A foreigner, returning from a trip to the Third Reich
When asked who really ruled there, answered:
Fear.
Bertold Brecht
Fear is the food of the sovereign. Fear of the enemy without, fear of those enemies who may also lie within, fear of all who may be objectively enemies, responsible for future possible crimes. Between the democratic and fascist sovereign, the difference is one of quantity. Between them there is a filial relation. Fascism is but the violent theatrical excess of the “rule of law”. The excess however has become permanent; it is the state of exception of our world.
To be amazed at our contemporary fascisms is to be blinded by them. It is to delude oneself with the deceptions of historical progress. To begin to understand fascism requires then a conception of history that is in keeping with the insight that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule”; a conception of history within which an anti-fascist politics has as its “task to bring about a real state of emergency”. (Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History)
The fear of the reign of the sovereign and the sovereign’s fears demand deceit. In its’ fascist incarnations, it subjects “all human relations to the rule of falsehood”. (Walter Benjamin, The Land Where the Proletariat May Not be Mentioned) Where all is false, truth is equally everywhere, which is to say that it is nowhere. There is no beyond where it may be hiding, only to be unveiled. Against universal falsehood, only other falsehoods may effectively resist; falsehoods that are fictions, fictions that create other realities, subjectivities of freedom. Benjamin’s real state of emergency is a state that calls for a fearless decision to create in the present, a now that explodes empty, chronological time, spaces and times of the greatest possible freedom.
Anti-fascism: A struggle against fear
A foreigner, returning from a trip to the Third Reich
When asked who really ruled there, answered:
Fear.
Bertold Brecht
Fear is the food of the sovereign. Fear of the enemy without, fear of those enemies who may also lie within, fear of all who may be objectively enemies, responsible for future possible crimes. Between the democratic and fascist sovereign, the difference is one of quantity. Between them there is a filial relation. Fascism is but the violent theatrical excess of the “rule of law”. The excess however has become permanent; it is the state of exception of our world.
To be amazed at our contemporary fascisms is to be blinded by them. It is to delude oneself with the deceptions of historical progress. To begin to understand fascism requires then a conception of history that is in keeping with the insight that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule”; a conception of history within which an anti-fascist politics has as its “task to bring about a real state of emergency”. (Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History)
The fear of the reign of the sovereign and the sovereign’s fears demand deceit. In its’ fascist incarnations, it subjects “all human relations to the rule of falsehood”. (Walter Benjamin, The Land Where the Proletariat May Not be Mentioned) Where all is false, truth is equally everywhere, which is to say that it is nowhere. There is no beyond where it may be hiding, only to be unveiled. Against universal falsehood, only other falsehoods may effectively resist; falsehoods that are fictions, fictions that create other realities, subjectivities of freedom. Benjamin’s real state of emergency is a state that calls for a fearless decision to create in the present, a now that explodes empty, chronological time, spaces and times of the greatest possible freedom.
From greece …