The repackaging of fascism

‘Fascism’ and ‘fascist’ are words that are being slung about with a great deal of abandon these days, almost always as a term of denigration for governments, policies and people that that are considered abhorrent.

They carry a great deal of emotional baggage, conjuring up frightening images of death camps and jackboots, but are they being used wisely, and do the actions of politicians deserve the description?

Before it became a term of abuse in the wake of World War II, fascism was widely considered as an acceptable form of government, not just in Italy and Nazi Germany, but among considerable minorities in most democratic countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

The thinking during much of the 1930s was that liberal democracies were ill-equipped to meet the rise of communism which was a threat to social order, and that something stronger, more authoritarian, was needed to stop its spread.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had their admirers. In the UK Sir Oswald Mosley was a particular fan of Mussolini’s style of fascism and if a General Election had been held in the late 1930s his British Union of Fascists may well have gained seats and played a pivotal role in Parliament.  

In the United States Charles Lindberg headed the America First movement, which opposed US involvement in the war against the Nazis and embraced polices that if not fascist, were certainly on the far right.

Today there are fringe groups that adhere to the legacies of Hitler and Mussolini, but no mainstream politician in their right mind would ever go to the electorate under the branding of fascism.

However, policies and actions can easily be disguised under more comfortable titles.

Philosophy Professor at Yale University, Jason Stanley suggests a few aspects of a political movement that might suggest it is masked fascism.

First is an appeal to an imaginary or glorious past which has been destroyed by the forces of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and globalism.  

“Through appeals to this mythical past, fascism establishes a hierarchy of human worth: Law abiding over criminal; hard-working over lazy; racially pure over impure; heterosexual over homosexual; able over disabled,” Professor Stanley says.

“Those deemed worthy are considered the nation’s true people; those deemed unworthy are singled out as threats.

“These false distinctions between worthy and unworthy are enforced through propaganda and anti-intellectualism that corrode shared reality, degrade language and create fertile grounds for conspiracy theories to flourish.”

It is not hard to find examples equating to fascism in countries around the globe. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most blatant when he says liberal democracy is “obsolete” has “outlived its purpose” and that multiculturalism is “no longer tenable”.

Some three quarters of a century after his country won a war against Nazi Germany in which millions of his compatriots died, Putin espouses concepts that would not have been out of place at a Nuremburg Rally.

While not yet so outspoken as the Russian leader, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, even Bolsanaro’s Brazil are heading in the same direction — but what about the bastions of the liberal democracy that Putin dismisses , the United States, The United Kingdom, the European Union?

US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that November’s presidential election be delayed because of the pandemic prompted condemnations of fascism, but he was not calling for the election to be cancelled, and he has not succeeded in silencing his critics, one of the hallmarks of a successful fascist dictatorship.

There is no doubt that Trump wants more powers than his office currently gives him — but wishing and getting are different things.

However, should he win — and win well — in November, he and his supporters might be emboldened to push harder against the restraints that have held him in check so far.

The EU is dealing with waves of what has been called Populism, but which almost always has its genesis in the ultra-nationalist far right, most prominently in Poland and Italy, but with supporters in most of the countries of the bloc. 

Most concerning is the path taken by the United Kingdom Government in the wake of its exit from the European Union.

Without the US’s system of checks and balances, the ruling Conservative Party has shifted to its extremes, destroying or subverting long-standing conventions in its bid to cement itself in power.

In its Brexit campaign it referred endlessly to the UK’s so-called glorious past, to the false claims that it stood alone against the Nazis in World War II, and how all this could be reclaimed if only it broke the shackles of the evil bureaucrats in Brussels.

In the weeks and months after the 2016 referendum many of its triumphant supporters taunted fellow citizens of colour, or who spoke with strange accents, calling on them to “go back to where you came from”.

Ministers routinely reject any advice, however sensible, that might be contrary to what they want to hear; instead they huddle around a select group of unelected sycophants plotting how they might target and neutralise those who stand in the way of their march to greater authoritarianism.   

Those who take this path maintain, as Putin said recently, that it is what the “overwhelming majority of the people want”, the problem being that under the system Putin advocates — and has largely succeeded in putting in place — there is never an opportunity for second thoughts.

The fire bells are ringing in the night. We ignore them at our peril.