologies in a world where everybody’s pointing fingers3.
If you’re a seasoned scholar of 20th century political history or the well-informed family member of a Zeitzeuge4, this might be old news to you. But if you’re just a guy or girl feeling an impending sense of doom when confronted with the latest antics of the technofeudal elite and don’t know what to do with all that anxiety, read on. Knowledge is power!
Good vs. Evil?
If you’ve spent any amount of time engaging in political discourse recently, you might have heard the F word being bandied around by members of both Right and Left. Do any of the items on the following list sound familiar to you5?
‘Eco-fascist’, referring to environmental activists
‘Health-fascist’ for governmental health initiatives, e.g. a mask mandate
‘Economic fascist’ for anything other neoliberal economic policy
‘Feminazis’ - for feminists, a lovely term coined by Rush Limbaugh
The revisionist term Liberal Fascism6
Using the term fascist as a suffix is a temptingly easy way to harness its polemical power. The Right has often used the term as a kind of Totschlagargument, or thought-stopper - a way of precluding further discussion by drawing on the our collective, subliminal association of the word’s invocation of good vs. evil.
It not only summons the collective conscience by invoking a common enemy, but uses a common misconception that fascism = totalitarianism to distract and point fingers in the (often wrong) direction. Example rhetoric: Do you love freedom and hate being told what to do? The eco-fascists are trying to take away your right to burn coal and throw your trash out of your car window. Beware!
The term has changed its contours in public discourse to refer to “'people who want us to do things we don't want to do”. This, we can all agree, is a dangerously diffuse way of looking at a clearly definable, unfortunately resurgent way of doing politics.
To help us understand when the term is being weaponised or misused, and where best to direct that all that well-intentioned energy, we need to remember what is at the core of the ideology, and what is not.
The shape of fascism
Fascism is inherently nationalist.
It is a political movement that has varied hugely in terms of its real-world application, but every fascism has one thing in common: a doctrine rooted in the perceived primacy and superiority of the ethnic or national identity of the group it represents. And as much as members of the manosphere would like to claim that feminism is somehow a belief in female supremacy, an ideology centred around equality and pluralism cannot de facto qualify for fascist status.
To illustrate, let’s use Robert Paxton’s example of an imagined US-American fascism. Because a story of Christian ‘pilgrimage’ is at the core of the founding story of the US, religion would be a likely central tenet of said ideology. An American fascism wouldn’t use the same anti-religious rhetoric as Nazi fascism, which was rooted in an imagined ‘Aryan’ ethnic identity, but would be a fascism nonetheless. Just because someone isn’t waving a swastika flag, doesn’ mean they aren’t a fascist.
So: each fascism is unique to the nation or group that employs it, and “authentic fascism is not for export.7”
Fascism invokes a shared ‘historic destiny’ through emotional appeal.
It is almost mythical in this sense. It draws heavily on the emotional impact of the idea of a shared destiny and history, a kind of ethnocentric nostalgia that can mobilise potential members of The Group. Times of disillusionment and polarisation provide fertile ground for this kind of rhetoric. When people are searching for belonging, identity and change, or feel misrepresented or left behind, the idea of a shared destiny and a path to reach it can be irresistible. Fascism could, hypothetically speaking, build on a collective dream of becoming great again.
In contrast, a political ideology that does not have the perceived supremacy of an ethnic, religious or national identity at its core, is not a fascist ideology. As far as I know, Greta Thunberg does not identify as an iceberg.
Fascism is always anti-democratic.
This is perhaps its strongest conceptual yoke to authoritarianism, but the key difference here is that authoritarian systems benefit from a passive and unpolitical populus, whilst fascism wants members of the group it represents to be politically engaged and active. Rallies, uniforms (or merch?), flags and media presence are great - as long as they benefit The Cause. Democracy is seen as a flawed system, and fascist reality an alternative. Dissidence and discussion are too democratic: fascism is black and white, “for us or against us”, and inherently othering. If you do not belong to the The Group, if you do not share the ‘historic destiny’, you will be pushed aside, or at worst, destroyed.
By extension, fascism is also anti-intellectual and (historically) anti-bourgeois. This has historically allowed fascist politicians to position themselves as would-be mouthpieces for the people8, whilst actively discouraging or banning intellectual thought that could result in said people thinking for themselves. Ironic, no?
Banning books and discouraging open discussion in educational institutions and the media under the guise of being anti-establishment (e.g. by cutting funding or closing down forums where this is possible) are tried and tested methods. Modus operandus: “We know best”.
Fascism is not about improving overall social conditions, although it might initially claim to be.
The promise of ‘cultural renewal’.7 is what draws people in, but in the end, the interests of The Group always take priority. An average person drawn in to a fascist movement via the promise of economic upturn or bolstered national industry should think twice about whether it says what it does on the tin.
But is 21st century fascism even possible?
The canonical definition of fascism tends to position this way of doing politics firmly between the First and Second World Wars, confining it to a short blip in 20th century history. Proponents of this temporal ankle monitor seem to believe we study history to learn from it. Others might say this is incorrect, and others still that we study history to learn the wrong things. In any case, I don’t think we can retire the term just yet. If it looks, feels and smells like fascism, it’s fascism.
If you want to learn more…
To learn to recognise the five stages of fascism, the Council on Foreign Relations has a succinct blog post that draws on Robert Paxton’s seminal work.
For more reading on nationalism, consider Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism (1983), Edited by John Breuilly, 2nd ed., Oxford, Blackwell, 2006. It’s a wonderfully comprehensive & nuanced text that looks at societies and national identities of every shape and size, and has looks at everything from the origins and seductions to the dangers and ultimately violent outgrowths of nationalism.
Many of us seem to have forgotten what liberalism actually means. To restore the word with meaning, consider the below definition, and perhaps visit Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s deepdive into the topic.
A political ideology centred upon the individual (see individualism), thought of as possessing rights against the government, including rights of due process under the law, equality of respect, freedom of expression and action, and freedom from religious and ideological constraint.
Liberalism is attacked from the left as the ideology of free markets, with no defence against the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and as lacking any analysis of the social and political nature of persons.
It is attacked from the right as insufficiently sensitive to the value of settled institutions and customs, or to the need for social structure and constraint in providing the matrix for individual freedoms.
From the curse May you live in interesting times (unknown origin). Funnily enough, this phrase entered our public sphere right around the height of 20th century fascism, via a speech delivered by Frederic R. Coudert at the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 1939.
If you pop ‘fascism’ into media-monitoring tool Mention, it’s got an estimated 84,161 mentions/month right now.
Proto-fascism refers to political movements that pave the way for the emergence of outright fascism.
German word meaning ‘contemporary witness’.
Griffin, Roger. “What Fascism Is Not and Is. Thoughts on the Re-Inflation of a Concept.” Fascism, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013, pp. 259–261, https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-00202008. Accessed 24 Sept. 2019.
From the eponymous book by Jonah Goldberg.
Paxton, Robert O. “The Five Stages of Fascism.” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 70, no. 1, Mar. 1998, pp. 1–23.