Despite the extremely stupid "LOL"s, this is an excellent narrative on the development and psychology of fascism. Best read in its entirety.
I have some strong reservations about the connection to capitalism, and it never really addresses why fascists initially think they're being victimised, but that's beside the point.
Fascists never think they are fascists. A fascist never thinks of himself or herself as a “fascist”, anything at all carrying a negative or malicious connotation. They think of themselves, first, as victims. Victims of great and grand conspiracies — the Jews, the Muslims, the Mexicans. Those behind these conspiracies are not regular people — they are especially cunning and vicious especially greedy and unscrupulous, especially seditious and slothful, especially bad. They are especially powerful, in other words. They have the power to completely destroy the way of the life, the whole existence, of the person being victimized.
Now. See what has really gone on here. Victimhood is a kind of paranoid delusion. Of a very specific kind — a histrionic persecution fantasy. That is one which carries a special note of alarm, a kind of cry for help. A little Mexican child, or a nerdy Jewish teenager, doesn’t have the power to destroy anyone, really. Victimhood is imagined.
The truth is that nobody cares about him very much at all. He is a “loser”, just another nobody, with very much money or status or power — a point I’ll return to. But precisely because nobody cares about him very much, the truth must be denied against in more and more histrionic ways — ways designed specifically to be noticed, so somebody does care. And now the psychology of the fascist goes from unreal to warped... The fascist isn’t the fascist — everyone else is the real fascist. Nobody is his victim — because he [in his own mind] is history’s greatest victim.
In a predatory world, you cannot tell yourself that you are flawed and that it is OK to be flawed. Instead, you must tell yourself that you are a victim. You are the righteous one, the good one, the one who deserved to be superior — but found himself bitterly unfairly treated. That is what you must you do, mentally, to survive, as a functioning being, all too often. Now you must make the world just again — and that means that, because you are not a flawed human being, but the superior one who deserved to be on top, making a world that cherishes and prizes you as the flawless being you are. Hence, the moral crusade against the monsters — who are the truly inferior ones.
The fascist lives in that world because it is the world that capitalism has created, unfortunately. Capitalism has taught him that weakness is unforgivable, a crime to be punished with abandonment, exile, and death. Because, of course, under capitalism, weakness is worse than useless — it is a liability, a burden, a cost — and so, as in America today, capitalist societies are prone to fascist collapses, as the world becomes a hostile place, which destabilizes people mentally, until all that is left is self-preservation through extreme, savage, and total destruction. Of others, of norms, of values, of democracy itself.
[It is not so much that the world is capitalist or predatory, but that it it is perceived as being meritocratic. The fascist is conflicted : torn between believing that the world reward's talent but unable to accept that his own low standing is due to his own inadequacies. See also the very similar "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" theory. Still, the main question remains unanswered : why do some people feel this way, while others do not ?]
https://eand.co/the-psychology-of-american-fascism-eff731c53f61
The LOLs should be replaced by strawman icons, LOL.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism is certainly in the mix. Fascists are always backed by wealthy people, seeking to keep the poor under control with military might.
ReplyDeleteOne might suggest, in fact, that when a capitalist system has failed to self-regulate (i.e. to redistribute wealth aggressively enough) to the point of failure, one frequent failure mode is to topple into fascist despotism.
ReplyDeleteI like to think that the kind of capitalism that ties neatly into fascism is a failure mode emergent in capitalisms that have been left unregulated for too long. Imagine leaving bread on your kitchen shelf too long, and discovering it's covered in supremacist white mould when you come back.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I'm not sure I know what kind of regulatory system is long-term stable enough to keep such Nazi-mould from arising. The closest I can think of might be constitutional monarchies, but erecting a king to keep the Nazi capitalism at bay is like using Perl to perform calculations: it multiplies your problem and provides job security to whoever keeps solving it.
Fascism can be construed as a nominally rational military-style strategy to organize a society to compete, as a defensive posture when under stress. This suggests that Fascism is an attempt to regulate Capitalism, though like the solution of a Monarchy, or Stalinism you may or may not like what it compels you to do.
ReplyDeleteThe logic of Capitalism is not dissimilar to the Law of the Jungle, "Power Rules" and any regulation is subject to the veto of those with the most power. The New Deal was struck as a compromise with the growing power of the Socialist movement's threat to Capitalism. It successfully defused the threat, but Socialism still seems the only viable path to controlling the inherent despotism of Capitalism, (by eliminating the practice altogether). Fascism would wither away along with it, it isn't some psycho mumbo-jumbo like the author tries to argue. (though the word has morphed into an all-purpose pejorative over the last 20 years, interchangeable with "deplorable")
There's plausibly a connection to unregulated capitalism. The distinction between different forms needs to be made clear, like the distinction between European-style socialism and Stalinist communism.
ReplyDeleteThough I suppose the article should be viewed more with its title in mind. It's about the psychology of (individual) fascists and how they rationalise themselves, not why they, or societies, fall into the trap in the first place.
Andres Soolo I think we do know quite a lot:
ReplyDelete1) Keep poverty in check
2) Ensure a high quality of public schooling
3) Ensure that the press do not fall into capitalist hands, or at least doesn't operate without oversight.
Andreas Geisler: For 1) to work properly, the not-poor people must also be able to, and choose to, vote often.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, Finland does almost everything of these things just right, and yet, it has the influential True Finns party. So, it is clearly not sufficient.
Andres Soolo Influential enough to be in the government... but not influential enough to be able to promote their own policies while in government.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the "free press" in Finland has the usual underbrush of cryptofascist screed. That would seem to be the biggest problem, really.
I suspect there is no single safeguard that will ever manage its goal perfectly (there's a nice review of how the BBC failed on Brexit here : https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/12/how-the-bbc-lost-the-plot-on-brexit/). It's a system-wide problem, with each element influencing the other. The collective combination of preventative measures may be far stronger than any individual aspect. Society must be just, but equally it must be perceived to be just.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Tabloids in the UK have had such a free reign, and have had so little opposition, that it seems they were able to dictate the discourse.
ReplyDeleteWhen that happens, "mainstream" media also becomes unreliable in short order.
Andreas Geisler That's true, but I think it's a rather weak effect in this case. What opposition does exist to the major tabloids (of which the BBC is the main one) doesn't seem to have conceded anything much to the the rhetoric of the gutter press.
ReplyDeleteI think a more important factor is that the BBC does not pick sides on political issues. It may do investigative journalism, but it never actively advocates for any particular political choice. It just reports what campaigners are saying. For Brexit, the Remain campaign wasn't saying anything much (e.g. "I give the E.U. 7.5/10.0" - yes, very inspiring stuff, I think not).
Less forgiveable, and where there may be a stronger influence of the tabloids, is the investigative reporting that happened after the vote - or rather, didn't happen in the case of the BBC. They reported the basic story, but little else, when they should have launched their own major investigation. The problem here I think is not so much the tabloids but that the major political parties themselves were (almost uniformly) saying that the vote was done and had to be respected no matter what. To say otherwise, to even hint at impropriety, was to be guilty of Remoaning and advocating a partisan political position. And the BBC can't be seen to do that. It sacrificed objectivity for impartiality. The BBC is good at standing up to individual politicians, but it doesn't fight or actively define the narrative of history very much.
One thing I think might help would be to severely limit not what the press can say so much as how many media outlets any private individual or corporation can own. One newspaper and/or TV channel ought to be enough for anyone.
Anti-trust and tax investigation have always been among the best methods against organized crime... that could have merit.
ReplyDeletePerhaps media should be regulated as a utility?
Some form of greater media regulation is something I've been advocating for bloody ages, but I usually get an earful from free speech absolutists so the conversation never gets anywhere.
ReplyDeleteA good start would be extending the remit of the ASA to include political advertising, or creating a similar body with that remit. It should not be possible to repeatedly claim disproven figures, let alone drive up and down the country with them slapped on the side of a bus.