"Fascism, the more it considers and observes
the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political
considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the
utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism –
born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of
sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts
the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it." -Benito Mussolini.
The word “Fascism” has been quite
popular lately, in the aftermath of the 2016 American presidential election and
the prominent role of so-called “Alt-Right” movements in that campaign.
Therefore, it is as good a time as any to give some thought to what exactly Fascism
is and how it relates to today’s political movements. We will first go through
the historical and philosophical origins of Fascism, then compare it to modern
Alt-Right movements, and finally offer a hypothesis for the underlying causes
of Fascism based on human sociobiology. You may be tempted to think that these
abstruse philosophical arguments are boring and irrelevant. Think again. Tens
of millions of people died because of them, and more may die yet.
A.
Origins
of Fascism:
Fascism
is an Italian word (Fascismo). The word derives from the Roman Fasces
(bundles), which were the symbols of authority of the Littores, the bodyguards
of Roman kings and subsequently of Roman Consuls. The Fasces were bundles of
rods (used for non-lethal punishment) surrounding an axe (used for capital
punishment). They were tightly tied with leather strings, symbolizing the
collective strength of the state. This ancient Roman symbol of authority
remains quite popular, and is present in numerous American monuments,
government buildings and coinage (Figure 1).
The name Fascismo was chosen by
Benito Mussolini and his ideologue, Giovanni Gentile, to symbolize strength in
union and the authority of the state. It first appeared in 1915. The Fascist
doctrine is thoroughly explained in a 1932 essay co-written by Gentile and
Mussolini, entitled “the Doctrine of Fascism[i].
Philosophically, the theories of
Gentile and Mussolini, as well as the less known Fascist theorist Giulio Evola,
had their most immediate roots in a variety of artistic and ideological
movements that developed in the 19th and early 20th
century: Dadaism, Futurism, and the
philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. What these movements had in common was the
rejection of rationalism and scientific progress as signs of decadence.
Instead, they hailed passion, activism, emotion, faith, ritual and heroism.
They longed for a return to a purer, more savage but more energetic and
exciting past where the strong prevail, the masses sacrifice for their
countries and war is the ultimate crucible of honor and nobility. The ideal
world for futurists and Nietzschians would look very much like the one
portrayed in George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones”. Nietzsche also criticized
the concept of objective truth, maintaining instead that truth is whatever one
sees from an individual perspective. In a sense, Nietzsche originated the
notion of “alternative facts”.
Gentile was a more formal
philosopher. He was a Hegelian, as was Karl Marx. Hegel’s philosophy
can be said to have given birth to both Marxism and Fascism. Oversimplifying
for the sake of brevity, Hegel, an extremely prolific and all-encompassing
thinker who inherited Kant’s mantle as the leading German philosopher, believed
that cultural progress proceeds by the contraposition of a “thesis” and its
opposite “antithesis” that eventually produce a “synthesis” which supersedes
both. While he never used these words himself, he describes the dialectical
process in his writings. For example, a “thesis” would be the idea that there
is a God who created the universe. An “antithesis” would be the idea that there
is no such thing as God and the universe doesn’t have a creator. A “synthesis”
would be the notion that the universe created itself. It therefore does have a
creator but this creator isn’t a God extraneous to it.
Marx took this Hegelian dialectical
concept and applied it to the class struggle. He suggested that historical
progress is entirely due to materialistic, economic factors, and that the
industrial revolution had created a dialectical contraposition between those
who own the means of production, the capitalists, and those who provide the
labor but don’t profit from its fruits, the working class. He hypothesized that
the “synthesis” between these opposing groups would be a class-less society,
brought about by a dictatorship of the working class. Marx wrote his massive
treatise “Das Kapital” in Victorian England, where industrialization had
created horrendous working conditions and where class distinctions were rigid
and pre-ordained at birth for most people. Marxism rejected religion as a
“superstructure” used by the dominant class to enslave workers.
Gentile used a similar Hegelian dialectical
scenario but suggested that nations, not classes, were the subjects of
historical struggles, and that a final “synthesis” would see a dominance of
superior nations. The irrationalistic, vitalistic Nietzschian ideology would be
the vehicle whereby superior nations gained the passion and will to prevail
(Wille zum Macht in German, or will to dominate). Fascism embraced religious or
religious-like rituals as ways to secure the passionate loyalty of the masses.
In this, it was distinct from its offshoot Nazism. Fascism had a ready-made
religion, Catholicism, whose world center was in Rome. All Mussolini had to do
was re-open diplomatic contacts with the Vatican and allow Catholicism to take
a central role in Italy. He did that with the Lateran Pact of 1929. Nazism,
whose followers included Catholics and Protestants, shunned
Christianity and harkened back to Nordic myths and a superior Germanic race,
although Hitler had been raised Catholic and had attended a Catholic school.
Both Marxist and Fascist ideologies
were deeply flawed, but that didn’t stop them from having enormous historical
consequences in real life. Marxist and Fascist states emerged amidst economic
uncertainty in the chaotic aftermath of World War 1. After the October
Revolution, a Marxist superpower began rising in Russia and exporting Marxism
to the West. Against it, nationalistic Fascist movements blossomed, beginning
in Italy and expanding to Germany, Spain and Portugal. Luckily for the world, Fascism
made the major tactical mistake of challenging simultaneously the liberal-democratic
Anglo-American capitalist nations and the Soviet Union. The after-shocks of
that conflagration resonated throughout the Cold War and continue to this day.
Had the Fascists been more pragmatic, they could have allied themselves with
the Anglo-Saxons and squelched Marxism. Britain and the United States would
have most likely fallen for such an alliance, as they were initially far more
afraid of Marxism than they were of Fascism. Dino Grandi, Mussolini’s ambassador
to Britain and the eventual architect of his downfall, proposed such an
alliance. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s favorite mentee, most likely did so as well as
he attempted some freelance diplomacy with Britain.
Benito Mussolini started his
political career as a Socialist, but abandoned socialism when his party refused
to support the participation of Italy in World War I. In time, he conflated
elements of Gentile’s Hegelism and Nietzschian primitivism into a political doctrine
centered on patriotism, which put the Nation above the individual. Fascism
rejected English and American-style individualistic democracy as selfish and
decadent and Russian-style Marxism as subversive and unpatriotic.
Fascism supported capitalism and
private enterprise, but on condition that
companies put themselves at the service of national interests. It rejected
trade unions and the right of workers to organize. Instead, it tasked the
government with establishing worker guilds and negotiate with employers on
behalf of workers. In other words, Fascism offered capitalism protection from
Socialism, strikes and unions in return for the unwavering loyalty of the military-industrial
complex to the State. In practice, Fascist hit squads started intimidating and
attacking workers and breaking strikes with violence, taking the side of big
business against workers. For this reason, big business and the monarchy
supported Mussolini.
Ethically, Fascism put the State
above everything else. As Mussolini wrote in 1933, “For if the nineteenth
century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying
individualism) it may be expected that this will be a century of collectivism,
and hence the century of the State[ii].
And again, in 1935 “Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State;
and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State . . . .
It is opposed to classical Liberalism . . .
Liberalism denied the State in the
interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true
reality of the individual”.
Fascism rejected ideas produced by
the Enlightenment, such as equal human rights and dignity, or the equality of
women to men. It espoused the notion that some people, races and nations are
inherently superior to others, and that a struggle for dominance is inevitable.
Multiple factors contributed to the
success of Fascism. The first and most important was fear of Socialism. The
Russian Revolution, a consequence of World War I, had swept away the
Russian royal family and was attempting to internationalize Socialism, by
appealing to solidarity among proletarian workers across national borders. Ironically,
Lenin had been sent into Russia from exile by the Germans during World War 1, in
hopes that he would destabilize Russia’s war effort. He succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams. Russia’s war effort did collapse, but Germany lost the war
anyway, and after Lenin consolidated power, Socialist and Communist parties
appeared in Germany and throughout Europe, in both victorious and vanquished nations.
These movements were fueled by economic distress in the aftermath of the war,
poverty, oppression of workers and abysmal working conditions in
industrialized countries. The consequences of the American Great Depression on
European economies made matters worse. Every European country was terrified by
the idea that an international movement, Socialism, would erase national
borders and undermine the mighty empires of Western Europe. Every monarchy in
Europe began promoting patriotism and religion as antidotes to socialism. The US used similar strategies during the Red
Scare in the McCarthy era.
The Italian monarchy took advantage
of Fascism and was complicit in its rise, because the royal family hoped that a
right-wing, patriotic, law-and-order dictatorship would protect them from the
onslaught of Socialism. The British, fearing Marxist Socialism would overthrow their
ruling class, initially supported Fascism, until they came into competition
with it for power and territory. Winston Churchill famously expressed strong
support for Fascism as a bulwark against Bolshevism[iii].
In a 1927 speech in Rome, he said among other things “Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces
which can rally the masses of the people, properly led, to value and wish to
defend the honour and stability of civilised society. She has provided the
necessary antidote to the Russian poison.”
Of note, Churchill’s views, as the
leader of what was at the time the greatest capitalist empire on Earth, were
not very different from those of Fascists. Churchill was a racist, who believed
that Native Americans and Australian Aborigines had simply been “displaced by a
stronger race”. He despised Indians and, despite later claims of a special
friendship with the Jewish people, in 1920 he disseminated anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories, reminding his readers that Karl Marx and Leon Trotzky were
Jewish[iv].
In summary, there was significant,
though not complete ideological overlap between Anglo-American capitalism and
Fascism before the 1930s. Fear of Socialism was a common denominator.
The conflict of interests between Fascist
Italy and Britain only flared when Italy decided that, as an Allied nation and
victor of World War 1, it had a right to its own colonial empire like France
and Britain did. Italy already controlled Libya and Albania, but its conquest
of East Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea) in 1936, a major campaign that
saw the deployment of nearly half a million soldiers and chemical weapons, put
it on a collision course with Britain (which controlled neighboring Kenya,
Tanzania and Rhodesia), and British economic sanctions pushed Mussolini into the
arms of his mentee Hitler, who had established his own brand of Fascism as
National-Socialism in Germany and had built a mighty military machine he
planned to use to conquer all Europe. The rest is well known.
B.
Neo-Fascist
movements, and how they compare to Anglo-American conservatism:
Officially,
Fascism died in 1945, with the defeat of the Axis in World War 2. However, reports
of its death were highly premature. Fascist dictatorships remained in power in
Spain (Francisco Franco) until 1975, in Portugal (Antonio Oliveira Salazar)
until 1968 and in Greece (a military junta) until 1968. Right wing
dictatorships that were Fascist in everything but name took power in Chile
(Pinochet), Argentina (Videla, Bignone), Brazil (Costa e Silva and successors),
Zaire (Mobutu). The Western Allies tolerated them and often actively supported
them in the name of anti-communism. However, in Western democratic countries
Fascism remained off-limits to reputable political parties. The fall of
Communism nurtured hopes that both it and Fascism could be consigned to history
permanently. But the fire was smoldering under the ashes. Neo-Fascist movements
appeared in the former East Germany (the Skinheads) and in the United States
(the White Nationalists), where they incorporated white supremacist elements
from the old Confederacy and the KKK. Neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi sympathizers
swell the ranks of populist parties in Europe (especially in Hungary, France,
Italy and the UK). A Neo-Fascist movement, the so-called Alt-Right, is
currently ensconced in the White House and has a privileged place in
present-day American government. But how do these movements compare to more
traditional conservatism in the English and American traditions? Communists and
Socialists have often labeled all conservatives “Fascist”. However, there are
important differences. Mussolini himself explained the key difference very
clearly (see above): “Liberalism denied
the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the
State as the true reality of the individual”. Anglo-American, capitalist liberal-conservatism
values individual freedom above all. In its worldview, the only acceptable role
of the State is national defense, to protect the internal marketplace. Beyond
that, there are very few acceptable circumstances in which the State has a
right to coerce individuals to act against their self-interest. This is why
capitalist “liberal”-conservatism is anti-regulation and anti-government.
Fundamentally, it maintains that if every individual seeks personal profit by
means that don’t include physical violence, an equilibrium will eventually be
reached whereby everyone benefits. Traditional conservatism has a strong libertarian
streak, and it worships the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a rather mediocre 20th
century thinker who authored “The Virtue of Selfishness” and “Atlas Shrugged”
among other works. Hyper-individualism, free-market, and profit as the key goal
of “homo oeconomicus” are bedrock values for Anglo-American conservatism.
Interestingly, Ayn Rand was an atheist, who flatly states in her “Introduction
to Objectivist Epistemology” and repeated in multiple interviews that God does not exist[v].
That would put her at odds with today’s social conservatives. Her epistemology
was probably her best work, but it’s essentially a rehashing of Aristotle. She
was a hyper-rationalist, and her social writings reflect a profound
misunderstanding of human nature. Fascism does support capitalism, but it
subordinates the individual to the State. Selfishly unpatriotic behavior (such
as hiding profits abroad or exporting jobs) is perfectly acceptable under
capitalist liberalism but traitorous for a Fascist.
C.
Is
the Alt-Right Fascist?
The
so-called Alt-Right is a 21st century form of Neo-Fascism, a sort of Fascism
2.0. The similarities are certainly more numerous than the differences.
However, differences exist and should be pointed out. Original Fascism considered
the Nation State as the most noble of human causes. It used capitalism,
religion and racism to maintain the cohesiveness of the State. It envisioned
history as a competition between Nations, which would be won by the most
cohesive, most disciplined, most resolute Nations. This was relatively
straightforward in the early 20th century, when multi-ethnic,
multi-religious Nation-States were not the rule. Thus, it was easy for
individuals to identify with the Nation-State as their tribe. The only significant
ethnic minority in Europe were Jews, and they were inevitably turned into
scapegoats by Fascists and Nazis, with the horrific consequences we all know.
Neo-Fascist movements are, if anything, more primitive than original Fascism.
They consider the Ethnic Tribe, not the State, as the most important social group.
Specifically, the White “Christian” Tribe of Conservative Evangelical
denomination is proposed as the highest form of human civilization, which must
attain domination over competing ethnic, religious and ideological tribes
within and outside the State. Alt-Right Neo-Fascism only supports the State insofar
as the State protects the predominance of the White Christian Tribe, and
violently rejects the State if it does not. As such, Neo-Fascism is in direct
conflict with the American Constitution, which forbids the establishment of an
official religion. This explains why
American Neo-Fascists call themselves “patriots” while embracing
anti-government movements, why their favorite definition is “White
Nationalists” and why they wish the government to enforce their religion and
protect their race to the detriment of the multi-cultural reality of American
society. They scoff at “Political Correctness” but aim to establish their own
version of “Theocratic Correctness”. Ultimately, they wish to enslave the State
to their Tribe and dominate over all other groups within the State. Original Fascism used race and religion as glue to
hold the State together. Alt-Right Neo-Fascism uses race and religion to hijack
a secular State in support of a distorted tribalistic vision.
D.
Why is
Fascism making a comeback?
The
traditional market-based capitalistic conservative vision based on
hyper-individualism rests on an important unstated assumption. Specifically,
it assumes that the probability of any given individual to improve his/her
standard of living by pursuing personal profit is sufficiently high. The United
States is basically a “lottery society”, in which individuals accept to
participate in a ruthless rat race in return for a chance to improve their
personal circumstances and those of their progeny. If that chance (probability)
is too low, the game is up. Once individuals realize that no matter how hard
they work, they have little or no hope of upward mobility for themselves and
their children, the temptation to stop playing the lottery grows. Upward
mobility was the backbone of the “American Dream”. To have a middle-class
lifestyle, to own a home, to send one’s children to school was an achievable
goal for most white Americans in 1950.
Unfortunately, this was due to unique historical circumstances that may never
be repeated in the foreseeable future. Among the victors in World War 2, the
United States was the only large economy with an intact infrastructure. The
English and French empires were crumbling, and their infrastructures had been
devastated by the war. Germany, Japan and Italy were in ruins. The Soviet Union
had lost 20 million people to war and dictatorship. China, India, Brazil, South
Africa were under-developed Third World countries. For a brief period of time,
the US was the only intact industrialized country in the world. It also
attracted talented immigrants from the rest of the planet. It basically had no
competition, and a white American was better off than essentially anyone else
on the planet except for the international ultra-rich. Those circumstances are
gone, and they will not return any time soon. The average American worker has
plenty of qualified competition and so does the average American company.
Moreover, large companies are now trans-national and move jobs, investments and
profits wherever economic conditions dictate, with the ultimate goal of
maximizing shareholder profits, not national prosperity. National borders are
economically meaningless. As a result of these historical factors, the golden
age of America is over. Every great power in the history of mankind has had its
golden age of explosive growth, and for America that age is in the past. This
is the hard truth that many in the American heartland haven’t heard or don’t
want to hear. The American Dream has been fading for a while now, as a
consequence of the very lasseiz-faire capitalism that created it. Increasing
inequalities, a concentration of wealth in the hands of a shrinking minority, a de facto transfer of power from elected government to corporations,
automation and globalization have created an environment in which upward
mobility is a mirage, and being born to a rich family is the best path to
wealth. This was the state of affairs in 19th century Europe that
prompted the birth of Marxism. Under these conditions, hyper-individualistic, market-based
conservatism offers a hollow dream. Fascism, on the other hand, offers strength
in numbers and emotional fulfillment. By being loyal to one’s race and/or
religious group, individuals who have very little hope of personal upward
mobility can feel empowered by practicing collective selfishness against other groups (the
immigrants, the Muslims, racial minorities, godless liberals). This psychological dynamic is very similar to the unquestioning patriotism
of Fascists and Nazis who marched to war for their Nations, so that the
Thousand Years Reich, the New Roman Empire or the Japanese Empire could prevail
– and provide better opportunities for their descendants. The original Fascism
arose in reaction to fear of change. Fear of Socialism, secularism and Marxist
internationalism coalesced into a violent, nationalistic, traditionalist
movement that devastated the world and committed some of the worst atrocities
in human history. Today, fear of multiculturalism, secularism, changing moral
customs and globalization are playing a similar role in fanning the flames of
Fascism once again. But why is Fascism a natural response to these fears?
Sociobiology may offer a plausible explanation.
E.
Sociobiology
of Fascism:
Understanding
human behavior is impossible without taking into consideration the basic
biology of the human animal. We are not metaphysical beings or disembodied
rational entities. Political philosophies, including Hegelism, Marxism and Ayn
Rand’s hyper-individualism ignore the scientific reality that the human mind is
a survival tool built by evolution for an animal species. Remarkably, Aristotle,
the early champion of empiricism, came much closer to the mark in the 4th
century BCE than scores of 19th and 20th century thinkers.
This great Greek philosopher may
be considered the grandfather of sociobiology. In his treatise on Politics, he defined
the human as “ζῷον πoλιτικόν (Zoon
Politikon)” or “social animal”. Aristotle specifically mentions how several animal species
have complex social organizations, and humans are among them. Twenty-one centuries
before Darwin and 22 centuries before molecular biology, Aristotle had a clearer
concept of what humans are than most modern Americans. Today, we know conclusively
that H. sapiens is indeed an animal species, the only survivor so far among
several hominin species that evolved on this planet, closely related to each
other and to the great apes. Our political gyrations are complex social behaviors
not unlike the workings of ant or termite societies, herd behavior in horses,
pod behavior among orcas etc. Political movements are, to use Richard Dawkins’
definition, an “extended phenotype” of Homo sapiens. As such, they are cultural
constructs built on top of genetically hardwired basic social behaviors. E.O.
Wilson, the father of modern sociobiology, includes humans among “eusocial” species, that is, species that live in
social groups throughout their existences. These include among others ants and
termites, honeybees, some species of wasps (which are closely related to ants),
naked mole rats, social shrimps, hyenas and humans. One constant element in the
evolution of eusociality is a defendable
nest. Every species that has achieved eusociality builds “nests” (campsites,
caves, villages, cities…) which are used as safe havens for reproduction, and
defends those nests from aggressors. In other words, eusociality includes a built-in “us versus the world” defensive behavioral
program. If you have ever disturbed a hornet nest or a fire ant hill, you
know exactly what this entails. Whether the threat is real or imagined,
aggressive behavior is triggered in seconds and soldiers lash out against
anything in sight, often sacrificing their lives to defend the nest. This is
not a rational response. It is automatic behavior hardwired in DNA. Have you
ever felt angry and defensive when someone disparaged an entity you consider
yourself as belonging to? Your home town or state, your native country, your
race, your religion, your football team? We all have felt that way, no matter
how enlightened we are. It’s a primal response. That response is the
sociobiological root of Fascism.
Among insects, eusociality has reached a point whereby
individualism is meaningless. Each colony is essentially a superorganism
composed of genetically related individuals whose only purpose is the survival
of the queen and the expansion of the colony against every other species (and
often related insect species). Ferocious wars between ant species are
commonplace. Ants have been around for approximately 100 million years.
Termites are even more ancient. Among the evolutionarily more recent mammals,
the situation is more nuanced. One can recognize three main social behaviors
that are at times synergistic and at times antagonistic: 1) Within-group
cooperation, the basis of eusociality; 2) Within-group competition for dominance,
and 3) Out-group competition with other groups, including defense of the common
nest. Hominids have been around for less than 3 million years, and modern humans
branched out of Africa only 60,000 years ago. We spent the vast majority of our
evolutionary history living in small bands of a dozen to a few dozen
individuals. These bands had dominant individuals and competed with one another
and other species for resources and territory, very similar to wolf packs or lion prides. This social organization persists today among inner city gangs,
and among our great ape cousins. Tribes came next, and they are still alive and
well in many parts of the world. Villages, cities, states, empires and
federations are much more recent developments, and all of them co-exist today. Within
all these social structures, individuals cooperate and compete. Like other
primates, we have an awkward mix of altruistic and selfish behaviors wired into
our genes, and our social and political interactions as individuals and groups
result from a combination of the three major behavioral drives described above. The
human condition, this constant Prisoner’s Dilemma that has us forever wavering
between angels and devils, is our evolutionary “original sin”.
Political doctrines built onto idealistic platforms and not
biological evidence emphasize one or another of the three major behavioral drives
as the means to attain the ideal society.
Traditional Anglo-Saxon capitalism and
its most extreme version, libertarianism, emphasize within-group competition
for financial dominance, a surrogate for the accumulation of food. The only legitimate function of
the State is to ensure that the rat race takes place unhindered. Select
individuals will attain wealth, and they will provide jobs (the equivalent of
sharing scraps of food in an animal band) for everyone else. As long as this
constant mutual depredation proceeds undisturbed, everyone will benefit.
Marxism,
on the other hand, emphasizes cooperation and discourages individualism. Its
version of an ideal society is more similar to a hymenopteran colony, where
individuals exist solely for the greater good of the colony. Broad sharing of
resources without private property will ensure the maximum benefit for all
people.
Both these doctrines have intrinsic fatal flaws because they ignore key biological
aspects of human nature. Capitalism imagines humans are rational, economically
minded, essentially individualistic creatures. It is not immoral, but it is fundamentally
amoral. To be sure, we have these characteristics in various measures, but only
part of the time. However, humans are intensely social. While we are certainly
selfish due to our within-group competition drive, we are also endowed with innate
empathy, an essential evolutionary tool to maintain social cohesion. Most of us long to
be part of something larger than ourselves, and are gratified by doing good for
our fellow human beings. We enjoy approval and fear isolation and ostracism.
This is why isolation is a form of torture for most humans. Narcissists and sociopaths, mentally diseased individuals who are nearly or
totally devoid of empathy, find hyper-individualism satisfying. It is no
accident that these personality disorders are common among CEOs. For the
average individual, however, capitalism is morally acceptable only as long as some
measure of social justice is achieved.
Marxism has the opposite flaw: it does not take into account
the innate drive of individuals towards within-group competition for dominance.
The notion that individuals will be content to share everything without
expecting individual rewards for merit is a utopia. The temptation to “game the
system” and reap rewards without doing one’s share of the work is also
evolutionarily hardwired into our brains. Without individual incentives, most humans lose
motivation. Worse, the competition for dominance simply shifts from the financial
arena to the political battlefield. Plutocratic elites are replaced by
bureaucratic elites, which use political structures to gain personal power, and,
more often than not, personal wealth. The most communist country in the world,
North Korea, is led by a family which wields hereditary power and has amassed a
multibillion dollar fortune abroad. The Kims are a royal family not unlike
European hereditary monarchies of the 19th century, ruling a country
where currying favor with the Leader is the most prevalent form of social
competition.
Fascism, on the other hand, emphasizes between-group competition. In sociobiological terms, Fascism is the
most tribalistic political doctrine. Loyalty to the group is paramount, and the group must prevail over rival groups.
Fascism combines within-group cooperation and competition in the service of a
"greater good", namely between-group competition. Leaders who emerge from
within-group competition must lead the struggle with other groups for total
domination. Capitalism prefers trade to war whenever possible, and uses
military force to protect profit-making activities. Fascism is far less
restrained in its use of force, as it maintains that the world is a zero-sum
game where “the fatherland” must prevail. War and internal repression are its favorite tools. Fascism emphasizes dedication to a greater cause than
individual wealth, and it requires unquestioning discipline. This is why rigid
codes of behavior, often enforced through religious rituals, discouragement of
criticism and submission to authority are necessary ingredients in the Fascist
worldview. “The group” must be cohesive and punish those who deviate from
orthodoxy, or it will be too weak to prevail against its enemies.
From these considerations, it becomes clear why Fascism arises
in response to fear, and why for a population to be enticed into Fascism, fear of an external and/or domestic threat
is an indispensable ingredient. Fascists unite in a response to a real or imaginary
enemy. Successful Fascist dictators manage to convince their followers that
they are under attack and must fight against a looming threat. The simple message
Fascist dictators and aspiring dictators send to their followers is “Your nest is under attack! Fight!” This
message is aimed at triggering the primal nest-defense response that all
eusocial species share, silencing rational considerations. It is no accident
that Fascist and Neo-Fascist groups are fertile grounds for conspiracy theories describing
obscure enemies conspiring to undo their way of life. It is also no
accident that Fascist and Neo-Fascist groups need scapegoats to identify as
responsible for the threats “the group” must defend against. The
original Fascism was powered by fear of Socialism, and it scapegoated Jews,
“guilty” of having invented Marxism and of undermining the European social
order for their own advantage. Neo-Fascist ideologies, particularly the
American “Alt-right” are powered by fear of multiple perceived enemies and have
a whole menu of scapegoats. Socialism is one of them, but it is now joined by
secularism, competing religions, nonwhite minorities, gays, feminists and immigrants. All these "enemies" are seen as conspiring to undermine the white, fundamentalist Christian, patriarchal, authoritarian society that Alt-Righters believe should forever remain the dominant tribe in America and the world.
F.
Did
conservatism enable the return of Fascism?
This question may be stated another way: have traditional conservatives triggered the “nest defense” response in segments of society? What has triggered that response? For some individuals, fear of economic loss
is a straightforward answer (see above). However, the paranoid feelings of out-group
hostility displayed by throngs of Americans are completely out of proportion
with the realities of a country with a growing economy, historically low
unemployment and low crime rates[vi].
Shouting abuse at refugee children is not a rational response to a real threat. What did trigger such disproportionate fear and hostility? The answer is that this fear has been carefully cultivated and stoked by a vast
political propaganda campaign aimed primarily at whites, which began with Nixon’s
Southern Strategy. As we have seen, endless explosive growth is an
impossibility. In a mature economy, mechanisms such as inheritance,
compound interests, etc. cause a progressive accumulation of wealth in the
hands of a small plutocratic elite, and the chance of “winning the lottery” for
individuals who do not belong to the financial elite decrease accordingly.
Standards of living stagnate for most but the wealthiest minority. At this
point, the “trickle down” myth is exposed for what it is, and capitalism
becomes less attractive to the average person. The American Republican party has
progressively shifted from promoting economic growth for a majority of
citizens (Teddy Roosevelt's "square deal") to protecting the accumulated economic privilege of a small
plutocratic elite which financially supports the party. Therefore, it has faced the dilemma of how to maintain
popular support in order to win elections, even though a majority of its voters
have little or no chance of benefiting from its policies, and some are actually
harmed by them through lack of access to opportunities for education and health
care. Tragically, the party of Lincoln has solved its dilemma by making
increasing use of Fascist-inspired rhetoric. It has actively promoted a state
of fear in White Christian Americans, leading them to vote against their own
economic interests in defense of their tribal identity. This has been a tactical success but it is proving to be a
strategic catastrophe.
How has Republican propaganda promoted a resurgence
of Fascism? Through relentless propaganda via TV (e.g Fox News), radio (Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and
a whole national network of right-wing "Christian" radio stations) and internet (Breitbart and legions of "fake news" sites), the GOP has made lavish use of scare tactics. These reached a new height during the 2016
campaign. Over the past 50 years, the cry of “The Bolsheviks are coming!” has
been replaced by “The Black Thugs are coming! The Moocher Welfare Queens are
coming! The Muslim Terrorists are coming! The Godless Atheists are coming! The Gays
and Trans are coming! The Hispanics are coming! The Brown People are coming! The
Foreign Companies are coming! The Big Bad Government is coming! And they are all here to take what is yours and
take over your nest!” Not coincidentally, the Tea Party symbol, a rattlesnake
surmounting the words “Don’t tread on me!” represents an animal responding
aggressively to a perceived threat. Decades of Republican propaganda,
culminating in the Trump campaign, have conjured up an endless series of
bogeymen to convince large numbers of White, "Christian" Americans, mostly from
rural environments, that they are under threat from multiple enemies. This propaganda has intentionally triggered
a collective aggressive response not unlike that of a disturbed fire ant hill. There
is a large difference between the 1920s and the last 50 years. In the 20th
century, a Marxist takeover of Europe was a real possibility. It was averted
not by Fascism, which in fact strengthened Marxist opposition, but by the
acceptance of trade unions and improved working conditions in Western
democracies. Today, the threats conjured up by right-wing propaganda are either
completely imaginary (like the New World Order, the World Government or the Gay
Agenda) or ridiculously overblown (immigration, militant Islam). As such, they
can and should be deflated by those of us who care to examine the
evidence. In reality, the most serious existential threats to Western
civilization are environmental degradation caused by its own greed and shortsightedness ,and financial corruption.
It’s important to remember, however, that a threat doesn’t
have to be real to be effective. It simply has to be powerfully depicted and
credible for the masses. A blood-curdling scream calling out “Terrorists!” in a
movie theater will cause a panic whether or not terrorists are really there. This
is why Trump, led by his Neo-Fascist strategist Bannon, continues to insist in
depicting a country in disarray and under threat, against all evidence to the
contrary. He needs to create an artificial climate of fear to trigger defensive
instincts among the masses and portray himself as the irreplaceable savior. Once such powerful
emotions are triggered, reason is overruled. This may explain the extraordinary
suspension of disbelief exercised by people who voted for an obviously
unqualified candidate of highly suspicious morality who promised to defend them
against a whole list of wildly exaggerated or imaginary threats. These tactics
are not unique to Trump’s America. Vladimir Putin has successfully transitioned
Russia into a Fascist regime by using the threat of Western aggression and
Western decadence against Russian patriotism and traditional values. This was a
textbook Mussolini move, and a supreme irony in the country that used to export
Marxism to rest of the planet.
Why is the tactical success of Fascist propaganda a strategic
blunder? After all, Republicans have managed to acquire a disproportionate
share of power and are aggressively promoting an agenda that is a dream come
true for their donors and completely at odds with the needs and wishes of most Americans. A solid majority of Americans wish the environment to be protected, treasure Medicare and Social Security, support common sense gun control and gay marriage, and have no interest in dictating which bathrooms transgender persons utilize. The GOP's legislative agenda completely ignores these majority trends. Unfortunately
for the GOP, this apparent victory carries within itself the seeds of collapse. Fascism is a deadly addiction that is very hard to break. It is emotionally far more
fulfilling than soulless commercialism, especially for those who can only dream
of attaining wealth. It promotes powerful mob emotions, even more so when
laced with fanatical religion, as it is in the US. Republicans thought they
could use a Fascist-like message and control it, but they made a deal with the
Devil, and the Devil is coming to collect. Neo-Fascist movements like the
Alt-Right have become indispensable to the GOP, and in 2016 they have taken
control of it. When Bannon speaks of “destroying the establishment”, this is
what he means. He means for White, pseudo-Christian mobs to seek national and world
domination over other ethnicities and countries by overturning the capitalist State
and enslaving it to their agenda. In the long run, this mindless rush to cultural
and racial conflict will hurt commerce and the economy. It will isolate the US
as the lone world bully and trigger trade wars that will benefit no one. It is
already discouraging the immigration of talented foreigners, an irreplaceable engine
of economic growth for the US. Shooting wars are also far more likely under
Fascist domination. But the American people quickly tire of perpetual war once
the body bags start coming home. Finally, Fascism is essentially incompatible
with democracy. It is a totalitarian ideology, and indeed the very word "totalitarian"
was coined by Italian anti-fascist Giorgio Amendola in 1923 (http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/totalitarismo/) and quickly appropriated by Fascism as a
badge of honor. There is no such thing as a democratic Fascism, whereas
Social-democracy does exist and can be argued to be the most balanced societal
organization. Eventually, countries that fall into the spell of Fascism must
make a traumatic choice between it and democracy. The US may be headed towards
such a choice.
G.
Conclusions:
Fascism
remains seductive because it exploits primal responses hardwired into the
eusocial human brain. It speaks to humans below the rational level and triggers
powerful instincts produced by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
However, we are not doomed to repeat the errors of our past. Millions of years
of genetic evolution have given us sufficient adaptability that we can learn
from our own mistakes, or we wouldn’t have survived. Adaptability through cultural evolution is a major feature of human behavior. Cultural evolution, the process whereby behaviors persist if they are rewarded by society and
decline if they are discouraged, is progressively refining our social mores. Human
social behavior is indeed trapped between the hardwired drives of empathy and selfishness. While it’s
very likely that genetics influences individual behavioral drives, genetic
evolution is too slow to change our fundamental nature in the short term. Moreover, in
the absence of natural enemies, there is no clear-cut selecting force that will
favor the rate of reproduction of more cooperative people. However, our
behavior is adaptable in response to external cues, including cues produced by
our own social interactions. We are trainable beings, which is why propaganda
works. Just like a dog can be trained to patiently balance a cookie on his
nose, exercising self-control rather than following his instinct to devour the
cookie as quickly as possible, humans are capable of learning social
self-control and teaching it to each other. And we are, slowly, changing our culture. Despite the gory headlines the
24-hour news cycle and internet news sites keep splashing before our eyes, we
are, as a species, increasingly less violent[vii].
We must remember that long before CNN and BBC World News online, genocidal wars
and massacres were the norm. They simply occurred without being broadcast in
real time to the whole planet. The fact itself that atrocities are being widely
broadcast is helping humans develop a revulsion for them. The Vietnam War
triggered widespread opposition in part because for the first time TV news brought the war in all
its ugliness to American living rooms. Today’s digital media are serving a
similar purpose. As a consequence, casualties and collateral damage from
military operations are being kept to an absolute minimum to avoid popular
outrage. This was not the case during World War 2. The death penalty was
standard in the Western world until recently. Yet, today, its use is
decreasing worldwide. When photographs of an execution appeared on French
newspapers in 1939, the movement to abolish capital punishment gained strength from
widespread revulsion. Yet, during the French Revolution, crowds attended mass executions
as a form of entertainment. We are increasingly more sensitive to the ethical
treatment of other humans and non-human life forms, and vegetarianism is on the rise throughout the
West. These are, in a primitive Fascist mind, signs of weakness. On the
contrary, these are signs of strength and progress that demonstrate the
adaptability of human behavior. Adaptability is essential to survival in a
changing world, and humans have a significant measure of it.
The first step in exorcising Fascism is to acknowledge that it
exists among us, and recognize that it offers individuals who have virtually no
chance of attaining social in-group dominance the opportunity to achieve
vicarious dominance through group aggression. The second step is to demystify
the tribal fears necessary for the survival of Fascism, using both facts and
emotional defenses such as humor. When we examine actual data, living
conditions on Earth, though certainly less than ideal, are better than they
have ever been in the history of our species. Harvard psychologist Steven
Pinker gives a powerful summary of the hard evidence for human progress in his comprehensive
2011 book “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, and convincingly reiterates his
case in two recent articles [viii], [ix].
At the time of this writing, in February 2017, it
appears that Fascism has ensconced itself in the very heart of the American
government. This is a development that would have been unthinkable in 1945. In
the short term, it is difficult to be optimistic. However, “the moral arc of the universe”, to quote Martin
Luther King, is long but it does tend towards progress. Its trajectory is not
smooth. Short-term fluctuations and even reversals do happen, and today we are
living through such a reversal. However, all long-term trends point towards humanity
slowly and painfully learning social behaviors that will allow us to survive in
harmony before we self-destruct. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected
and we are confronted with the reality of our common humanity, tribalistic
ideologies like Fascism will eventually lose their appeal. A concerted effort
by enlightened humans will hasten its demise. Each of us can contribute to this
effort by supporting reason, science and critical thinking against
irrationalism, by disseminating reliable information, debunking fictional threats
and promoting exposure to other societies. We humans are unlikely to ever change
our contradictory biological nature. However, by acknowledging and studying that nature, we can
cultivate the most useful tools evolution has given us and discard tribalistic tendencies that are no longer helpful to our survival.
[ii] Benito
Mussolini, "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Jane Soames
authorized translation, Hogarth Press, London, 1933, p. 20
[iii] “I
could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been, by Signor
Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise in spite
of so many burdens and dangers. Secondly, anyone could see that he thought of nothing
but the lasting good, as he understood it, of the Italian people, and that no
lesser interest was of the slightest consequence to him. If I had been an
Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the
start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and
passions of Leninism. I will, however, say a word on an international aspect of
fascism. Externally, your movement has rendered service to the whole world. The
great fear which has always beset every democratic leader or a working class
leader has been that of being undermined by someone more extreme than he. Italy
has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally
the masses of the people, properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour
and stability of civilised society. She has provided the necessary antidote to
the Russian poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an
ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism.” Quote
from a 1927 Winston Churchill speech in Rome.
