A reflection on Fascism, by Alessandro Stella, published with Lundimatin #402, 06/11/2023.
Many people, unfortunately, have an outdated image of fascism, made up of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other military-political dictators of the 20th century claiming this ideology. Some are even afraid of these crazy little groups parading with swastikas and portraits of Hitler and Mussolini. But what we really need to be afraid of is the global expansion of fascist ideology, which is already there, before our eyes, with new faces, sometimes surprising.
When Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour present themselves as the most fervent defenders of the State of Israel, when Giorgia Meloni goes to Tel Aviv to assure the Israeli Government of all her support, when Victor Orban votes against the resolution of the the UN calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to spare the Palestinian population, it is truly worrying. And that raises questions.
What is fascism today? What it has always been, but with new clothes, new enemies, new scapegoats.
Fascism has always been characterised by the cult of the Fatherland, of the family, of blood ties, by the principles of order, discipline, authority, by the cult of the leader, the praise of virility, by the conviction of the superiority of one “race” over another, of one gender over another, of one age over another, of one civilization over another. And other separations of identity draw on religious, ethnic, regional and behavioural differences. All of these together lead and conform to a dictatorial state.
According to these principles, where is fascism today?
We should start by saying that the State of Israel is a fascist state. It is horrible, monstrous even, but what the State of Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for 75 years and which today reaches its peak with the voluntary and assumed extermination of an entire people to take their lands, is fascism. This is the outcome of a long war of colonisation, following the Zionist principle: “A land without a people for a people without land”. For 75 years the State of Israel has implemented a series of pogroms which have driven Palestinians from their lands and their homes, causing a Palestinian diaspora of millions of people, in neighbouring countries and throughout the world. While pushing out as many Palestinians as possible, the Israeli colonialist state gradually built ghettos for those who insisted on remaining in the lands of Greater Israel; open-air prisons, surrounded by walls and barbed wire, repeated checkpoints, making the lives of residents unbearable and unliveable. The Palestinians have been killed, robbed, hunted, discriminated against, humiliated, locked up in prisons or ghettos. So why should we be surprised that all this suffering pushes the victims to revolt and pour out their accumulated hatred against their tormentors? When an oppressed person attacks his highly armed tormentors with a kitchen knife, it means that he is at the end of his rope and that he is uttering his last cry of distress.
It is terrible and dismaying to see that children and grandchildren of the Shoah, victims of the identity-based hatred of the Nazis, can do to others what their ancestors suffered. Also, we should say that if “post-fascists” take up the cause of the State of Israel (wiping out their anti-Semitic history), it is because their targets are no longer Jews but Muslims, because in the United States and Europe, not elsewhere it must be emphasised, the Jews of yesterday are the Muslims of today.
This de facto fascism practiced by the Israeli state towards the Palestinians, with armed repression, extreme colonisation, apartheid, assassinations and imprisonment of Palestinian resistance fighters, is paradoxically accompanied, within Israeli society, by freedoms unknown in other countries of the Near and Middle East. The Republic of Israel has a Parliament elected by strict proportional representation, which undoubtedly makes it the most advanced system of representative democracy in the world. Also the social and cultural freedoms for women and LGBT+ people, as for simple partygoers, contrasts with the patriarchy, homophobia, the prohibition of “diabolical” music and dances which are current in the Monarchies and Islamic Republics of the region.
And, from Saudi Arabia to Iran, from Turkey to Egypt, from Morocco to Indonesia, all Muslim states are under the influence of religious law, whether by applying full Sharia or by having religion as the insurmountable reference for public action. When we establish that divine law is prior and superior to civil law, fascism is there. When women are considered and treated as inferior to men, it is fascism.
Historically, the idea of making religious doctrine the unquestionable reference for life in society is not specific to Islamic countries, but has been and is shared by all religions. Should we recall the alliance between the sword and the church, from medieval Europe to American colonisations, from Franco’s Spain to the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century? Or the state and social structure in Hindu countries where, from birth to death, everyone is assigned to a social class according to the hierarchy established by religion?
Let’s look at the global panorama of existing regimes. We see that most states are governed either by the military, or by political parties allied with the military, or by clerics supported by the military. If there are no longer any military dictatorships strictly speaking in Latin America, we know perfectly well that the military is there, behind it, always very powerful and threatening. Although a few rare African countries have a civil and parliamentary government, we know that it is the army or militias that reign supreme. As for Asian countries, it is frankly ridiculous to only see the military dictatorship in North Korea. From Thailand to Indonesia, from Vietnam to Singapore, civilian governments are strictly controlled by the military. The same is true of the great ex or post-communist republics, Russia and China, where the police and military apparatus serves today not for the liberation and emancipation of the working and exploited people, but for the capitalists who exploit and oppress the people. As for “the largest democracy in the world”, the United States, everyone knows that its President and every public officer must swear loyalty to the State placing their hand on the Bible and that behind the government it is above all the Pentagon which pulls the strings of geopolitics. Finally, we can observe that in the 21st century people are still governed by castes, orders, minority and powerful classes made up of soldiers, merchants, religious people, politicians, as since the dawn of time when States were formed.
So, what to do against all these fascisms? Should we claim or appeal to democracy, to the republic? The fact is that both democracy and the republic, contrary to their etymologies, have never existed in fact. These basically fair and meaningful terms have always been used rhetorically and instrumentally since ancient Greece, through the Roman, Florentine, French and American republics, until today, to legitimise, in fact, the power of elites (economic, military, religious, political) over the people, in their name and “for their good”.
There is no need for Marine Le Pen to take power in France, fascism is already here.
Alessandro Stella
Alberto Toscano’s recent work, Late Fascism, is essential reading in this regard and it is a work that pushes the kind of analysis pursued by Alessandro Stella further. See the Verso Books Blog and Ill Will for selections from this work. An earlier piece by Toscano, “Notes on Late Facsism” (2017), was published in Historical Materialism.
Fascisms, yesterday and today
A reflection on Fascism, by Alessandro Stella, published with Lundimatin #402, 06/11/2023.
Many people, unfortunately, have an outdated image of fascism, made up of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other military-political dictators of the 20th century claiming this ideology. Some are even afraid of these crazy little groups parading with swastikas and portraits of Hitler and Mussolini. But what we really need to be afraid of is the global expansion of fascist ideology, which is already there, before our eyes, with new faces, sometimes surprising.
When Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour present themselves as the most fervent defenders of the State of Israel, when Giorgia Meloni goes to Tel Aviv to assure the Israeli Government of all her support, when Victor Orban votes against the resolution of the the UN calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to spare the Palestinian population, it is truly worrying. And that raises questions.
What is fascism today? What it has always been, but with new clothes, new enemies, new scapegoats.
Fascism has always been characterised by the cult of the Fatherland, of the family, of blood ties, by the principles of order, discipline, authority, by the cult of the leader, the praise of virility, by the conviction of the superiority of one “race” over another, of one gender over another, of one age over another, of one civilization over another. And other separations of identity draw on religious, ethnic, regional and behavioural differences. All of these together lead and conform to a dictatorial state.
According to these principles, where is fascism today?
We should start by saying that the State of Israel is a fascist state. It is horrible, monstrous even, but what the State of Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for 75 years and which today reaches its peak with the voluntary and assumed extermination of an entire people to take their lands, is fascism. This is the outcome of a long war of colonisation, following the Zionist principle: “A land without a people for a people without land”. For 75 years the State of Israel has implemented a series of pogroms which have driven Palestinians from their lands and their homes, causing a Palestinian diaspora of millions of people, in neighbouring countries and throughout the world. While pushing out as many Palestinians as possible, the Israeli colonialist state gradually built ghettos for those who insisted on remaining in the lands of Greater Israel; open-air prisons, surrounded by walls and barbed wire, repeated checkpoints, making the lives of residents unbearable and unliveable. The Palestinians have been killed, robbed, hunted, discriminated against, humiliated, locked up in prisons or ghettos. So why should we be surprised that all this suffering pushes the victims to revolt and pour out their accumulated hatred against their tormentors? When an oppressed person attacks his highly armed tormentors with a kitchen knife, it means that he is at the end of his rope and that he is uttering his last cry of distress.
It is terrible and dismaying to see that children and grandchildren of the Shoah, victims of the identity-based hatred of the Nazis, can do to others what their ancestors suffered. Also, we should say that if “post-fascists” take up the cause of the State of Israel (wiping out their anti-Semitic history), it is because their targets are no longer Jews but Muslims, because in the United States and Europe, not elsewhere it must be emphasised, the Jews of yesterday are the Muslims of today.
This de facto fascism practiced by the Israeli state towards the Palestinians, with armed repression, extreme colonisation, apartheid, assassinations and imprisonment of Palestinian resistance fighters, is paradoxically accompanied, within Israeli society, by freedoms unknown in other countries of the Near and Middle East. The Republic of Israel has a Parliament elected by strict proportional representation, which undoubtedly makes it the most advanced system of representative democracy in the world. Also the social and cultural freedoms for women and LGBT+ people, as for simple partygoers, contrasts with the patriarchy, homophobia, the prohibition of “diabolical” music and dances which are current in the Monarchies and Islamic Republics of the region.
And, from Saudi Arabia to Iran, from Turkey to Egypt, from Morocco to Indonesia, all Muslim states are under the influence of religious law, whether by applying full Sharia or by having religion as the insurmountable reference for public action. When we establish that divine law is prior and superior to civil law, fascism is there. When women are considered and treated as inferior to men, it is fascism.
Historically, the idea of making religious doctrine the unquestionable reference for life in society is not specific to Islamic countries, but has been and is shared by all religions. Should we recall the alliance between the sword and the church, from medieval Europe to American colonisations, from Franco’s Spain to the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century? Or the state and social structure in Hindu countries where, from birth to death, everyone is assigned to a social class according to the hierarchy established by religion?
Let’s look at the global panorama of existing regimes. We see that most states are governed either by the military, or by political parties allied with the military, or by clerics supported by the military. If there are no longer any military dictatorships strictly speaking in Latin America, we know perfectly well that the military is there, behind it, always very powerful and threatening. Although a few rare African countries have a civil and parliamentary government, we know that it is the army or militias that reign supreme. As for Asian countries, it is frankly ridiculous to only see the military dictatorship in North Korea. From Thailand to Indonesia, from Vietnam to Singapore, civilian governments are strictly controlled by the military. The same is true of the great ex or post-communist republics, Russia and China, where the police and military apparatus serves today not for the liberation and emancipation of the working and exploited people, but for the capitalists who exploit and oppress the people. As for “the largest democracy in the world”, the United States, everyone knows that its President and every public officer must swear loyalty to the State placing their hand on the Bible and that behind the government it is above all the Pentagon which pulls the strings of geopolitics. Finally, we can observe that in the 21st century people are still governed by castes, orders, minority and powerful classes made up of soldiers, merchants, religious people, politicians, as since the dawn of time when States were formed.
So, what to do against all these fascisms? Should we claim or appeal to democracy, to the republic? The fact is that both democracy and the republic, contrary to their etymologies, have never existed in fact. These basically fair and meaningful terms have always been used rhetorically and instrumentally since ancient Greece, through the Roman, Florentine, French and American republics, until today, to legitimise, in fact, the power of elites (economic, military, religious, political) over the people, in their name and “for their good”.
There is no need for Marine Le Pen to take power in France, fascism is already here.
Alessandro Stella
Alberto Toscano’s recent work, Late Fascism, is essential reading in this regard and it is a work that pushes the kind of analysis pursued by Alessandro Stella further. See the Verso Books Blog and Ill Will for selections from this work. An earlier piece by Toscano, “Notes on Late Facsism” (2017), was published in Historical Materialism.