Why call this cluster of phenomena fascism, however post-?
Post-fascism finds its niche easily in the new world of global capitalism without upsetting the dominant political forms of electoral democracy and representative government. It does what I consider to be central to all varieties of fascism, including the post-totalitarian version. Sans Führer, sans one-party rule, sans SA or SS, post-fascism reverses the Enlightenment tendency to assimilate citizenship to the human condition.
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Citizenship in a functional nation-state is the one safe meal ticket in the contemporary world. But such citizenship is now a privilege of the very few. The Enlightenment assimilation of citizenship to the necessary and “natural” political condition of all human beings has been reversed. Citizenship was once upon a time a privilege within nations. It is now a privilege to most persons in some nations. Citizenship is today the very exceptional privilege of the inhabitants of flourishing capitalist nation-states, while the majority of the world’s population cannot even begin to aspire to the civic condition, and has also lost the relative security of pre-state (tribe, kinship) protection.
The scission of citizenship and sub-political humanity is now complete, the work of Enlightenment irretrievably lost. Post-fascism does not need to put non-citizens into freight trains to take them into death; instead, it need only prevent the new non-citizens from boarding any trains that might take them into the happy world of overflowing rubbish bins that could feed them. Post-fascist movements everywhere, but especially in Europe, are anti-immigration movements, grounded in the “homogeneous” world-view of productive usefulness. They are not simply protecting racial and class privileges within the nation-state (although they are doing that, too) but protecting universal citizenship within the rich nation-state against the virtual-universal citizenship of all human beings, regardless of geography, language, race, denomination, and habits. The current notion of “human rights” might defend people from the lawlessness of tyrants, but it is no defense against the lawlessness of no rule.
I finally got around to reading this, and I think this sums up well a feeling I've had for awhile, but couldn't put into words: This explains Trump (and the overall tolerance from many...
I finally got around to reading this, and I think this sums up well a feeling I've had for awhile, but couldn't put into words:
As one of the greatest and most level-headed masters of twentieth-century political sociology, Seymour Martin Lipset, has noted, fascism is the extremism of the center. Fascism had very little to do with passéiste feudal, aristocratic, monarchist ideas, was on the whole anti-clerical, opposed communism and socialist revolution, and—like the liberals whose electorate it had inherited—hated big business, trade unions, and the social welfare state.
This explains Trump (and the overall tolerance from many "centerists") so much better.
We are, then, faced with a new kind of extremism of the center. This new extremism, which I call post-fascism, does not threaten, unlike its predecessor, liberal and democratic rule within the core constituency of “homogeneous society.” Within the community cut in two, freedom, security, prosperity are on the whole undisturbed, at least within the productive and procreative majority that in some rich countries encompasses nearly all white citizens. “Heterogeneous,” usually racially alien, minorities are not persecuted, only neglected and marginalized, forced to live a life wholly foreign to the way of life of the majority (which, of course, can sometimes be qualitatively better than the flat workaholism, consumerism, and health obsessions of the majority). Drugs, once supposed to widen and raise consciousness, are now uneasily pacifying the enforced idleness of those society is unwilling to help and to recognize as fellow humans. The “Dionysiac” subculture of the sub-proletariat further exaggerates the bifurcation of society. Political participation of the have-nots is out of the question, without any need for the restriction of franchise. Apart from the incipient and feeble (“new new”) left-wing radicalism, as isolated as anarcho-syndicalism was in the second half of the nineteenth century, nobody seeks to represent them. The conceptual tools once offered by democratic and libertarian socialism are missing; and libertarians are nowadays militant bourgeois extremists of the center, ultra-capitalist cyberpunks hostile to any idea of solidarity beyond the fluxus of the global marketplace.
So, from an article published in 2000, we have a pretty succinct summary of today's politics 25 years later: The left is stuck defending human rights instead of class rights. The center ignores systemic problems and despises any solidarity that inconveniences them. And the right marches, as always, towards full-blown fascism.
Extremism of the center is a very interesting take on what we've taken to call oligarchy. If it's a holding on to a liberal order long after it fails to meet the needs of its people, it explains...
Extremism of the center is a very interesting take on what we've taken to call oligarchy. If it's a holding on to a liberal order long after it fails to meet the needs of its people, it explains why it wasn't that big of a jump to go from Obama to Trump for a lot of people.
Well, the first part of that second quote is no longer true. Anti-immigrant rhetoric didn’t threaten democracy 25 years ago, but after Trump rode it to power, it’s severely eroding democratic...
Well, the first part of that second quote is no longer true. Anti-immigrant rhetoric didn’t threaten democracy 25 years ago, but after Trump rode it to power, it’s severely eroding democratic norms in the US now.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric was already a pretty large part of the dialog by 2000. The South Park episode "Goobacks" aired in 2004, the source of the "They took our jobs" meme. I'd say it's compatible...
Anti-immigrant rhetoric was already a pretty large part of the dialog by 2000. The South Park episode "Goobacks" aired in 2004, the source of the "They took our jobs" meme.
I'd say it's compatible with our current form of democracy, given how even Democrats lean into it.
Well, that's what I mean. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was compatible with democracy, until it became an all-purpose excuse justifying Trumpism's rights violations. I still think democracy will...
Well, that's what I mean. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was compatible with democracy, until it became an all-purpose excuse justifying Trumpism's rights violations.
I still think democracy will survive, but in what form?
From the essay:
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I finally got around to reading this, and I think this sums up well a feeling I've had for awhile, but couldn't put into words:
This explains Trump (and the overall tolerance from many "centerists") so much better.
So, from an article published in 2000, we have a pretty succinct summary of today's politics 25 years later: The left is stuck defending human rights instead of class rights. The center ignores systemic problems and despises any solidarity that inconveniences them. And the right marches, as always, towards full-blown fascism.
Extremism of the center is a very interesting take on what we've taken to call oligarchy. If it's a holding on to a liberal order long after it fails to meet the needs of its people, it explains why it wasn't that big of a jump to go from Obama to Trump for a lot of people.
Well, the first part of that second quote is no longer true. Anti-immigrant rhetoric didn’t threaten democracy 25 years ago, but after Trump rode it to power, it’s severely eroding democratic norms in the US now.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric was already a pretty large part of the dialog by 2000. The South Park episode "Goobacks" aired in 2004, the source of the "They took our jobs" meme.
I'd say it's compatible with our current form of democracy, given how even Democrats lean into it.
Well, that's what I mean. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was compatible with democracy, until it became an all-purpose excuse justifying Trumpism's rights violations.
I still think democracy will survive, but in what form?