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1/ The terms “fascism” and “anti-fascism” are continuously bandied about today. But those who use these words the most seem to understand them least, such that today’s self-styled anti-fascists paradoxically take on the central features of fascism to an extraordinary degree.
2/ Contrary to popular belief, fascism is *not* counter-revolutionary or reactionary opposition to progressive ideas in the name of tradition. Instead, it is a stage in the 20th Century process of political secularization that started with Lenin.
3/ Fascism replaces traditional religious principles with a secular religion in which the future (not an idealized past or meta-historical ideals) is made an idol. For fascists, politics replace religion in the quest to liberate humankind.
4/ Fascist authoritarianism is thus a revolutionary/progressive authoritarianism. Fascism does not attempt to preserve a heritage of traditional values against progressive advances; fascism itself advances as the unfolding of a wholly novel power.
5/ Fascism does not look back to history or to meta-historical values for guidance, but strains forward, advancing by a “creative destruction” that feels entitled to overturn everything standing in its way.
6/ The mystique of action, deployed to remake and transform reality, becomes the new driving force of history. The logic of the fascist’s “creative” activism leads one also to deny other people’s personality and individuality—to reduce person’s to objects.
7/ Once value is attributed to pure action, other people cease to be ends in themselves and become mere instruments (or obstacles) to the fascist political program. In fact, once others are reduced to objects, it no longer makes sense to speak of moral duties towards them.
8/ This leads to extraordinary narcissism: the fascist acts as though he is the only person who really exists. Fascism lacks any sense of the law, embracing instead its own will to power. Action requires no ultimate goal, and tactics can be embraced or discarded at whim.
9/ As a result, although fascists fancy themselves creative, in fact their actions can only destroy. Taboos are torn down at will: the past may be deployed as an ideological tool or cipher; but wherever it is not useful, it is discarded, defaced, toppled.
10/ Novelty is by definition positive for fascism, and he word “revolution” takes on an almost magical, mystical significance.
11/ With all this in mind, we can understand why the word “fascism” logically boomerangs back to apply most aply to today’s self-styled anti-fascists. https://arcdigital.media/police-brutality-and-the-suicide-of-revolutionary-violence-483f5fd48258
The practical upshot for today’s culture wars is not merely that the “cure“ might be worse than the disease, but that the most radical cure in this case just *is* the disease, thinly veiled—and this will absorb valid attempts to cure our ills, including the cancer of racism.
