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Politics

¿Qué hace a un fascista?

Nov 7, 2022 Jan-Werner Mueller

PRINCETON – Casi exactamente un siglo después de la Marcha sobre Roma y el ascenso al cargo de primer ministro italiano del líder fascista Benito Mussolini, una política cuyo partido desciende de los fascistas originales, Giorgia Meloni, ha asumido como primera ministra de Italia. ¿Estamos siendo testigos del retorno de un fascismo en minúsculas -un fenómeno político que ha resonado mucho más allá de Italia desde 1922?

Si bien no tiene nada de malo formular la pregunta, hablar demasiado libremente de fascismo podría inducir fácilmente a los líderes de extrema derecha a decir que, como sus críticos siempre exageran, ellos también deben inflar la amenaza a la democracia. Como era de esperarse, Meloni hizo un gran esfuerzo por distanciarse del fascismo en su discurso inaugural ante el Parlamento.

Sin embargo, al considerar la cuestión del fascismo hoy, debemos recordar que ha pasado por diferentes fases. Si bien hoy en día no hay regímenes fascistas en Europa o en el hemisferio americano, ciertamente hay algunos partidos -inclusive en el gobierno- que podrían adoptar gradualmente una dirección más fascista.

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Curtis Carpenter Nov 13, 2022

Perhaps it's important to differentiate between "applied fascism" and the spirit of it, never mind how it's made. And in spirit, I'm reminded of the famous dialog about words between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
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Mirek Fatyga Nov 8, 2022

I am not sure that I agree with the last paragraph: "it is a failure of political judgment to conflate todays far right with Fascism".

Fascism is a political method of ruling societies through incitement of emotion. Incitement of emotion is accomplished through propaganda. This is why Fascist regimes see the press and independent thinkers as their prime opponents.

The opposite of Fascism is Democracy which is often conflated with elections. While elections are a necessary condition for democracy, they are not sufficient. Democracy can only be preserved if political elites maintain the commitment to stop demagogues who want to rule through incitement of public emotion. The Fascist danger in the US and Europe is that a significant fraction of political elites abandoned this commitment and elected to succumb to demagoguery in the interest of pursuit of power.

Fascism is dangerous because it tends to work. Humans are not particularly rational. Owing to our evolutionary roots, we are primary emotional creatures and logical reasoning comes to us hard. Therefore, Democracy requires constant love and attention, strong commitment to quality education and robust mechanisms to suppress political incitement of emotion. Once any of these mechanisms break, Fascism, not Democracy is a default solution. If the society comes under stress due to circumstances, Fascism becomes even more likely. The most powerful human emotion is fear. It is easy to induce and exploit great fear when there is plenty of fear to go around already.

Fascism has many manifestations. Some of these manifestations just devastate their own societies. If Fascism emerges in the country which has a potential for technological and military power, it often leads to devastating wars. Conflating Fascism just with Hitler and Mussolini was a faithful mistake after WW2. This mistake is understandable as the survivors of WW2 wanted to put the war behind them and move on to a better life. In actual reality, however, Fascism was popular in Europe between the wars, in fact quite fashionable. Fascist trends were also strong in the United States. It could be said that the US ended up as the arsenal of Democracy due to a random act of the Empire of Japan which caused the US to enter the war against the axis powers. The victory of "realism" over "idealism" and an accommodation with a victorious Nazi Germany in Europe was a perfectly plausible outcome in my opinion. Argentina is an example of what could have happened.

As a result of the failure to fully account for Fascism in the interwar period, we are inventing now new euphemisms to call Fascism something else because we compare present day Fascism with German concentration camps. Hitler was just one endpoint of Fascism which was particularly destructive because he captured a society with high potential for scientific, technological and military excellence. He also captured a society which was already primed for resentment.

The present day incarnation of Fascism is now devastating Ukraine with a largest land war in Europe since WW2. Just like 100 years ago Moscow hosted Communist International (Red Fascism), today it is hosting Fascist international (Brown Fascism) radiating into Western Europe. We do not have to conflate anything any more, Fascism is upon us again because of generational amnesia. Fortunately, it does not yet have a full blown counterpart in Western Europe, but this may come as well. Fascist trends are clearly visible there and the widening war is imposing stress on societies.

Fascism is a political method that is as simple as A-B-C. A: find a scapegoat; B-induce fear and hatred of B through propaganda; C- present yourself as a savior. If you look at the western world today, Fascism is attempting a breakout everywhere. Don't belittle this breakout with platitudes that it is not "quite as bad yet". It is bad already and in the era of nuclear weapons consequences can be many fold more catastrophic than consequences of WW2.
- Kathleen McMullen Nov 14, 2022
  
  Fascism represses emotions in particular empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another; even a stranger or someone from a different background. It represses compassion and kindness and insists on indifference to the suffering of others. Anger, especially about injustice, is another emotion that fascists would seek to suppress in favour of obedience and passivity. Where civil society is well established and developed fascism is going to have a hard time persuading citizens to repress their opinions about fairness, justice and being a good neighbour.
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