From a Berlin bunker to the new world order
As a state form classical fascism ended in a Berlin Bunker in 1945 but as an ideological movement it continues on. There are continuities as well as discontinuities between periods as socially produced space/time is sedimented, never completely disappearing (Massey 2005). An ideological definition of fascism transcends the statist characterization of the Third International –problematical when applied to non-state actors such as social movements or terrorist groupings .The ideological or “new consensus” definition finds that fascism is “a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism…a revolutionary and populist thrust towards national regeneration in a new order” (Griffen 89:2008). This new world order is hegemonic and universal.
For free market fundamentalists there is no alternative to the market, the market is a universal principle. Universalisms negate the local and specific, raising cultural particulars to the global, necessitating enforcement (Butler 2000). Neoliberalism is hegemonic. Hegemony encompasses the full range of capitalist domination- a process that naturalizes the existing social structure rendering it legitimate and invisible (Gramsci 1971). Ideological hegemony both at the level of media and in the built environment structures lived experience, transforming the political into a passive spectacle, while funding streams and regulation normalize class conflict in ways acceptable to the power bloc.
Global integration and the repositioning of nation states limit the viability of fascism as a state form suitable to solving the problems of capitalism in crisis, but identity politics in its reactionary variant might provide a suitable vehicle for extralegal policing when legal measures fail in a period of weak and constrained class solidarities.
Security rather than democracy has become the watchword in what has been termed a “Risk Society” (Beck 1994). Risk society being the recognition of the limits of formal rationality, of inherent uncertainty where predictability and control have unintended consequences (Beck 1994). Risk is unevenly distributed, corresponding roughly to class. The cumulative effect of risk is felt by the totality, as disease vectors, social upheaval, and asymmetrical war have repercussions in an interconnected system of nodes and arcs (Beck 1994). Perhaps it is exactly this uncertainty that compels some to take a leap toward the sureties of faith and nationalism, rejecting the cosmology of progress, rationalism and civic constructions of national identity.
One senses that the logic of war, containment and strategic embellishment penetrates into even the most intimate spaces of everyday life via technological surveillance while cities are being retrofitted to new purposes (Harvey2005; Brenner, Theodore 2002) complete with fortified enclaves (Low 1997; Caldeira 1996). Polarization is recognized and countered by paramilitary policing and the technologies of surveillance by classes in power across social formations and within them, “structured in dominance and over-determined” (Althusser 1968) by empire. Coercion and channeling are tools used to fragment and disperse dissent, preventing effective organizing (Earl 2003)
The privatization of public spaces and systematic criminalization and dehumanization of racialized peoples in LA, the emergence of private security forces and the prison industrial complex in California (Davis 1990, 1992) attest to the inherent instability of the neoliberal project. Coercion is selective, focused on subaltern communities systematically and as well as targeted threats--both organizational and specific—such as contentious demonstrations or organizations (Earl 2003).
Global integration under the auspices of a free trade regime, the emergence of governance outside of electoral politics at the national scale, and an ideology of liberalism in a risk society limit the appeal of extraordinary state forms such as fascism among the power block even as selective and targeted forms of surveillance and repression are deployed. Classical fascism is a less than ideal solution to the problem of capital accumulation when production chains and capital flows transcend national borders in an unparalleled way. Fascist groupings might be contending for state power, but in reality rather exist in America as extra-legal policing agents expanding the repertoire of options available to elements of capital when hegemony fails.
Fascism has transformed itself into a polycentric, utopian movement assuming a rhizomic form similar to other transformative social movements (Griffen 200:2008) Fascist groupings in the United States seem to be an example of “loosely brokered networks” (della Porta and Tarrow 2005) linked to larger global networks of reaction. Fascist networks have developed a “complex internationalism” (della Porta and Tarrow 2005) like other informal, NGO, and criminal networks. They cross borders forming an imagined community of white identity confronting change.
References:
Althusser, Louis; Balibar, E. (1968) “Reading Capital” London: Verso Editions
Brenner, Neil; Theodore, N edit (2002) “Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe” Malden MA: Blackwell
Beck, Ulrich; Giddens, A; Lash, S. (1994) “Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order” Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Butler, Judith; Laclau, E; Zizek, S. (2000) “Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left” London: Verso
Caldeira, T. (1996) “Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation”. Public Culture
(8)303-328.
Davis, M. (1990)”City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles”. London:
della Porta, Donatella; Tarrow, S. edit. (2005) “Transnational Protest and Global Activism: People, Passions, and Power” Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield
Earl, Jennifer (2003) “Tanks, Tear Gas and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression” Sociological Theory 21(1) 44-68
Griffin, Roger(2008) “Ä Fascist Century” New York: Palgrave
Harvey, David (2005) “A Brief History of Neoliberalism” Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Low, Setha M. (1997) “Urban Fear: Building the Fortress City” City & Society (9)53-71
Massey, Doreen (2005) “For Space” London: Sage