What They Call Fascism

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Clarissa

August 1, 2021

Fascism is anything leftism hasn't yet subjected to totalising commodification. Anything that can't be bought or sold, any social bond stronger than money. Duty, honour, obligation, family, love, dignity. They want you deracinated & dissolved, complete market subsumption.
— Aimee Terese (@aimeeterese) August 1, 2021

This is a brilliant insight. I’m putting it here because I want to keep thinking about this.

It’s also a great illustration of how to let go of outdated arguments and leave the quagmire of circular thinking. Everybody – including me – has been repeating how the word fascism is being misused by the left to brand all opposition as pure evil. We say it and say it and say it. “They are the real fascists!” OK, so what? We’ve said it, and it’s true, but now what? And then one random online person finally says, “OK, but what is it they call fascism? What do all these things have in common and where do they stand in relation to the neoliberal mentality?” And we have finally moved towards a fresh insight.

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3 responses to “What They Call Fascism”

Chthonic Reducer

August 1, 2021

I remember reading in the pages of Maximum Rock & Roll magazine back in the 80s that freedom to consume is not freedom at all, it’s only economic slavery.

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1. ladyfiaran
  
  August 1, 2021
  
  Interesting, since the editors of Maximum R&R were anarchists and possibly communists. Brainless consumerism shouldn’t be seen as freedom, wanting whatever you want whenever you want is something children believe but one ought to grow out of it as an adult
  
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a

August 2, 2021

To self-appointed anti-fascists – anyone can be one, no action is required as long as you intone the right mantras – anything and everything that they don’t like is fascism.
Like all religious cults, all ideologies are like that: an unquestionable set of beliefs, an openly affirmed statement of faith, inerrant prophets, a holy book, public acts of worship where heresies are proclaimed and heretics outlawed (“cancelled”).
The decline of religion in the West – pace the likes of Voltaire and Dawkins – has not seen the dawn of the new, harmonious, liberated age which they predicted, but the coming of a benighted totalitarian society that is all the more difficult to resist as it is not imposed by government authorities (unlike in China or North Korea) but freely embraced by the apparently educated and presumably informed sections of society.
How did we get here? The only reasonable answer is, because of the technology that the digital revolution has made possible.

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