A selection from a long interview
The most productive way to understand fascism —an approach that allows us to think about both historical fascisms and twenty-first-century neo-fascisms — is to start with fascism’s social and political project, which stems from its worldview (rather than a doctrine per se). This ideological core is what endures, despite the different strategies used, which represent forms of adaptation to the particular and changing political circumstances and cultural contexts. This worldview can be encapsulated in a set of elements which are in ways also articulated with each other:
- An obsession with decline, decadence and the decomposition of a community considered to be organic and fixed …
- A civilisational and/or racial paranoia that makes it possible to connect this decline to the presence on ‘our’ soil of immigrants, minorities and groups considered fundamentally alien…
- Hatred of equality and of all movements that push for it…
- The idea that a national or civilisational renaissance is possible on the strict condition that the body of the nation or civilisation is purged of its fundamental political and ethno-racial enemies…
- Fascism’s specific mixture of both ultra-conservatism (attachment to these hierarchies of gender, race, class, etc.) and a discourse, symbolism, and imagery of subversion and revolt. Fascism and neo-fascism speak of rupture, and this gives them their quite distinctive and explosive character, as a reactionary revolt… The enduring connection between interwar fascism and contemporary neo-fascism lies in this matrix. It has political, ideological and strategic dimensions, especially through the whole idea of a ‘third way’ (neither left nor right, neither socialist nor capitalist)…
The more dangerous threat comes from the political branch of the far right, that is, the neo-fascist far right, which has been working for decades to remodel the political, strategic and programmatic legacy of fascism, generally without explicitly claiming to do so. It does this while maintaining its anti-immigrant and racist (particularly Islamophobic) ideological bedrock and making nods and winks to those who are attached to the fascist political tradition.
When a significant fraction of the political, economic and media elites hand power to the fascists on a plate, they do so in order to re-stabilise the political order, in a context where no parliamentary majority can emerge and where the political situation is deadlocked, on the brink of a regime crisis.
The historical function of fascism, from the point of view of the ruling classes, is thus more a hegemonic function than a military one (i.e. dealing with a working-class revolutionary upsurge, an ongoing or imminent uprising, etc.). That said, it is indeed a question of crushing all forms of protest and opposition. In the current context, this means not only trade union and workers’ protests, but also, of course, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-war, radical environmentalist, feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements.
Trump is not the only historical example where rich individuals and tycoons have sought to build a political career. Johann Chapoutot gives an example of this type when he cites Alfred Hungenberg — a big industrialist who bought a press empire and became a minister in the non-Nazi wing of the German far right.
In the case of the Nazi movement, people like Göring and Ribbentrop organised dinners and meetings with prominent members of the bourgeoisie and the business elite to offer them reassurances and thus to help along their own path to power. Looking at today’s scenario, we can draw on Marlène Benquet’s work on the major financiers of the libertarian far right.
This dimension needs bearing in mind. It is particularly needed to refute the discourse of the fascists themselves, as they present themselves as a supposed alternative to ‘the system’, and as people who want ‘change’. ‘System’ is, by the way, a typically fascist term: the Nazis used it constantly..
Fascism constructs a whole discourse and rhetoric, mobilises emotions and feelings, develops a certain style and forms of humour, takes care over its public appearances, the staging of its meetings, etc… Today, Javier Milei arrives with his chainsaw and makes a show of himself together with Elon Musk.
Today, we are living with the consequences of forty years of neoliberalism. This should not be reduced to a policy of marketisation, privatisation, etc. It is also a policy of depoliticisation: ‘there is no alternative’, as Margaret Thatcher put it. In other words, this means letting ‘the market’ (i.e. capital and the imperatives of accumulation) govern and discipline public policy. In this historical context, the left and the labour movement but also the far right are finding it more difficult to mobilise their supporters in the streets than they did between the two world wars...
It is important to understand that fascist and neo-fascist movements are fundamentally opportunistic in economic and social matters, particularly when they are not in power…
Fascism is both there and not there.’ It is there in the sense that a process of fascisation is underway, in the sense that the functioning and materiality of the state have already begun to change by focusing on groups considered easy targets, scapegoats... So, the exiled, refugees, immigrants from the Global South, minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, and the Roma, who are not only subject to discrimination but also to illegal procedures — a state racism.
there is no fully-fledged fascist regime in French society. That much is clear. But elements of the process of fascisation have been set in motion, not by fascists in power, but by agents of fascisation, or ‘fascisateurs’ as Frédéric Lordon calls them — the same idea that applies equally to Emmanuel Macron, François Hollande, Manuel Valls and the first fascisateur, Nicolas Sarkozy.
There is both a normalisation of fascism and a fascisation of the normal; a mainstreaming of the far right and a radicalisation of the right.
There are always elements of continuity but also of rupture. This is also true of interwar fascism: Hitler built upon what Brüning, Von Schleicher and Von Papen had done when they were in power between 1930 and 1933. But he did not stop there; he wanted to go much further, and he did. The question of how far fascists will go, in terms of migration policy, the press, civil liberties, and democracy, depends on many other factors. It essentially depends on the social and political balance of power, the type of coalitions that fascists build and their support within the state, the type of resistance they face, their need to crush certain forms of resistance (or not) to stay in power, etc.
When we try to take all this into account, it is quite clear to me that the criminalisation of the Palestine solidarity movement began before Trump, but that he is not content to simply continue what went before but is amplifying and accelerating it.
if the Rassemblement National comes to power, it will be equipped with a legal, regulatory and state arsenal that is already far advanced due to the fascisation process driven by Sarkozy.
Macron’s rise to power is part of a trend that began earlier with Sarkozy and Hollande, with moments of rupture... But Macron’s time in power also constitutes a clear break, which can be measured even in purely quantitative terms. We need only look at the figures provided by Paul Rocher on the use of so-called non-lethal weapons that maim and kill people (think of Rémi Fraisse, Zineb Redouane or Mohamed Bendriss), or the increase in the number of bans on demonstrations by the Paris police prefecture. In statistical terms, there is a clear break.
When we are interpreting the motivations of far-right voters, we shouldn’t look at them in isolation of each other, as if they were simply added on top of each other (the cost of living and incomes, insecurity, immigration, etc.). These factors are connected to each other. Once again, often it is xenophobia and racism that bind them together, giving them coherence and providing a form of malign causality (immigrants and minorities held to blame and said to be guilty of all evils.
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