BUDAPEST: First Haider, now Berlusconi. The government of my country, Hungary, is also part of that worrying trend. Along with Bavaria’s provincial government (provincial in more senses than one), it has been the strongest foreign supporter of Jörg Haider’s movement. Viktor Orban’s government here, besides other misdeeds, attempts to suppress parliamentary government, penalize local governments controlled by its opponents, and is creating a novel state ideology in cahoots with a group of lumpen right-wing intellectuals.
I cannot consider myself a neutral observer of all this. A video from 1988 shows Orban protecting me with his body from the truncheons of communist riot police. Ten years later, Orban appointed a communist police general as his home secretary. Political conflicts between friends are usually acrimonious and this is no exception. Our opponents - in personal terms - are too close for comfort.
Orban, Haider, and Berlusconi represent a new politics of exclusion that has found a comfortable niche in today’s global capitalism. The old politics of exclusion was Fascism; this new post-fascism is very different: it lacks a Führer, one-party rule, or an SS. Yet it shares a crucial feature with Fascism: it seeks to reverse the great Enlightenment idea that linked citizenship to the human condition.
By equating citizenship with human dignity, the Enlightenment extended it - at least in principle - to all classes, professions, sexes, races, and creeds. The state was conceived as representing everyone; as such, citizenship ceased to be a feudal privilege for the few and became a universal ideal, delivering virtual equality in political conditions.
The Fascism of the first half of the 20th century attacked the notion of universal citizenship, but not in the name of conservatism. For although Fascism was counter-revolutionary, it did not seek to re-establish hereditary aristocracy. Nonetheless, it obliterated the universal citizenship within which the nation-state represented and protected everyone inside its borders. Under Fascism, the sovereign power determined who did and did not belong to the civic community.
The Fascist idea of denying citizenship through exploitation, oppression, discrimination or even annihilation is being replaced nowadays by a new form of exclusion. The new politics of exclusion - what I call post-fascism - does not need storm-troopers and dictators. Freedom, security, and prosperity, indeed, are left undisturbed, at least for that productive majority living in rich countries. But the idea of citizenship here is akin to what existed before the Enlightenment: citizenship becomes again a grant from the sovereign, not a universal human right.
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These new politicians of exclusion represent a striking phenomenon of the turn of the millennium: an extremism of the center. How can you have an extremism of the center? Before communism collapsed, the old bourgeois world was permanently confronted by strong competitors to the right and left. Both of those antagonists vanished ten years ago, leaving capitalism as the sole force on the political horizon. In such a world, dissent is pointless, because anti-capitalist politics is taken seriously by very few.
As a result, political repression is unnecessary and exclusion can be accomplished from the center. Citizenship itself is increasingly defined in apolitical terms. Interest groups and other voluntary associations – the touchstones of the much-lauded “civil society” – cannibalize politics and citizenship increasingly becomes a matter of policy, not politics.
Haider, Berlusconi, and Orban are prime examples of this. Their discourse is partly libertarian/neo-liberal. Their ideal is the propertied little man. They strongly favor shareholding and home-ownership, and are mostly free of the old Fascism’s romantic-reactionary nationalism, as distinct from the new parochial selfishness and racism.
They seek to achieve their goals though a “soft” exclusion of borders, immigration laws, neglect, and the movement of capital. In the old days universal citizenship resulted from liberation struggles and efforts at exclusion were used to suppress these insurrections. Such struggles are impossible to imagine for today’s wretched of the earth because no one exploits them. No extra profit or surplus value is being extracted.
Instead, the poor have become superfluous. Far from abusing those on the periphery, the center (i.e., the majorities within rich countries) focus on keeping the poor at bay. Awesome frontier barriers are erected. Humanitarian wars are fought in order to prevent masses of refugees from flowing in and cluttering up Western welfare systems.
Abetting this extremism of the center is the international economic system. Fights for higher salaries and better working conditions are met nowadays, not by violence and strikebreakers, but by capital flight and rebukes from the IMF. Only one exit - exodus - remains for the poor and it is the exclusionists’ job to prevent their taking it. The attacks on the underclass which follow – on both the global poor and domestic ne’er-do-wells – provide post-fascism with populist energy.
Citizenship in a functioning Western state is the one safe meal ticket in the modern world. Today, however, it is becoming the privilege of the few. Post-fascists need not put non-citizens into freight trains; they only need to prevent them from boarding any train that might bring them to the West.
Of course, post-fascist ideas are not unique to Austria, Italy, and Hungary. They exist throughout Europe’s anti-immigrant movements. Extremism of the center may not threaten liberal democratic rule, but is incompatible with the Enlightenment idea of universal citizenship. For the threat posed by post-fascism is not that of incipient authoritarianism, but of a politics that reserves the benefits of citizenship to the few.
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US President Donald Trump’s import tariffs have triggered a wave of retaliatory measures, setting off a trade war with key partners and raising fears of a global downturn. But while Trump’s protectionism and erratic policy shifts could have far-reaching implications, the greatest victim is likely to be the United States itself.
warns that the new administration’s protectionism resembles the strategy many developing countries once tried.
It took a pandemic and the threat of war to get Germany to dispense with the two taboos – against debt and monetary financing of budgets – that have strangled its governments for decades. Now, it must join the rest of Europe in offering a positive vision of self-sufficiency and an “anti-fascist economic policy.”
welcomes the apparent departure from two policy taboos that have strangled the country's investment.
BUDAPEST: First Haider, now Berlusconi. The government of my country, Hungary, is also part of that worrying trend. Along with Bavaria’s provincial government (provincial in more senses than one), it has been the strongest foreign supporter of Jörg Haider’s movement. Viktor Orban’s government here, besides other misdeeds, attempts to suppress parliamentary government, penalize local governments controlled by its opponents, and is creating a novel state ideology in cahoots with a group of lumpen right-wing intellectuals.
I cannot consider myself a neutral observer of all this. A video from 1988 shows Orban protecting me with his body from the truncheons of communist riot police. Ten years later, Orban appointed a communist police general as his home secretary. Political conflicts between friends are usually acrimonious and this is no exception. Our opponents - in personal terms - are too close for comfort.
Orban, Haider, and Berlusconi represent a new politics of exclusion that has found a comfortable niche in today’s global capitalism. The old politics of exclusion was Fascism; this new post-fascism is very different: it lacks a Führer, one-party rule, or an SS. Yet it shares a crucial feature with Fascism: it seeks to reverse the great Enlightenment idea that linked citizenship to the human condition.
By equating citizenship with human dignity, the Enlightenment extended it - at least in principle - to all classes, professions, sexes, races, and creeds. The state was conceived as representing everyone; as such, citizenship ceased to be a feudal privilege for the few and became a universal ideal, delivering virtual equality in political conditions.
The Fascism of the first half of the 20th century attacked the notion of universal citizenship, but not in the name of conservatism. For although Fascism was counter-revolutionary, it did not seek to re-establish hereditary aristocracy. Nonetheless, it obliterated the universal citizenship within which the nation-state represented and protected everyone inside its borders. Under Fascism, the sovereign power determined who did and did not belong to the civic community.
The Fascist idea of denying citizenship through exploitation, oppression, discrimination or even annihilation is being replaced nowadays by a new form of exclusion. The new politics of exclusion - what I call post-fascism - does not need storm-troopers and dictators. Freedom, security, and prosperity, indeed, are left undisturbed, at least for that productive majority living in rich countries. But the idea of citizenship here is akin to what existed before the Enlightenment: citizenship becomes again a grant from the sovereign, not a universal human right.
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At a time of escalating global turmoil, there is an urgent need for incisive, informed analysis of the issues and questions driving the news – just what PS has always provided.
Subscribe to Digital or Digital Plus now to secure your discount.
Subscribe Now
These new politicians of exclusion represent a striking phenomenon of the turn of the millennium: an extremism of the center. How can you have an extremism of the center? Before communism collapsed, the old bourgeois world was permanently confronted by strong competitors to the right and left. Both of those antagonists vanished ten years ago, leaving capitalism as the sole force on the political horizon. In such a world, dissent is pointless, because anti-capitalist politics is taken seriously by very few.
As a result, political repression is unnecessary and exclusion can be accomplished from the center. Citizenship itself is increasingly defined in apolitical terms. Interest groups and other voluntary associations – the touchstones of the much-lauded “civil society” – cannibalize politics and citizenship increasingly becomes a matter of policy, not politics.
Haider, Berlusconi, and Orban are prime examples of this. Their discourse is partly libertarian/neo-liberal. Their ideal is the propertied little man. They strongly favor shareholding and home-ownership, and are mostly free of the old Fascism’s romantic-reactionary nationalism, as distinct from the new parochial selfishness and racism.
They seek to achieve their goals though a “soft” exclusion of borders, immigration laws, neglect, and the movement of capital. In the old days universal citizenship resulted from liberation struggles and efforts at exclusion were used to suppress these insurrections. Such struggles are impossible to imagine for today’s wretched of the earth because no one exploits them. No extra profit or surplus value is being extracted.
Instead, the poor have become superfluous. Far from abusing those on the periphery, the center (i.e., the majorities within rich countries) focus on keeping the poor at bay. Awesome frontier barriers are erected. Humanitarian wars are fought in order to prevent masses of refugees from flowing in and cluttering up Western welfare systems.
Abetting this extremism of the center is the international economic system. Fights for higher salaries and better working conditions are met nowadays, not by violence and strikebreakers, but by capital flight and rebukes from the IMF. Only one exit - exodus - remains for the poor and it is the exclusionists’ job to prevent their taking it. The attacks on the underclass which follow – on both the global poor and domestic ne’er-do-wells – provide post-fascism with populist energy.
Citizenship in a functioning Western state is the one safe meal ticket in the modern world. Today, however, it is becoming the privilege of the few. Post-fascists need not put non-citizens into freight trains; they only need to prevent them from boarding any train that might bring them to the West.
Of course, post-fascist ideas are not unique to Austria, Italy, and Hungary. They exist throughout Europe’s anti-immigrant movements. Extremism of the center may not threaten liberal democratic rule, but is incompatible with the Enlightenment idea of universal citizenship. For the threat posed by post-fascism is not that of incipient authoritarianism, but of a politics that reserves the benefits of citizenship to the few.