The Anatomy of Neo-Fascism - Part 1

Why a new term is needed for a new era

Today, I want to start a series about what I'm calling Twenty-first century Neo-fascism. I hate writing about politics with a passion, but hell, with election season approaching now is the time to get this subject off my chest and move on. I can imagine the kind of comments I'm going to get for this, but I just don't care anymore. If you don't want to read it, don't read it.

What is Fascism?

The term “fascism” has become totally debased in modern political discourse. It's been used as a political slur against any politician even moderately right-of-center for decades and, as a result, the term has lost all its meaning. People called Nixon a fascist. People called Reagan a fascist (they weren't). Today, the Republicans call the Democrats fascist. Your high school football coach was a fascist. As a result, it's become an all-purpose pejorative devoid of meaning because if everyone is a fascist, then no one is a fascist. It’s a classic instance of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Because fascism has become such a politically-loaded and emotionally-charged topic, the term has unfortunately become off-limits to describe modern-day political movements—even those which undeniably resemble those of fascist regimes in style and substance. Discussions are often fueled more by emotion than by reason, generating more heat than light. Let's try to do better.

To start off, fascism historically was the product of a particular time and place: Europe between the wars.

Scholars and historians have struggled to define what fascism is ever since the end of the Second World War. Given the destructiveness wrought by the regimes commonly identified by that term, it seems like it would be easy to define. Yet it’s not. Mountains have ink have been spilled and entire books have been written, yet still there is no universal agreement on what constitutes fascism.

One of the difficulties in defining fascism is that very few political regimes explicitly identified themselves as fascist. There was no “fascist program” to sign on to—instead every country implemented different permutations based on their own idiosyncratic history and culture. Unlike Marxism or Liberalism¹, there is no body of fascist literature. Fascism is more of a political style or a modus operandi than a coherent political and economic philosophy. It spread by osmosis between right-wing elites in various countries imitating each other, giving it a similar form wherever it was practiced—uniforms, marches, salutes, youth organizations, and so forth. That's why it's often hard to find commonalities, even between political regimes commonly referred to as fascist. As George Orwell wrote in his essay, “What Is Fascism?”

It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships.

Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean.

I think it's helpful to define what fascism is not. To that end, I want to make a distinction between:

• Fascism,

• National Socialism (i.e. Nazism)

• Authoritarianism

• Totalitarianism

• Far-right political parties.

All of these have become hopelessly muddled together in the discourse because they all share certain similarities. Yet, if we want to define our terms properly, we need to make distinctions.

National Socialism was the particular form fascism took in interwar Germany under the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and its leader Adolf Hitler. However, Nazism had distinctive characteristics unique to German culture, including: 1.) white supremacy, 2.) rabid antisemitism, and 3.) state-sponsored genocide. It was also extremely militaristic given the militarism of the Prussian state which was the driving force behind German national unification.

National Socialism (Nazism) is what most people think of when they use the term fascism, but they are not the same thing. Germany was neither the first, nor the only country to be fascist, otherwise the term would pointless—we could simply use the terms National Socialism or Nazism and leave it at that. Therefore antisemitism and genocide are not requirements for fascism. These were not characteristic of all regimes which adopted the fascist political style.

In reality, fascism originated in Italy under Benito Mussolini who coined the term based on the fasces carried by ancient Roman lictors as a symbol of authority. The opening shot for fascism is generally considered to be Mussolini's March on Rome almost exactly a century ago in October 1922. Fascism was a revolutionary far-right movement which grew in opposition to equivalent far-Left movements such as communism and socialism, and many early fascists had, in fact, formerly been socialists including Mussolini himself².

It’s worth noting that the two countries most commonly agreed upon to be fascist—Italy and Germany—were nation-states that had only formed relatively recently in 1870-71 and whose people had little to no experience of parliamentary democracy. There were also fascist movements inside a number of countries which never attained power, most notably Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) in Great Britain.

Fascism arose in response to a very particular set of circumstances unique to that specific time and place. Among these were:

• World War One and its aftermath, which was the single biggest contributor, but also;

• The social dislocations caused by liberal capitalism;

• Rapid technological advances;

• The Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the rising popularity of Communism.

• Fragile democratic institutions and disgust with democracy.

• The Great Depression.

Authoritarianism is a much broader term. While it's applicable to fascist regimes, it's common to many other kinds of regimes as well and refers to countries with a lack of democratic institutions, a lack of government accountability, and control by a single individual or faction. Totalitarianism is a more extreme variety where all of society is sublimated to an all-powerful state or party which controls and manages every aspect of life. Generally, historians do not describe fascist regimes as totalitarian, but they do describe them as authoritarian. Communist regimes were not considered to be fascist, but were considered to be totalitarian. In political science, words have meanings.

Far-right political parties are distinct from fascism in several ways. They they aren't revolutionary. They work within the existing political order to advance their goals. They do not seek the overthrow of the state nor the installation of a dictatorship. Far-right parties have philosophical commonalities with fascism, such as scapegoating, sexism, regimentation, and reactionary politics, but are nonetheless different.

What this tells us is that fascism need not be antisemitic, nor genocidal, as is the common perception. The typical argument goes that, so long as a regime is not engaging in industrial-scale mass murder, it cannot be fascist. Yet that was only a characteristic of German National Socialism, not fascism as a whole. Other fascist regimes were not overtly antisemitic or genocidal, nor as obsessed with racial purity as was National Socialism. And some genocides were carried out by regimes not considered to be fascist. But in the popular imagination, Nazism and its iconography have become synonymous with fascism, leading to confusion and misunderstanding.

Definitions of Fascism

Let's look at some of the most common definitions of fascism by scholars over the years. Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, offers the following succinct definition:

“Fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, minorities, and leftist radicals. The fascist leader creates fear about a takeover by Marxists and leftists and presents himself as the only solution.”

The British historian Roger Griffin, in The Nature of Fascism, defined it as a form of Palingenetic ultranationalism:

“Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.”

The concept of palingenesis refers to a sort of “rebirth” which will take place once the nation is cleansed of enemies, degenerates and subversives. It is inherently backward-looking, as it seeks to return society to a mythical past before the nation was corrupted when things were better than they are. It is inherently nationalistic, as every fascist movement appeals to patriotism and asserts that its nation is inherently superior to other “inferior” nations and peoples. It is populist, as it claims to represent the will of the “common people” against the “elites” who are causing the nation’s downfall. And it portrays itself as the only way to save the nation from the chaos and destruction wrought by enemies, foreign and domestic.

Historian Robert Paxton, in The Anatomy of Fascism, describes fascist movements as preoccupied with national decline and humiliation:

“Fascism may be defined as a from of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood, and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

One of the more popular ways to define fascism is the “checklist” method. In this view, in order for a political movement to be considered fascist, it has to check all (or nearly all) the boxes on some sort of checklist, otherwise it doesn't count. One of the most popular checklists was created by the writer Umberto Eco in his essay Ur-Fascism. In the essay, Eco lists what he sees as the fourteen essential defining characteristics of fascism. Businessman Laurence W. Britt also outlined a fourteen-point list in 2003. More recently, American academic Jason Stanley has developed a ten-point checklist in How Fascism Works³.

Each of these definitions capture part of the essence of what makes fascism, fascism, and taken together they give us a picture of what makes it different from other political styles such as authoritarianism or garden-variety far-right politics. You can read more definitions at the Wikipedia link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

But what I'm going to argue is that, while those definitions may be useful in understanding the historical fascism, they are irrelevant, because no modern-day fascist regime is going to look exactly like the those which emerged almost a century ago under radically different circumstances. It would be foolish to think so. Even in its own time, no two fascist movements were exactly the same.

Trying to compare points on an imaginary checklist between modern political movements and those from times past is silly and pointless. Rather, fascism as it exists in the twenty-first century will have its own unique style and particular characteristics in response to the issues and anxieties of people today. Therefore, I am going to refer to these modern-day political movements as Twenty-first century Neo-fascism.

What is Twenty-first century Neo-fascism?

Typically, determining whether a movement is fascist or not hinges on making historical comparisons. But I argue that this is the wrong approach. Clearly modern-day fascist movements aren't going to look exactly like those which arose in response to circumstances like the Great War, Revolution, and the Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s.

To take an example, modern-day fascism—unlike the historical predecessor—would not be a response to the dislocations caused by the First World War which has long since passed (as has the Second). Furthermore, it would not be a response to the rise of Communism and the Bolshevik Revolution. In fact, Russia has abandoned Bolshevism, its Communist regime has fallen, the Cold War is over, and globally Communism—and even socialism—has receded as a political force everywhere in all but name (e.g. China). We are in a completely different time.

That's why I think it's important for us to adopt a new term allowing us to distinguish modern-day fascism from its historical counterpart. Just like the term neoliberalism was coined due to its family resemblance to the original economic liberalism which preceded it from 1870 to 1914, Neo-fascism applies the same logic to define modern-day fascism as similar—but not identical to—its historical counterpart from 1922-1945. That's why the “neo-” prefix is so important. It avoids the trap of viewing modern-day political movements though a historical lens. The “neo-”prefix has been applied to a variety of modern political ideologies which are the descendants of earlier ideologies such as Neo-Marxism and Neo-Nazism. This is the same idea.

The Circumstances Behind Neo-fascism

Twenty-first century Neo-fascism, then, differs from historical fascism, so we need not trouble ourselves over whether or not it hits all the points on a hypothetical checklist. Nor need we be concerned with minor differences which disqualify modern political movements because they lack one or two defining features.

This also avoids pointless comparisons of specific individuals who happened to be the leaders of these movements. What's important is the belief system of movements themselves rather than comparisons between particular individuals who are vastly different due to culture, age, background and other circumstances. Comparisons between Trump and Hitler, for example, or between Trump and Mussolini, are totally irrelevant to whether or not the MAGA movement is Neo-fascist. Of course these leaders are going to vastly different (although you could argue that the leaders of these movements tend to share certain temperamental similarities).

Reading a lot of the online discussions, it seems like those who desperately want to avoid using the term fascism for any modern political movement will always be able to do so. They can always grasp at straws to say, “see, this movement can't be fascist because it is different for x, y, and z reasons.” No matter how obvious or glaring the similarities, there will always be at least some differences which can be used to disqualify it. How could there not be? By defining a new term for the fascism of the twenty-first century, however, we sidestep that objection. We avoid getting bogged down in fruitless comparisons which are never—I repeat never—going to match up exactly. Of course there will be differences.

Instead, the question becomes whether or not the term “Neo-fascism” is justified when describing these political movements despite the differences. That is the critical discussion. This allows us to focus on the similarities rather than quibble over the differences.

So, then, is the moniker justified? Is the fascism in Neo-fascism fascism appropriate? I argue that it is.

Like its predecessor, Neo-fascism is a response to a particular set of challenges unique to our own time, which is why I'm referring it as “Twenty-first century” Neo-fascism. These include:

• The dislocations caused by neoliberalism and global trade.

• Anxiety over rapidly advancing new technology including automation and AI.

• The rise of social media and alternative news outlets.

• The September 11 attack and the years of pointless wars that followed.

• The 2007-2008 global financial crash.

• The rise of China and Russia.

• The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic and the economic disruptions in its aftermath, including high inflation.

• The proliferation of failed states and the associated refugee crisis.

• Worsening climate change.

• Fears of societal decline and ethnic displacement.

• Extreme wealth inequality and downward social mobility.

• The end of economic growth as we know it.

The common element to both of these eras is rapid change and uncertainty, and in uncertain times, extreme political movements rise to the fore. We know this from history. These are popular responses to a widespread perception that things are out of control and that society is falling apart. Whenever that happens, authoritarianism becomes a popular alternative and people begin to look to a strongman to solve all their problems, even if that strongman has to blow up society and break all its laws and institutions.

In that regard, it's not at all surprising that a new from of fascism is emerging in our own time. The dislocations caused by neoliberalism, new technology, the pandemic and the global financial crisis have caused people to abandon the mainstream center-right and center-left parties around the world and flock to radical alternatives on both the extreme Left and extreme Right, just as they did following the First World War and the Great Depression. And there are clear parallels between then and now. Consider the words of Italian World War One veteran Italo Balbo:

“When I returned home from the war, just like so many others, I hated politics and politicians who had betrayed the hopes of soldiers, reducing Italy to a shameless peace. I'd rather deny everything, destroy everything, to renew everything, from the foundations.”

Balbo became Mussolini's right-hand man in his fascist regime. Like many people today, he had lost faith in society and was willing to follow anyone who claimed they could fix it, even if it meant destroying society and killing other people to do so. For the fascist, the decline of the nation justifies doing “whatever it takes.” Furthermore, their political opponents are not people with whom they may disagree, but internal enemies (“the enemy from within”) who are contributing to the nation’s downfall and must be eradicated (communists, immigrants, socialists, liberals, Democrats etc.). They are—in effect—subhuman. Only the fascist political program can rescue the nation from those who have betrayed it, and if they fail, there won’t be a country anymore. This is the logic of national and societal rebirth—the logic of making the country great again.

What’s remarkable is that Neo-fascism has become a unifying force for the exact same kinds of people who formed the basis of support for the original fascism. Neo-fascism is comprised of the very same idiosyncratic types of people: reactionaries; monarchists, traditionalists; religious conservatives; disaffected military veterans; racists and bigots; back-to-the-landers; hippies; occultists; misfits and cranks; along with wealthy industrialists and accelerationists of various proclivities who want to build a new society on the ruins of the old. The worldviews of these people couldn't possibly be more different, yet they're all politically united under the banner of Neo-fascism. In future posts, we’ll examine just how eerily similar these ideologies are to those that influenced the original fascists.

A common slogan is that “fascism is capitalism in decay.” That is, when socialist and leftist movements are not allowed to gain traction as alternatives to a liberalism that's failing for a lot of people, the ruling class offers fascism as an alternative to fend off legitimate challenges to its wealth and power. I think there's a lot of truth to that idea. In the case of fascism, its historical basis of support was a frustrated middle class— what Marxists referred to as the petit bourgeoisie. In a prescient essay entitled Fascism is the Wave of the Future, Edward Luttwak wrote (my emphasis):

...neither the moderate Right nor the moderate Left even recognises, let alone offers any solution for, the central problem of our days: the completely unprecedented personal economic insecurity of working people, from industrial workers and white-collar clerks to medium-high managers. None of them are poor and they therefore cannot benefit from the more generous welfare payments that the moderate Left is inclined to offer. Nor are they particularly envious of the rich, and they therefore tend to be uninterested in redistribution. Few of them are actually unemployed, and they are therefore unmoved by Republican/Tory promises of more growth and more jobs through the magic of the unfettered market: what they want is security in the jobs they already have – i.e. precisely what unfettered markets threaten.

A vast political space is thus left vacant by the Republican/Tory non-sequitur, on the one hand, and moderate Left particularism and assistentialism, on the other…And that is the space that remains wide open for a product-improved Fascist party, dedicated to the enhancement of the personal economic security of the broad masses of (mainly) white-collar working people. Such a party could even be as free of racism as Mussolini’s original was until the alliance with Hitler, because its real stock in trade would be corporativist restraints on corporate Darwinism, and delaying if not blocking barriers against globalisation. It is not necessary to know how to spell Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to recognise the Fascist predisposition engendered by today’s turbocharged capitalism.

Astonishingly, Luttwak wrote these words at the end of the Cold War in 1994.

The Defining Characteristics of Neo-fascism

Without further ado, here is what I think are the defining characteristics of Twenty-first century Neo-fascism:

• Subordination to a messianic leader and his cult of personality.

• Illiberalism and contempt for democracy and democratic institutions.

• Dehumanization, othering and scapegoating.

• Militias, extra-judicial violence and stochastic terrorism as political tactics.

• Culture war and an obsession with degeneracy and decline.

• Apocalyptic language and rhetoric.

• Revolution and rebirth (“palingenesis”)

• Reactionary and paleoconservative politics.

• Populism.

• Conspiracy theories and paranoia.

• Ultranationalism.

• Replacement of transnational economic and military alliances with “spheres of influence.”

• A loyal media apparatus which dispenses agitprop and curates an alternative reality for party members.

• Hypermasculinity, machismo, and a preoccupation with the "feminization" of society. Celebration of "masculine virtues," misogyny and contempt for women.

• Natalism, anti-feminism, and traditional gender roles.

• Glorification of violence.

• Scientific racism, hierarchy and Social Darwinism.

• The merging of church and state and the promotion of religiosity.

• Disparaging of education and intellectuals.

• A quasi-mystical world view. Occultism and mistrust of science and expertise.

• Embrace of cutting-edge technology and progress.

• An eclectic and non-ideological economic program (i.e. “whatever works”).

These form the core of the political style that I'm referring to as Twenty-first century Neo-fascism. I will argue that many of these characteristics are extremely similar—if not identical to—its historical antecedent. However, there are also some key differences which reflects the fact that Neo-fascism is a twenty-first century phenomenon responding to the issues and challenges of today rather than of the past. Perhaps the most significant of these is stoking fears over immigration and the promotion of “Great Replacement” theories and “Clash of Civilizations” rhetoric which are at the heart of Neo-fascist ideology worldwide.

The most significant difference is the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has united the far Left with the far Right worldwide in opposition to vaccines and public health mandates. Both poles have adopted a similar paranoid political style and skepticism toward expertise of any kind. While some have dubbed this strange ideological alliance “horseshoe theory,” journalist Naomi Klein refers to it as “diagonalism”: “Diagonalism is a combination of extreme rejection of traditional democratic institutions with elements of spiritual holism as well as libertarianism, and a belief that all experts are lying all the time.⁴” Opposition to vaccines and public health measures has galvanized far-Right political movements worldwide, which is certainly different than the past when vaccines were seen as a godsend saving millions of lives, including those of young children. Ironically, those opposed to vaccine mandates frequently employ Nazi and holocaust terminology to describe their ideological opponents⁵.

Based on these factors, I argue that MAGA is clearly the most “classically” fascist movement in the Western industrialized world since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.

This is the reason why I refer to the MAGA movement and Donald Trump as fascists. More accurately, they are Twenty-first century Neo-fascists, but that term doesn't mean anything to the average person, so I have to use the term fascism. But I do have a very specific meaning which I have outlined in this post, whether you agree with it or not.

This list also indicates why, in my view, the far-right political parties which have gained popularity in Western Europe so far are not fascist. This may be controversial, but I will argue that these parties do not meet the criteria of Neo-fascism. These movements still respect political norms and do not reject liberal democracy. They do not seek the overthrow of the state. They do not see their political opponents as enemies to be rooted out and destroyed. They do not seek to establish a dictatorship. For the most part, they are not allied with armed militias pursuing extra-judicial violence (although some fringe far right groups might qualify).

For example, when the National Rally lost electoral gains in the French election due to a last-minute alliance of centrist and leftist parties, they did not engage in mass terrorism, question the election's integrity, or storm the Élysée Palace. I also don’t consider Modi's movement in India Neo-fascist, although it does have some of the hallmarks including ultranationalism, a charismatic leader, and ethnic chauvinism.

While the original historical fascism was birthed in Italy by Benito Mussolini, twenty-first century Neo-fascism originated in Russia under Vladimir Putin, and Russia is the epicenter and primary exemplar of this political style. Russia took tactics developed during the Cold War for psychological warfare and demoralization of the West and repurposed them. Instead of spreading the gospel of Marxist-Leninism and the establishment of international Communism, these techniques were repurposed and deployed to spread a new type of reactionary conservative ideology around the globe, made possible by the existence of social media and the decline of traditional news sources. Russia has been found to be funding far-right political movements in Western Europe, spreading disinformation and agitprop online, and funding media outlets in the United States associated with MAGA and the Republican Party.

The reason these ideas took root in Russia is due to the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War. The Western world—in thrall to neoliberal ideas—failed to successfully integrate Russia into the capitalist world order and left it to fend for itself. As a result, liberal democracy failed, just as it did in Nazi Germany. The result of these poor decisions on the part of the victors was an unimaginable human toll uncannily similar to the suffering inflicted on the German people in the aftermath of World War One. Simply put, their entire society crumbled around them and everything they knew disappeared. Out of this chaos came Putinism as a unifying force, much as Hitler and National Socialism rose to prominence out of the chaos of Weimar Germany. Grievance, resentment, and a desire to restore the nation to glory flourished in this environment, just as it did in Italy and Germany following defeat in the First World War. The result is what has become Twenty-first century Neo-fascism. And it’s spreading around the world.

So by defining a new term for the fascism of the twenty-first century, we can sidestep pointless debates about whether or not MAGA is fascist if it doesn't hit all the points on an imaginary checklist derived from long-dead movements of ages past, or if some of the details don’t quite match up exactly. Instead, what’s important is looking at the movement as it actually exists today and focusing on the similarities rather than the differences. Because the fate of the world is at stake.

That's what we'll be looking at next time.

1. For American readers, I'm using “liberal” in it's traditional sense here as “economic liberalism”: the paradigm that all of society must be subordinated to the demands of markets and trade without restriction and the corresponding removal of social protections.

2. One thing we’ll see as a feature of Neo-fascism is the co-option of leftist rhetoric, terminology, and tactics to advance their own agenda and world view. This was true of the original fascists and it is just as true today: Steve Bannon has repeatedly referred to himself as a “Leninist.”

3. Eco’s fourteen characteristics of fascism are:

1, The cult of tradition.

2. The rejection of modernity.

3. Action for action's sake.

4. Disagreement is treason.

5. Fear of difference.

6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class.

7. Obsession with a plot.

8. Our enemy is both weak and strong.

9. Life is a struggle. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.

10. Elitism and contempt for the weak.

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. Impatience for death.

12. Disdain for women and intolerance of nonstandard sexual habits.

13. Selective populism.

14. Newspeak—an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax.

Jason Stanley discusses his ten tactics of fascism here:

4. https://geog.ubc.ca/news/doppelganger-a-conversation-with-naomi-klein/

5. Although the National Socialists themselves were not always in favor of vaccination.