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OPINION
The ‘F’ Word
Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump is
shown on video monitors as he speaks live to the crowd
from New York at the Republican National Convention
in Cleveland
NICK LAND
AUTHOR, FANGED NOUMENA
October 17, 2016
12:36 PM ET
FONT SIZE:
Fascism is back, apparently. At the very least, it might be getting more interesting to
talk about.
In the period immediately following World War II, both of the triumphant blocs
moved rapidly to define the word ‘fascism’ expediently. The critical objective, on
each side, was to emphasize those features comparatively understated in its own
domestic version of the phenomenon, in order to underscore the impression that
they had unambiguously sided against it. ‘Fascism’ was, definitively, that thing
recently and at an enormous cost defeated. The immense sacrifices – and, in fact,
progressive fascist reconstruction of society that had been accelerated during the
war years – was justified by the crushing defeat of an absolute evil. Distinction was
imperative. Thus, the Soviets drew particular attention to the comparatively muted
anti-capitalism of the Axis powers, while the Atlantic allies concentrated upon the
exotic trappings of German anti-semitic Aryanism. It is particularly notable that the
predominant Western definition of fascism is remarkably maladapted to even the
most basic comprehension of the Italian original, and that both Western and Soviet
anti-fascist narratives are compelled to downplay the revolutionary socialism of its
roots, in both its Italian and its German variants.
This is all understandable enough, but it grotesquely mystifies the reality of fascism,
which was epitomized – universally – by the 20th-century war economy. Every major
contestant of WWII – including the great Asian powers Japan and China – developed
fascist governance to an advanced state. The essential feature was state seizure of the
economy’s ‘commanding heights’ in the delegated (and integrated) ‘popular interest’.
During war time such interest is peeled back to sheer survival, and thus publicized
with dramatic intensity, which is also to say with an unusual absence of skepticism.
Fascism is therefore broadly identical with a normalization of war-powers in a
modern state, that is: sustained social mobilization under central direction.
Consequently, it involves, beside the centralization of political authority in a
permanent war council, a tribal hystericization of social identity, and a considerable
measure of economic pragmatism. Fascism is practical socialism, distinguished from
its dim cousin by its far more sophisticated grasp of incentives, or of human nature
in its motivated individual and tribal particularity. When compared to universalistic
communism, fascism’s practical advantages are such that ‘actually existing socialism’
always soon turns into it. National socialism and socialism in one country are not
sanely separable things. Everyone knows that the literal meaning of ‘fascism’ is
bundling.
Like its Continental European and Soviet competitors, American fascism had been
fully consolidated by the beginning of the war. The New Deal cemented its structural
pillars into place. Socialization of the economy through central banking, the
transformation of the Supreme Court into a facilitator of systematic executive overreach, and a transformation of mass-politics through broadcast media technologies
had composed a new, post-constitutional political order. It is this formation that is so
flagrantly entering its phase of terminal dementia today.
Since the fascist state justifies itself through perpetual war, it naturally likes wars
that cannot end. The Cold War looked like one, but wasn’t quite. The War on Terror
is a better bet. In regards to their interminability, if not their moral intensity, ‘wars’
on poverty, drugs, and other resilient social conditions are more attractive still.
Waging modern wars, and their metaphorical side-products, is what the fascist state
is for. Winning them on occasion, and by accident, is only ever a misfortune. That
lesson seems to have been thoroughly learned.
The recent adaptation to television of Philip K. Dick’s prophetic The Man in the
High Castle is one suggestive indication of a general ideological awakening. In
dramatic contrast to the prevailing historical myth, fascism won WWII so decisively
that its opponents were driven to the political fringes of paleo-conservatism (once
mainstream conservatism), libertarianism (once mainstream liberalism), and
Trotskyism (once simply ‘communism’). The victory was so complete that even policy
objectives as blatantly fascistic as nationalization could be considered wholly
innocent of fascist taint. It wasn’t even necessary to say: “Nationalization, but, you
know, not in a fascist way.” It would be amusing if it hadn’t ruined everything.
Perhaps it still is amusing. It’s notable that humor has become quite a lot rougher
recently.
Since fascism had entirely filled the Overton Window, it lost contour, and became
invisible. The word persisted in public conversation only as an empty slur. Under
this cover, and the absurdly misleading branding associated with it, American
fascism ascended to a state of global hegemonic dominance. Since 1989, it has been
essentially unchallenged, except by the geopolitical temper-tantrum that is radical
Islam. Yet suddenly, from left field, the Trump candidacy has thrown it into crisis.
The flamboyant fascist features of the Trump campaign – and still more of his
excited Alt-Right supporters – are deniable only by fools. The prior escalation of
overt fascist imagery by the first Obama campaign and subsequent administration
was no less remarkable. The established convention in polite society that all
conservative presidential candidates are Hitler obscured the trend before this year,
on both sides. Much of this might be reminiscent of the Jonah Goldberg thesis that
we are all fascists now, which was near-universally dismissed out of hand, for
reasons that have been – until recently – under no socio-political pressure
whatsoever to defend themselves. It’s obvious nonsense, the mind-control class had
decided, and that should have been enough for everyone. Those days are
unmistakably ending.
The general insight that remains incompletely crystallized is this: Democracy tends
to fascism, due to its fundamental affinity with tribal mobilization (i.e. its essential
illiberalism). The multi-century ratchet of Western democratization has led, exactly,
and inexorably, to this. If the worst hasn’t come yet, it will come soon. We are all
close to seeing that now.
An especially obvious catalyst for political radicalization has been the embrace of
demographic engineering as an explicit policy objective, of deliberate partisan
asymmetry, attended by a rolling thunder of cultural-elite approved rhetoric that has
not only been indiscreet, but blatantly triumphalistic. When dismissing fears of
‘white genocide’ as malignant, and over-wrought, it is not helpful to laugh in public
about the steady progress of population replacement (in the fashion of John Judis
and Ruy Teixeira, most obviously). At some point, Bertholt Brecht’s most celebrated
example of devil’s advocacy – “Would it not be easier … for the government to
dissolve the people and elect another?” – switched ideological polarity, to become a
bitter Alt-Right joke. The new American demography is really going to screw you
guys over is funny as hell, until – suddenly – it isn’t.
There’s been a lot of laughter in 2016, but not much smiling. Perhaps it won’t be so
long before people realize what they’ve done.
Nick Land is an independent writer living in Shanghai.