The New Global Fascist Bloc: Part III; The God-Given Right to Rule, Pt II.
The control of the masses is key to the success of any populist or fascist movement. But how the leaders do it, the degree of unspoken interaction, the depth of the libidinal ties that forge the bonds of loyalty between the leader & his followers is key to understanding the dynamics of this relationship, and how they might explain the irrationality of spontaneous violence that often follows.
‘Since the collapse of actually existing socialism and the abrupt ending of the Cold War that had polarized the world along the lines of contending theories of modernization, there has been a steady attempt to recover historical intensities that had been displaced by the reduction of political differences to a dyadic struggle between ʻtotalitarianismʼ and the ʻfree world.ʼ Almost as if the flood gates had been lifted, the suppressed experiences of a prior age have been unleashed into the new time announced by the post-Cold War, reminding the present that the past had not really disappeared so much as been shelved in our midst…/…One of the more important casualties of this silencing and banishment was the fate of fascism, as both a powerful ideological force in the 1930s and a political movement that swept rapidly over whole continents…/…With the ending of the Cold War, fascism was released from its singular association with totalitarianism and the way was reopened to focus on its relationship to capitalist modernization, if not to induce occasional pangs of nostalgia for the 1920s and 1930s.’
Harry Harootunian, The Future of Fascism, (16).
Working towards the leader…
Arguably the political, social and economic crises that have been brewing in the U.S. have outstripped the historical time-frame witnessed in 20th century Germany. Depending on where you put your initial crisis marker; be that the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War (1989), the First Gulf War (1990–1991), the NATO bombing of Bosnia (1995), 9/11 (2001), the Iraq War (beginning in 2003), maybe even the Sub-Prime Recession of 2008/9, or perhaps to some more esoteric date, like Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ narrative (1992); wherever you plonk your pin it could reasonably be argued that U.S. democracy, such as it is called, has endured far better than that of the Weimar Republic.
Arguably, perhaps for the white nationalists of the American far-right, the final, most humiliating crisis was likely the election of Barack Obama.
And all the while, ‘the Right’s cultivated nightmare of a ceaseless and corrupting ‘invasion’ of refugees, asylum-seekers, migrants, and many kinds of foreigners lays down the soil where a militantly racialized nationalism can be tilled (17),’ and nurtured in the highly weaponised rumour mill that is social media, where Trump and his bully-boy tactics excel.
Henri Lefebvre (referenced in Toscano, 11) believed that ‘Germany never was, but only becomes through a sacred and ideal violence, that there is no Nation prior to the bloody work of the political soldier and the Aryan condottiere.’ Thus, Nazism needed to present the nation as not yet having existed in its idealised form in order to render the national myth as endowing a futurity that is both dynamic and real, and in this respect is to be found in the myth of making America great again.
‘The myth of an impossibly distant past everywhere belied by a corrupt present and only salvageable in a revolutionary future defines a specific temporality governed by a violent project of purification of self and extermination of the other (11).’
So Germany is not; Germany can only be made. And this in itself justifies the obliteration of what came before; the destruction of community, of difference, sacralising the purity of the racial nation to come ‘in a fleeting, but terribly demanding future.’ What had been art and culture before was now subsumed and devoured by the racial revolution, because the new Germany can only ground itself ideologically in the origin myth of what has past, by transposing the myth into what is yet to come.
Peter Osborne, writing in his thought provoking book, The Politics of Time (18), suggests that fascism can be best understood as a variant on the counter-revolutionary ideology that is conservative revolution, which as Toscano points out, can then be interpreted as a formulation of reactionary modernism (11), that can only become reactionary once the traditional forms of authority have been neutralised, a strategy being openly employed by the Trump administration now.
Under this modernist temporal umbrella national socialism can be seen as reactionary avant-garde — a one-off, if you will — but more widely, fascism can be understood as a ‘temporalization of history’ that lies within modernity itself:
‘…the structure of radical reaction within and against modernity — is of necessity contradictory, since one of the things it aims to reverse is the production of the very temporality to which it is itself subject. Radical reaction cannot but reproduce, and thereby performatively affirm, the temporal form of the very thing against which it is pitted (modernity). Hence the necessity for it to misrepresent its temporal structure to itself as some kind of ‘recovery’ or ‘return (18).’
He continues, ‘….the possible always (and only) recurs as the possibility of repeating the past … the present is narrated as crisis and decline…while the future appears within the horizon of a ‘return to a new beginning.’’ It is, writes Osborne, the mapping of a specific national (and nationalistic) narrative of originary meaning onto the existential structure of resoluteness, via repetition, repetition, repetition.
The trolling President takes a pick axe to the fabric of social relationships and normative politeness to expound and feed the anomie, swinging his verbal pick indiscriminately, repeatedly, against enemies, allies, friend and foe alike, levelling the field of hatred, making abuse and ‘othering’ as acceptable and as routine as getting dressed in the morning.
‘To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity,’ those left behind by globalisation and neoliberalism, like much of Trump’s base I would suggest, Umberto Eco explains their nationalistic fervour, their togetherness, in the simplest of terms, even as Trump gives them the enemies to hate, ‘Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies.’
‘The de-secularization of politics, the theology of prosperity, firearms in civilian life, the attacks on speed cameras, the hatred of organized workers — these aren’t archaic customs from a bygone era,’ said Roberto Schwarz of Bolsonaro’s Brazil (19). ‘They are antisocial,’ like trolls on the internet,‘but,’ just like Bolsonaro and Trump, ‘they germinate(d) in the soil of contemporary society, in the vacuum left by the failure of the state. It’s quite possible they will have a place in our future, in which case the relics will be us, the enlightened ones.’
I lift my head and catch sight of myself in the mirror. Am I a latter-day Sebastian Haffner (see my post, ‘Living the Dream,’ for some more context on this, (20))?
Then with a shrug of verbalised resignation that one can feel emanating from his words, Schwarz says of the failures of the left everywhere, ‘…though globally too, of course, the beacons of modernity have lost much of their light.’
The reemergence of fascism in the post-Soviet years, after its silence and banishment as a valid ideology during the Cold War, following Harootunian’s quote above, gathered an unexpected casualty in its wake; the left has been drained of its vigour and fight; mesmerised and side-swiped by the end of history narrative and the alleged liberal-democratic victory it brought.
And I think, what price a young, energetic Bernie today?
Across the West, convergent post-colonial, imperialistic histories, narratives and, in the case of the U.S. and Israel, contemporary discourses and policies, shape transnational xenophobic pathologies that differ only in their minutiae nationally, but congeal internationally to give rise to universal themes of anti-immigrant anxieties that, ‘spur the virulence of right-wing political insurgency, interconnected as ever with racism against people of colour. In each context, the surge in hate crimes — verbal abuse, physical assaults, trolling, arson, bombings, murder, public and hidden intimidation of every kind — inexorably shapes the prevailing socio-political climate, often in complex collusion with security forces and police. Assassinations in Britain of Labour Party MP Jo Cox (16 June 2016) and in Germany of local CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) politician Walter Lubcke (2 June 2019), each chosen for their well-known pro-refugee advocacy, can be matched by the attempted murder in the United States of District Judge Esther Salas (19 July 2020)(21).’
The Weimar Republic, Neumann asserts (2), failed because the three partners in the democratic process — the Social Democrats, the Democrats, and the Left-wing Catholics — could not contain ‘the monster that lay within the German economic system. In fact,’ he says, ‘instead of smashing the power of the industrial monopolists, they unwillingly strengthened it,’ just as democratic neoliberalism has done today.
However, it was also Germany’s first attempt at democracy, and that was also a likely factor, but in terms of pure longevity, it could be said that the far more aged, more practised American (pseudo?) democratic system has shown far greater resilience. And whilst the dreadful political violence and loss of life described above was part of a series of events that culminated of Hitler’s Nazi takeover of Germany, it could also be said that, thus far, no such widespread and convulsive violence has yet to be witnessed in America.
Whether, in this respect, the tumultuous events of 1/6/21, can be viewed as an isolated incident, or merely a forerunner of things to come is, as yet, unknown. That said, the fact that Trump has now pardoned nearly 1600 people who were convicted following the Capitol attack, including those who were known attackers of the Capitol police, would seem to indicate that such violence, if renewed, would be condoned, if not welcomed.
Indeed, Arthur Rosenberg, in his seminal paper, ‘Fascism as a Mass Movement (1934)(22), wrote of Hitler’s stormtroopers:
‘Legally, the stormtroopers should be tried and sentenced to jail. But in fact, nothing of the sort happens to them. Their conviction in the courts is pure show — either they do not serve their sentence, or they are soon pardoned.’
Furthermore, writes Rosenberg (22), that, ’of course, the use of violence by ruling classes against the classes they rule over is as old as the history human civilisation itself. In particular, the capitalist classesof Europe never hesitated to use the utmost harshness and mass-bloodshed wheever their position of power was threatened by socialism or even by popular movements for democracy…/…now, it goes without saying that the ruling class its state apparatus for the exercise of force, for the state apparatus is there precisely for that purpose — the authorities, police and judicial administration are there to combat subversion, and when those do not suffice, the army is brought in. In special emergencies the ruling class can reinforce its state power by calling in volunteer-forces or mercenaries, but even in those cases it is the official state-power itself that struggles directly against the revolution with its own weaponry and laws.’
He then observes that, ‘when the oppressed masses are weak, they put up either no resistance at all or weak resistance to the ruling class and state violence.’
Stormtroopers though, fall outside the normal remit because they are not part of the state apparatus, and can take things into their own hands when political and verbal opponents of the authorities become ‘disagreeable’ to the ruling class but, the authorities are not strong enough politically or legally to handle the job. In such circumstances the actions of the stormtroopers are ‘in complete violation of the laws’ of the land, but nonetheless, ‘work with the (complete) connivance of the state (22).’
Whilst mob violence is an integral part of American social history — I wrote in a recent post of one of the last such incidents that led to the brutal maiming, torture and lynching of Claude Neal, in front of a cheering crowd of more than 5000 Floridians in 1934 — but, as former Federal Prosecutor, Brendan Ballou, wrote in an op-ed in the NYT, there has been little to fear in this regard for decades.
Mr. Ballou, who was one of those who prosecuted the 1/6/21 rioters, and who resigned his position the moment Trump pardoned those he had helped to convict, says that may be about to change. ‘Freed by the president, they have never been more dangerous,’ he wrote, with many declaring upon release their rabid desire for violent retribution against those who had allegedly wronged them. ‘It is now our turn,’ said one Mr Tarrio, upon release.
With Trump giving them his full back-slapping endorsement; ‘These (are) people who actually really love their country,’ these groups will be doubly loyal to the new King now, and evermore eager to carry out the President’s wishes. Throwaway comments, such as ‘hang Mike Pence’ or ‘let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?’ in respect of Liz Cheney, may well become nothing less than a de facto death sentence for his putative victims. And Trump, with his new monarchical immunity, could just shrug it off with a callow, ‘I was just being sarcastic,’ comment like he did after suggesting that injecting bleach could help combat Covid.
Andrew O’Hagan said this is Trump’s great achievement; bringing his loathing of others, his loathing of opponents, his loathing of anyone who talks or thinks differently from him, out into the open and making it acceptable for his ‘collectivity’ to hate, to insult, to injure, to ‘other,’ and as such to become part of the putative ‘solution.’
Using Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (23),’ as inspiration, I wrote extensively last month about the possibility of any monarchical ambitions Trump might hold, and how he might act on them should he so desire. But, and it’s important to realise, that such an outcome would not result in Trump sitting on a throne, wearing ermine and a crown, brandishing the baubles of Kingship, an orb and a sceptre; his kingship would be more of an abstract undertaking.
Indeed, Ross Douthat wrote in a NYT op-ed, interestingly called, ‘In the court of King Trump,’ that amid the chaos so comically, and so tragically brought to life by Dana Milbank recently, that ‘Trump has set himself up as a king with a court where the main litmus test is personal loyalty, and so there are incentives for any people who wants anything in America (except, yes, more undocumented immigration or more D.E.I. programs) to appear before him as a courtier, risking their dignity in the hopes of winning favors from the throne.’
He then goes on to discuss the many growing rivalries within the court; protectionists vs. Wall Street, Middle East hawks vs. Middle East doves, etc,. And this made me think of a speech made by Werner Willikens, State Secretary in the Prussian Agricultural Ministry, in February 1934, quoted in Ian Kershaw’s majestic biography of Hitler. Willikens said:
‘Everyone with an opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can only with great difficulty order from above everything that he intends to carry out sooner or later. On the contrary, until now everyone has best worked in his place in the new Germany if, so to speak, he works towards the Fuhrer (24).’
And Trump, like Hitler before, is well known for his lackadaisical work habits, and the vague, oft-times contradictory nature of his comments, which may leave a certain latitude within which any ambitious subordinate or wannabe may seek to operate. And having his ‘wishes’ interpreted and acted upon, in what might become differing ways offers Trump a potential win-win in several ways.
Firstly, it means Trump doesn’t need to get bogged down in, or even try to fully grasp the inner workings of any particular project or policy; he can snatch at the basics and offer meagre, obtuse suggestions for the underlings to grasp at and figure out. If any of the would-be solutions works then he looks like a genius, whereas if they don’t, then he has a built in fall guy.
Indeed, Catherine Belton detailed how Putin likes to keep his staff at loggerheads with each other (7) in part, for the reasons above, but also because, all the while they are fighting for the leaders attention, they are not presenting any sort of threat to the ruler himself who remains aloof, above the fray, keeping a cool head when all about may be losing theirs.
Thus, were a loose comment with respect to a personal or political rival to be taken literally, Trump would have a ready made scapegoat, who he could coddle and pander to, with reduced sentences, a pardon, or even amnesty.
Rosenberg (21) wrote how fascism was widespread throughout Europe even before the outbreak of hostilities in WWII. Building on Karl Polanyi’s assertion that the germ of fascism, rather than the movement itself, was present at the inception of capitalism [see reference in Toscano (11) which is sadly no longer available on Polanyi’s archive]. Polanyi’s observation was, according to Toscano, ‘a pithy articulation of an understanding of fascism as a potentiality lodged in capital’s very marrow,’ that Polonyi himself, labelled the dormant germ of the ‘fascist virus.’
And Rosenberg notes that whilst the fascist tendency was prevalent all across the West prior to the war, what was lacking was the ‘peculiar tactic of using stormtroopers which is,’ he writes, ‘a characteristic of modern fascism…/… Their very existence signifies that normal conditions no longer prevail.’
And certainly thus far, this aspect is conspicuously absent from Trump’s anti-like-personnel, anti-American armoury; that is provided we park 1/6/21 for the moment as merely an aberration and not part of any calculated strategy, though it is worth bearing in mind Theodor Adorno’s point (12) that the demagogic agitators like Trump, and indeed, like Hitler before, are intent on turning the masses into mindless crowds ‘bent to violent action without any sensible political aim, and to create the atmosphere of the pogrom.’ Their universal purpose, he insists is to instigate a ‘psychology of the masses,’ following the work of late nineteenth century psychologist, Gustav Le Bon, who wrote (15) that crowds, ‘after a period of excitement, enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in which they are guided by suggestion,’ a state that might admirably reflect the situation on 6/1/21. Though Le Bon does qualify this and say that under such circumstances ‘it seems difficult to qualify them (i.e. the crowd it its totality) in any case as criminal’ though ‘certain acts of crowds are assuredly criminal, if considered merely in themselves.’
In this respect, please see my analysis of this aspect of 1/6/21 in my recent post here.
Adorno is writing with specific reference to the use of fascist propaganda and speech-making in post-wartime America, where the ‘similarity of the utterances of various agitators (such as Father Charles Coughlin and Reverend Gerald Smith — both feature heavily in Rachel Maddow’s, ‘Prequel’ (25), & her podcast series, ‘Ultra’ about early and post-war fascism in America, and both specifically identified as ‘rabble rousers’ by Adorno)…/…is so great that it suffices in principle to analyze the statements of one of them in order to know them all.’
Adorno is scathing in his criticism; ‘the speeches themselves are so monotonous,’ he says, ‘that one meets with endless repetitions as soon as one is acquainted with the very limited number of stock devices. As a matter of fact, constant reiteration and scarcity of ideas are indispensable ingredients of the entire technique.’
And then I recall, the mind-numbingly, soporific nature of Trump’s inaugural address, with so many campaign slogans interjected into the mix, it was unlike any address I’d heard before, and to my mind more of a campaign speech than anything else. I remember thinking at the time how he used such simple language; how it was so downbeat, monotonal, and yes — I can’t get away from it — soporific. It was just dull and uninspiring for me. Sure, for his ‘fans,’ I’m betting he pushed all the ‘right’ buttons, stroked all the ‘right’ egos, upset all the ‘right’ democratic apple-carts, but it was severely lacking in magic for me.
In attempting to explain what it is that adheres a mass of individuals to a demagogic, or even a demagogic fascist leader, Adorno (12) rejects basic biological phenomena to explain the gathering of mass formations in respect of a budding fascist leader, and tells us that, ‘the members of contemporary masses are at least prima facie individuals, the children of a liberal, competitive and individualistic society, and conditioned to maintain themselves as independent, self-sustaining units…’
Given that Adorno was looking to explain the base violence and more destructive elements and actions of the brownshirts, but also German’s more widely whilst under the fascist ‘influence,’ he realises he is one step advanced from the fundamental point. Even if more primitive, archaic urges remain, perhaps dormant within us, we would still ‘have to explain why modern men revert to patterns of behavior which flagrantly
contradict their own rational level and the present stage of enlightened
technological civilization.’
Freud, writing during the years after the end of WWI and before the advent of German fascism, takes us back to the archaic primal horde in an attempt to uncover the bond that unites a group of individuals together, not only as a group, but also as a group under the primary control of a chief or leader.
Freud tells us (13) that, ‘the members of the group were subject to ties just as we see them to-day, but the father of the primal horde was free. His intellectual acts were strong and independent even in isolation, and his will needed no reinforcement from others. Consistency leads us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one but himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs. To objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary.’
Likening the leader to Nietzsche’s mythical ‘superman,’ Freud postulates that the groups members remain in the need of the leaders acknowledgement, his love, and delude themselves into the belief that the leader loves them as they love him. But ‘the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterly nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent. We know that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it would be possible to show how, by operating in this way, it became a factor of civilisation.’
As I discussed a few weeks ago, at the psychoanalytic level, ‘fascism preys on the contradiction between the self-preservating conatus of the ego and its constantly frustrated desires,’ of the group members, which, ‘results in strong narcissistic impulses which can be absorbed and satisfied only through idealization as the partial transfer of the narcissistic libido to the object (i.e. the leader)…By making the leader his ideal he loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the strains of frustration and discontent which mar his picture of his own empirical self (11).’
Trump himself extols the virtues of freedom and all that it means (to him?). In his inaugural address he promised that ‘our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free.’ For many right-wing movements liberalism is often portrayed as a pernicious and interventionist hindrance on many freedoms, particularly in respect of the possessive aspirations of individuals, particularly entrepreneurs, and of corporations. Liberals often counter identifying the exaltation of the state and ‘repudiation of liberty’ as being absent or lacking in the ideologies of far-right movements and governments.
In response many of today’s authoritarian regimes have spawned ‘Freedom’ parties, with liberty and freedom often being adopted as their ‘leitmotiv,’ as a way of distinguishing them from their liberalising opponents. Freedom from alleged ‘medical totalitarianism;’ freedom for and of property ownership; freedom from religious, racial or civilisational differences, particularly from those of migrants or immigrants (11).
Indeed, Toscano (11) gives us what he describes as a ‘choice example’ of the final trend above, from ‘Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective’s formidable panorama of an emergent ‘fossil fascism,’ in the book White Skin, Black fuel (referenced in Toscano and in my library, but as yet, unread!):
‘The doctrine of ‘energy dominance’ was annotated with some classical American freedom speak, when the Department of Energy in 2019 began to refer to fossil gas as ‘freedom gas’, to be exported without constraints around the world. Official documents from this Department, still headed by Rick Perry, spoke of fossil fuels as ‘molecules of U.S. freedom’.’
But as Toscano points out, ‘conceptions of freedom (at both the individual and collective levels) were not (and are not) alien to fascism, and that we may gain in our understanding of fascist potentials and subjectivities by tarrying with that apparent oxymoron, fascist freedom.’
Maybe we should ask Mahmoud Khalil for his take on American freedoms right now? I’m sure the answer would be illuminating…
Thanks for reading, and the reference list below is for this post and the previous one here.
- The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction; Walter Benjamin, 1935. From ‘Illuminations: Essays and Reflections;’ Walter Benjamin, Edited by Hannah Arendt, 1968.
- Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism; Franz Neumann, 1942. Introduction by Peter Hayes, 2009.
- A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution; Orlando Figes, 1996.
- Crime and Punishment; Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866. Translated by Jesse Coulson, 1953.
- What Is To Be Done? Nikolai Chernyshevsky, 1863. Translated by Michael B. Katz, 1989.
- Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; Simon Sebag-Montifiore, 2003.
- Putin’s People; How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West; Catherine Belton, 2020.
- The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America; Timothy Snyder, 2017.
- Schizo-culture: On Prisons and Psychiatry; Michel Foucault. From ‘Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–1984,’ Michel Foucault. Edited by Sylvère Lotringer, 1996.
- The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy: A Study on the Political Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen; Pedro Magalhães, 2021.
- Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis; Alberto Toscano, 2023.
- Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda; Theodor W. Adorno, 1951.
- Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego; Sigmund Freud, 1921. Republished in 2021.
- The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements; Eric Hoffer, 1951.
- The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; Gustav Le Bon, 1896. Republished 2001.
- The Future of Fascism; Harry Harootunian, 2006. Radical Philosophy, 136, (March/April, 2006).
- What is Fascism and Where does it Come From? Geoff Eley, History Workshop Journal, 2021.
- The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant Garde; Peter Osborne, 1993.
- Neo-Backwardness in Bolsonaro’s Brazil; Roberto Schwarz, New Left Review 123: May/June 2020.
- Defying Hitler: A Memoir; Sebastian Haffner, 1939. Revised Edition 2002.
- What is Fascism and Where does it Come From? Geoff Eley, History Workshop Journal, 2021.
- Fascism as a Mass Movement; Arthur Rosenberg; 1934. In ‘Fascism: Essay and Europe and India;’ Jairus Banaji, 2nd Edition, 2016.
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; Karl Marx, 1852, Published in ‘Die Revolution,’ 1852. Available as pdf download.
- Hitler; Ian Kershaw, 1998.
- Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism; Rachel Maddow, 2023.
