The Future Face of Fascism
Intersectional CIA ads and 'progressive' defenses of Israeli Apartheid give us a glimpse into what Fascism in America could really look like, and it's not Jackboots and Proud Boys.
Recent events in Palestine have brought to mind something I’ve posted about often on twitter, but like so many things I post on twitter, never bothered to put down in a permanent, long-form place. In this case, it’s the future appearance of Fascism, at least in America and the rest of the anglosphere.1
Fascism is a slippery term. Attempts to pin down a coherent consistent definition struggle against the amorphous, and somewhat subjective nature of political movements and polities in action. Was Juan Peron a fascist? It is alike in some sense to John Carpenter’s shape-shifting monster ‘The Thing.’ It has a discernable modus operandi, but no definite form. You cannot say it has so many limbs, or so many eyes, only certain mechanisms of action and underlying tendencies of behavior. In this case, for the moment, we’ll use a fairly broad general definition. All the authoritarian, chauvinist, undemocratic and deeply hierarchical elements already so present in modern western society, taken to their logical extremes, with severe repression of all dissent, pointedly with substantial degree of actual enthusiastic mass support. You may say, “well that sounds like the present moment”, fascism, like any sort of social organization or mode, is in some respect a matter of degrees. America today is let’s say, not a Fascist society in total, but always already fascistic, and it’s fascistic elements have been growing more significant especially in the Neoliberal era. Fascism is Reaction’s funhouse mirror of liberalism, the process of finding it’s new workable form when the old is exhausted and defeated.
Reaction is a dynamic political force. It is not stodgy and eternally looking backward as often assumed, but culturally and intellectually vibrant, dialectical, always absorbing and countering the innovations of the left, evolving new forms to persist in new conditions. Fascism marks a dramatic, extreme mode of this ability to absorb and evolve when confronted with a severe crisis and failure of both the old order and it’s opposition, whether reformist or radical. This is the key thing I want to establish going forward: Fascism is not fixed in place in terms of it’s specific ideological manifestation, like The Thing, it has no definite form, policy, or symbolic or affective language. We continue to imagine Fascism as merely a return of it’s inter-world-war European forms, ethno-nationalist, ultra right wing, jackbooted, black-shirted, patriarchal, anti-Semitic and so on. This was never always the case historically, and is not necessarily the case now.
Fascism absorbs the elements of the society in which it forms, the prevailing cultural, aesthetic and ideological norms, in reified forms. This is why we should not fear that Proud Boys or Neo-Nazis should overtake political power in America. They march around in odd and alien form, bearing the visage of the Nations historic and mythological enemies. They exacerbate and embody the alienation that drives them to these political positions, assuring their perpetual political marginalization. It is as if the actual Nazis paraded around in French military dress. Absurd.
Fascism tends to emerge from the middle classes. It may find sympathizers, supporters and proponents in the bourgeoisie, among the intellectuals and in odd pockets across the bulk of society, but this is the core of it’s support, the substance of it’s inertia. This is where economic aspiration meet economic vulnerability, where one may be ‘small’ enough and weak enough to be vulnerable in times of crisis, but affluent (or formerly so) enough to relish one’s superior social standing and reject the calls to redistribution and egalitarianism that emerge from a socialist movement from below. The archetypical fascist is spiteful enough of those above them to embrace radical social change, but also too spiteful of the lower orders to embrace egalitarianism, if not outright terrified of the mobs knocking on their door to steal their property.2
Thus a future Fascist movement, at least a truly politically viable one, will emerge from the broad American middle class, mirroring it’s values, aesthetics, and affectations. Recall Ronald Reagan, America’s most iconic modern arch reactionary leader, coming to restore American Greatness after nearly two decades of social upheaval , not with thundering oratory and identically clad masses, but the kindly, paternal gentility of Mr. Rodgers. Smiling, warm, sunny, morning again in America. Fascism, by the immanent evolutionary necessity, will take the form of it’s time and place. Now, let us consider Israel.3
Comparisons of Israeli Apartheid to Nazism are not unwarranted. Before the crisis of the later war led the state to adopt the “final solution” it had engaged in a decade of pogroms, racial restrictions, evictions and resettlement schemes that are not only loosely alike in kind, but in some cases functionally identical to those carried out by the Israeli state since its formation. Palestinians, like Jews, and Poles and other groups, find themselves restricted to ghettos, undeveloped and under martial supervision, arbitrarily and suddenly expelled from their homes to make room for ethnic settlement, and treated to brutal, grossly disproportionate reprisal when they, unavoidably, meet this violence with violence in kind. Faced with the same stress factors Nazi Germany was, with no more perceived need to mollify foreign audiences, would the Israeli state stop short of perpetuating it’s on Holocaust? Let’s hope we never find out. Yet it remains, counting the vast oppressed Palestinian population amongst it’s ranks, rather than solely the ethnic beneficiaries of it’s social democracy, we can make a fair call that Israel is a fascist state by some reasonable metric. And here then we see, in the face of brutal atrocity, so-called progressives, good liberals, defending Fascism not with blood, soil and thunder, with raging reactionary bile, but the defense of modern liberal values: Feminism and queer rights. This is no anomaly, one need not look far to see this same rhetoric deployed widely. The IDF in recent years advertises itself as LGBT-inclusive, and promotes it’s female combat troops as a feminist triumph.4
The IDF is not alone here, the trend is picking up steam Stateside, as the recent infamous “woke CIA” ad shows.
Since the end of the second world war, the CIA has been the world gestapo. At every turn fighting against anti-colonial liberation movements and egalitarian and left wing groups, from the most radical to the gently reformist, dealing drugs, teaming up with “ex” Nazis and funding paramilitary death squads worldwide. And yet, in tempo with the moment, however artlessly, it seeks to advertise itself with all the inclusive language popular with educated, social justice minded younger ‘progressives.’
These ideas are now mainstream, especially with the urban middle class which shapes culture. Even Donald Trump had to pay lip service to LGBTQ rights5, and the younger-skewing reactionary online subculture associated with him has been happy to embrace gay and trans micro-celebrities when they’ve otherwise echoed their sentiments. At least on the level of the rhetorical and symbolic, racial, sexual, gendered equality, or at least pluralism, is here and seems here to stay. While the internecine and idiotic online culture wars frustrate and annoy, on the whole this remains a positive development, and what follows is not an argument to embrace cultural conservativism as somehow preferable. What I want is to highlight the severe limitations with the focus precisely on the rhetorical, affective and symbolic.
The liberal-progressive defense of Israel and it’s ethno-fascist policies is predicated on the combination of present liberal-progressive rhetoric with liberal-conservative civilizational warfare worldviews. Ethnic cleansing, imperialism, militarism, pervasive surveillance and brutal policing, these things are more are all necessary to protect what makes our society liberal and progressive. Your right to be gay, trans, a woman, black, or what-have-you is under threat from illiberal barbarian hordes. Internationally it’s the Muslims, the Chinese, the Russians, domestically it may be the Socialist Left (Toxic bros! Secret Fascists), immigrants from the global south (conservative Catholics and reactionary Muslims, unlike our good tolerant citizen Muslims), and even the Archaic costume-fascists like the Proud Boys, all held up as threats to liberal pluralism which will be used precisely to quash that same pluralist society. Democracy? You can’t trust the poor ignorant mobs not to take away your rights, they must be surrendered to the enlightened elites who will protect you. The gay military, the intersectional CIA, the multi-ethnic doing good representation corporations, a rainbow ruling class of all colors and creeds united in their unquestioned domination.
Our preoccupation with the symbolic, aesthetic and affective risks blinding us to this reality. That fascism will come, or at least we will conclude our course towards it, not with Nazis, but with everything comforting, familiar and promising to keep us and what we love safe and secure. That it will bear apple pies, rainbow flags and will talk the language of bodies and spaces - because that will be the popular symbolic order of the day. Because Fascism will pray on our fear, our fear of the Other inside and out, of victimization, of loss, and status anxiety and identity. It hinges on victimization real and perceived. Perpetual victimization is the recurring lynchpin of Fascist narratives after all, an enemy within and without, inferior and degenerate, but all powerful, above and below, waiting around every corner and orchestrating every failure and suffering.
We see this with Israel. Jews are the ultimate victims of Fascism, and perfect victims for the west, as we can sympathize with them without complicity (we fought the Nazis!). Of course this is historically untrue, but we’re talking of popular mythology, not historical fact. It is this legacy of victimization that makes the Zionist cause sympathetic, that makes it easy to swallow the pervasive propaganda, and be blinded to the ugly reality. The victim becomes the victimizer, but retains their victim complex. The victimizer, the oppressor, as coded and categorized, must feel shame, must introspect, can be subject to criticism and excoriation, but the victim? How they fight back, how they lash out, how they defend and assert themselves, is beyond reproach. Here too the future Fascism will deploy a plurality of victim narratives, some purely fictional, many rooted in present and historical fact, to justify acts of victimization and silence criticism.6
Do you want to redistribute power and wealth? Well now, our ruling class is made up of womxn and POC and queers, and you want to steal their hard earned acquisitions now that they’ve finally been allowed to participate fairly in Capitalism. You oppose the invasion and annexation of a country? Well that country is full of homophobes and racists who will murder you if you don’t get them first! Want to let those refugees in? Well they’ll turn our nation into a retrograde religious theocracy!7
This is nothing without precedent. We see it in happening in Europe with the increasingly restrictive responses to Muslim immigrants. We see it historically. The xenophobic ‘Know-Nothings’ of antebellum America, to whom modern liberals often compared Donald Trump, where not hick reactionaries. They where generally the era’s progressives, anti-slavery, pro-temperance, in some cases proto-suffragists, who feared that waves of Catholic immigration brought in racists, bigots and retrogrades who would institute a reactionary Catholic theocracy.
I don’t mean to be hysterical. This is not a prophecy of doom, but only a warning about potential dangers. That we ourselves become so preoccupied with symbol and affect, looking not at the substance of people’s beliefs and actions, or a realistic evaluation of their power and capability, but looking at buzzwords, and emojis, and subcultural traits and senses of humor, so busy scrutinizing each other on immediately accessible but superficial elements, that we miss the wolves in rainbow-coated sheep’s clothing.
The future face of fascism will not look like Adolf Hitler, nor Richard Spencer or even Ronald Reagan. It will be queer and intersectional, BIPOC and neurodivergent, nice and liberal, soft and wholesome, familiar and comforting as Apple Pie and Adventure Time.8 It will not be here to scare us, but rescue us from fear, to offer security and comfort in a time of crisis, chaos and confusion. The future face of fascism is a mask of mirrored glass, that will reflect no awful alien visage, but ourselves back at us. Smiling, always smiling.9
Or really anywhere contemporary liberal values have become or are becoming mainstream. Fascism in, say, Ukraine still looks a little more obviously familiar - for the time being.
“Breaking up the big banks won’t end racism.” Recall here how often, when pushed or provoked, middle and upper class liberals reveal shockingly retrograde views towards the poor and working class. Case in point: MovieBob.
I want to clarify very thoroughly: 1) This is not an equation of Judaism with Fascism. 2) This is not an equation of social tolerance, pluralism, racial emancipation and gender and sexual equality, in substance and goal, with Fascism. I shouldn’t have to say this, but, y’know, online.
One recalls Paul Verhoeven’s eerily prescient spoof, 1997’s “Starship Troopers”, who’s fascist dystopia is multiracial and gender-egalitarian.
Of course in practice the Trump administration was terrible for LGBTQ rights, which is here emblematic of the difference between Fascism taking a liberal-progressive affect, and what the actual result would be: Tolerance and pluralism for the upper classes only.
I’d like to expand on this capacity for victimization to be exploited and abused at some point. Just because it can be, of course, doesn’t mean we should knee-jerk dismiss victimization of individuals, and social oppression of groups.
We already see this with the weaponization of human rights in justification for American Empire. At some point I’d like to address the issue of how the Empire’s exploitation of feminism and gay rights, among other issues, undermines those movements abroad. They become symbolic of imperial intervention, a foreign imposition and instrument of domination to be rejected.
Because this will be the prevailing cultural climate, not because it is in any sense innately fascist or bad to be any of these things, or because increasing social tolerance of sexual and gendered minorities, or the renewal of militancy in racial equality, is a bad thing. Again this should go without saying.
Often overlooked is how often Fascism, and reaction more generally, is not purely militaristic and ultra-macho. It is generally heavily romantic, utopian, and cloying. Fascism has an anti-intellectual bent, in whatever forms, it makes appeals to the heart over the head.